Palworld Review – As Wide and Deep as the Ocean

What is Palworld?

Palworld is a 3rd person open world survival crafting game with creature-collecting elements developed and published by Pocketpair. Back in January of 2024, when the game released in early access, it was crowned as one of the biggest launches in Steam’s history, and after over a year of major updates, the game is finally officially released in its 1.0 version. But despite those years of updates, the game still looks and feels the same to me as someone who played during its early access launch.

Over the last 2 weeks of me playing it, I felt that the game is superb in what it focuses on. Whether that is the open world design and what you can do while exploring it, or the Pals that wander around that you can collect and fight with. But what it does falter in is the lack of an interesting story and just how needlessly complex the crafting and base building goes. However, despite those issues, Palworld was fun, intense, and gave me a very unique experience I was not expecting.

Developer & Publisher // Pocketpair
Platforms // PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5
MSRP & Release Date // $29.99, July 10th, 2026
Reviewed On // Xbox Series X

A Very Absent Story

When you first start up Palworld, you are dropped on a beach with a few pals staring at you with a tablet nearby, talking about the “World Tree”. After this scene, you are basically thrown into the massive open world of the game. There is very little in the way of story cutscenes or any engaging story beats.

When it comes to story progression, it really is just tied to the 8 towers with bosses, and what follows after. It is all meant to get you to explore the game’s world, but there’s not really a memorable story behind it all. Just a series of going to locations, talking to people about the boss in that tower, and taking them on in a rinse-and-repeat fashion.

The bosses, however, have really cool attack patterns and arenas. Zoe, the first boss, rides atop a chaingun-wielding Pal. It’s a simple encounter, as you can use pillars in the arena to avoid gunfire. The next ones that follow, like Lily and Marcus, have more open arenas that don’t give any real space to hide but enough to maneuver around in. I think the best boss personally was Saya due to the Pal she had and the arena’s ethereal design. Saya herself, alongside the other bosses mentioned, has really cool anime-inspired designs. However, considering the lack of a real story, they couldn’t stand out besides their designs or presentation.

With all of this being said, the boss designs and how their encounters are crafted definitely make up for the lack of a real story and narrative. The epicness of the endgame bosses leans into pure cinema that will live rent-free in my mind.

A Sprawling and Varied Open World in Palworld

A word of warning: when I said massive open world in Palworld, I meant it. This game’s world is separated into multiple giant biomes with large lakes, windy rivers, towering mountains, and cliffs that fully utilize the traversal mechanics of certain Pals. Some will let you fly, some will let you swim quickly, and some can cover ground quickly. Without them, the open world will take a very long time to get from point A to B, even with the fast travel points littered throughout.

Between all of this, you are put through the wringer on making a home, capturing Pals to do work for you, and eating to stay alive. You are taught through an NPC in the beginning area and prompts in the UI on how to get started. Chopping trees, punching and killing Pals for food, and building a Pal Box to start your first base. Palworld doesn’t really hold your hand through all of these mechanics. It lets you live and learn, even with the rarer materials and where some things come from when it comes to Pals. It’s not a problem at the beginning of the game, but when you get to the endgame tier stuff, it starts to become a little confusing.

As far as how the world is designed. Its world is designed first and foremost as beautiful, with distinct color usage. Outside of the rolling green hills and snowy valleys, there’s a volcanic area, and even sections of the game with windy caverns and crimson colored environments. It’s a visual treat, especially with some medieval flavoring as you see above with legendary Pal statues littered throughout.

A Land of Pals, Bosses and Activities

Littered throughout the world are a range of different bosses, like all open worlds have. You can run into bigger, stronger versions of existing pals, or humans with threatening auras that use guns, swords, or bows and arrows. They will always offer more experience points than regular enemies, and if you capture any of the Pal mini-bosses, they are, of course, stronger than their normal counterparts.

Aside from the mini-bosses, there are random events happening in the world. You can stumble upon meteorites that have alien Pals you can capture and supply drops for enemy factions that you can steal. Not to mention oil rigs off the coasts that you can take on for extra loot as you keep exploring. As varied as the world is, you have so many random encounters to match that variety.

Nearly Endlessly Layered Basebuilding Mechanics

At the heart of the experience in Palworld is its basebuilding, and it can be either as simple as you need it to be, or as big and complex if you have the time to work your way through it all. It all starts with a single base, a Pal Box for storing your captured Pals and the space it lets you build in around it. The space is generous for each base but cannot be expanded. IF you ever feel lost on what you need to do, there’s always an upgrade path with certain things to build, leading you to the next new resource to build more facilities or armor and weapons for your character.

But the problem with the upgrade system is that, after a while, it only becomes a way of leading the player to new things. Initial upgrades add more space for Pals to be summoned, and allow for multiple bases to be placed throughout the world. But I was expecting some passive upgrades with each one past that final cap in the system. Especially when there are hundreds of different things to unlock and build, then use those things to unlock and build other things.

Despite being the deepest system in Palworld, the basebuilding becomes unnecessarily long and convoluted. I would have much preferred fewer things in the overall tech tree to unlock if they were more noticeable as upgrades. Case in point, I have a semi-auto rifle that felt similar in power to the regular laser rifle I spent more time crafting and making its ammo for. Not to mention the furnaces feel very slow when you need to build hundreds of ingots to make conveyor belts that still feel slow when building materials of Pal spheres. Speaking of Pals, though.

Loads of Unique Pals in Palworld

You will have your own character with weapons, stats, and armor to venture out in the world with. There will also be hundreds of Pals to collect. You collect Pals by finding or crafting Pal spheres to throw at a Pal to add them to your collection.

Pals come in shapes and sizes, especially sizes. Some of the earliest Pals you find are pink cats, walking circular sheep, and adorable chickens. Then you will stumble upon more and more unique designs. Like some of the Pals the bosses have, such as Selyn, hovering above a colorful crescent moon, or a pair of knight centaurs like Necromus and Paladius.

But the real kicker about every Pal is not just its designs, but how they’re used. Outside of Pals you can use to fly, swim, or traverse on land quickly. There are also Pals that offer unique passives to the player. For example, one Pal gave me a double jump and air dash, with another giving me immunity to lava if it was summoned. There are also certain Pals that can summon guns, or be ridden atop while they blast away with miniguns or rocket launchers. One in particular is a fish that can be grabbed and used as a katana, basically a swordfish.

It’s absurd how unique Pals can be and how well they mesh with the rest of the gameplay. I only wish that Pal spheres were more potent as you get into higher levels. I am not expecting a basic sphere to capture level 70 enemies, but needing the hardest-to-earn ones to have a chance to capture Pals at that level is annoying.

Janky Gameplay and Amazing Customization

When it comes to the actual gameplay on the player side in Palworld, it’s pretty janky. The general impact of weapons feels off, the movement is a little stiff, and the player animations aren’t the best either. It all just feels off, and the overall sound quality of everything in between sounds compressed and underwhelming. Obviously, when it comes to the animations and effects for Pals, that’s all impressive. Some of the attacks, like Selyne’s moon beam being in a crescent shape, are a great attention to detail, and the sandstorms that Anubis conjures look and feel powerful. But the player side of things got the short end of the stick.

Finally, Palworld lacks a lot of modern-day accessibility settings, but makes up for it in interesting ways. When you make a world, you can edit the overall settings to your liking. This is not just damage taken and dealt sliders, but also experience point gains, hunger, stamina, and item weight gain sliders as well. You can make the game as easy as you want it to be or as hard and punishing as you can handle. I played on normal for most of my save and only swapped to casual near the end of the game, and even with that modification, the game still felt like a proper challenge.

When it comes to the general experience of Palworld, it can be anything you want it to be, and it’s crazy how customizable it can be.

Simple Music and UI, Weird Performance and Bugs

To get some simple stuff out of the way first, Palworld never crashed on me, but it did overheat my Xbox once, and only once. The game’s performance is hit and miss; the open world can be smooth or choppy, while dungeons or arenas for mini-bosses can be very smooth.

That being said, the game has very consistent bugs and issues. One dungeon had a boss spawn above the roof, and I couldn’t progress. Pals I summon would often stop functioning or not respond to me calling them over to use them as a mount. And at bases, Pals can be performing tasks, but a lot of the time never in the area the task is at. You can see someone mining from a hot spring, or crafting items from a conveyor belt from the food box. It’s very immersion-breaking at times.

That being said, though, the game’s art direction and overall fidelity are beautiful; the game’s UI complements that by not getting in the way at all. The music is also pretty simple, the only standout tracks being the game’s main theme and the little fanfare when capturing Pals, since you always hear it after every successful capture. Otherwise, the game feels very silent when exploring the world.

Closing Remarks on Palworld

Palworld is a far cry from the usual creature-collecting games on the market. Instead of being turn-based and bogged down with long, drawn-out cutscenes and dialogue sequences. This game lets you explore and feel the action yourself with a massive open world, a needlessly complicated base-building system, and so many Pals and bosses to take on. There are even little collaboration items and zones from games like Terraria and Ultrakill. The game is worth every single penny of its price tag, and absolutely has earned its success by daring to be different in the genre it’s in. You should absolutely pick up Palworld and have a fun time as I have!