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Palworld did more for the monster-collecting genre in one early access title than Pokémon has in the last decade of AAA titles.
Why does Nintendo deserve these patents when they aren’t going to produce anything meaningful with them and simply weaponize them to squash any real threatening competition?
Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise in the world, and 2nd place isn’t even close. I think they can give a little ground to an indie developer who makes games that people are actually interested in playing. The patent bullshit is ridiculous.
Hard to blame them for thinking that at the time. CD-based consoles had a very rough start in that era, but the PS1 was probably the first actual hardware success that used the CD exclusively as it’s medium. Nintendo had pushed cartridges to their absolute limit with the technology they had, so it was only a matter of time before someone ended up succeeding where others failed.
There were two heroes that were released as Xbox exclusive DLC back during the original release - Kit Fisto and Asajj Ventress. The mod added them into the PC version by reskinning Ki Adi Mundi and Ayla Secura respectively. The Aspyr release uses the reskinned versions from the mod rather than the official models from Pandemic/Lucasarts which they presumably had permission to use but chose not to despite the fact that the original models don’t have graphical errors and do have the correct fighting style/animations.
The only thing Pokemon-esque about it is the monster designs and that you catch them in spherical objects.
Everything else about it lends itself more to the survival crafting genre.
Gameplay I think is quite enjoyable from the bit I’ve played. It feels a lot more sandboxy than Pokemon would have ever allowed in their games because they care a lot about story narratives that everyone now finds super boring.
The singleplayer experience, called Squadron 42, is not yet available. Online only for the public alpha test.
As to whether or not it’s worth it, you can be the judge. They have multiple free-fly events each year (although the most recent one just passed I think) where you can download the game and play for a whole week for free to see if it’s for you. I would wait for the next one to come up and try it then, if you are curious about it.
Generally, I try to steer people away from it even though I’m a fan of the game myself because it’s just so rough around the edges and the initial mystique and wonder of exploring a vast solar system quickly wears off and gets replaced by tedium and lost progress due to bugs and glitches, so it doesn’t make for the most enjoyable experience. YMMV.
I’d say just wait for SQ42 to come out, however long that may take. Possibly within the next few years if we’re being optimistic.
My gripe with him isn’t so much his fight mechanic, it’s his absolutely massive hitbox that activates whenever it moves a centimeter.
Fighting him from the air is the most efficient, I’ve discovered, but I spent a good few attempts trying to get in close with the plasma blade and would see three quarters of my HP bar disappear because my recovery animation overlapped with the startup of his charge attack that shouldn’t have been able to hit me because I was to his side or rear.
The Cataphract has been my favorite fight so far. Really challenging, but really rewarding.
In my experience, you don’t have to compromise. You can take meta dual shotguns and two heavy hitting shoulder mounts and just vaporize enemies. Almost trivially, in fact.
The problem is, the game is not more fun if you force yourself into something like a melee hybrid build. It’s significantly harder and there’s less room for error when piloting lightweight ACs, so it’s no surprise that most people find the most comfortable build to be one where you have high health and damage mitigation, insane burst DPS, and stunlock potential.
In short, there’s not a good balance between the different playstyles and difficulty. Some bosses are actually really fun to fight, but two or three of them have made my shit list already just due to the nonsense you are forced to put up with. Juggernaut, Balteus, and Sea Spider are the three biggest offenders right now.
Anybody who has ever been unfortunate enough to have to apply for any of these healthcare or food stipend programs would know that it’s not as easy as the government makes it seem. In fact, the amount of bureaucracy, means testing, and highly restrictive income limitations means that most people don’t qualify period and people who do qualify have to spend an inordinate amount of time waiting to hear back from the government to know if they have been accepted or not, all the while hoping and praying they don’t get sick and can manage their money long enough to continue feeding themselves.
Case in point, my fiance is out of work right now and actively seeking work. She applied for both MediCAL and SNAP and was denied for MediCAL because she had earned too much already that year to qualify and the SNAP benefits totaled out to $20/month in food stamps, based on historical income, which is insufficient even for the most frugal of individuals to make work. This is for someone currently earning $0/month and being almost entirely supported by me.
After a certain point, it becomes a massive drain on your time and resources that could be spent looking for a job, so you stop bothering with the system altogether because who wants to spend hours doing paperwork and submitting claims just to get enough spare change to buy a bulk bag of rice to feed yourself a struggle meal?
I don’t want to hear shit about “handouts” from anybody. My fiance paid her taxes faithfully for years without ever having to rely on the program, so where are her benefits? She has undoubtedly paid more into the system than she will ever extract.