To task them is my real test; to exploit them is my cause

I don't tend to go for Open World Survival Craft games -- not since the halcyon days of Minecraft and Terraria. I haven't given half a thought to Pokémon in forever, either. And I usually avoid games in Early Access, so, how did Palworld get its hooks in me?

Playing with a friend helped, but this isn't one of those ... "so janky it's funny" or mock-with-your-friends kinds of games. In fact, Early Access or not, Palworld's mechanics and its overall game loop work pretty well! And I think what makes Palworld's loop especially engaging is that it's not just another surival crafting routine.

Your captured Poké- Pals can work in your base and run infrastructure, like an automation game, and they do so based on Pal-specific abilities. A rock-breaking Pal can work a mining quarry, collecting raw ore; a fire-breathing Pal can run a furnace, smelting that ore into ingots; and then you can craft those ingots into more powerful armor and swords and guns and so on.

So you put Pals to work in your base, and to keep them fed you need more infrastructure - run by more Pals who plant seeds, water and harvest crops - and support structures that'll keep them rested and healthy. The touchpoints between hunting and catching Pals, and automating (well, Pal-o-mating) your base, turn Palworld into a surprisingly effective combat-survival infrastructure-scaling hybrid game.

And it provides a ton of open-ended freedom in how you play, whether you want to hyper-optimize your Pal workflows or go out and farm materials yourself, approaching objectives and powering up however you see fit. ... for a while.

Palworld's upgrade grind does eventually get very grindy, the experience point thresholds ramping up and Palsphere capture chances dwindling down so much that gameplay can start to feel like a chore -- even when you configure your private server (like my buddy and I did) to soften those numbers up. And the recent Sakurajima update worryingly adds even grindier endgame components like oil and "plasteel", that all but require you to leave the game idle as Pals are laboring away.

My buddy and I are done catching 'em all for now, but I could see myself coming back to Palworld after Early Access if it makes that endgame content less toilsome. And assuming it smooths out some quality-of-life issues, like covering more of the map with fast travel, making it easier to transport materials between bases, and improving pathfinding for Pals getting to their workstations.

But what's impressive about Palworld already is how few of those rough spots get in the way of having fun with it, and how much of its Pal-catching and base-building is there to enjoy today. And, also, that you can build your dinosaur Pal a shoulder-mounted missile launcher.