Seriously “#1 sold game on steam in 2024” ah yes, because that’s a good metric when it’s been only one month and the biggest titles have a tendency to drop in December
(FYI, by raw numbers Minecraft is still the #1 popular game. Not relevant to the discussion but a neat statistic. It’s kind of mind boggling how popular that stupid block game is)
Palworld gameplay isn’t even remotely similar to Pokemon. Its basically Ark Survival that just so happens to have plagiarised pokemon designs instead of dinosaurs.
I kinda wish they didn’t go such overt plagiarism in terms of design because then Palworld could be a nice game on its own
The graphics argument is so weak anyway as Palworld is basically a more watered down ark survival with worse graphics and a pokemon esque design philosophy.
There’s also a recent trend of “forever games”, where it’s clear that the goal is to keep you playing it perpetually. It has both upsides and downsides. These games tend to change intensely over the years. Minecraft is such an example.