One of the weirder aspects of seeing people talk about Palworld is the seemingly-baked-in assumption that "people are desperate for a good Pokemon game" which is just cooked from first principles. Sword/Shield and ScarVi are the 6th and 7th best-selling games on the Switch, respectively, and ScarVi in particular is a Really Good Game. Like, it's fun as fuck. Tons of quality-of-life improvements, the traversal's great, great writing, great cast. Had a buggy launch but bugs get fixed and the thing about launches is that launches aren't lifespans. This isn't a "stop being mean to Nintendo/Pokemon" post, they don't need anyone to defend them, it's just Weird to see people arguing from the position that a fun, overwhelmingly-popular game isn't.
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in reply to @Bigg's post:
idk it seems kinda routine recently for people to assert that fun, overwhelmingly-popular games are actually Garbage that will be a Dead Game as soon as whatever half-baked knockoff releases
also like what would be the overlap be between 'people desperate for a good pokemon game' and 'people who want to play something making plantation jokes'
I think part of it is that modern Pokémon is very different from what it once was, and a lot of people (including me) miss some of the gameplay mechanics and level design of the older games. I have negative interest in Palworld, but while I liked ScarVi, I still wish they'd make a game more in the vein of the old 2D Pokémon.
Also SwSh sucked don't @ me--
I didn't say anything about Sword/Shield other than it selling well. Why are you being weird on my post
also:
imho, bootlegs/bootlegging isnt inherently bad or without honor. pokemon as a whole has a LONG and storied history with bootlegs of every shade of quality.
but like, bootlegging starts to feel a LIIIIIIIITTLE weirder when its like some actual COMPANY with EMPLOYEES n shit doing and releasing trailers and getting a shit ton of money. Very different vibe compared to some dude in the early 2000s making a bootleg romhack version of Ruby and Sapphire for fun.
as you said, not defending GameFreak's honor here but this feels like a strange thing for folks to be tossing money at, especially at a time where so many small creatives are struggling
Pokemon bootlegs whip ass. Pokemon Infinite Fusion is, like, an insanely cool project that you can play for free on your PC or mobile device extremely easily.
Also there's like. Lots of other creature trainers. I played the fuck out of Digimon Cyber Sleuth. Just feels weird to ascribe this bad thing's popularity to an assumed need that is being insanely met at all levels
yeah exactly. this isnt filling some niche, its just... not great??? at all?? and it costs fucking 35 canadian maple dollars????
I don't know if other people feel this way, but I've stopped with Pokemon because I realised what I wanted wasn't a good game, I wanted to feel like I did when I played Red and Gold for the first time. This must be a problem with a lot of older franchises, but I think Pokemon especially because it's still so recognisably similar to the original core concept. So "pokemon but they're all new (and have guns)" might be attracting players like that. If that's the case, surely player count will plummet when novelty wears off?
My usual angle in that sphere is usually "I want to play a pokemon game with a different gameplay loop", and Legends: Arceus was one of the most refreshing takes I'd ever seen... right up until there was a heavy string of difficult trainer battles. The thing that I was enjoying Legends: Arceus for not doing.
Palworld, if it could actually commit to interesting gameplay loops instead of trying to meet a Youtube Thumbnail Shock Value quota to its own detriment, could have been sorta another step beyond Legends: Arceus, in an interesting direction. Maybe not Stellar at it, but interesting enough to still fit my usual "I want to play a pokemon game but I don't enjoy the standard pokemon format anymore, even though that format is fine".
I am definitely guilty of using the phrasing of "want a good pokemon game" tho, which isn't really what's happening, yeah.
I want an actually-multiplayer pokemon game where I can ride my own pokemon around with my friends, and pet my pokemon, and get my pokemon to use their unique abilities to help me out with various tasks, and have satisfying and engaging exploration, and have Breath of the Wild-style physics interactions that my pokemon's elemental powers can interact with, and Palworld definitely doesn't deliver all of that but it delivers more of that than any single pokemon game has so far. It sure beats Pixelmon, at the least.
I'm hoping that Palworld gets better (in various senses of the word) through early access, but more than that I hope that it inspires the Pokemon Company to take notice and get to finally making something like the particular pokemon game that I among many others have been craving for decades.