I actually bought it, tried it for a bit, and then refunded it.
It just felt kinda bland? Not sure if this is just because I wasn’t in in the right headspace, but the game got to the point where I started collecting resources in a base and I just put the game down.
It’s like they got a generic survival game and added not-pokemon and guns to it for shock factors, without really considering gameplay cohesion.
The real reason I refunded it though is because, according to someone on Bluesky, the devs have a history of being NFT and genAI shills. I’d rather not get emotionally invested in mons that could just become NFTs or AI puppets.
Very interested in a future game where someone else takes the idea and actually has the passion to create a good 3D mon catching game. Clearly it’s something the market wants.
The generative AI and NFT concerns were overblown. His generative AI comment was from his other game, AI art imposter which has AI in the title. For crypto stuff, it’s likely because his company just chases trends. Say what you will about that, but to me a trend chaser is more innocuous than a grifter.
I wish this were an article/column, but it’s a brief video if you want a journalist’s perspective: youtu.be/mYBN5Er8qOs
Rouge likes. I just can’t get into them. The only one I was able to sink any kind of time into was Hades. I actually enjoyed it a decent amount, but I find the gameplay loop for roguelikes just wears me out pretty quickly
Monster Hunter World, again. Had been playing Sunbreak together until a friend wanted to prove world was the better game for some stupid reason. I genuinely like both, but SB was so much better for multiplayer.
I'm playing Apollo Justice on my N3DS after playing Phoenix Wright 2 and 3. So far I find it less interesting, I played it for a bit way back in the DS days but can't remember much. Strangely enough, Maya Fei is my favourite character of the franchise, with her half a brain cell and all.
I'm also trying to get through Persona 5 Royal, I've tried 4 times between the original on PS3 and this one. I can't get engaged enough and it's so frustrating. I loved Persona 3 and 4 and have played them a few times since I discovered them in 2011 or so and was really hyped for 5 for years. But 5 feels like a worse Persona 4, despite all the enhancements. I just finished the third palace (the farthest I ever got was the fourth palace a few years ago) and I haven't touched it in a couple of days because I can't find the will to go on. Maybe it's me who has changed, although I still find 3 and 4 very enjoyable.
Maya is a genius compared to Pearl. Poor girl was introduced as a little kid and they decided she’d stay a toddler in a grown-up body for the rest her life.
P5R was my first introduction to the series, but I’ve heard the characters in P4 are much more fleshed out. Is that your issue, or would you say it’s the game mechanics that are bugging you?
I'd say it's a bit of both. I have the impression that they wanted to do a better Persona 4 but for me the characters feel more artificial and the game feels bloated in comparison. By wanting to expand on everything that made P4 so good, they expanded everything a bit too much for me. And reading the game lasts some 100-120 hours reinforces this feeling and makes me uncomfortable, which shouldn't be the case with such a beloved franchise.
I can’t really compare too much to P4G, since I never got very far in it (I missed the QoL improvements).
I think being able to save in safe rooms let them expand the Palaces/Dungeons, which I could see making the game drag for some. Personally, I enjoyed the safe room mechanic since it meant that I could play for short times if necessary, which let me “pick up and play” much easier.
The sleep function is pretty nice, but I like to swap games relatively frequently; so being able to save frequently is still critical for me. Plus at the time, I was just playing on my personal computer, so I couldn’t leave it running, even if I wanted to.
For P5R, I suggest only playing for an hour or a two at a time; I think it helps keep the game from dragging. For me, it helped keep the exploration aspect fun since I didn’t have to rush to the end since I was probably not getting there in this sitting anyways.
That’s pretty cool. Does it let you pause games indefinitely while playing other games, or does it just initiate a pause while you’re on the home screen, etc?
A Steam Deck plugin for the Decky Plugin Loader that makes it possible to pause and resume games even for those that don't have an immediate pause option.
Useful for when you wish to temporarily suspend an application in order to redirect the cpu and gpu ressources to another without having to close it.
I intend to replay Apollo Justice for the same reasons as you lol, I wish I didn’t forget the plot of the Ace Attorney games so I could keep with the main story.
Yes, though it’s mostly been my partner that has been playing! She’s gotten into a gameplay loop of gearing up, heading to the furthest teleport point, exploring until she finds the next, and coming back to re-equip and work on the base stuff. mid-30s level I think, the base is pretty neat too
I’ve been having a blast. I’ve played other survival games but they rarely feel interesting to me, I haven’t delved this deep into since Conan Exiles (which now that I think about it also has a mechanic of capturing people to work/defend your base)
There are a few issues I’ve had. The worst are when playing on a dedicated server, I often lose connection and I load back in under the world. The worst is when offline my pals are unable to care for themselves and they’re all weakened and depressed when I log back on, the only solution right now is to put them back in the box before logging off.
You're going to need a better eye for asset flips. It's too easy to dilute the meaning of the term if you're going to start including the likes of Palworld.
It’s good but as a fan of survival games like Minecraft, Rust, Valheim and Grounded it leaves a lot to be desired in that aspect of the game. It feels really early access (which yeah I guess it is so I’ll concede on that) and feature non-complete. With that being said, I’m still coming back to it and enjoying it.
P.S. I’m also on gamepass and have sunk a few hours into cloud gaming as well and it’s pretty good. As soon as Microsoft start adding something like native upscaling to xbox cloud gaming they’re gonna be on a whole other level of playability.
The gameplay is very good up until level 40 and is definitely one of the more complete early access games.
So far I have not encountered any game breaking bugs, but the game itself does have tons of jank.
Now I am currently level 47, and can say that leveling from 40 to 50 is a hella grind and takes a lot of time and resources. Mainly time, as getting end game pokeballs takes a massive amount of resources that only pals can harvest, process, and then craft.
Also, the end game bosses are quite beefy and hit like a truck.
For what it’s worth, if you customize the difficulty of your game (which you can do at any point, including after reaching the 40s), you can change most things, including resource drop rates and how much effort it takes to mine them, xp rates, Pal encounter rates, capture rates, etc.
I had a similar experience as you; by the time I hit 42 or so, I had the capture power maxed out, and most eggs were not giving me anything interesting, and I had the whole map revealed, so exploring had lost its luster and I was not enjoying the thought of grinding out another 6-8 levels to start being able to tackle some of the harder challenges in the game; I set the XP rate to x4, and doubled the resource rates, and it pretty much solved the problem for me.
Obviously if you’re playing on a server this isn’t an option, but if it’s just your own single player game, consider trying it; you might find some settings that smooth it out for you.
If you build a base on/near a bunch of ore nodes and dedicate it entirely to mining your pals will mine it for you and it respawns daily (passive ore generation ftw!!!)
There is a fairly nice base location near the center of the map that has ~6 coal and ~6 ore nodes, and is on a plateau making it functionally immune to NPC raids. I found it completely accidentally; there’s the 3 wildlife sanctuaries around the outside of the map and they all face inward at different angles, so I was trying to triangulate where they were “pointing” to see if it was leading somewhere. Turns out it was leading to a sweet base location.
This is noteworthy because there’s 4 resources (ore, coal, sulfur and quartz), so you need a base with access to 2 of them if you want to have all 4 generating passively.
For end game, how do you think the spheres feel? Cause I swear to god the ultra and legend spheres have bugged capture rates; no way I am getting the percentages those things advertise.
Lol, I know what you mean. Those legendary spheres say like 80-90% but it feels like a coin flip most of the time. I have had so many fail at like 95%.
I've got a feeling that the legal issues, even if they're in the clear, are going to pose a lot of problems for the longevity of the game. But, I'm really hopeful that this sparks inspiration for other devs to take on the monster collecting genre. Pokemon has dominated that space for so long that they practically define the genre at this point, so it'll be nice to see new monster collectors come out with their own unique styles.
So far Pocketpair has been VERY careful about actually infringing on copyright or trademarks. People smarter than I am are pretty certain that if Nintendo or the Pokemon Company could take legal action against the game as it is, they would have already. The important things to note are that you cannot copyright an art style and you cannot copyright or patent game mechanics. And even if things were touch and go, the gameplay loop of adding survival elements and an emphasis on cooperative guild base management is pretty transformative compared to Pokemon games. So as long as they avoid adding pals that are so close to their Pokemon counterparts that they don’t pass the squint test they will be alright.
While all of that appears to be true, that doesn't mean Nintendo/TPC aren't able to make this small studio's lives a nightmare if they wanted. I have a feeling that the level of scrutiny the studio will be under from now on is going to inhibit any real innovation, as they're already walking a very fine line as it is.
It's also worth noting that they're both Japanese companies, and Japan has different views on IP than the rest of the world. I don't really know enough to go into detail, but it's entirely possible something a company from the US could laugh off is enough to get action taken in Japan.
Agreed, all of the ‘drama’ surrounding this possible copyright case is largely created by youtubers and tiktokers for views.
That said, Nintendo WILL probably sue but as a formality to protect their brand, and will gracefully pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees as a cost of business once the court rules in Pocket Pair’s favor to keep their copyrights from lapsing to generic use. It’s not uncommon.
Not doing that is how Bayer lost the copyright for ‘Asprin’ in the U.S.
Now if a ton of people refer to Pals as Pokemon the same way people refer to all tissues as Kleenex, THEN they might legitimately run the risk of losing their copyright and will pursue aggressively but I don’t see that happening.
There is no legal issue, Nintendo is suing as a formality to protect their existing copyrights. They’ll be ruled against and shrug their shoulders and pay Pocket Pair’s legal fees because that is a much better business decision than risking losing their copyright to their existing creatures.
If they don’t aggressively protect their copyright, the JCO might just rule that they have become generic and common use like how Bayer lost the trademarked name ‘Asprin’ in the U.S. when it was considered common use and Bayer did not pursue it aggressively.
But that doesn’t make good youtube poop or memes so you probably think this is some kind of hotly contested hullabaloo because of where you are getting your info from.
I read it was Pokémon like and wrote it off. I’ve tried to but never enjoyed Pokémon. I grew up on jrpg’s so you’d think that was right up my alley. But I disgress…
The comments here paint a more complex story. It honestly still doesn’t seem like my type of game, but my curiosity is piqued. I’ll check it out.
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