Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Prime Palworld - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Video Game hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are bringing you a very special episode on Palworld. Palworld may have taken the world by storm, but how good is it? Why has the video game world exploded with Palworld fever? Is there more to this video game than just cute Pokemon look-alikes? We address the gameplay, similarities to Pokemon, what sets Palworld apart and answer the burning question: Is this a fad or is it actually fun? Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona, Morgau, Disratory and Jwaf Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We normally don't release episodes on Wednesdays, but we are here with an emergency podcast. Cue the air horns.

Palworld has taken the world by storm. We had to get our thoughts out there as soon as we could. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he is capturing syndicate thugs and selling them as slaves on the black market. It's Ryan. What? Sorry. I'm stress eating like my pals. Oh, boy. Get back to work, Ryan. All right.

And then joining Ryan and me, he's busy posting viral tweets that get replies from the official PalWorld Twitter account. It's Josh. Aw, shucks, you guys. All right. Before we jump into our half dive here on Palworld, please make sure to follow us on socials at VideoGamersPod. We did have a tweet go viral today. Just got retweeted literally two minutes before recording by Pal World.

And we'll talk about that here in a little bit. You can also help support our show and keep it running by signing up on Patreon at $5 a month. You can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. You'll get bonus episodes and other perks as well. All right, guys, Pal World. Let's just start off with the Steam description, like we normally do with these games. Here it is. Pal World is a blatant ripoff of Ark and Pokemon with a dash of Zelda, tossing them all in a blender, and charging $30 for it.

What? All right, I do kid. I do kid. It's heavily inspired by those games. I don't think I'm breaking any news here um this is a game that i would say heavily borrows from some of the greats packages packages it all together in a way that's a lot of fun here's the actual description on steam fight farm build and work alongside mysterious creatures called pals in this completely new multiplayer open world survival and crafting game. All right, so in case any of

our listeners are not in on what is going down here currently in the gaming world, Palworld released into early access on January 19th. It immediately sold like gangbusters. We are recording this here on the evening of the 23rd. The game has already sold over 6 million copies in four days it now currently holds the second highest concurrent player account ever on steam and what's even crazier is that it's only getting bigger and bigger it's only been a couple days in many ways this is the exact kind of game that tends to vibe with our friend group. I mean, we're talking exploration, combat, crafting, and in this case, online co-op up to 32 players, which is very rare. So let's talk about what the

game actually is. Josh, why don't you jump in and kind of give us like the 30 to 60 second elevator pitch of how Palworld plays? Oh man, I got to keep it short. Okay. So Palworld is, like you said, it is a survival, crafting, exploration, creature capturing game a la Pokemon, right? That's the biggest thing that we see is the comparison to Pokemon. And I know that there's a lot of people out there that have said, hey, they're just ripping off Pokemon. And I get it. That's an easy thing to kind of assume, especially with the way these creatures look. And I can say I understand that thought process. But when you actually start playing Pal World, you start to see that there is a lot more to it than just ripping off Pokemon and trying to get rich off of that IP. So you're right, Paul. We love these kind of games because they just let you hop in with

friends and work together and have fun and do dumb things and have Ryan steal my eggs. Oh, there we go. And things like that. Or Paul die 4,000 miles away across the map and then have to spend an hour going to get his corpse run while we're all waiting to fight a boss. You know, those sorts of things. You know, you mentioned the tweet at the beginning of the show. There is a really good video where a good, good friend of ours,

Ace of Shame, had joined us and was playing it with us. And we took on a big boss that we could not kill. I mean, Paul had the absolute genius idea to say, hey, what if we just build a ton of campfires and he walks over and burns to death? He was a Leaf-style pal. So you figure he's got to be weak to fire. Yeah. And so we went, shoot, let's give it a shot. And then Ryan went, well, if we're going to do that, let's record it. And then Ace went, I'll record it. And we put it out there, and apparently people love it.

And it's just, the main takeaway is that when you give people a sandbox game to play, they will find ways to have fun. And that, to me, is what PalWorld is about. If you strip away the Pokemon copying, the references and similarities to other games, like Ark and Breath of the Wild and even Fortnite, you are left with something that just winds up being fun for people. Yeah. So I feel like that really...

Similarities. Similarities, yeah. So I think that covers a lot of how it's like kind of similar to Pokemon. Ryan, how would you kind of compare this to Ark? Because like all three of us have also played Ark together. I think that's probably the closest comp. Yeah, I would definitely agree. I honestly, I like it because I know what to do.

It feels familiar. It feels familiar. I pop into that technology bracket and then I can go through and click all the things I need to upgrade. Again, pretty similar to the Ark. But again, it's just one of those things hey if you can take these little bits and pieces from each game and make something that's gone this substantially great like it's wildly successful obviously within a few days so they did something right and they put uh this little piece from this game this little piece from that game these are the best parts let's mesh this all together and make something that people are going to love that they can stream that um it's going to be a phenomenon

and that's exactly what's happened so yeah it's it's awesome well they also combine it with a little bit of like weird dark humor it almost satirizes those things a little bit because i would say that this game doesn't revolutionize anything in particular no but it's just a great compilation of other great games with a little dash of poking fun at it like what if we use pokeballs not just on pokemon but actually on people and force them to fight for us and build our bases for us and i get that some people like brush up against these and they're like does this condone like slavery and it's like come on clearly this is poking fun at all those things it's over the top antics just for the comedic effect uh but i think that's why it really

just struck a chord with so many people it feels familiar it's very easy to pick up and play and when you can do it with large groups of friends you end up with these wild stories like us with the manor s that are really fun to talk about and share with other people uh let's kind of like start to break down some different aspects of this game i'm kind of curious to hear you guys like if you actually break it down what is your favorite part of this game is it like capturing new pals? Is it the base building? Is it the combat? Is it crafting? Like, let's just kind of start there and then we'll kind of break down those categories and go into some more detail. Let's start with Ryan. Ryan has played by far the most out of the three of us. I don't know if you've just had no jobs recently, Ryan,

but you have been playing pretty much all day, every day. I want to hear from you first. What's your favorite part? I love it, man. I got to say, I love, like, Ryan played Ark and he was like, guys, I kind of like this. And then I think, like, this is the follow-up to that for Ryan, where, like he said, he's like, I know what I'm doing now. And so I am very curious to hear what Ryan's favorite part of the game is. Well, yeah, I mean, I'm self-employed, so obviously I took this whole week off because I knew this was going to happen. Like everyone knew. Everyone knew Pal World would take off.

Yeah. Very rarely do we get a lot of rain in Phoenix, Arizona, but this week we did. So I had definitely some time on my hands to play. And so I've just been going gangbusters and like you guys said with arc i i kind of knew what to do and i am the thing that i thoroughly enjoy in these games is just i just love farming mats i love creating the ways to i'm a caretaker i like to get everything for everybody, get all the stuff together. Hey guys, while you were gone, this is what I did. So just today I built an ore farm because we were just like, man, we can't get enough ore. And I wish there was a way to do it for fiber. And so there's a few hiccups that we have as far as materials go. I just want to figure out

how I can streamline that process. So that's the part I love. I love kind of digging into the weeds there and getting all the materials we need to just keep advancing and getting better bases and better stuff and then just make everybody happy. It's community, man. We're a community. You know, I got to say something here, Paul, because Ryan built me a house with nothing but organized chests inside of it with signs that said crafting materials, medical supplies, creature souls, ammo. And Ryan understands me. He gets me, Paul. And he was like, Josh is going to love the fact that all of these chests are organized. And I don't want to, like, say that you don't do that, Paul.

But, you know, I'm just saying that, you know. Look, we have brought this up so many times. Josh, I can't believe we're still having this fight. When we play rust first of all rust pay attention oh you gotta let us you gotta let us just easily mark things don't let me do like an ammo box with a skin that's too broad we need to be able to make actual signs like in pal world but whereas josh in rust always wants to pair base mats together, that is not useful. If you are the person like me who has all the recipes, if I'm going to craft satchels,

I want a satchel crate that's got my rope and it's got my cloth for the, I don't remember the exact recipe. We haven't played in forever. But my bean can grenade mats, I would group that way. Josh would just group by a different way and we would always end up making each other's chess really disorganized. As much as it drove you crazy,

you drove me crazy just as much putting it all back in the wrong way. All right. But Ryan is Mr. Infrastructure. All right. Ryan built, I still don't know why it's a two-story warehouse, but that's fine. It has space, ambience, man. You got an atmosphere.

Yeah. With very well laid out placards marking what everything holds. I love that you actually also built a bank for us to go deposit gold so we can share the gold together yeah i think ryan you you built most of our base and you would also build little satellite bases that we could fast travel to if you found something interesting like the black market dealer was so funny because since we're still new to pow world you posted a video on discord where you're like guys i don't know what this is but he looks scary and it's like a level 40 guy with big teeth and it's labeled like black marketeer or something like that yeah yeah yeah and so you're like i'm just gonna put a pal box right here so we can fast travel to it later and then the next time i got on you and i went to go explore and look at that and i thought it was so funny because i just kept walking closer to him

i'm like do you think he's an npc we can talk to and you're like i don't know he's right next to a fire barrel i think we're gonna have to fight him and you're like don't go in there and then i just walked halfway to him and i was gonna stop but i think you thought i was gonna keep walking so you walked past me but then it turns out you can just talk to them and you can you know buy and sell pals and and syndicate thugs on the black market everybody needs a good black market right yeah yeah the best games have it like rim world yeah pal world you got to have it in there little dose of uh of silliness right all right well we're gonna go ahead and take just a short break and then we'll be right back with more Pal World. so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online and sign-up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month.

That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Are you crushing your bills? Defeating your monthly payments? Sounds like you're at the top of your financial game. Rise to it with the BMmo eclipse rise visa card the credit card that rewards your good financial habits earn points for paying your credit card bill in full and on time every month level up from bill payer to reward slayer terms and conditions apply all right coming back from our break josh what's your favorite thing to do here in the game?

So for me, most of the time in these types of games, I love progression. If you give me a game that has solid progression, I've been saying this forever, it really sinks its hooks into me because I just want to keep, there's always that carrot in front of me. There's always that thing to work for. There's always that higher level zone that I want to go explore. So I need to build up my gear and my level and all that stuff. So I am a sucker for progression in games. Pal World gives that to you in a lot of different ways, whether it is the tech tree or it is the ability to capture larger and more difficult pals exploring the world, harder boss fights. We just found a tower,

which are the mega boss fights in this game. And we were like, let's just give it a shot. You know, let's see who's in there. And we got one shotted like almost instantly. I mean, that was the second tower.

We had already done the first one. The second tower, but we had no idea what was in there, you know, and we. We had already done the first one. Yeah, the second tower. But we had no idea what was in there, and we just discovered it all together. And so for me, progression is the draw that keeps me playing. And my particular play style, I am not a bass builder.

You guys know that. I think at this point, you've basically said, no, Josh, we'll take care of the bass. Don't worry. Don't build anything. Valheim was the end of it. After Valheim, you got fired. I had already been fired in Rust. You lasted longer than I did. But Valheim was when we're like, nope, give it to Jared, give it to Todd. Anyone else can build these bases.

Yeah. And that suits me just fine. So what I really enjoy is going out and looking around. Like I like to explore and I like progression. So while, you know, Ryan is building the base and Paul is farming materials and, you know, ACE is capturing pals and taking care of them. I am generally the guy that likes to go out and look around, see what's out in the world.

Whoa, guys, I just found something really cool. Maybe we should explore this as a group or something like that. And again, this is where this kind of combination of genres comes in. Is it works for me? Is this brand new? I've seen this before, but it's done well. And so when you give me that ability to progress and you give me a world that I can go explore and find neat things in, I mean, there's dungeons in this game, there's boss fights, there's higher level areas where you're going to find pals that you've never seen before,

that sort of stuff, that's what draws me in. And so that's what I find myself doing more often than not. And it works. Whoa, hold on. So I'm not allowed to go explore in Fortnite, but you can go explore in power world and everything's hunky-dory is that what we're doing he's trying to kill you in fortnight ryan which they usually do but that's besides the point i will say that the exploration is handled really well in power world i think that the world of arc is more beautiful to look at, and it's more interesting the first time you take off on a flying mountain. You can actually see

the world. Ark does that better, but Power World still, it is scaled back. I would say it's a little more akin to Valheim in that regard, where you do have different biomes. You've got your tropical areas and the tundra, and you realize very soon, if I climb up into the snow mountains, I'm going to die very quickly because I need to craft my tundra outfits and things like that. But there is a lot to do in the open world, you know, not just in finding dungeons and bosses and things like that, but you can also discover these effigies that you can then use to upgrade your player and your ability to catch pals. It does seem like there's a lot to discover and find and do in the open world. And I think one of the best things, Ryan, you were the first one to realize, because we all hopped on pretty close to the same time and started playing together on the same

server. You were the first one to realize you could scale walls like Breath of the Wild. And I think that's a great addition to this game. It was mainly because i was sidetracked and then you guys were running off and i'm like oh no i gotta get to them and then i just started trying to jump to the wall and then i could just start climbing so i will i will say the stamina i i hate the stamina bar on this game like i just wish it was a little more i don't know streamlined or better or not as punishing punishing yeah yeah i i would say the exploration is an awful lot of fun i will say that with the game being

early access and being done by an independent studio things like the dungeons you find are very scaled back i think we realized pretty quick that they're a little bit copy and pasted, which is, you know, it's just, it's a cheaper game. It's $30. We're not going to complain, or at least I'm not going to complain about something like that. However, I would like to say in the future, that would be one of the biggest areas where I think they can improve is having like a more robust dungeon system. I actually really like the fact that there are dungeons. It's one of those things where I get excited whenever I find one. I will say that I'm with you. I think that they are a little just kind of bland right now. And it's definitely an area where

they could seriously focus on handcrafting a few of these, maybe even having some quest stuff situated on those i do like the fact that there is always a boss in a dungeon you know you're going to find one it tells you before you even zone into it that hey this is a level 29 boss in here and we have found some neat rooms there was one room that had like a treasure chest out in the middle of like a big dais and we were like oh this going to be a boss fight for sure. And then we walked out there and it was just a treasure chest. And I think we kind of all went like, where's the boss?

Yeah, exactly. But then we found the boss later on. But it was like, you know, they can definitely handcraft a little bit more of that. And I think it would go an awfully long way for just the, again, that progression and that interest in the things that you find out in the world yeah i i definitely agree i was you know so shocker i was on right before we recorded um and uh i was on with ace actually and we we were in a dungeon and normally you run in you go to the one section go straight through the kind of the center uh pathway and that's the way to the boss

this one actually had this different corridor that almost looked like a dining hall that led to the boss and just that subtle change we're like oh cool this one's different you know oh it's something new so if they were able to just do a little bit of a tweak so just to give that little bit of difference to each dungeon a little bit of uh kind of je ne sais quoi then i think i think i think it would just make a big difference for kind of those in between moments when you're not doing something big or extravagant you're just kind of clearing a dungeon but again you just find those walking by walking to new areas so it's it's yeah i love this game guys yeah and and it's fun to race each

other for who's gonna loot the chests at the the oh absolutely i was screaming at paul because he was like a half inch ahead of me and i was like no no paul it's mine see this is this is the difference that these guys don't know because i talk about this ryan this is you and me on the chest with ace i'm like hey bud do you want the right or the left chest i'm like you pick and then he's like oh i'll take the left i'm like okay and i get the right and then you know josh he's blaming everyone. But you know, Josh would go and snake both in a heartbeat. Josh is the one who brings it out of the group. When Ryan and I did a dungeon solo, Ryan's, you know, 300 meters ahead of me. And he's like, all right, I grabbed one chest.

The other one's ready for you. I'm like, all right, thanks, Ryan. But then when we play with Josh, that's when we just start ganking stuff from each other. Oh, but I stole his egg. I stole the egg. Exactly. You did steal my egg, but I stole his egg. I stole the egg. Exactly. You did steal my egg, but you gave it back also. What's really funny, and I didn't tell you this, is I stole your egg last night, Ryan,

and you didn't realize that I had grabbed it. And then you kept going like, where'd it go? Where'd it go? You'd been hatching this egg for like four hours, and I didn say a word and then i just stuck it in the pal box and then you were like oh oh there it is i must have had my inventory full or something oh brian's getting ready to report bugs i am it's just josh my egg disappeared yeah i so live confession right here people there you go yes so we've talked a lot about exploration we got to talk about capturing pals because more than anything else that's kind of what sets this aside i know ace and i have said this several times in our discord the the

fact that a lot of people rail on this game for quote quote, ripping off Pokemon, they're giving us the Pokemon game we've always wanted. If there was an official Pokemon game with open world crafting like this, we would be more than happy to scoop it up, but it doesn't exist. We've been given these half-hearted games like Arceus and stuff, so that doesn't bother me at all. Now, these are not, of course, they're not the official licensed Pokemon like you know pikachu and and things like that but it's a very similar system all right instead of throwing pokeballs you throw pal spheres there are different grades of them there are pal spheres mega spheres giga spheres all right so you can kind of see if you're any any familiar with pokemon this is all going to

sound very familiar i will say it's very funny. And I thought this was very funny right off the bat that you have to just start beating on these pals in the open world until they're low level and can throw a sphere at them. And in the beginning, you're fighting like little kitty cats and lambs. So cute. That will just cry as you're punching them in the face until they're almost dead.

And then you got to put them in one of the spheres. It's pretty hysterical. You also get bonus points if you take them from behind, which we all enjoyed making lots of jokes about. And then I think what they do here that takes the game to the next level is that every pal you capture does have different traits and stats. And this is almost where it gets a little similar to RimWorld, because you'll have certain

characters that, maybe if it's like a water-type Pokemon, it'll have the ability to water your crops for you in your base. So that way, you don't have to manually water everything. I have a pal working my base that'll do it for me. But they also have little personality traits. Like right now, we're running multiple pals that have bottomless stomachs. And they will just constantly eat food, whether they're hungry or not. But they'll even get moody.

Like we had a pal yesterday. I think it said something like, so-and-so is feeling neglected. So they went to bed. Yeah. And so they're not working in our base. And you can actually pump your pals full of antidepressant meds that will make them happier and go back to work. This is that extra layer where it's not just a blatant ripoff. They do add a little extra flavor here that I think is a lot of fun. Yeah. I have to give credit. I don't know who came up with this meme, but it really does make me laugh whenever I see it. The meme is basically, it's like the Pokemon icon and it says,

you're just a cheap knockoff. And then it says, Palwar, and it goes, oh, no, no, I'm the upgrade. Yeah, yeah. And this is the thing. You guys know I've never played Pokemon. I don't get into the games. I've seen them. My kids play them. I know what they are, but they've just never interested me. And I'll say in the very beginning, that was my very initial impression with Palworld, right?

I think it's a very easy thing for people to go, this is a Pokemon clone or a Pokemon knockoff, so I'm not interested because those games are not for me. And I 100% get that because that was me. But then when you see that they've sold 6 million copies, you start going like, well, what am I missing? Is there something more to this? And that's when we jumped in. And there is way more than just Pokemon to this game. Now, I will say, since we're talking about how you capture the Pokemon and stuff like that. For me, like there is a very like tangible like reward for capturing a Pokemon or I'm sorry, a pal that has a very low percentage chance, right? Like that is part of the game to say oh i've only got a six percent chance to capture this guy but then you watch the little the little wheel tick up and then you hit a hundred

percent i mean how many times have we cheered because of that you know and then it's like oh i got him like we fought it was only a point four percent stuff like that yeah the other part is in the co-op portion of this game we are all all guilty of this, so this is not just me, but it is a race to see who can throw their sphere first to try to capture it, because there is a legit competition amongst us to try to capture these things. And so that adds that fun layer with your friends as well.

The personality of these pals is to me, what makes that part of the game work for me, the fact that they get mad when they're at the base and they're working and they don't want to the fact that they get all snippy and they'll just go to bed. We, you know, we, I had some like little dragon guy that I was super stoked to get. And then he just overeats. And it literally like is flashing above his head saying, overeating, overeating. And I'm going, quit eating all the food. Like, why are you doing this?

And then I'm starting to like yell at these pals. And then I feel like an idiot. But at the same time, like I'm a fun idiot at that point, because that is where these things shine is the personalities that they have, the chores that they do. They're helping around the base. So you want to go out and capture more of them because you want to see what they can do. And on top of that, they fight for you and you can ride some of them. Yep. And I want to to know what is your guy's favorite or maybe most memorable pal that you currently have in your arsenal like when i think of ryan i'm definitely thinking about like

your giant floppy fish oh yeah that thing's so what is it depot or depo or something like that he's worried so no depresso is the big cat that's that's the other one yeah yeah it's it's like some big floppy dirt fish but that guy he uh he made it um he was a little too good at mining so he's on our ore mine now and as fish do yeah as fish do yeah those ore fish that was i was when that was probably one of the early nights or um when you guys were gone and it was one in the morning and i was still on blinking heavily trying to stay awake but couldn't stop myself from playing and i came across the syndicate and there was a cage in the cage was uh another pal and i'm like okay i'm gonna murk all these dudes and free this guy and it was this giant fish thing and i'm like oh okay let's see what

this does and then i take him out and then he got even bigger once he was out of the cage and it was just it's just comical when you get the bosses or the the specialty ones they're obnoxiously large and that just makes it even better oh that makes it so much more fun like we're still relatively early in the game i mean it's only been out four days and we're dads with families and full-time jobs, but we've played so much. I just love my giant Relaxaurus. It's just this giant, stupid-looking blue dinosaur.

Yeah, it looks so friendly, but he's kind of a beast, and I think he's great, so I'll pull him out. Those bubbles, I just caught one right before we recorded, and I was like, oh, this is lame, and then he shoots those bubbles and I saw him hit all the syndicates and they just were like, they all died. They're pretty great. Is your favorite your, your, whatever the worm, like the, the, the dragon that flies the boss that we just captured last night. So I'll be honest. I haven't really had a chance to use him very much. I do know because you can look forward in the tech tree and see what's coming up. And I do see where there's a saddle for him. So maybe... I'll be honest, I'm kind of basic. I just want to ride things.

So for me, it's like I have the dire wolf and he's fast. And I love being able to just dart around because a lot of times, again, because I'm just kind of going out into the world and looking around and exploring. And then the bird, which the real name is a nightwing, but I just call it Flappy Bird. And so I just hop on that guy and I fly around and he's very out of shape. He has no stamina whatsoever, but he gets me where we need to go. Dude, I will say I was a little disappointed when I first unlocked the saddle for the Melpaka because they are pretty slow, but you're just riding a llama around the world

and you're only maybe like 10 to 15% faster. Riding the Dire Wolves is a lot cooler and then you can ride like the Ike Thyrdears and the Nightwings and so on and so forth. But being able to ride the Pokemon is pretty cool because you can also fight while you are riding them or you can let them fight on their own on the ground. And sometimes, you know, you kind of like switch back and forth. But I do love the fact that all that stuff works together.

Now, something to mention about the combat portion of the pals that's really neat to me and is not evident to a lot of people is they have their abilities. And if you're riding one, you can command it which ability you want to use. So that almost is like another skill tree almost. But then you can find out in the world, you can find these fruits that teach skills to the pals. So if you want to give your fire pal a water skill, you can if you find the fruit. So you can actually really get into how you're tweaking the pals that you can carry with you. And you can carry five at a time. You can only deploy one at a time, but you have a set of five that you go out into the world with. And so there is a good bit of strategy there as in like, which five are you going to take? Well,

you're going to take a transport guide that you can ride. You're probably going to want a tanky, one that has a lot of hit points. You're going to want one that does a lot of damage. And so you get into that kind of personalization as far as like the party of pals that you bring with you too. And I like the fact that you can upgrade them with skills. You can sacrifice other pals of that kind to like infuse that guy and make him stronger. So there really is a lot of depth to building these guys up and making them what you want to make them too. And I think that's another part of the progression tree in this game is just like, okay, I found this pal that I really like. Let's see how awesome I can make him.

All right. I think there are also some other really cool things you can do with pals, but let's go ahead and take our last break and then we'll come back and break that down. Okay. So some other cool things about that, Josh, you were mentioning how you can carry like five pals in your party. Some of them have traits that also impact your player just by having them with you. Like having the cats in your party, let you carry more weight and some other characters will increase the damage you do so the fact that all these things kind of synergize and work together i think is awesome there's also like the pal condenser pop in like five chicky peas and it's gonna make one chicky pea with more you know attack power and stuff like that you did also mention sacrificing and

we gotta talk about that it gets the cleaver if you're not working you get the cleaver let's just say no foxes will get between josh and his leather no i this is where you just get to be stupid in games sometimes so you can if you get a meat cleaver it's like an item like a pickaxe or you know a hatchet but it allows you to butcher a pal and of course i'm like well i gotta see what this does and then so you do you pull up your little command menu where you can command the pals you can say hey attack don't attack you know i want to feed you these sorts of things and And if you're holding the cleaver, it turns into butcher pal. Uh,

and when you do, you just turn like Jason Voorhees on this guy. You are double, double handed over smashing this poor guy. And again, I love the humor in this game because it's not, it doesn't try to take itself too seriously it puts a blurred out kind of sensor like area over the best part was yeah over like this whole horrendous action that's happening uh and yeah so then of course because

i'm an idiot i just anytime one of our pals in the base is not working or is being moody, I just say, it's going to get the cleaver to the block with you. Including being able to butcher your humanoid slaves, if you have any in your party as well. That's true. Which gets a little dark, but it does give you the ability. Yes. All right. So we have talked a little bit about the tech tree. This is definitely lifted from

ARK. Basically, you just bring up a menu. You earn XP in this game by doing anything, whether you're mining, crafting, capturing pals, it all gives you XP. And you unlock these tech points that you can then spend based on your character level. So every time you level, it unlocks a new row of new recipes that you can click and unlock. I will say, I don't know that I love being able to see every line of recipes all the way down to the bottom. It does take a little bit of the mystery out, because right off the bat, it's like, okay, I've been running around using this club, but now I can make a spear. Oh, that's awesome.

But then if you scroll down, it's like, oh, then I'm going to go to crossbow. Now I'm going to be able to craft firearms. That almost would be more fun if you just stumbled into that down the road. I don't know if you guys feel the same way or not, but that was one of my very few complaints is that there's not a lot of mystery of what you're going to learn down the road now they do shroud some recipes because you have to like buy a schematic or find something in the world but i did find that to be a little bit of a bummer i kind of liked it because then i knew what we had to prepare for i i get what you're saying that there's not like the mystery of trying to figure out when you unlock something. Oh, okay.

Now we need this. But I don't know. Games. I mean, it's kind of hard enough with all the stuff we have to do and manage these and all these temperamental Pokemon. And then, or excuse me. Excuse me. We're going to have to edit, redact that there. Pals.

Our pals. TM. And then we got to manage Josh murdering them all. So there's a lot in this. Okay, wait a minute. To defend my honor, I only murder the ones that deserve it. Okay. Yeah, I get it.

I get it. But we have a workforce, man. We got quotas to fill. You know how many ingots I need, dude? Come on now. A lot. We got no time for sl. You know how many ingots I need, dude? Come on now. A lot. We got no time for slacking off. This is true.

This is true. We do have that. There's a weird spot on our base, too, that they keep getting stuck. There is. I mean, this game, again, is an early release. So there is a little bit of hiccups here and there. But we have a little spot on our base that's like a little cliff of a hiccups here and there but there's we have a little spot on our base that's like a little cliff side that's right in the middle that they keep getting we we

transfer back to our base and it's his eyes are bloodshot he's starving something's definitely wrong yeah then you go around looking like which guy's got the evil looking? Who is it? Oh, we've seen some crazy stuff. One of the funniest was when our buddy Ace captured our first slave. And anytime he would try to spawn him, he was just a floating bat in the air. Not like a rodent bat, but like a baseball bat. And we're like, what on earth is in this game's coding that that's how this character appears? So yeah, it's got a few bugs for sure. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the long-term prospects of Palworld.

So we're kind of looking at pretty much every survival crafting game. It's a very common loop. It's just get further in the map, find new mats, unlock new recipes, rinse and repeat as you work your way through the game. Right now, there are a total of five towers that have the mega bosses. So far, we've only been able to defeat the first one. That was actually we defeated that one quite handily. We did try the second one a little premature because I think that boss was like level 31 or something like that and we

were not yet ready we basically got one shot but there are five total in the world um i would say there's a lot there to enjoy i think the game is already worth the 30 bucks however i would love to see them add additional towers and more bosses maybe maybe even more biomes. It is a little bit scaled back in that regard, but I still think there's plenty to get your money's worth. I was kind of curious to hear your guys' thoughts. This is my one concern with this game, to be honest with you. Now, it is early access. A lot of times that puts people off. This is a game in early access. While it may be a little buggy, you are going to get your money's worth right off the bat. That's my opinion. Don't be afraid of the early access

part because you're going to have enough fun to justify the money that you're going to spend on it. I do worry about the longevity of this game. And I think that's a question a lot of people are asking. I see it a lot on social media where it's like, is this just a flash in the pan? Is this just a huge wave where everybody has FOMO and so they're missing out and so everybody's buying it to see what everybody's talking about? But in three weeks, are people still going to be talking about Palworld? And for me, the thing that they need to do is they need to continue dangling that carrot. And it needs to be more than just a massive tech tree. I'm with you, Paul, a little bit. And then I don't like knowing what's coming up. I get what Ryan's saying about being able to prepare and things like that. For me, if I scroll

all the way down to the bottom and I see, oh, at some point, we're going to get a mounted rocket launcher, but that's the cream of the crop, I kind of almost lose the carrot a little bit because I go, well, that'd be really cool. But now I know what the end game is, you know, as far as it goes. Imagine if it was like Valheim where they add new pals and new recipes, and now you find that pal, you kill it, you get some kind of new mat, and it pops up telling you, now you've unlocked these new recipes. I think you and I liked that system the most. If you could have that inside Pal World, and I'm not saying I want it as a live game service,

but if we got a couple updates, because right now I think there's something like 103 pals, you kind of run across almost all of them within your first dozen hours. But if there was some kind of, a couple updates down the road with new recipes and new mats, I think that would do a lot as far as longevity. That and then I like that it's open world and I like exploring. But sometimes having a quest is very beneficial to continue to dangle that carrot and keep interest, at least for somebody like me. If I have a quest that just says,

find and kill the black marketeer, right? I have no idea where that dude is in this world, but it gives me something to say, maybe I should go look at this cave. Maybe I should go check out this point of interest, right? There's something that just says, I know that there's something else for me to do or to aim for. Now, towers are very visible and you know, there's bosses in there, but we kind of knew we were going to get our butts kicked, but we just wanted to see, you know? And so like, it kind of takes away a little bit of the mystery or a little bit of that draw for me to kind of just say, well, all we're trying to do is get strong enough to fight this guy in the tower. So for the longevity of this game, I would like to see them tweak the tech tree and the

progression, maybe hide it, maybe give some surprises or something like that. And then I actually would like a quest system or just a pointer. Just give me a reason why I'm flying 20 minutes away from our base camp and looking around other than just like, oh, look, there's a new pal I never saw before. So did you really enjoy the tutorial missions? I love those. I kind of did. That should kind of continue. Honestly, that's my point. It's like they went away and then I kind of went, well, what are we supposed to do now? And I'm not saying I need my hand held throughout an entire game. I mean, we've been lifelong gamers, but it gives you a little carrot is all it does. And that's why I say you can even leave it vague at that point, right? And just say, hey, find this guy or capture a level 30 pal, right? Or something to just say, you've got something to focus on because I, in my gamer ADD, will get lost. And then I'll just kind of go, this game was a lot of fun, but oh, look, this game's coming out in two days. Let me see what

it's got to... AKA enshrouded. I mean, honestly, you know, and so I think they would do themselves a huge service to the gamers and the longevity of this game if they can kind of focus on that stuff and i'm not saying that they're not because the game again this game is early access and they may they may have these huge plans and they may be implementing all of those i really hope that they do but to me that's what they need to do yeah i love i love the idea of like the vague missions like uh you know capture this guy or or get this character that's over 30 or just something like you said the carrot just something simple that will just keep you

going let me keep checking off this list everybody loves to to you know mark stuff off the list so i think if it's something that can keep the continuation of you playing and having objectives and wanting to just do more. Because, I mean, once you get your base built out, once you got these things done, you have a ton of mats. Okay, cool. I can get some new materials. I can get some new gear. But I want to go explore. You go, you explore, and you come back to the base.

The exploring is mostly the fun part. That's where you're going to have the fun. You're finding new things so if they can make that interaction um enjoyable i think that's what will make that continuation on the game and people coming back other than you know just playing it for a you know a few hours and then logging off yeah i thought the tutorial missions were done rather well because they were not terribly specific. It was like, go capture 30 pals. And then you do that, you get the little checkbox, you get the dopamine hit, and it's telling you, upgrade your base from level five to level seven. And then you kind of see, okay, well, if I look in order to upgrade my base, here's what I have

to do. And then they finally tell you, go to the tower and fight the syndicate boss. And then you do that and you can see other towers and then there's just no more missions so it's similar to valheim in that regard where it's like here are the world bosses i can see i'm gonna go to them in these different biomes and that's really the only thing maybe just a little bit more along the way would have been nice um i would like to ask you guys is there anything that you like or don't like about the game that we did not yet cover? Because I have just a couple minor things. I got one.

I got one big one. Let's hear it. Give me a mini-map, man. Come on. Ping. Let me ping. Let me ping. Okay, let me ping and let me mini-map.

You know how many times I have to stop and then I don't... There's not like an auto-run, right? No. No, not that I don't think auto run right? so I can't continue on running, I gotta just pull up the map, look, okay I'm going the right way and then run continuously, listen, we're gamers it's 2024, we're needy

give us the mini map let us ping stuff for our friends and companions and you know that's all except for a lot of other things as well that we asked for that's a great tip i would love a mini map yeah yeah big time i mean i have a great sense of direction unlike paul and i still would like a mini mass yeah absolutely yeah there's nothing worse than when you have a whole group of mobs chasing you and you're trying to figure out which way to run and you you literally can't open the map while

running like you're saying right and you have to stop now you're in danger trying to figure out where to go i will say maybe the biggest nuisance we've run into so far at least in my opinion is that you have pals that will automatically pick up and move mats inside your base if you're within this blue circumference of your of your uh base josh and i after we died to the second tower boss yesterday we ended up grabbing some of the incorrect loot uh because we had to recover our corpses. And so Josh and I dropped everything for the other person and our pals immediately picked it all up, put them in random boxes, and it definitely took us about 10 minutes to get all of our gear back. And I get the convenience

of your pals moving stuff for you, but I was like, oh my goodness, this turned into such a hassle. So I don't know that there's a better system. Maybe if I drop something, make the pals wait 60 seconds or something before they start moving it. Or just a direct trade too, you know? Or a direct trade, yeah. So I mean, for me, there's a lot I like about the game. I think if I was going to point out some nuisances, I feel like base building is an afterthought. I mean, Ryan has built a good organization and stuff like that, but I feel like there's really not a reason to build a base other than just aesthetics. Using some other games as an example, in Ark, you had to build a base because you would get attacked by T-RRexes and stuff, you know? And so you needed that defense. Same thing in Valheim. There are raids that happen while you're playing and

you get a big warning and like, you know, anywhere from two to like 10 monsters will come streaming down and attack your base. I like that. I think that's neat, but they're fairly wimpy. And if you have a bunch of pals at your base, they just wreck anything that comes through there anyway. I'll be honest, I'm not finding too many nuisances. There's just a couple of quality of life things. And I think you guys touched on those. A mini map would be really nice. Pinging is an absolute must. I mean, how many times were we like over there and you guys are like, where? And then I'm like over there and it's like oh like and i just you know you need to be able to ping something for people other than that i think it's just continued development you know world events are a really cool thing having things happen as you

are out in the world this world is huge and i have explored a decent bit of it but a lot of times i find that i'm not finding a whole lot. There are the dungeons, there are the towers that you find, but it'd just be really neat to come across whatever actually happening in the world and then being able to join in or locate some big boss or something like that. Now, they do point out actual bosses on the mini map for you. So that's kind of a way for them to say, Hey, here's a guy that you can fight. But I think I just like a little bit more of that randomness. Again, I just, I personally need those things to keep me invested in playing beyond the first like 15 to 20 hours.

Well, especially because it's just one map. It's not procedurally generated. So yeah, you'll run into a syndicate base where you can free a pal or you'll find that dungeon but there's really only a small handful of things you can find outside of that we haven't really seen much else now i will say some people in our discord did say that the raids do get much more tougher down the road which i like hearing i think that's a good thing um the last thing i'll say something that i really like any item that you have put in a box is available for crafting i love that oh yes how annoying is it honestly josh you don't even have to care about organization in the boxes it

doesn't matter in rust it was always such a pain to have to go find your mats grab them out of eight different boxes and now i can craft my ak or my rocket or whatever or an arc i've got some items inside this uh i don't even remember the name of some of the machines in there you had like the machine thing but then we would have boxes with other mats and you had to get them all and consolidate it if anything's in a box you can run up to any crafting station and it just shows you. You've got 8,000 stone, you have 2,000 wood, you have 480 fiber, and you can craft 18 of these saddles if you want or whatever. And you just set it to go. You can stand there and do it. You can walk away and let your pals do it for you over time. I think that is such a quality of life improvement.

That was like one of my biggest beefs with Ark was like how you had a hundred different containers and you'd have to search for stuff. I think Pal World makes it very easy, but it also makes it really easy to like overspend mats. And next thing you know, like everyone needs fiber and there's no fiber in the base. Or I'm like, Ryan's like, Josh, can you craft me a saddle for this bird?

And I'm like, sure. And I check and I've got the mats. like ryan's like josh can you craft me a saddle for this bird and i'm like sure and i check and i've got the mats and then it's like okay well then i have to go run save this pal off this cliff that he's stuck on and then i come back and it's like i'm eight ingots short now and it's like wait a minute what happened to that and it's like because everything's available any time to craft something and then it was like oh i didn't know you were you needed those i made this and now it took some of those away too i was incubating an egg dude okay listen it was cold and it needed warmth and i'm just trying to trying to do my job yeah well any other stories anything else to cover do you guys think we've kind of hit all of it? I think we've hit it. I mean, the only thing for me, again, I give this game a chance is I think

the lesson that I learned is don't write it off because it looks cutesy. Don't write it off because you think it's just a Pokemon clone. There is a lot to enjoy in this game. And I think that it's a little bit deceptive to a lot of people that don't know. I see a lot of that out there on social media. People are curious about it. I've seen people write it off and just saying, I'm not a Pokemon guy, so I don't care about this. But I think you're doing yourself a little bit of a disservice if you're taking that stance. It's not going to be for everybody. I mean, that's plain and simple, but it does enough right that there is a reason that so many people have bought this game and are enjoying it. Is it going to win game of the year? No. Is it fun? Yes. Yes. And I mean, what else? What are we doing this for? You know, we're here. We're here to play games to have fun.

You don't play them for accolades and all these different things like you play it because you enjoy it. And this one hits those marks. I am not. I grew up in the prime era of Pokemon in elementary school, late elementary school. I was like nine, ten years old. Pokemon was at its full height and i had an original game boy i was playing the original pokemon i had cards i had i watched my friend childhood friend open up a charizard holographic like so like i nothing was better yeah it was it

was the time you know mid mid late 90s so nineties. So I understand all that, but I'm not going to sit here and, and say that this game isn't fun. Like that this game isn't enjoyable just because of that, you know, that it's like this, you know, they have, they have it's Pokemon. They have all the money in the world. Why couldn't they make a game like this? Right. You know? So, so there's no reason that we shouldn't already have something like this five years ago ten years ago look at all these other games that are survival games that are just like that so yeah um i'll get off my soapbox here i just i i'm having a blast i am probably gonna get right on right after and try to play um i do have to edit this so i'll try to be careful on how long i play but uh okay okay i gotta pick on ryan

this this speaks to how much ryan loves power people are still listening 56 minutes in i i they they deserve this story all right so ryan is the one that edits our our episodes and make sure that you know they're ready to go and Sorry, everybody. And so we have bonus episodes for people that support the show. You can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. But we do two bonus episodes a month. And we had recorded one and we were waiting on Ryan to finish editing it. Well, I realized last night, because we had all been playing Power World all day, that I was like, oh, wait, Ryan never pinged me to tell me that the bonus episode was ready.

So I tag Ryan on Discord and I say, hey, Ryan, don't forget about this. And I don't get a response at all. And I waited a good 15, 20 minutes. And I'm like, is he? but then i look and what do i see ryan is playing pal world so what do i do i log into the game and i said let me just see maybe he's afk i log in and there's ryan running around doing a ton of different things and i run over to him and i start bashing him over the head with my pickaxe and then he sees me and then I start doing the crouch thing and he's like crouching and he thinks I want to play. And then I just built a sign that said, Ryan,

edit the episode. And I see Ryan read the sign and then just run into the base and log out instantly. And I was like, I had to go into the game to get Ryan to do the podcast. This is how we have to reach Ryan now. I'm glad you remember that one. I totally forgot about that,

but that definitely, that did happen. Yeah. Oh man. That cracked me up so hard though, man. And then I just left the sign. Cause I was like,

I knew Ace was going to log in or you were going to log in or Paul was going to log in and see it. And I was just like, oh man. Oh, I demolished it in the morning. I bet you did. I got rid of it. I'm like, this is the stain on my legacy.

Oh, I love that story. It just shows you exactly how easily you can get sucked into this game. Yes. All right. Well, I think that wraps everything up here for this one on Pal World. Make sure to rate our our podcast five stars leave a written review in apple podcast if you can as a reminder our social handle is video gamers pod come check that out we hope that everyone out there enjoyed this extra wednesday

episode and until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody