• DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    This game bites a lot of other games, but it’s fun to play which is more than I can say for any Nintendo Pokemon game in recent memory.

    • SkyezOpen@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Pokémon hasn’t pushed the envelope at all. I think this game really shows what you can do with battle pets in an open world and Nintendo should take notes. Not necessarily breaking their format or making a survival crafter, but there’s a lot of potential they ignore.

    • lobut@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      I mean everyone’s favorite game Stardew Valley is a Harvest Moon rip-off. Gotta shit or get off the pot Nintendo.

    • Poggervania@kbin.social
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      10 months ago

      If a game copies what another game does but does it better and/or gives it own spin on things (which PalWorld arguably does, considering that you can have your Pokemon Pals fight with machine weaponry and also enslave capture people as Pals), I don’t see how that can be a bad thing. Otherwise, people should be up in arms about every roguelike Metroidvania or Soulslike game.

      • BarrierWithAshes@kbin.social
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        10 months ago

        Yeah this is more of the pokemon fandom being deranged. Closest thing in memory was a few people complaining Bleak Faith stole some animations or something from Dark Souls.

        The whole thing was resolved without incident and nobody threatened to kill anyone either. Most people didnt even care.

      • abraxas@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, people seem all over the place about whether a copied mechanic is “ripping off” or just a genre.

        These pokemon-likes have no more in common with Pokemon than Street Fighter with Virtua Fighter, Tekken, MK, KI, Fatal Fury, Guilty Gear, DBZ, or even Super Smash Bros… and about 2 dozen other games

      • Mikina@programming.dev
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        10 months ago

        Exactly! The game is pretty great case study on how to combine different genres together and make them work, while also being a prime example of how really important theming is.

        I haven’t actually played their previous game, Craftopia, but it looks like that both the “using animals in bases” and “catching animals into spheres” was there too, to the point where Palworlds are getting really close to just being mostly a reskin.

        But that illustrates really well how much does different theming works wonders for game feel. The mechanic while in Craftopia, with normal animals, wasn’t really much of note. But just by simply reskinning them to a colorful monster collecting game, instead of regular animals, the game feel entirely different, the mechanic is way much more fun to interact with, and it completely changes the game.

        Sure, they did build some changes on top of how it worked in Craftopia, and switched the game around to be mostly build around it, but a lot of the elements remain the same, only in a different skin.

        And that’s a really good case study in game and themic design, and I really love it.

        For that, I really like what they have done, and the game has been so far really fun, even while being only EA. Sure, they still have a long way to go, but I’m really interrested in what direction will they take the game, and I’m really glad they choose the mix of genres they did, and that they mixed and matched elements from other games in a clever fashion, where nothing feels like it was just slapped into the game just because it’s popular. It’s taking the best ideas from other games, and uses them to a great effect together.

        I also don’t mind them choosing the traditional Pokemon visual style, because it’s just the best fit for this kind of game. There is a reason why almost every Souls-like game looks like Dark Souls, because the atmosphere just fits into the mood and gameplay the genre is going for. The same can be said about monster collection games.

        However, I’m a little bit worried about some red flags raised about the studio - namely that their history with supporting and finishing EA projects is a little bit wonky (although, it can be explained by them coming up with Palworlds concept, and liking it so much that they just immediately switched over to obviously way, way better concept for a game), and also the fact that one of the developers was tweeting about how AI can be used to circumvent copyright by just letting it generate designs similar to other existing products, while making an example on Pokemon. That’s not really a good look, when you’re working on a game that is also a monster collecting game and you don’t want to be accused of stealing design without making it yourself. And that, especially combined with the fact that Palwords is mostly just a re-skin of Craftopia that has been polished a little bit, may be a red flag that indicates that this may have indeed be just a quick attempt at low-effort cash-grab, where they threw Pokemons to AI to change them a little bit without taking any effort at designing original monsters.

        But none of that is a concrete proof, and I still believe and hope that instead of a cheap cash-grab, they really do love the game idea and are excited to work and iterate on it, and will not abandon the game for next project once the hype dies down. Time will tell, but I really hope that it’s the latter.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        10 months ago

        People keep saying that Nintendo is going to sue them or something, but remember digimon?

        Pokemon isn’t even an original idea - they just took one aspect of the jrpg and took it further. There’s been countless games that played with the same concept - they’re very litigious, but they don’t have any standing against a game that doesn’t use their IP - and the concept is not their IP, the Pokemon are

        • prole@sh.itjust.works
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          10 months ago

          Shin Megami Tensei did it first anyway. And Pokemon straight up stole monster designs from Dragon Quest.

      • platypus_plumba@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Shooting at Pokémon with assault rifles feels so wrong. It feels like a weird mod that doesn’t match the core of the game.

        I just saw a 2 minute video to form that opinion, but I’ll check more about it.

        • Mikina@programming.dev
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          10 months ago

          It’d say that exactly what most of the haters are not getting. This is not supposed to be a Pokemon game. It’s a survival crafting and basebuilding game, that uses Pokemon for a great effect and neatly integrates some of the aspects of Pokemon games to fit into the genre.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      I’d pick I up if there was an actual storyline/something that needs to be accomplished and not just an open sandbox where the point is to just build and upgrade.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          10 months ago

          Yeah. It’s so crazy what ends up going viral sometimes. Over 5 million in a weekend for an early access from a no name company (essentially) is just nuts. Who knew a pokemon rip off with guns was going to cause such a big haul.

      • neokabuto@sh.itjust.works
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        10 months ago

        Yeah, I played a decent amount and quit when I realized the first boss isn’t the lead-in to the story. I’ll come back when there’s more to it (especially since the Game Pass version is out of date).