With several million downloads in its first few days, it's safe to say that Palworld has taken the world by storm. Its success may partly be due to the label widely attached to Pocketpair's game ever since it was first revealed: we've all heard it described countless times as "Pokémon with guns".
But how accurate is that description? Is it really that similar to Nintendo and Game Freak's RPG series? Now that the game is available and we've had the chance to play it, we're going to examine its main features, similarities and differences to shed some light on this hotly debated comparison.
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The first and most obvious feature that brings Pokémon to mind when we look at Palworld is undoubtedly the appearance of its creatures, known as Pals. These beings, which populate the world of Palworld and give the game its name, are indeed very similar in design to many Pokémon. So much so, in fact, that hundreds of players have already accused Pocketpair's game of plagiarism, claiming that it copies Pokémon designs with only minor alterations. Some even believe that the Pals may have been created using artificial intelligence based on Game Freak's pocket monsters, although this is something we cannot prove.
The shapes, colors, sizes and even faces of many Pals are clearly very similar to those of certain Pokémon. Some people have even suggested this was a deliberate decision by Pocketpair to attract attention. There is Lamball, a sheep-like Pal reminiscent of the Pokémon Wooloo; Cattiva, a small fox-like creature resembling Zorua; and Robinquill, a green bird that fires arrows like Decidueye... These are just a few examples, and the list goes on.
— onion_mu (@onion_mu) January 18, 2024
It's only natural to immediately think of Pokémon when you see the Pals. In this respect, the comparison between the two franchises is undeniable. However, when it comes to gameplay, the two games are actually very different. That distinction could ultimately save Pocketpair from facing a potential lawsuit from Nintendo or The Pokémon Company.
As we mentioned, Palworld's gameplay has very little in common with Pokémon. It is actually an open-world multiplayer survival game featuring base management, resources and materials, workbench crafting, hunger and temperature meters, and other typical mechanics of the genre. All of this makes it much closer to popular games from recent years such as Rust, DayZ, Valheim, the ever-popular Minecraft or even the more recent and hugely successful LEGO Fortnite mode.
Players will therefore spend most of their time in Palworld searching the world for different materials, chopping down trees, mining stone, deciding what their shelter should look like, organizing their character's inventory and unlocking recipes and new structures to become more powerful and take on the bosses found in various towers.
The Pals you capture can also lend a hand at your base and work alongside you, either by producing additional resources or speeding up crafting. This is something we've never seen Pokémon do, as their role is generally limited to battling other creatures.
Closely related to the previous point is, of course, the presence of firearms and weapons in general, which represent another major gameplay difference compared with Pokémon.
In Nintendo's games, the protagonist is usually a character with few abilities of their own who relies on Pokémon for almost everything, from flying and swimming to cutting down trees. In Palworld, however, your character can equip clubs, bats and spears, and eventually use a powerful and varied selection of firearms to fight their way through the world, alongside the Pals' special attacks. The protagonist can even level up and improve attributes such as stamina, attack and health.
You can also climb almost any surface or craft a glider that allows you to leap from great heights without taking damage—two exploration mechanics that feel as though they were taken straight from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Overall, you could almost say that there are more mechanics and actions centered around the protagonist than the Pals. The creatures act as an addition or a source of support, rather than being an essential tool at the absolute heart of the experience as they usually are in Pokémon.
One mechanic that certainly resembles Nintendo's series is the ability to capture Pals. Palworld features just over 100 creatures to find, but instead of using Poké Balls, players throw items called Pal Spheres to add Pals to their Paldeck, which is essentially a Pokédex containing the most important details and information about each creature.
Your chances of capturing a Pal depend on its level and resistance, as weakening it first makes it easier to catch. This mechanic is similar to what we saw in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, for example, as everything takes place from a third-person perspective rather than through turn-based battles.
However, you can also choose to kill Pals and harvest various resources from them, including meat, eggs and more. You can even cook them, which would be rather cruel and difficult to imagine in the world of Pokémon.
Although the game places some emphasis on collecting Pals and adding them to your party to make them stronger and overcome various challenges, the creatures currently have no evolutions, nor is as much importance placed on training them as in Pokémon. You can still interact with them in several ways, including petting them, assigning them to defend your base, giving them nicknames and feeding them. Ultimately, however, Palworld offers many other major activities beyond the excitement of collecting creatures.
Pokémon has never been a series without a multiplayer component, whether cooperative or competitive. From trading creatures with other Trainers to challenging them to battles, these features have been essential in building such a passionate community over the years. However, Palworld places a much greater emphasis on multiplayer right from its main menu, where players can join servers or create their own game and invite friends to cooperate from the very beginning.
Rather than occasionally interacting with other players, Palworld lets you enjoy their company throughout the entire game, working together to build bases, exchange resources and help one another defeat powerful enemies. Although the game did not include any PvP systems at launch, these were planned for the future, and we were confident they would make Palworld's online experience far richer and more varied than Pokémon's traditional strategic turn-based battles and predominantly single-player adventures.
