Context: Pocket Pair is spreading their devs thin on three unfinished early access games (Craftopia, Palworld, Never Grave) and capital G Gamers are crying

64 points

Palworld is $30 on steam. Itā€™s a litttle expensive for an indie game but Iā€™ve gotten my moneyā€™s worth already. Itā€™s not perfect but I wasnā€™t expecting a AAA title. Honestly Iā€™m just impressed multiplayer works as well as it does. I also appreciate that they didnā€™t shoehorn any awful cutscenes in. No story > bad story. It also runs pretty great, even though my computer is older and Iā€™m using proton/linux.

Compare PokĆ©mon scarlet, $70. Laggy. Unpolished. Missing features from previous games. Unskippable cutscenes with characters just standing around talking to each other. Boring basic story. Nothing to do at the end of the game (no battle tower). No new fun features (the open world feels empty and ugly, compare BotW/TotK). Itā€™s too open, there is no Mt Moon to get lost in.

Even if the team makes no further improvements Iā€™m still having fun with palworld. I donā€™t see myself ever replaying scarlet.

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2 points

Right, and is OP saying buying another Pokemon game will make gamefreak actually put effort in? Like why would it work the 10th time when it failed the first 9 times.

Gamefreak doesnā€™t put effort in because they donā€™t have to. Fans will continue to buy them regardless of quality.

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Are you assuming Iā€™m buying pokĆ©mon games?

Iā€™m playing stuff I actually enjoy like Cassette Beasts. Iā€™m hyped for the upcoming Beastieball too. I tried TemTem but it felt too much ā€œMobileā€ for me for a lack of better terms.

Iā€™m pointing out that itā€™s funny to me that fans of Palworld got angry at the very thing PokĆ©mon fans got angry at Gamefreak for (Namely, spreading their team thin on Little Town Hero)

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1 point

Ahhh I misunderstood. in the palworld fansā€™ defense, I imagine gamefreak seeing a game that uses elements of their games but in an innovative way get a huge game l fanbase might convince them to change their strategy a little bit.

Fewer people buying Pokemon games would help as well, obviously, but if sales went down at the same time a game they see as a competitor gets real big, that might actually kick their butts in gear.

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2 points

Yea Iā€™m with sheeple

I donā€™t think my buying habbits are going to communicate anything to a company. I buy what looks fun to play. ā€œRealā€ pokemon games look like a worse and worse buy, and thatā€™s just how it is. I donā€™t expect them to change their development cycle at all.

At best, I hope Palworldā€™s (and cassette beastā€™s) success attracts better companies to make their own version. If this lights a fire under gamefreakā€™s butt I will be extremely (and happily) surprised.

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36 points

I really hope Pocket Pair is in it for the long run and carefully manage their success to create new popular series. However, the cynic in me thinks theyā€™re going to release as many titles in early access as they can before people realize none of them are ever being finished by the devs who are now multimillionaires and have no financial incentive to continue.

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13 points

Unless they continue to make blunder for years to come, at this point i doubt they will fold. They already becoming one of the highest selling indie game within one month and made millions to last several years, they can just hire more.

And if they running out of money they can just fire everyone down to the core team and cancel the other game and focus on Palworld, write an ā€œiā€™m sorryā€ essay, and continue their day.

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4 points

Iā€™m like 99.9999% sure that craftopia was an initial attempt at something similar to palworld, it has all the catching mechanics, the skills the pets use, the crafting machines, and their last major update was to add a ā€œseamlessā€ open world. I think they eventually decided that theyā€™d be better served to jump from unity to unreal and just make a whole new game instead of improving craftopia.

I just wish they were more honest about it. I think theyā€™re still afraid to call it what it was and so they are pretending to care about craftopias future.

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30 points
*

Toxic fans find new straws to grasp at, majority of gaming population donā€™t care and keep having fun with new game. More news at 11

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23 points

Iā€™m 60 hours deep on Palworld less than two weeks in while maintaining a full-time job. I donā€™t buy games to make statements, I buy them because theyā€™re fun to play. And this particular one really is a ton of fun to play. Yes, theyā€™re clearly ripping off pokĆ©mon and breath of the wild and elden ring, and Iā€™m sure a few other games. But itā€™s a lot of fun nonetheless.

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6 points

Same, despite being in early access itā€™s already a lot of fun. Feels like the game that I wanted gamefreak to make but never did.

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21 points

modern games have been underwhelmimg and too expensive for too long. my switch just sits unused in a corner, while i happily play games from my favourite franchises on my (hacked btw) 3DS.

although i imagine games like tears of the kingdom being great fun to play, iā€™m not paying 50ā‚¬ for a physical copy.

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9 points

Iā€™ve also recently regressed to older games. Itā€™s been FFVIII and PokĆ©mon Heartgold for the past several months.

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5 points

itā€™s impressive how bad pokemon games have gotten. i played sun/moon on 3DS (which isnā€™t even the best one on that system), and later sword/shield on switch. itā€™s just the exact same game with slightly better character customization and worse story.

iā€™m in the process of playing all ace attorney games because iā€™m just obsessed with that franchise. 3 of the 6 original games and a spinoff are on switch. the rest of the 11 games are playable on the 3DS, partly through emulation.

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5 points

The worst part of PokĆ©monā€™s move to 3d was the loss of any kind of art style.

The new PokƩmon games are so boring to look at.

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