Ok, might as well give my thoughts on the game and not just talk on the plagiarism.
I have never seen so many people simp over a game that is so aggressively mid. Every element to it is below par in every genre it tries to be in. From crafting, to base building, to catching and fighting with the pokerip-offs, to just getting around everywhere. Worst is that all the elements interfere with each other. Gathering resources, fighting, and movement such as running and climbing all use stamina which is just dumb. Not only does it give you a cooldown when gathering and moments that leave you open in combat, but doing one of these things leaves you worse at all the others. If you run and want to mine, you have to wait for your stamina to refill, you try running from a fight, if you're caught, you're fucked. And that's not getting into the mechanics with the "Donut Steel" monsters. When you're fighting with them, you have little control meaning if you want to catch something, you better bring them back to their BOTW bombs and hope they don't kill it before hand. Or you should hope you don't get fucking stuck in one one of them. Yeah, that happened to me. Tried to run away but it ended up just on top of me and unable to catch it. In Legends Arceus I could stun it with some mud, but this? Just lube up because the game will bend you over. The crafting and base building, even in a genre where things can take a while, the crafting just takes too long. You can automate it... somewhat, but to do that you have to use the shitty catching mechanics. It is just all around unfun. And that's ignoring the bugs.
Fucking hell, say what you want about modern Pokemon, at least Scarlet and Violet are fun when they work. It feels like people are shaming a 5/10 with a 4/10 and I'm fucking baffled.
The same argument for Scarlet Violet can be levied for Palworld too here, so much that the "Quit Having Fun" comic thrown since Sword Shield era are haunting
them today. Both are "buggy, but fun" with the difference that SV is fully released
AAA game while PW is early access. A significant portion of PW fans were burnt out by the generational blunders TPC has thrown and when they play it many realised it's not just Pokémon Gun and find it actually fun. And while I don't like fanatics, any PW stans of today is result of TPC's failings and Pokémon fanatics calling war to it first (and others joining in with their bad faith "evidences" or straight up
false accusations such as genAI. I say others as I saw the first of that video was made by non-fan).
The gameplay loop actually works. People say one catches Pals, build base, work in the base with Pals helping automations (you can do the works yourself too), catch more Pals, continually build the base, while also unlocking technology as one progresses that allows further explorations. Some says the elements shouldn't have worked together (and I did think so with how contrasting the aesthetics is) and yet it DID.
One thing Pokémon and (almost every) others has never offered is fighting
alongside the mons, not just fighting
using mons. That in itself is a very refreshing take on the mon genre. It's like combining Arceus with MonHun (and MonHun itself almost comes close with the Palico sidekicks, but understandably it's not the focus of). And on that note, stamina meter is common and it fits the survival genre much like MonHun about hunting, while one will soon be able to build saddles to ride bigger Pals to go further surpassing the stamina meter limitations. Catching Pals by weakening it is pretty much every other Mon games and MonHun has trapping mechanics too anyway if less fantastical and more realistic.
And realistically, they're still fantastic
monsters, so you'll be stomped if you think you can run unscathed. There's reason Professor Oak stops you from going to grass after all.
Another thing people are hooked over is building one's base into becoming interior designer. If Minceraft and Animal Crossing could work in their genres, ids why can't Palworld either.
My critique on PW is that a few their designs do have weird choices such as ugly thunder dog (Daschund still pulled it better) or ice fox which is too busily designed, and that they are still limited in species with like 5 foxes (although this is also because they have 150ish monsters
without being evolutionarily related), so I hope they'll expand by researching more real life nature or concepts to make species from.
Of course, it's not for everyone. The gameplay is already different it's perpendicular aside of Mon catching. But people definitely had fun with it if the 94% reviews are anything to go by. I didn't plan to get it, but now I'm convinced to when I have working PC.