Reviews

Genuinely has the most annoying starting cast out of any open world gacha I've ever played. A bunch of children and a goofy animal mascot that's basically Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy. Except this is if Groot was in EVERY scene. The obsession with children in gacha games is just annoying and dumb.

The "art style" of the story's cutscenes are in the "omg so wacky!" anime style and they are so busy and hyper it's seizure-inducing and genuinely naseuating. The game tries to have a realistic, beautiful overworld with some scary moments, but its all ruined by the cartoonishly over the top and loud cutscenes. I know I can skip the story, but I don't want to. I actually found the general plot interesting, but the way it's presented is unbearable. 

Despite the game taking place in an urban landscape that has graffiti, R&B music, and rap, there's somehow not a single black NPC in sight. Even Hoyoverse did slightly better on that front. 

Hoyoverse also did better with character integration with the world. As in most other open world gachas, in NTE there's a subtle but clear seperation between your character and the environment. Can't do any action in elevators, most menu functions are disabled in domains, you can't jump, switch characters, or even look up when swimming. You also can't climb onto something while you're swimming either like you can in Genshin. The sound effects are very samey. And the climbing being a weird "half wall run and half regular climb" is just really annoying, both on animation and muscle memory wise. 

*TL;DR: Nothing has tooltips and the gameplay is basically just button spamming and collecting drops.* Putting the Gearbox and privacy situation aside, I surprisingly found this game pretty boring and beginner-unfriendly. 

First and most grievous in my opinion is that not A SINGLE ITEM has a tooltip. Items are basically all your upgrades. At first this isn't an issue because most items come from chests which are random anyway. But then there will be stations where you can buy an item from a list of other items, but you can only buy one item and you basically have no idea what any of the items do. Apparently the items used to have colored outlines which showed their rarity, but this feature was removed at least for items in the shop stations, which is weird because thats when knowing what the item is actually matters. There's also trading stations where you can trade an item you have for another, but again, you have no idea wtf you're trading for the first time you play. Once you get an item it's recorded in your logbook, which you open by pausing and selecting it. And if you ever forget what an item does? Yeah, you have to open the pause menu, go to the logbook, and search for the item from the list instead of just hovering over the tooltip like a lot of other roguelites implement. I don't know if "no tooltip" is a thing in other games other than Binding of Isaac, but it does not feel good in this game. Before an update you couldn't even open the logbook during a run. 

Second: environments are bland in the way that there's no variety in them, despite there being different biomes. Monsters don't look interesting or varied. This is especially annoying when you're trying to search for a teleporter and you're basically walking around in circles because everything looks the same. 

Third: gameplay is spammy and dull, your goal is basically to just kill monster hordes. it's like those zombie games in fortnite or a wow-like mmo where you just hold trigger and click something whenever your cooldowns are off. 

Fourth: the effects on screen get really intense really quickly. To the point that you can't even see enemy attack alerts. And if it's a boss, you can get caught off-guard really bad.

 Fifth, and I know this is more of me being dumb, but my first run I spawned next to a blood alter. The blood alter's icon was shaped a little bit like a teleporter and it has the exact same color, and that combined with the fact my first task was "find a teleporter," I thought the blood alter was the teleporter. When it didn't do anything teleporty the first time I interacted with it I thought maybe it was some special thing where I had to interact with it enough times and it would turn into a teleporter (like basically an alter that always spawned closed by where you could sacrifice your health to get a teleporter more quickly, instead of searching for one out far). This was not the case and I didnt die, but the fact that teleporters and blood alters don't have different colors (and more differently shaped icons) doesn't make much sense to me. 

Sixth, character build doesn't seem to matter and is too dependent on RNG. You just open as many chests you can find and get whatever item it gives you, with the goal of getting the Most Items and the occasional shop/trading station. Usually I like hack-and-slash games, and roguelites, but something about this game is almost too simple for me. I think it may have to do with lack of needing positioning (enemies just charge at you the same way). If there's a something deeper than that that I'm missing because I haven't played much, then that's my mistake. But this game really does not have that initial hook or addiction like other roguelites do that I've played (Hades, Binding of Isaac, Slay the Spire, Gungeon, Dead Cells, freaking Splatoon 3 Side Order, etc). 

I haven't played RoR 1 but I can definitely see this as a game that works for 2D but not for 3D. The good: I like how items appear on your character. 

Only started playing this because of a Steam Family, and I recommend it, but only very tentatively. 

I've always been wary of "early access" games. More and more developers have been doing that lately and it usually results in a product that is buggy, a product that is never finished, or a finished product that isn't even different from the early access version. With the latter, you have to wonder why even call it early access, and just call it "live service" or something (if there's continuous updates). While I understand its for funding reasons, it's always been a bit of a red flag to me. Palword is set to finally get out of "early access" this year, yet the game doesn't feel like it, and I really worry about their promise of 1.0 having "so many changes."

Palworld fun and addicting, but probably only for the first 15 hours or so. It's one of those games you play non-stop for a week but then never touch again after that. The gameplay is fun, but gets repetitive. The world is visually lackluster, with very sparse architecture, and the architecture that is found usually isn't unique or interesting to look at (a lot of the same-looking huts and stone shambles). The environment is pretty, but so "realistic" that it's boring and looks like every other generic fantasy rpg. 

The NPCs are of mobile-game quality, and Palworld does that thing where interesting lore can be read via long pages you find scattered across the map. This can work, but you have to make the visual environment/characters unique/stimulating enough to motivate players to want to read MORE about them. The game does not do that. Pokemon wins on worldbuilding by a landslide. Palworld has made zero cultural impact for a reason.

The Pals are cute, but I don't think they go well with the environment. Their flat, overly cartoonish features (the human characters also have this) against the very detailed, realistic environment...and guns...just doesn't look right, and people made fun of how palworld looked for a good reason. A more stylized environmental art style would have done wonders for this game, but even then it wouldn't have fixed the fact that there's nothing really to do on the map except fight players of pals, and build and collect stuff. 

It also gets to a point where you kinda just...auto everything? All the pals have all these attacks/skills but you can't actually control them in combat, so I don't really understand the point of them. Maybe later on a deeper combat system is unlocked. But something like that should be available from the start.  

Despite being visually much more similar to Pokemon, I'd say Palworld's mechanics lean a lot more towards the crafting side, and the main gameplay is more similar to Minecraft or Factorio. While I would recommend Palworld to anyone, you'll probably stick with it longer if you're someone who is into base-building/factory games and the type of repetition they have.

Finally, I just don't know if I trust that the devs have truly upgraded Palworld, because they've really given no proof that they have. Once 1.0 comes out I may change my review.

TL;DR: Bad QoL, white as hell, middling dialogue/NPC interactions, unplayable without a gazillion mods.

I want to preface this with the fact I've never been a fan of the sim genre, so keep that in mind. I actually find the farming gameplay fairly fun. But my overall experience has been meh. A lot of my issues come down to QOL, dialogue, and the general non-farming elements of this game. It feels like it's trying to do too much and ultimately gives a "jack of all trades, master of none" experience. Every feature except for the standard farming feels mediocre. 

Dialogue/Interaction: Dialogue is painfully dull and only becomes kind of interesting when you become a LOT closer with the townsfolk. This is fine I suppose except you're also supposed to *marry* someone, effectively making sdv a dating sim as well. Except, because of this lack of personality from npcs, none of them really "hook" you or are likeable/interesting enough to keep you pursing them. When you first meet them they're all just kind of meandering around and kind of just say hi to you or are just plain rude. One of them is straight up misogynistic (like around the second and fourth time you talk to him) and the other straight up tells you you're ugly (like the second time you talk to her). Again, I don't mind if npcs dislike you. But why would I try to even befriend someone who tells me I'm ugly or is misogynistic? And the male npcs have vastly different ways of speaking and beginning dialogue while the female ones really don't except for Haley and the older women. This immediately makes the male npcs more unique and fleshed out than the women ones. Decay system sucks, which is where if you skip talking with a character for a day or two, their friendship decreases and you have to work to build it back up. There were days where I didn't feel like walking across the map and just wanted to farm in near my house, but no, I HAD to walk to talk to a character so I wouldn't lose progress. All this really turned me off the marriage system and I wouldn't have tried to do if a marriage partner didn't help you around your farm. I get that all of this this is probably to emulate real life dating, which is a long process of searching and getting to know multiple people until you find "the one," but in a video game with a lot of walking, npcs, and bedtimes, this doesn't translate well. Other annoyances with the npc system is that apparently there are cutscenes you can trigger, but you have to be at specific places at specific times, but you're never told when or where and there are a few you can PERMAMENTLY miss. These cutscenes help flesh out the world and characters but you probably won't see them unless you have the wiki open 24/7. Also with most npcs when you give them gifts they literally just say the same thing, this isn't bad but for example if you give Sebastion the exact same thing and he loves it, he will always only say, "I love this, how did you know?" it just makes the dialogue feel that much cheaper/less immersive, and would have been nice if he said something like "I love this, thanks for getting me this again." This isn't hard to code at all and feels like an oversight. When you enter a cutscene, which usually involves entering an area, your character moves around automatically. This is fine of course but when the cutscene ends you're transported immediately back to the entrance of the area, signifying that cutscenes are more like just separate videos that the player watches and not experiences that actually happen in the world/with the characters. Again, not a big deal, but it's multiple, small things like this that build up and break the immersion/vibes. There's also a lot of cute and interesting things in buildings, but you can't interact or do anything with most of them, to the point I don't even understand why they're there. It'd be interesting if you could go into a store, go to a shelf, and actually buy stuff off of it but you can't.  

Saving: You can't save without ending your day. It makes the game feel tedious and stressful in early/mid game where you have you really be efficient with your time and make the most out of your day. No clue why it was designed like this. This combined with the fact that most events are one-day only, basically makes the game feel like mini-fomo. This also relates to...  

Time: Places closing early REALLY annoyed me at the very beginning of the game, basically forcing me to manage my money and time extremely well just so I could buy the beginner materials. You also literally can't stay awake past 2 am, and this would be fine except I chose the wilderness farm, which spawns monsters at night around your base (except it's not that much), and bc of the 2 am thing I never got to fight that many monsters so I don't even understand the point of the wilderness farm. Monsters also apparently don't really give you any necessary upgrades/materials while mining/chopping/foraging, etc. do (or the monsters drop them but at EXTREMELY low rates). So you *have* to spend your time doing those things while combat is something you put on the backburner, or is tied to mining. And since the wilderness farm doesn't have a mine close by, this effectively makes it completely worthless.   

The wikia problem: You basically need to always have the wiki up while playing, especially to know where to find mats and npcs (they should make it where their location gets tagged on the map once you get enough hearts). You can download qol mods, but my belief is that you shouldn't HAVE to. While I like mods, you shouldn't HAVE to get them just to have basic things like "where I can I find this material so I can progress? Where is this npc since I need to literally talk to them everyday?"  

Permanent things: There's rare fish you can NEVER catch again, so if you accidentally sell/trash them you're screwed. You also get a fairy later on, but its color is random and you can't change it. And [i]every other fairy you get will also be the same color.  

Combat: Not very deep but is fairly fun. 

Music: Very bland.  

Diversity: I want to preface this by saying that when I heard people talk about SDV having a diversity problem, I thought they were overreacting. I don't really care if a dating sim just has white people. But when I actually started playing, I realized they were right. Aside from the people, the game's vibes, setting, and culture are just blindingly white; and there's a lot of subtle microaggressions. The white NPCS usually wouldn't be a problem but it's feels bad this time because they all already feel very samey. Only 2 main POC npcs and only one of them is dateable (and she's half-white). Later on there are a few other POC, but you can't date them and they fall into the "strange exotic merchant" trope. The desert trader says "your coin has no value where I can from," really trying to highlight how they come from such an "exotic+mysterious" place (despite literally just being a North African person). There's also some drama with the local shopkeeper and the big Joja corp. Shopkeeper tells the corp guy that he doesn't want his "products imported from who knows where." Yeah, I don't want any products from those nasty other countries like slimy tofu or curry, just my homegrown american potatoes!!! 

Also no nonbinary option. 

Tbf, none of this is really that bad, but it really bogs down the setting and almost makes it feel like racist small town full of crotchety old people. All this combined with the fact that many of the white npcs are initially rude to you, hit a little too close to home for me, a non-white person who grew up in a white suburban town and had to deal with always feeling like the outsider, hearing similar negative comments, and being told to get over it because they're still "nice people." So yeah, small problems build up and the gameplay isn't fun enough to make me overlook them. Will probably only play with friends.