I was going to hold off on reviewing this until I'd finished the available content, but with my gaming laptop in repair I don't see myself getting to that anytime soon, so I'll just throw this out now with the caveat that I haven't played for longer than a handful of hours so far.

First impressions are: it's better than I expected, particularly considering I'm not really into survival/crafting-type games at all (with a few exceptions - Minecraft and Raft, though they feel as though they barely count, and Subnautica and The Forest kept my interest with their stories). It's not something I see myself devotedly playing or becoming a big fan of, but it's fun to play with a good group of friends, the graphics are clean, it has some good potential, and it kept me engaged for as long as I was on it.

The gameplay is still pretty rough, but that's probably a given with an Early Access title like this. I experienced a lot of bugs and glitches and just general awkward movement.

Re: the elephant in the room, I think to say there's no copying here would be to be in complete denial, especially considering how shameless a BOTW copy their last game was. A fair few designs in here are blatant rip-offs, some going as far as to have the Pokemon assets one-to-one copied but just flipped around or combined with others', so I'll be curious to see how that lawsuit pans out. I don't expect the game will be entirely taken down, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if they have to rework some designs and elements.

That said, there are also some nice unique (as far as I know) designs here. I'm cautious to give Palworld too much credit because I've seen claims the artist has stolen from Fakemon/fanart as well, so those 'unique' designs could be down to someone else, but I don't know enough about that to say for sure.

Gameplay-wise, it's not really much like Pokemon at all - I see a lot of comparisons to ARK, but I've never played that, so it mostly just reminded me of Rust. I leave the base-building up to my friends and pretty much just spend my time collecting Pals and exploring, and that works for me.

I'll keep up with it and I'm interested to see where the development goes, though I can also completely understand why this game is getting the criticism it is. I've also heard their other game had some incredibly bad practices and financial ethics, so I'm retaining some caution.

I hope updates add more of a storyline, and ideally I'd like to see more maps. It's the same world regardless of server, which I get, but it means once you've explored in one you don't have much left to see. Having more of a plot with relevant NPCs/locations etc. scattered around it might make it feel more interesting.