5 reviews liked by tbagirlfriend


When you get over how absurdly hilarious the idea of personally beating up your Pokemon and then forcing them to do slave labor with these blank, cute, stupid looks on their faces is, there is something genuinely unsettling and disturbing about driving your "Pals" to the brink of insanity as a result of overwork and slave-driver labor conditions. You can't even say it's an effective political statement - or a scathing critique of Nintendo and Game Freak's business practices - because Palworld is a soulless, empty, plagiarizing husk of a video game whose sole interest is capitalizing upon the initial shock value that comes with a hook as brazen as 'ripoff Pokemon slavery simulator with guns'. This is a Family Guy Cutaway Gag of a video game, a Robot Chicken skit turned viral, a shitty Smosh parody given a source code. Apart from the weirdly interesting and complex slavery system, Palworld is clickbait and nothing more.

Minus half a star for the choppy framerate and Gamecube graphics. That aside, this is fantastic. This is about as deep as monster collectors get but it still seems pretty newbie friendly: the number of permutations between monsters (who all have multiple innate passives) and the fact you can graft any 3 skill paths onto anyone is insane but you can't really screw up too bad: rescouting becomes super easy as you progress and you have 1000 monster slots to work with, so getting the right skills on the right monster isn't too tough. Monsterpedia is excellent: if you're worried you need a synthesis guide they really give you a lot of recommended combos, you can check family trees in case you've forgotten past synthesis, etc. Really user-friendly without being handholdy. As long as people play ladder (and it's never been easier to make great, unique monsters), it'll never get stale.

This is a BIG game too: my memory may be foggy but I feel like the campaign is about twice as long as past entries. The story strikes a nice balance between telling a solid isolated narrative and being a geeky fanservice what-if prequel for the Zenithian trilogy freaks (Why is Toilen Trubble a main character here? I dunno man but he's a piece of shit and I'm happy he's here to rob everyone in the name of science).

Localization slaps. Took a screenshot every time they announced a new arena fighter, dialogue is insanely dumb in the best way. Anyways eat your damn heart out, Pokemon.

I want jill valentine to feed me pumpkin pie

Really cool, idk whether or not it's transhumanist. Really cool aesthetic and does a good job balancing making a statement with inviting more questions. Definitely worth the less than 15 minutes it takes to complete.