UPDATE: The comments section under this review is now closed. I don't feel like constantly pushing back against uncharitable characterizations of me or my position every few minutes of my day. I have more important things to do with my time. A lot of you really don't like that I consider the worst reviews of this game on here to be petty and vapid. I get it. But name-calling and misrepresentation is not the way to win me over to the other side of this conversation.

In a good faith effort to address some of the criticisms of my review that actually made sense to me, I have revised some passages to be clearer in their intent. Beyond that, I can't do anything else. I can't lie and claim to also think this game is garbage when that isn't how I feel. If you want a Palworld hate circlejerk, you can find plenty of those under the scads of one- and half-star reviews bombarding this page. Enjoy. But that's not what I want my review page to turn into.

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Palworld is not an original game. It also doesn't claim to be. It relishes in its influences, giving intentional nods to the likes of Breath of the Wild, Ark: Survival Evolved, Pokemon, Digimon, Shin Megami Tensei, Minecraft, and others. Through its art style, musical cues, creature designs, and gameplay mechanics, Palworld serves as a joyous love letter to all of these prior games without which it would not exist.

But originality alone is not what makes or breaks a gaming experience for me. Above all else, a game must make me want to keep returning to it, and make the hours pass by in an instant as I have an amazing fun time getting lost in its virtual world. If a game can do that, then it's succeeded at its most important job.

And for me, Palworld is very much a success by those standards.

Equal parts open world adventure game, RPG, fort defense, survival crafting game, monster catcher, and raid-based MMO, Palworld manages, somehow, to balance all of these and function as a game unique enough in its play experience to earn its own place among the gaming canon. I have put over 100 hours into it so far, and the sense of adventure, exploration, wonder, and accomplishment that it gives me is comparable to those same feelings I got from playing Breath of the Wild for the first time. I kid you not.

Is it for everyone? Of course not. But it scratches all of the exact itches I need.

The review bombing this game is getting is really a shame. Because this is one of the very best games of its kind to ever release, and it does not deserve this hate campaign. While there are plenty of actual reasons to dislike this game, the lowest scores for it right now seem to almost always accompany reviews that strike me as somewhat disingenuous and unlettered. Even some reviews go so far as to admit that they haven't even played the game but that they're giving the lowest score possible anyway because want to Fight the Power (TM) and take a stand against what they perceive as a lazy reskin of Pokemon. From this, I can determine that a majority of these most vapid and pointless negative reviews seem to be coming from disgruntled Pokemon fans who feel like their beloved franchise is being plagiarized by or unfairly compared to Palworld.

What I need to clarify, based on the comments on the initial version of this review, is that I am not endorsing the narrative that Palworld is a "Pokemon killer," or that Pokemon as a whole IP sucks, or that Nintendo is awful, or that Palworld is superior to Pokemon in every aspect, or any other claim if this sort. I do, however, believe that Palworld is a more enjoyable gaming experience than any of the mainline Pokemon games in recent memory. That doesn't mean Palworld is innately superior to Pokemon, but it does mean that the programmers and developers behind Palworld have, for whatever reason, managed to make a game that is much more fun to play than current offerings from The Pokemon Community have been. That could change tomorrow, but today, that is a true statement. Whether you think it's derivative as hell, Palworld is, first and foremost, incredibly fun.

The reality is that this game is not ripping off or plagiarizing Pokemon. It is simply too different a game to ever have a claim like that stick. In Pokemon, you catch monsters, bring them out for key battles against other monsters, and traverse fairly linearly from town to town, gym to gym, until you collect them all and beat all the bosses. The end.

In Palworld, you collect monsters, build bases, level up your character, craft outfits, weapons, decorations, armor, more production devices for even more crafting, farm for resources to do the crafting in the first place, give your collected monsters their own weapons and armor, ride them like mounts, employ them as workers around your base, use them in battle, fight alongside them in battle, explore dungeons, traverse an expansive open world, defeat bosses to unlock key upgrade items, complete side missions to expand your base and build even more bases, customize your character's appearance, join other player's games for online co-op, have them join yours as well, form guilds with your online friends and join in raids, defend your own base against other raids, and countless other things that the developers will continue to add through regular updates.

The two games are almost nothing alike. The only similarity being that in both games you collect monsters. But in Palworld, you can do so much more than that. It pulls elements from Minecraft, Harvest Moon, Breath of the Wild, ARK: Survival Evolved, Fortnite, and LEGO, just to name a few. And it isn't coy about these influences. But it also isn't merely a haphazard stitching together of those different game types, either. Palworld manages to take these influences and blend them in such a way that a game with its own distinct identity and play style still emerges from the primordial soup. And the game's huge success is, in my book, completely deserved and earned. People worked hard on this game.

But do not misunderstand me: I was going to give this game five stars anyway. Even before the naysayers started shouting so loudly by the beginning of the new week. Over the weekend I became absolutely obsessed with Palworld's freedom, customizability, and charm, and I was already prepared to declare it my current frontrunner for game of the year. I am not giving it such a high score merely as an attempt to balance out to unfair, review-bombed rating. I am giving it such a high score because I genuinely believe it deserves it. And the fact that the game has sold over 4 million copies in just 3 days shows that I am not alone in enjoying the hell out of it. If that makes me a fool, so be it. I don't stare at my video games on walls in museums. I play them as interactive adventures. Fun factor is king when it comes to how I evaluate games. And Palworld has that in droves.

As for the claims of plagiarism... As of this writing, no proof of this claim has been found. But even if the (very small team of) developers had to use AI generation for some of their assets (as of this writing still unproven, but possible), I do not believe that would lessen the legitimacy of the game's accolades as an incredibly well made gaming experience on the whole. Do some of the creature designs look a bit derivative of Pokemon's art style? Sure, but so does Digimon, Dragon Quest Monsters, Monster Sanctuary, Monster Crown, Monster Hunter, Coromon, Ni no Kuni, Nexomon, Shin Megami Tensei, or any other of the countless creature collection games that exist today and are presented in an anime style. It is inevitable that similarities will occur. And Nintendo and The Pokemon Company do not own the sole rights to the creature collection genre at large. That isn't how this works. You can't patent a style or a genre. It's far too broad a category, and doing so would snuff off creativity and influence, which are key ingredients in art.

I for one am happy that such influences were put to such amazing use in order to create the beautiful art (yes, video games are art, even if you don't personally like them) that is Palworld. Long may it reign.

A hodgepodge of ideas from other games thrown together to create something that works oddly well. The game is full of problems and is undeniably janky as all hell but the simple truth is that its addicting and engaging. I doubt it has much staying power, but that's honestly fine because I'm getting plenty of good hours out of it here and now.

No it won't kill Pokemon or change anything Game Freak does in the future.

No the designs aren't plagiarism, they are the store-brand equivalents of your favorite snack.

No its not just a Pokemon rip-off, this game rips off a ton of games and smashes them together which actually ends up being strangely unique, if it was just Pokemon games it was trying to mimic then it would honestly be far less fun.

The game may be devoid of any truly original ideas, but the point is that its actually kinda fun... and in the survival/crafting genre that is an achievement.

Its a 6/10 at best, but sometimes 6/10s are good fun.

The day after Christmas 2016, I got my PS4. A couple months prior, I finally got back into Playstation gaming after strictly being a Nintendo Fanboy for years. With my PS4, I got the Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4, Skyrim, Little Big Planet 3 and Final Fantasy XV. I couldn't wait to dive into all these games I wouldn't have even given a chance years before. Fast forward to early April, I decided on a whim to pick up Persona 5 only a day after it came out. I knew almost nothing about Persona besides my one friend always recommending the series so I took a chance, and ended up loving it. Fast forward to May 2017, I pick up NieR Automata. That one friend who recommended the Persona series, would also show me gameplay of the original NieR. At this time I was still in the middle of playing Persona 5, but knowing I took a chance on that and was loving it, I took a chance on Automata as well. I didn't start it until June and didn't beat it until August of that year, but from my memories of 6 years ago I remember absolutely loving it. Fast forward to today and I decided I wanted to replay this game finally. I was wondering all this time if I'd love this game as much as I did back then, because 2017 was my absolute favorite year ever...at least that timespan of like April-August and it could have clouded my judgement. Well my thoughts are complicated but as you can see by my score, I do indeed still love this game overall.

When I first started this, I decided to replay it on hard. It had been 6 years since I played it but I figured I could do it. After dying 10 times in the super long intro, I decided to bump it down to normal. It might be a skill issue but I didn't find it fun to die in 2 or sometimes even 1 hit. I played the entire game on normal and I don't feel bad, I just wanted to have fun. Though tbh, on my first playthrough through Route A...halfway into it I kinda wasn't having much fun. My main issue was, I kept comparing every little thing to Gestalt which is the consequence of playing this immediately after that. I kept missing the main cast of that game and just wasn't digging Automata's cast much. By the end of route A, I was disappointed in the game...and disappointed in myself for feeling this way. I absolutely adored this back in 2017...did I change? Was I too cynical now or something?

My main reason for being disappointed was because my favorite aspect of Gestalt, the cast, was not even comparable in this game I felt. My favorite character was 9S and his best scenes don't even happen until the later routes. The cast of this game is solid I'd say but doesn't come close at all to Gestalt's main cast, at least for me. That was my main hangup during route A, and is still even now the biggest downgrade this game has compared to Gestalt.

During route A, even though I was disappointed by the end of it, there were still plenty of things I liked about the game and several improvements compared to Gestalt. The combat for one is definitely improved overall. Yes the combat is not on par with something like Bayonetta or DMC, but it's still flashy enough so that it feels good. You have two weapons at once and it feels good to switch between both. You also have these Pods that act as the Weiss of this game. You can switch abilities with them, and some of the abilities are straight up ones from Gestalt which was cool. Same with the weapons, some of them were ones from Gestalt so you know I had to use my beloved Beastbain. I also really loved the movement in this game compared to Gestalt, dashing around this post-apocalyptic world...especially in mid-air on top of buildings, god it feels good.

Speaking of the post-apocalyptic world..this a bit of a running gag in my discord server that I have a major hard on for it. And that's correct, I still absolutely adore the world in Automata. The world is not as fleshed out as actual open worlds, but that's partly why I love it. I think the world is the absolutely perfect size for a gaming world. It's small enough where I don't find getting around to be a chore, even if you can fast travel...and big enough where it's fun to actually explore and take in the amazing locales. Goddamn I love the aesthetic this world provides. The starting area is a ruined city overgrown with plant life and that aesthetic is like my #1 aesthetic now thanks to this game. You also have a massive desert with a whole city half buried in the sand at the end of it. You have an abandoned amusement park full of celebrating machines. There's more ruined buildings on the coastline. There's a forest area that leads to a grassy castle. Right before that area, you go through a little shopping center that's full of overgrowth. There is no area I dislike going to because every single one has such a cool aesthetic which really does it for me. The world/setting of the game was my absolute favorite aspect when I first played (besides the OST) and even now it's still probably my favorite aspect. If there's any single one thing that this game destroys Gestalt on, it's definitely its world.

Speaking of the OST, it is still fantastic 6 years later. While personally, I do prefer Gestalt's OST by a fair margin...Automata's is still awesome. Back then my favorite themes were all the area themes and while they're still great, I really like a lot of the battle themes now. Grandma Destruction and Emil Despair, obviously because they're remixes of Gestalt songs but A Beautiful Song may be my favorite totally originally Automata song now, it's fantastic. The OST is indeed objectively amazing but I think the reason why I don't like it as much as Gestalt's now is because the songs have way more going on in them while Gestalt's are more simple. Automata's songs are also generally more epic and fast paced vs Gestalt's more elegant sounding songs. I still do love Automata's OST tho and it's definitely one of my favorites ever. Honestly tho I think Gestalt might have my favorite OST ever in any game, at least as of now so ofc that would be hard to top but Automata certainly isn't that far off.

Something I definitely loved this time around was the Gestalt connections I wouldn't have ever gotten when I first played. Like certain lines reminiscent of Gestalt, or really obvious things nowadays like how the desert machines all wear Facade-like clothing. There's a quest in the desert that even has you finding hidden items that were all connected to Facade which was amazing to discover. Speaking of quests, I honestly think they were a lot better in this game compared to Gestalt. Sure, you don't have the amazing banter between NieR and Weiss. However as a whole, I found there to be less fetch quests and more memorable quests that felt somewhat impactful towards the worldbuilding. Obviously, the single best quests are the Emil ones for me just cuz they connect to Gestalt so heavily but that was gonna be a given. Oh yeah, Emil is back...his side quests were awesome as stated before but besides that he's only really here as a shopkeeper which is okay I guess. If he didn't have either of the side quests, he would have been a big disappointment but those salvage his appearance I'd say. Also up to the end of Route A, I'd say the bosses were solid overall but none of them really wowed me besides Simone who was amazing. That's partly because A Beautiful Song plays during it but still. Also Also, I forgot to mention I did do every side quest and of course upgraded all weapons to max. For what you get from doing that, which is some of the best content in the game imo, I think it's worth it.

Anyways, a lot of things have been improved from Gestalt but the big downgrade being the cast hampered my enjoyment of the 2nd half of Route A cuz I kept comparing the two games the entire time. I established this before, so you'd think Route B would be even worse because it's pretty much a retread of Route A except with small changes here and there, kinda like Route B in Gestalt except not nearly as good. Well here's the weird thing, I honestly enjoyed myself more with Route B than A. That's weird because usually people hate Route B from what I've seen but idk I digged it. Maybe it's because I was playing as 9S who I enjoyed a lot more than 2B. Or maybe it was the addition of hacking which I honestly quite enjoy even tho I know many others don't. Idk but once I beat route B, I was definitely enjoying myself more than I did at the end of route A. So I don't get when people say Route B is bad, it's different enough that it's fun to play through again. Then Route C is next and that's where the story has it's peaks...and where the game definitely won me over again.

Route C is totally different from A and B and that's a huge change from route C in Gestalt. There it was the exact same as Route B except with two new endings so Route C in Automata is definitely a big improvement. There's tons of twists, reveals and heartbreak and it's 100% the best route no question. I still don't think the story elements or character interactions come close to gestalt in its ending, but they're definitely very good. I think story-wise, I like it less overall then Gestalt's just because of the inferior cast but it has some really emotional singular moments and so I like to think I love the moments in this game more than the entirety of its story which is opposite of Gestalt. Going into those moments though, and they both happened in Route C, they were the final super boss that you access by getting every weapon to max...and ending E.

The final super boss I knew would get me because of its connection to Gestalt, and they are huge connections, but I didn't think the waterworks would flow as hard as they did. Even more surprising was ending E. I still remembered what happened but idk man it really got me. When that certain part happens and you hear the choir, I broke down. This is THE moment I'm giving this game a 10 for now. I was contemplating whether to actually drop it to a 9, and I still might eventually who knows, but the fact I cried to something that had no connection to Gestalt really...that made me realize I do still love this game even without the Gestalt shit.

I may not be in love with the game's story or cast, and I think the OST is somewhat of a downgrade..however. The combat being improved, the still wonderful OST, my favorite world in any game and the worldbuilding and connections to Gestalt I do love. And so as of now I'm going to keep this at a 10, again I might drop it down eventually but Ending E won me over for now. I do definitely love Gestalt more now as you already know, which is so weird because I once had this at a 10 and Gestalt at an 8 lol. Funny how things change.

Back in 2017, I bought this game alongside the Digital Devil Saga duology and Vagrant Story. I happened to find it at a convention and knowing I had just played Automata that year and loved that, I figured I'd pick it up. I honestly didn't even know there was a NieR game before Automata at the time, so I was pretty surprised. I started playing it, got up to seafront and had no idea how to fish and then promptly dropped it. Fast-forward to 2021, I see that a remake of the version with Brother NieR was releasing soon and I decided to go back and actually beat this game. I play through the entirety of it (besides ending D) and thought it was great, though I did have some issues with it that held it back from me loving it more than Automata. Fast-forward again to this year, I had planned to replay Automata for a while now and decided that November would be the month to do so. Before that though, I decided I wanted to replay Gestalt and see if I ended up liking it more now. Well seeing my updated rating, I'm sure you can see how I felt. This game is honestly not objectively perfect but it does certain things so well and I love it so much, that I can't give it anything less than a 10/10.

So the thing people like about NieR the most is the story. When I played it in 2021, I thought the story was good but overrated. I also somehow missed the gestalt documents at the end of the game, so that plus appreciating the story as a whole a lot more, made me realize it really is peak. A big part of the story being amazing too, are the different endings you can get. Ending A is great but the game really comes together when you go through route B. Some things get revealed to you at the end of Route A, and so there's a bunch of little changes in Route B that flip your perspective on what was going on and I just love it. You're basically replaying the 2nd half of the game all over again but because of all those little changes, I had no issue with it. There's also ending C and D and the route for those is basically the exact same as B, only the ending changes. The endings for those are great (especially ending D, holy shit does that ending feel impactful) however I can see how it would get tedious for someone playing considering it's pretty much all of the same content as route B. Either way, the story is just fantastic I think and definitely better than I once thought.

Though, the story is not actually my favorite aspect of the game. My favorite aspect is the main cast. Honestly may be my favorite cast in any game ever tbh, I love all of the main 4 so much and think they complement each other perfectly.
Weiss and Kaine are always throwing insults at each other, Weiss is always complaining about NieR's tendency to just help someone no matter what, Emil has a great affection towards NieR as seen later in the game, Emil and Kaine get along well because they both see themselves as outcasts...there's a lot of different character dynamics going on and when it's all 4 of them together they just make the perfect JRPG team imo.

The other big thing I absolutely loved was the OST. When I initially beat the game, I realized that the OST was really good but as time passed, I kept coming back to certain songs. I was listening to Gestalt's soundtrack more than Automata's and now that I've beaten it again, I can confidently say I 100% like it more than Automata. It's honestly just perfect and probably in my like top 3 Game OST's ever now. Stand out songs for me are Grandma, Emil Karma and it's other variant, Song of the Ancients, Shadowlord and more. The music is just top tier.

Another thing I really love is the gameplay changes that happen throughout the game. Besides your normal combat, there's also little sections that change things up. There's several 2D sections throughout, there's a forest area that plays out like a Visual Novel, the first visit to Emil's Mansion is basically Resident Evil with its semi-spookiness and fixed camera angles, Emil's Mansion's basement gives you this top down view that plays like Diablo, not to mention most of the bosses area bullet hells. There's just a lot of variety in the gameplay and really makes the game feel fresh.

Speaking of the core gameplay though, let's talk about the combat and the other "flaws" I see this game having. The combat...compared to more flashier, fast paced action games is lackluster. I remember it was a big issue to me when I initially played the game, but honestly it grew on me a bunch and I learned to enjoy it now. I don't think the game ever really needed super flashy complex combat and so I think it gets the job done. Plus there's something I enjoy about how chunky the combat can feel, idk I said the same thing about Yakuza 1 and the same thing applies here too.

My other biggest issue back then, and this was purely just a me thing, was I didn't like the world and it's aesthetic nearly as much as Automata's. The post-apocalyptic world in that game was my absolute favorite aspect when I played, and so to go from that to this was disappointing back then. I still much prefer Automata's world but I honestly do enjoy Gestalt's now. It's far from my favorite gaming world, though I also don't play it for that so it also gets the job done I think.

A couple small issues I did actually have with the game this time around were the bloom effects in some areas and the Exp system. I think the bloom in seafront and the fog effect in the northern plains can look kinda ugly at times, I'm sure that's probably fixed in the remake so that's really only a Gestalt issue. I also disliked how if Kaine or Emil got the finishing blow on a normal enemy, you missed out on any Exp. I hope that got changed in the remake because it can kind stink when playing here. I can also see why people would dislike all the backtracking, hell I was getting a bit burnt out myself going for ending C and D lol. But overall, I think the backtracking to old areas isn't as bad as people say. The area you go back through the most is the junk heap and even then, that area isn't too long and has banger music so I had no problem going through it several times.

Last time I played, I only did a few of the side quests that were needed to get every weapon for the latter endings. This time around, I did every single one...and while they could get very fetch-questy, I enjoyed them overall. A lot of the time there's some voiced Weiss/NieR dialogue that makes the entire quest worth it imo. The best quests overall were I Facade I thought. Most of those were very memorable, alongside the lighthouse lady ones of course.

I did also get a chunk of the trophies I was missing before, the big one being the Lunar Tear one. That definitely took a bit of effort on my part but once I finally got it, it was pretty satisfying. I still have the speedrun trophy and the weapon upgrade trophies to get so maybe I'll do those on my next replay who knows.

So yeah, is the game perfect? As I pointed out, there are some issues I can see others having and there are even some things I still wasn't a fan of in this game. But the absolutely peak story and especially peak cast and OST, just makes me want to give it a 10 and that's what I'll do for the time being. The game has a lot of heart and I think it's worth playing if you haven't already.

Anyways, next is Automata and it's been even longer since I last played that so I'm hyped to see if I'll still love it as much as I did six years ago!


Also sorry if this review is incoherent at all, writing this at 3 AM randomly lole.