It might seem odd to hear my cries for fewer guns in a game that's been all but monikered 'Pokemon with guns', but to me, everything about Palworld is screaming for a pacificist mode. That's not just because I'm a known Pokemon lover either, it's the fact that its focus on brutality feels so at odds with everything else that Palworld has going for it. And hey look, I get it. The pitch for a Pokemon game with guns and other weaponry is certainly a selling hook, particularly as it feels like such a dichotomy. But I don't know how well that works when that same feeling also extends to the gameplay.
Although Palworld's Pokemon Gym-esque challenges do form a part of the gameplay, the majority of my time in this world has been spent building a base. Pals play an intrinsic role in this too, with so much of the buswork and tasks that you'll want to carry out in your base able to be completed by them. Some screenshots suggest that this means your base will quickly turn into some kind of sweatshop for Pals chained to workbenches, but in reality it's a throbbing ecosystem where you've got to work hard to make sure your Pals are looked after.
Pal-cifist
Initially, they'll need beds, a constant supply of food, later medicines, a hot spring for taking long relaxing baths, and will also take breaks. You have to take care of your Pals if you want them to work, it's a world away from the sweatshop screenshots we've seen as part of the Palworld promotion. I've been building a home.
So much of your homebuilding can only happen by finding specific resources that drop when capturing or taking out the Pals themselves, like Pal Fluids or Electric Organs (the less you think about what they are the better). So aside from your probably rather familiar quest to catch 'em all, there's an additional incentive to gather your Pal Spheres and explore the wilds. But, that's when the dissonance starts coming in. Even from the opening tutorials you're encouraged to attack wild Pals with a stick, and there's such an odd dissonance between the sweet innocence of the first Pals you'll meet and the aggression you have to go at them with.
Later, you'll unlock baseball bats, spears, axes, and bows, along with the synonymous guns and other weaponry. You can even discover upgrades for individual Pals that give them ways to really weaponize their abilities. It's always a bizarre shift from the otherwise serene pace of base building and resource gathering strapping a special saddle to a little green monkey to give it an assault rifle.
You can attempt to forgo the one-on-one violence by getting your Pals to do the work for you, a la Pokemon, but there's a risk there. Pals themselves are often overpowered for simply trying to capture wild critters, tending to take them out entirely before you've managed to lob a Pal Sphere in their direction, leaving you to watch their cross-eyed corpse slide slowly, sadly, down the hill before your eyes.
Palworld really missed a trick to not bring in some non-lethal, or at least non-violence, options to its weaponry. It's goofy enough that the developer could have had some fun with oversized rubber mallets with comedy-level squeaks, or gone down a more realistic route with sleep darts and stun guns to offer an alternative role-playing option to the arsenal on offer. A better reflection of the adorable Pals, stunning world, and otherwise fairly idyllic life you can build for yourself in this game.
