Palworld is a massive success, celebrating an astonishing 1.5 million concurrent players on Steam. In a highly competitive market flooded with quality games, it can be difficult to predict which games will succeed and which will vanish off the radar. Palworld’s selling pitch of “Pokémon with guns,” combined with survival game elements, helped propel it to the top. But there’s another factor in Palworld’s success, and it’s fan frustration at the stagnation of the Pokémon franchise.

The Pokémon RPGs are often criticized for being the same game over and over again, with only slight adjustments to the formula and more Pokémon to catch. This isn’t entirely true — Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a big open-world experiment, allowing the player to take some agency back from their team of Pokémon. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet built off of that foundation, expanding the open world and introducing the well-received Terastallization........

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