TPA 57

So for the sake of pages, I thought I would talk about Palworld and Koudelka and mention why I like Palworld so much. Then I'll finish with a few more pictures from Koudelka. Palworld is like Pokemon. You capture strange animals in the wild which art style doesn't seem to fit with the rest of the world, and instead of training them you use them to build stuff for you. There are pals that lay eggs which you can feed to your other pals which are busy making you more pal balls. You can send a bunch of pals off to a dungeon and have them grab supplies for you which helps with collecting loot. Then all this stuff feeds back into the base building aspect which admittedly doesn't have a lot of depth to it. I do wish that the developers would make more items for me to use to decorate and add more pals. As it stands, there is about a hundred and fifty pals that you can find, I've already found forty which means I'm a third of the way done with the game. There's lots to explore as well; dungeons to pilfer, bosses to smash and blueprints to find to make special weapons. It all feeds into this cycle of going out and coming back. The problem is that I like Enshrouded better since it has a better combat and building system. I should talk about Enshrouded someday but for now let's focus on Palworld. The Pals are...cute...I guess. They have these painted on looks on their faces which makes me think that the developers put the bare minimum effort into their game before moving on. This has happened before with their other games that they've abandoned. I know that game desigining is expensive and difficult but fans deserve a conclusion. Palworld also misses the world building that Pokemon has. In Pokemon there was a rival system, secret Pokemon to find, and this over arching narrative about the conspiracy behind Team Rocket. The world felt lived in. It felt like there was a society behind the world. People interacted with Pokemon and used them for various tasks. Like a harmony behind the world that's missing in our own. That was the appear for me behind Pokemon. Palworld, misses all of that as if it couldn't be bothered to design a lore. It frustrates me when I see potential in something and the creators are either too ignorant or too lazy to try to find out what lies beneath the surface. It's what made me want to get into writing, that feeling of "I can do better" motivated me to write. Maybe that was the wrong motivation. Back to Palworld, I also love the carelessness that went into the game design. You have this device that "blends" the Pals together. You can transform a one star Pal into a three or four star if you have enough Pals. That's like saying that putting more sheep into the grinder makes a better sheep. It's so audatious in the face of the game's world. At least with Pokemon, the Pokemon centers which healed and stored your Pokemon made sense in terms of the gameplay. Even if you were digitizing the Pokemon you went with it because it made things convenient. In Palworld, it's as if the developers are forcing you to go along with it instead of building it into the world. "Yep, here's a blender. Use it as you will." It's so blatant that it's funny. I'm always thinking about going back to the world like I did with Stardew Valley which either means it's a good game or an addictive game. 

Next, Koudelka.

Possessed Shelf

I think the devs were running out of ideas. There are several possessed items in the game. I think that inanimate objects would have been interesting but the vast amount of them makes me believe this is the result of crunching.

Possessed Chair

What's a chair going to do to you? Sit on you? This is the last of the possessed series.

Pricktail

A combination of human and scorpion? That sounds interesting. It's not Lovecraftian but alchemy ideas were mentioned by Lovecraft. I assume fusion of man and beasts is always something to do with alchemy.

Puppet

Of course puppets are creepy. Dead eyes staring back at you and limbs that move in impossible ways. It's a good addition.

Raven

I doubt this has anything to do with Poe but ravens are symbols of the life and death cycle. 

Scapegoat

The photo info lists this character as "Jezebel." Bestarity says that it is the form of betrayed and fallen woman. I love the lore behind this boss. The form, the lore, all this adds to the mystery of what happened to her and what twisted her to become this thing.