Palworld: Pokemon’s Dark Counterpart

Have you ever wanted Pokemon skins in Fortnite? No? Good. Palworld does that for you by giving your adorable Pokemon-like friends guns

Palworld is an exciting new role-playing game that dropped this month. The game takes Pokemon and combines Fortnite and Stardew Valley in its mix. The game features a beautiful world with cutesy graphics reminiscent of Pokemon. It would not be surprising if a person, not familiar with Palworld, mistook it for a new addition to Pokemon. A much more violent addition to the traditional Pokemon formula, but still Pokemon.

The family-friendly Pokemon series is difficult to imagine featuring guns. Luckily, Palworld not only introduces guns that these adorable creatures can wield but the player can also fight the monsters of this world. The only Pokemon game to attempt something similar is Pokemon Legends Arceus where the player can face Pokemon without Pokemon of their own.

The two franchises seem similar on the surface with collectible pets and battling but they have some glaring differences. We will be looking into the similarities and differences between Palworld and Pokemon in this article.

The World

The world of a game is arguably one of the most important parts of it. They provide a sense of exploration and adventure in games. Both Pokemon and Palworld provide similar worlds for the players to explore. The worlds are large spans of land, water and air all of which can be explored. Each of these regions is fully explorable and contains wildlife that players can interact with. There are also interactable overworld items and spaces in both games. Whether it be moving rocks or building bases, the games provide a lot of variety in their overworld.

Palworld however allows players to do way more than Pokemon ever did. Players can start entire civilizations with the space they are provided in the game. They can run farms and even full-fledged factories with their Pals.

Pals: Pokemon with Guns

The Pals in Palworld are mostly the same as the Pokemon we catch in Pokemon. Except these Pals have way more uses than battling. The Pals help you live, thrive and kill in this world. We will be looking into some of the insane things these cute little beasts can do.

Use Guns

The game throws you on a stranded island with these Pals living all over it. Your survival depends upon how you can use resources in the game to sustain your life force. These Pals can be your pal in crime. The Pals can be equipped with guns to help you take down other stronger creatures including boss battles. The stronger equipped your Pals, the better your chances of survival.

Farmers

Pals can be used to help you grow plants to sustain a living. You can both eat your produce and sell it to gain money to survive. Your Pals can use their powers to water and harvest your crops.

Factory Workers

Pals can be your cheap factory workers. Using them to produce goods for free does not violate any laws in the Palworld. Pals will work for you as long as they are fed. They will continue to do their jobs if they’re well-fed, till the day they die.

Food

They help you make food but they can be the food themselves as well. While it is known to be forbidden in Palworld, if you are desperate enough to survive, you can devour your “Pal”.

Evil Teams

Evil Teams have been a central part of every Pokemon game. They act as the primary antagonist of each game and add to the story of the games. Palworld has somewhat of an evil team as well. The Poachers of Palworld function similarly to Team Rocket in Pokemon. They are here to capture all the Pals for their own evil use. (Although everyone playing this game puts the Pals through some tough times)

The unique part of Palworld though is that you can completely ignore the poachers and focus on a lifestyle simulator game. You can use your Pals like harvest sprites in Harvest Moon to build the best farm on the land… or a factory if you like being an industrialist.

Exploration

Pokemon has a huge following due to the massive exploration capabilities the games provide you. Discovering new cities with unique designs, music and colorful characters is what made the Pokemon series what it is. Fans of Pokemon have however noted that the newer games have fallen off from what they used to be. With the jump to 3D games, Pokemon seems to have stripped down its world from what it used to be.

Palworld while not featuring any cities (other than any you build), features a huge world with lush forests and caves to explore. Each area of the map is beautifully created with immaculate attention to detail. The game also has dungeons that can be explored. These dungeons are treacherous areas on the map that have rare Pals and items. They can however end up being your demise or cause you to lose a Pal or two.

Multiplayer

One of Pokemon’s fundamental mechanisms is multiplayer. It is one of the principal features the games were based on. The games allow you to battle and trade your Pokemon with your friends to complete your collection of Pokemon. The games always come out as two versions such as Ruby and Sapphire, each game has unique Pokemon that you cannot in their counterpart. This allows the players to connect with their friends with the other version to complete the Pokedex.

Certain evolutions of the Pokemon rely on these trades. The newer Pokemon games have also introduced raids which allow you to take on difficult boss battles with your friends for astonishing prizes and rare Pokemon.

Palworld in a similar vein has multiplayer. While still in its early stages, the game also allows you to team up with your friends and Pals to shoot down multiple enemies, The games also allow for trading and battling your friends. Palworld also has servers which can connect upto 32 players in a single game.

They have also promised to add a PvP mode into the game and a larger amount of players to the servers.

Conclusion

Palworld seems to have come out at a time when people are getting tired of Pokemon. While The Pokemon Company keeps adding lackluster DLCs to their glitchy games, Palworld does something new and different. The game has just come out and already shows huge promise as it is compared to one of the largest gaming franchises in history.

While Palworld may not take down the behemoth Pokemon anytime soon, the game shows promise. They are showing how Pokemon could easily improve their games if they tried something new and kept their games up to standard. Palworld is finally some form of competition that Pokemon has desperately needed to keep them relevant.