this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Is it good?
I agree with most casual reviews that it's a bit unpolished, somewhat buggy, and needs work in some areas, but on the whole is a decent foundation for a game and most importantly is FUN.
Fun fun or Dorf Fortress FUN?
Ok, now I want a game that mixes Dorfromantik with Dwarf Fortress.
Same question.
People rave so hard about any pokemon clone regardless of quality that it's really hard to figure out which ones are actually fun.
I think this is more of an Ark/MC clone than a Pokemon clone.
I'm familiar with Ark but MC?
Minecraft presumably
Oh, duh. It was so obvious I missed it. Thanks!
Master chief, he is in other games now
So, not really what I'm interested in. It's definitely not "what an open world Pokemon should have been" without the core turn based combat that defines Pokemon games.
It does kind of look like it has potential despite not enjoying survival games, but it's weird to be calling it Pokemon when it doesn't have the mechanics and the similarity looks like just the fact that you have little monster friends.
Yeah if you're going for a game that's mostly Pokemon-based, this ain't it.
It's just ARK but pokemon instead of dinosaurs, and you don't lose them when they're killed, and it has some of that botw/genshin exploration/collectability sprinkled in. It's fun, but it's a survival first, mons are one of the gimmicks.
It looks like it's almost ARPG-like combat with the Pals, and the Pals in factory building looks more interesting in terms of base building. There's mention of exploring dungeons, too. I could see giving it a shot down the road.
It looks like it could catch me more than most survival stuff. I'm going to keep an eye on it and see how it evolves. But the traditional survival loop definitely isn't my thing, and all these articles calling it pokemon are super misleading.
Combat is real time, and you can't really choose which move your pal uses. You fight alongside them at the same time with your own weapons and need to dodge the flames/tornados/electricity as well.
It's hardly even a survival game though, more just a crafting game. You don't need to worry much about food and thirst isn't a thing. I get so many berries that everyone can survive off that. Hunger almost shouldn't even be included as it's more of an annoyance than a thing someone needs to actually focus on and worry about.
Having tried it, there seems to be a lot of thought put into it from having the pals help grow crops to being a flamethrower in battle.
It's very much a smoother Pixelmon experience (pokemon Minecraft mod).
Feels like ark but possibly more polished? Hard to say since it's in early access.
As someone who's played my fair share of Ark, I'd definitely say it's more polished than Ark already
Easily. My computer runs it on default graphics at 60fps without weird artifacts. The things I use and build work.
Running a dedicated server for my friend group, and it's pretty fun!
I've been hearing really good things. People expecting some shit post of a game but ending up with something that was actually pretty deep.
That's going to be difficult to answer because people are going to look for different things in the game. I don't particularly care for the survival mechanic. I don't like having to keep up with food. And the food appears to spoil rather quickly. Like some of it has a timer of like 15 minutes. Currently there's a bug though where you can make it last indefinitely. If you have food on you drop it and pick it up and it resets the timer. If you have food in the feed bin, move it from the bin to you then back in a resets the timer. Also appears that perhaps if the pals add food in like eggs it resets the timer as well.
For a pokémon game it's all right. It is leagues better than what the pokémon company has been putting out. Closest I can say is it's kind of similar to Arceus.
The AI needs work yet. But it's early access so that's to be expected.
Combat, I really don't know what to say. You have stats as the player that go up based on your choice each time you level. You can increase your damage by 2 each level... You start at 100 damage... And the weapons that you get are basic, poison and fire. You can also get a melee weapon but... If the player is meant to fight alongside the pal it needs a little work yet. Especially with your range attacks you need to constantly craft ammo.
The whole crafting mechanic... I don't really understand the point. It's the exact same mechanic that's just lobbed into every single game. I will say it works quite well in this mechanically. Like when you're trying to put a wall up or floorboards down they snap together. And you don't need to keep the resources on you you can just have them in a container literally anywhere on your base.
There are proper bad guys, which the pokémon company has long since abandoned.
If this game gets the proper support from the developers, I can definitely see a lot of potential from this. But I think they're definitely going to have to sit down and think about what should be in the game and what should not be in the game.
With the food timers, as far as I can tell only the top unit expires, so you can jam 100 baked berries in your feed bag and not have to worry about managing hunger for a few hours
With the food timer, you can just use the sort button on your inventory, storage boxes, feed basket or chiller box and it will reset all the timers.
Its alright if you like the whole survival thing but it isn’t anything groundbreaking, just that plus a Pokémon-esque companion gimmick.
I like it, played about 8 hours yesterday after buying it and looking forward to a few more hours this afternoon.
Haven't experienced many bugs at all other than small things like my little penguin guys have trouble carrying wood to the storage.
Also I wish I could designate storage priorities to certain boxes for specific resources since they just go to the closest one and it makes it difficult to find stuff sometimes.
But that's all stuff that can be polished out before full release and doesn't affect the gameplay much right now.