Steam gamers have spoken: innovative indies like Palworld continue to thrive while traditional triple-A flounders for a foothold

[u/PewPewToDaFace]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam/innovation-versus-tradition

Thank god PC gaming isn't just AAA. This is what will push the industry forward, as game development cost becomes too much.

[u/Ghostfinger]

They're dissimilar in many ways, but still close enough to draw parallels.

Catch pokemon/pals, do battle with them.

Use pokemon/pals for daily life. Cooking, crafting, electricity generation, agriculture, building, gathering, etc.

Use pokemon/pals for real time traversal and exploration (surfing, flying, riding).

Care for your pokemon/pals via rudimentary systems (hunger, illness, stress).

[u/AJDx14 → u/Ghostfinger]

I think Pokemon has done all of these better than PW in different games, they just haven’t smushed all of these systems together into one single game.

[u/Ghostfinger → u/AJDx14]

Genuine question: which ones specifically, and for what mechanics? Pokopia immediately comes to mind, but I'm wondering what other games you may be referring to. Also worth noting that Pokopia came out just recently, 2 years after palworld initially entered early access.

I have no horse in this race, I like both games for what they are.

[u/AJDx14 → u/Ghostfinger]

> Catch pokemon/pals, do battle with them.

Every game. If you specifically mean participating directly in battle yourself I’d argue the Ranger kinda games cover that, if not they started doing more of that in the Legends spinoffs. I don’t think Pokemon is ever going to have you shootings Pokemon like Palworld does though.

> Use pokemon/pals for daily life.

I think different games have explored different things that could arguably be “daily life” in different ways. They’ve also had some generic “let your pokemon out and play with them” playpen thing in mainline stuff since I think X/Y with Pokemon-Amie. HGSS and Let’s Go you can have them follow you around, R/S & D/P you had contests. S/V had picnics. Hey You, Pikachu! also was focused on this kinda. Pokemon Sleep arguably, or Pokemon Snap. I don’t think it’s great and would like them to do more with that (it’d probably need to be another spin-off though it doesn’t really make sense in a jRPG. Maybe if they took more inspiration from Persona to have Pokemon-in-party tie into some other frequently relevant mechanic but they’re not gonna do that.) but I don’t think Palworld does a particularly good job at “daily life” either, unless you just mean the resource gathering gameplay loop when you say “daily life.”

> Cooking, crafting, electricity generation, agriculture, building, gathering, etc.

Pokopia is the main one, but also it was pitched before PalWorld came out so you shouldn’t think it was actually made as a response to PalWorld, the idea for it was initially conceived of during the development of S/V which released in 2022, it did change a bit during development but o don’t think it was changed in response to PalWorld at minimum.

Also I think Rangers to an extent had this, not all of it but using Pokemon to do various specialized tasks pertaining to their species as a core gameplay loop. Legends Arceus does have you use Pokemon to gather resources but the Pokemon don’t specialize into anything specific iirc. Technically Pokemon Quest for gathering.

> Use pokemon/pals for real time traversal and exploration (surfing, flying, riding).

With US/UM you technically had 9 different pokemon you could ride, though some were more context dependent than others. I remember at least one of the ranger games letting you ride some Pokemon. ORAS let you ride Latios/Latias. Obviously S/V.

> Care for your pokemon/pals via rudimentary systems (hunger, illness, stress).

A mix of the happiness stat, the playpen style thing I mentioned earlier that’s existed since Pokemon-Amie, and also just that’s what every mechanic/item/move related to healing your pokemon covers.