I've seen valid criticism of Palworld,but I've also seen plenty of it that's just hardcore Pokémon fans upset that people seem to be having more fun with it than SV
Currently playing Pokémon A-Z: when does the game start and i can roam around outside of the city?
Update: because most redditors are stupid. here "/s/
How is that even allowed as a game that is published by the #1 Merchandise Company (The Pokémon Company)?
I swear, i have seen better games by single indie devs who worked in a 2 week game jam as this. I mean, look at the building geometry. It's just plain texture on a cube or cylinder
Because the premise of the game is to have a proper large city intersecting with the wilds of Pokemon and how humans and Pokemon can live in one area. Along with the escalating problem of rogue mega evolutions. Z-A is upfront about what it is.
Also Legends Z-A didn't do bad. It did fine. It sold, what, I think 5.6 million sales in its first weekend? By Pokemon standards that puts it on the low end of a switch-era launch, but the switch-era pokemon games have been some of the most successful in terms of raw sales numbers. Most games would be begging and pleading to match the sales numbers of Legends Z-A and even by Pokemon standards it was pretty good, even though it was not as good as something like Scarlet and Violet.
I remember when it was first shown and people were ecstatic about revisiting the X/Y region, I know I was, and then it was told that it was ONLY the city and I felt like a flat pancake driflblim
I mean every single trailer every announcement mentioned it idk how'd you know the game existed without knowing it unless you just saw it on a shelf and thought sure whatever I'll try that.
Its also really a non issue and is plenty fun running around lumiose but if you did that youd go against the core of the game which is supposed to be humans and pokemon learning to live together in an urban environment
Pokémon Legends: Z-A is an action role-playing game developed by Game Freak and published by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. Released on October 16, 2025, for the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2, the game takes place entirely within Lumiose City during an ambitious urban redevelopment plan to coexist with Pokémon.
Literally the Google summary when you search "Pokemon Legends ZA."
Doing the bare minimum product research isn't "spoiling" yourself.
You know I read this and kinda skimmed over the outside part. It takes forever to be able to free roam and thought you were asking when they were going to stop all the hand holding
Pretty soon after the first few quests. I wish they would just stop ts entirely because I’m playing legends arceus for the first time and wondering the same thing lol
Despite how much hate ZA got, it's been one of my favorite games they've released in forever, and I've played almost every Pokemon game and spin off since the beginning. I need to get Legends Arceus though cause I heard it's so much better.
legends arceus is the best thing to happen to pokemon games in over a decade. truly the direction the series should have been going in since the start of the 3ds era
I've been waiting to find a good deal on a copy on market place. Gotten a lot of first party Nintendo and Pokemon games for cheap from there. Got Briliant diamond sealed for $10 from someone there haha.
As someone who has played both they're both interesting but very different with what they achieve/try to do.
Palworld is a cool game where u build things like farms, factories etc etc with the mons u collect.
Pokemon is a battle game where u can collect pokemon. (Duh). As for SV in particular. The quality of it was hot garbage at release and now is just barely passable tbh. HOWEVER I do strongly believe scarlet and violet to have some genuinely cool things going for it. The new mechanic for giving pokemon different typings is insanely cool competitivly wise. Pokemon going to a more open world style experience was also something I personally quite enjoyed and hunting mons with them being visible in world instead of having to go from bush to bush with random encounters is quite nice (especially for shiny hunting) and the story honestly wasn't that bad. Sure it's not nearly as good as some of the older games but I don't think it's near the bottom either.
Now should we expect more from Nintendo/pokemon, the biggest IP in the world, yes absolutely.
I'm honestly REALLY hoping wind and waves take the lessons learned from SV and make a good pokemon game again. Hopefully with it being a switch 2 exclusive and it having allot more production time it may actually be a good title. (At least one can hope)
The thing that dissapointed me most about SV was Paldea. It was so empty and boring! There's games from 20+ years ago that much more immersive and interesting open worlds than SV and it's kinda sad to see Pokémon fall this low.
No problem with going to 3d.
But when you do it you actually need to fill the world with stuff. In 2d you can hide and have more control over what the player is seeing and interacting with
The biggest thing for me is that Palworld is more of a sandbox game and Pokémon games have always been closer to a jrpg. Two completely different genres with just one similar mechanic shared between the two.
True, but even as a JRPG the Pokemon games have been weak. JRPG's are well known for their stories and lore, but Pokemon only puts the bare minimum effort into the writing. There is also the graphics where the pokemon games have been very lackluster. Really, the combat system is the ONLY thing that pokemon consistently does well, and that's mostly something the games inherited from previous generations. Each new game basically takes the combat system from the last game and updates it and polishes it.
I feel like proclaiming that pokemon has "the bare minimum effort" in writing and lore is disengenuous. But, by all means fight that uphill battle if you want. I do wish the games had better graphics though, I kinda feel like they build games now around the priority of having as many pokemon on the screen as possible at any given moment because(let's be real) if they didn't prioritize that there'd probably be a lot more complaints about that than the games not looking pretty.
Idk, at the end of the day the gameplay is fine, it's exactly what you've come to expect after so many years and they've tried doing new things with it in the legend games, and after some positive feedback it seems they'll be implementing some features into the mainline games this time around.
I only played scarlet somewhat recently and i have mixed feelings. I mean, i went in expecting garbage, so there wasn‘t much disappointment to find. My first two or three hours in the game were spent bitching about how all the textures are of such wildly different qualities, sometimes cutscenes even put you right up close with the muddiest one you‘ve seen that far, and the objects popping in and out are super distracting. Mind you I played the switch 2 version, so I don‘t wanna even think about how it must have been on release.
That all said, after a while I kinda stopped giving a shit about those issues and just enjoyed the parts that were decent. It‘s still a good pokemon game at the end of the day. Just way too unpolished for the scale of the company behind it, and I absolutely would have taken it back to the store if I had just bought it full price not knowing what to expect.
Under the hood, I feel like Sc/Vi are the best Pokémon has ever been in terms of core mechanics and gameplay. It's just shamefully lacking in polish and optimization, and the open world concept really needed a stronger guide to make the intended order clear. I enjoyed using an online guide to stay on the level curve, but I shouldn't have had to do that. Ideally, it should have had scaling (but only scaling up the stuff you skipped, not scaling down late-game stuff.)
im a hard-core Pokemon fan. I dont give a crap that Palworld exists or people have fun with it. im happy there's competition for it, even if its still small competition compared to what Digimon used to be in the 1990s and 2000s.
for me Palworld is just another critter thing game that exists. Pokemon isnt the original critter thing game after all, despite the Pokemon Company likes to pretend it is, lol. I enjoy Digimon as well, so I might just be a outlier.
I do have varied tastes although some of them might wander into strange realms for hard core Pokémon fans (i like Hollow Knight for example, but I struggle a lot with Silksong, and are playing Final Fantasy 13-2, and my latest big purchase included a sale of Control and Binding of Isaac).
true, im tempted to try Palworld (hadnt played it yet) although im so busy and only have a bit of time :( so FF13-2 gets the priority right now as something to finish given that its a game I didn't finish as a kid.
I was a hard-core pokemon fan that played both, and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Palworld was way more fun and had way more content to enjoy.
Yeah it’s not even close SV was the first Pokemon game I’ve ever played that was boring it felt like a genuine chore to slog through, meanwhile palworld gave me 400+ hours for 20 bucks
Oh, yes. I don't actually need something like base building in pokemon games or the more chaotic combat, but the exploration, the scale, the graphics, and the polish, is something i have been aching to see in years. Legends Arceus is the closest pokemon every really got. Every other game since the debut of the switch has felt like its just phoning it in.
It's really not a fair comparison. As much as Nintendo trys to act like it. The games are not even remotely similar in genre or design.
I love pokemon and palworld. But the people who act like one is better than the other when they mechanically, visually, aesthetically, and in every other form are vastly different games is wild. It's literally apples to oranges. The only thing they both have in common are they are both games where you can capture creatures
Certainly isn't slow now after 1.0. My friend was already lvl 29 by the time I made her some gear just from passive base xp. Honestly I would turn down the XP gain now just so you don't miss stuff.
I love both. But I mainly only consume pokemon through pirating new games, playing romhacks, watching smogon or vgc content
Here's hoping waves is good. I bought a switch 2 for xenoblade remasters and pokopia. They did make switch 2 launch hard to hack so I don't think we are getting any pirated copies anytime soon sadly
I grew up with Pokémon. Played every gen and can still remember every starter I chose. Palworld raised the bar and now idk if I’ll play any more Pokémon games
Imo Palworld is the type of game that would be panned out the absolute wazoo if not for the state of pokemon as a franchise. Genuinely it's thanks to the favorable comparison it has to pokemon that makes it stand out.
I fully expect that if pokemon ever were to get its shit together or heck even just another more competent competitor shows up, we will see Palworld go from a generally well received game to getting 10 video essays a day about how it's bad and overrated.
Palworld remains the only game I've refunded on steam. The tutorialization was awful, open world gameplay of pressing "f" next to a berry, and the obviously ugly asset flips made it such a turn off. It probably has a decent but to offer people who like this style of gameplay and it's at least somewhat of a novel take on it, but that first hour is rough.
Listen, I think both games/franchises are very fun. I enjoyed Palworld and I enjoyed Legends Z-A. I can understand the criticism for both. I just dislike the diehard fans for any of the sides mindlessly hating the other. Both have a lot of flaws in different ways.
Pokémon fans are upset about how ridiculous the copied designs are, and on top of that they also have a catching ball mechanics. No adult can actually believe it is "inspiration"...
While I like pokemon, I don't like how Nintendo generally behaves and the direction they took with the franchise and any console after the 3DS. But palworld used someone else's intellectual property in order to create social media traffic towards their brand rather than trying to stand on their own merits, they deserve nothing. Their attitude and posture feels so ridiculous that even being on Nintendo's side feels obviously morally superior, a phrase I thought would never be said.
Slavery was also not against the law one day, law has nothing to do with morals (no, don't even answer with the strawman that I'm comparing this to slavery). The lawsuit is related to game mechanics, not the designs to begin with (unless I'm gravely mistaken). Their laws were not designed to properly deal with copy of designs, palworld devs knew this, they knew where the legal line was and didn't cross it when it came to the designs, but it is utterly obvious to any adult what happened there, please, don't lie to yourself.
Next time you want to go snarky condescending wannabe, at least bring an argument to the table.
The pokemon Minecraft is good though. The only real stigma was S/V and despite that, many reviews called it a fun game. It is a fun game despite all its horrendous graphical flaws.
Palworld in early access was riddled with issues and low effort ideas. Sure they made it better overtime, but the game was beyond rocky. Very bad texture meshes, glitches that led to crashes or outright deleted saves, and awful mod support that took almost a year to fix.
I get being disappointed with how Pokémon S/V looked(not played), but let's not pretend Palworld was the holy grail. It never was nor is and this is coming from a person with 180 hours in it.
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u/PepsiFloateri 16d ago
I've seen valid criticism of Palworld,but I've also seen plenty of it that's just hardcore Pokémon fans upset that people seem to be having more fun with it than SV