Playing A Game Palworld PC

I have to say, it impressed me that Palworld released out of early access at all -- let alone with new content and stability improvements. Considering the generally poor reputation of early access survival-craft games, it's refreshing to see. Enough to pull me and my co-op crew out of Deep Rock Galactic for a few months, now.

That being said... the "upgrade grind" that I lamented two years ago is still very much part of the game. The content that Palworld early-launched with is more accessible than before, denser with optional activities to easily accumulate experience and power up. But as we continued chasing the main quest's gym-like towers into newer regions, Sakurajima and Feybreak and Sunreach and the World Tree, I felt like those optional objectives thinned out.

Getting our levels up to face the next boss got more and more difficult, toward the end. And while the experience-level curve ramped up, so did crafting complexity, requiring more base infrastructure and more intermediate components to build new weapons and armor.

The grind can still be pretty fun! With a couple of qualifications:

  • Playing with friends, to help share the burden of upgrading bases and equipment and pal rosters;

  • And leaving the game on, so base pals are continuously working their posts while you're away.

Lucky for me, an extracurricular project to simplify that first bit - converting my party's private game world into a dedicated server instead, so we could each log in separately - also solved the second by accident. An always-on server turned out to be crucial for keeping late-game crafting components available.

(I guess there are developer-hosted public servers, too? Where you can play with the public? If you're into that sort of thing.)

So it may not last long as a solo endeavor, and the hosting - or idling - needed for late-game production might be a turn-off. And I'd be remiss not to note that post-1.0 menu screen interactions are still kinda rough. ... and the "story" isn't even worth mentioning.

But! for me and my buddies, and my home server, the stars aligned to make Palworld 1.0 a very worthwhile co-op adventure.

Better than: No Man's Sky, Terraria
Not as good as: Satisfactory
Though: what the game itself lacks in automation-engineering satisfaction, I managed to get from developing observability, instead.

Rating: Good