Example of what you should not do in game development.

- Palia had a 50 million dollar budget.
- Team consists of 20+ employees which come from big companies like Blizzard, Sony, Epic, Zynga, and Riot.
- Development started in 2018.
- Palia was released more unfinished than Stardew Valley, a game that only took 4.5 years to make and was designed by one person who was working as an usher for a cinema.
- Originally claimed to be an open world MMORPG focusing on the social aspects, which the game is literally anything but that.
- After the backlash of the false MMO claim, the devs created a condescending blog to tell us what they think MMO means.
- Devs then released a highly requested feature, pets, which they put behind a paywall.
- Instead of providing free and paid pets, the devs released another condescending blog stating they would not do that.
- Over the months instead of adding more meaningful content or even multiplayer content, they kept releasing useless content that wont have you playing longer than a few more minutes, such as: Obstacle course, romancing more NPCs, more NPCs, crops, cooked foods, and quests.
- Noticing they are losing many players, mainly due to not even considering MMORPG fan's wishes, they began trying to push out the game to every platform possible.
- Now that they're getting negative reviews on Steam, they made a blog stating they're just an early access game, simply just to hide behind it.

First I'm going to talk about the 'MMO' part of Palia. Palia is not an MMO. It really isn't. It's not 'massively' multiplayer, objectively. There are 25 players on a server and there are currently two in game areas, excluding your plot. That's a small world, and a small section of players to interact with.

Secondly, the 'multiplayer' part. Palia has no business being multiplayer in its current state. It's a complaint people have had since day 1. I'm not sure if there are two different visions at odds with one another in the dev team, but it certainly feels like it. Palia has almost no multiplayer features. It feels like a single player game with other players as background. You don't really do things together, you do things alone while standing next to other players. The only exception to this really is cooking, which is very well done and fleshed out. Even things like flow groves or flow trees, that require multiple people, are really at odds with what makes a good multiplayer game. The only required multiplayer activity is a chore. You will find special trees you need two people to chop, and you have to call it out and wait for someone to help. There have been multiple instances where nobody even comes, so you're then locked out of chopping it, or animation cancelling for 5 minutes to do it yourself. The one good multiplayer feature was tied to an event - it was a minigame called Hotpot. Why this was tied to an event and they don't focus on the core game, I have no idea.

Finally, I want to talk about the main reason I'm leaving a negative review. Whenever I've had criticism of the game there will inevitably be a lot of fanboys coming out of the woodwork to screech "But it's in BETA, what do you expect?" Except, it's not. All references to the game being in BETA were removed from their website. The steam page does not say the game is in BETA and the 'BETA' descriptor under the main title screen was specifically removed from the switch version. (Small update to this: prior to posting this review I checked the discord and a mod was warning someone for discussing this subject, make of that what you will). I also encourage people to look at the company reviews on Glassdoor to see that some of what I'm saying here about mismatched visions, poor communication and obsfucating the truth seems to have some weight to it. EDIT to this: S6 put out new that the game is in fact still in BETA. No mention of why this tag was removed from switch but at least they're taking steps to be clear and clarifying things which is definitely a step in the right direction to being more communicative.

I do recommend trying the game, because it is fun for a while. I just want people to be aware of some of the issues and to not get their hopes up that this game is sustainable as a long term game like other 'MMOs' are. I do have hope for Palia in the future but as it currently stands it needs some serious changes and the devs need to listen to the community, and faster. Whoever was responsible for hotpot - it was great, well done. Add stuff like that to the base game and don't lock it to an event. Whoever added the new trees/ flowers to be grown on plots - also a great step. Now actually focus on making this a community focused game. Let people sit down in town. Add games or different card games to the inn. Palia has so much potential that's being wasted.

Palia is not a game you will finish in one sitting nor is it the game's purpose. It's more like RuneScape or FFXIV – it's an investment, something you can sink thousands of hours into. Your own world to take care of and to escape to on a regular basis.

The core gameplay is rather unlimited building of your own house, leveling up a variety of skills and grinding a vast amount of resources. Stress free, with a lot of friendly players.

There's absolutely zero pay2win nor as little as paying for convenience (e.g. bigger bag slots). Everyone is equal, everyone has the same options. You only buy pets and cosmetics for your characters for cash.

Try it. ^^

This game is so cozy and fun, focusing on cooperative, rather than competitive play. The community is really nice and kind. The housing, gathering, and crafting is everything I wanted out of MMO professions!

The game has quite a lot of bugs and random crashes still, but its charm greatly overshadows it.