Great game for relaxation

A must play for VR.

The definitive Space Marine simulator.

Great game for relaxing and letting your mind wander off

Usually, I'll write very long negative reviews, but just this once I'll save myself the effort and go on to say that, from what I've played on launch week, the game isn't worth outstanding outrage. In fact, nothing about it is.

In terms of story it is tolerable enough to go through, but it is not compelling mostly due to the pieced up nature of the live-service model barring it from a conclusion, and even the conclusion for the first season that they have lacks any weight other than the shock factor of "Why yes, your beloved icon of the Arkham games died like a chump.", and even then I'm still at the belief it's been done as a marketing ploy because, aside from the fact that the prologue has the first combat area of the Arkham Asylum game and the location plastered all over it (which you just visit in cutscene format by the way), along with a museum about the previous Arkham games which you only visit once and function like a YouTube Arkham lore video, you could never tell in a million years this takes place in the Arkham universe.

In terms of technical and gameplay design, its not risky or innovative enough to warrant me even giving a two cents on the matter. It's just more of what I've seen before: a third person live service squad shooter meant to milk your wallet, with an underwhelming late game grind and some "teamwork" that is much less teamwork more like 4 people all running 4 separate games of singleplayer shooting the same grunts on the same missions repeated over and over. There's no synergy involved, no mixing and matching. Anyone who thought of buying this game for the team dynamic has probably moved on to other co-op games with similar launch windows like Helldivers 2 long ago by now, which actually include proper cooperation.

Everyone is tired of the genre, but Warner Bros really desperately seems to just want their own money machine like Fortnite or Apex without the actual investment.

The best AAA launch I've seen in God knows how long, the least invasive battlepass and premium currency system ever, every next mission hinges between the greatest last stand in history, the most profound demonstration of overwhelming force and the most ridiculous and gruesome deaths imaginable often one after the other. Despite the relatively limited number of different enemy types and factions and the select few choices in missions, honestly so far in the 50 or so missions I've played not a single one has managed to feel the same.

It'd be a sin if this wasn't a GOTY nominee at the very least down the line.

I'm not even sure where to begin and where to end with explaining what a both sometimes mechanically broad but also malignant dumpster fire this game is on videogames as a whole.

To begin, I'd like to mention the fact that the game is not actually that bad, the majority of what I have to say here will be very negative, but there is some position for nuance. I bought the game convinced by friends that it's not just some lazily thrown-together Pokemon with guns, and for the most part that is not what I got, in fact, the game is very broad and opens up a lot of freedom in many areas.

HOWEVER, you will quickly have moments where you're going to interact with an element of it (whether that is the tab menus, the crafting, the combat or the movement) where it'll feel like this really odd deja vu, often to the point where it is like a malaise creeping up into every facet of the whole game. Not everyone will feel this, and for the most part unless the library of games you've played is quite broad chances are you won't either.

To best explain my understanding of it in the little I've played before refunding, the game plays like a combination of whatever the developer saw in other games before it and wanted to fit in thinking it would belong in an open world pocket monster game akin to Pokemon or Digimon. I played for a short while, but right out the gate thoughts kept hitting me such as "Oh I interacted with this menu before, it's like the technology tree in Ark" or "Oh I have experienced this crafting before, this is like Rust" or "Oh this movement is like Genshin Impact, even the stamina bar and terrain navigation is nigh identical." even if I can't deny the fact that the gameplay taken from those games is exactly what makes the experience consistently decent throughout enough for other people that aren't me to pick this game up and play for hours losing track of time.

At the same time it somehow manages to be new, but it also doesn't actually do anything new. It is a unique breach into an untapped area of gaming, but at the same time it's unoriginal down to almost every nut and bolt that doesn't revolve around how you put the Pals to work as slave labor.

There is no investment into some sort of intriguing universe, everything is deliberately ambiguous, vague and, whenever not covered in just natural terrain occupied by generic ancient architecture which only varies from the same debilitated medieval-looking stone ruins you've seen a thousand times over in other games before, also occupied by misleadingly simple "high-tech" magical monuments or ruins which don't have many stories to tell and which I swear looked better when Sega was making them in Sonic Frontiers. It is like this to where the world is more so a base and much less a springboard towards something compelling. The world exists to be traveled upon and used for the gameplay but you do not get to participate in anything the world might have potential to tell. Other survival games of similar caliber using open worlds such as Ark or The Forest also like to keep their universe in a backseat over the gameplay itself, but this is much less like the universe of Palworlds taking a back seat and more like being stuffed into the trunk to simply cross a checklist of an environment for the gameplay to take place in.

The best way I could describe it, and the most similar a different game has made me feel the same, would be Ubisofts Immortals: Phoenix Rising - it toes the line between a shameless, trend chasing cash grab, but retains that modicum of gameplay, universe and design style unique enough from just about most other BOTW clones to where you may see it as enough of a standalone product.

Palworlds by contrast makes a similar but lesser illusion of this where, half the time, I was hesitant to call the game unfun or lazily-made, but it most definitely demonstrates borrowed gameplay elements from other games where it is lazily unoriginal - no effort was made to make the games universe stand out in combination of the gameplay elements it clearly borrows from different games other than the basic elements which allow for it to be legally distinct (Pal design mostly). It toes that line between that aforementioned trend-chasing cashgrab and a standalone game juuuuuust enough to where you aren't sure whether it is in the former ballpark or the latter, but clearly everyone can tell what it rips off given that every second video I see people play of it on YouTube is either named "Ark with Pokemon" or "Pokemon with guns" or "Ark with guns and Pokemon".

I can't help but think that at one point, the developers sat down and said "Originality doesnt matter, just make something in a rough draft of a universe that people will want to play in.". I can't say I agree but clearly this strategy managed to work.

And honestly, the fact it worked pisses me off to no end. The idea that this is an entire developer, with a library of games that are just one rip off after the other (Never Grave of Hollow Knight and Craftopia of BOTW), and that millions of people right now are buying it and also encouraging these same developers to pursue more of this. This game like all their other games is in effect a mesh of previously existing games to where the final product is fun enough to where the remainder of thought which needs to be put into the game doesn't matter beyond just what their legal team is capable of saying to Nintendo lawyers.

And I cannot in good will say that this is a direction I want videogames to take - if you're already going to base something on something else, there are more tasteful and subtle ways to do it where the game may also have some of it's own laurels to rest on - treating your universe as a blank, unimportant canvas to add just the gameplay from other games you wish to add just isn't it, even if it may create a fun loop which people want to play.

TL:DR - Is it fun? If you can get over how heavily it borrows, most definitely. Is it original? No.