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I'm loving the hell out of Palworld, and for me that's saying a lot because I usually have no interest in survival games at all. I think what sets this one apart is that there's more focus on building your base and less on managing hunger and piss meters and stuff like that I usually hate in the genre. There is a hunger meter for you and your pals, but it's not that hard to manage and once you get a farm going you never really need to worry about starving anyway. You'll be spending much more time building up your base and catching pals to put to work. That's really what I love most, all the different ways you can use your pals. Not only will they help you with building things, but depending on their element they can also do things like cook food, water crops, plant seeds, power electric devices, and more. You can even make special equipment to use them in unique ways out on the field. I built a special harness for my fire fox that lets me carry him around and use him like a flamethrower. I made a harness for my deer pal so I could ride him around. I built my grass squirrel...well, an Uzi. I gave him an Uzi. Don't go to the Palpagos Islands tomorrow. Playing single player is fun, not to mention pretty challenging during boss battles, but I made a second character so I could join a friend's world and we had an absolute blast building up a base and hunting for new pals together. It's the most fun I've had in co-op in some time. While I didn't try it myself, you can also play on both official and fanmade dedicated servers that support up to 32 players. Maybe at some point I'll make a third character to give that a go. Some people out there are ripping on this game because they say they blatantly copied several Pokemon designs, and some of them do look really similar, but I kinda...don't care about that? Yeah, I don't care if they ripped off the biggest media franchise on the planet. Getting up in a tizzy about it stinks of some real "leave the multi billion dollar company alone" vibes to me. Besides, the gameplay is completely different in almost every way. Actual pal battles happen in real time and you're actively helping out with whatever weapons you have on hand. There's really no comparison. The other criticism I hear is that it's too edgy and I feel like this is really overblown. There's no blood or gore whatsoever and when you kill(?) wild pals they just ragdoll with spirals in their eyes. The supposed edginess comes from the fact that the game gives you total freedom to do horrible things if you choose to do so without forcing or even encouraging it, but the amount of freedom can lead to some fucked up implications. For example, I had a human poacher take a shot at me with a rifle so I caught him in a pal sphere. Yes, you can capture humans. I took him back to my camp, grabbed a meat cleaver, and chopped him up for parts (the butchering was censored with a mosaic). You can be as kind or cruel as you want to be and both approaches are valid. My personal style is to cherish my pals and keep them happy but also rain fire and death down on any humans who dare to cross me. It's a real hoot. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed an early access game this much and I can't wait to see where it goes in the future.