Alexia Unplugged

Overview

Palia is now in Open Beta! If you’re not familiar, Palia is a new open-world MMORPG, where humans are mythical creatures that have disappeared completely—until recently, that is. Humans have been popping into the world of Palia all over the place! As a newly returned human, you get to unearth the ancient mysteries of the human race as you adapt to life in Kilima.

I’ve had my eye on Palia for a while now, and I was so excited to play it when I got the invitation for the beta. It’s obviously in Beta. It’s far from a polished game, and so far, most of the character designs imply that they will all be very exciting in the future, and there are bits of flavor all over the map. It’s definitely not quite the in-depth RPG experience that I’ve grown used to, especially since I’ve been pretty obsessed with Baldur’s Gate 3 lately (who isn’t). However, the cozy vibes are there, and the world is new and fun to explore, even if it’s not quite as easy to fast travel as I would like.

Essentially, I think that Palia has a lot of potential, and it will be very fun to see where it goes! The game’s mechanisms are familiar, but different enough from the norm to be exciting. Kilima and Bahari Bay are big, beautiful, and you can tell the world is constructed with a lot of care. There are a few things about Palia that grind my gears a bit, but I think that they are generally worth it.

The World

As with any open-world game, Palia utilizes a quest system with a compass that shows active quests and NPC markers. This is insanely useful. I am extremely directionally challenged, and this difficulty extends to video games. As much as I love open-world video games, I always inevitably waste an awful amount of time thinking I’m going to the right place, and actually being as far away from where I should be as possible. The only thing that would make the map and questfinding system better would be a minimap, so I wouldn’t have to keep pulling up the main map all the time.

The world also feels immense. This could be a good thing, but fast travel in Palia is similar to real life; a little inconvenient, but it makes sense. Fast travel works by interacting with signs at stables, which allow you to travel to any other stable. There is a caveat, however, that you must pay a fee of 10-50 gold based on the distance to your destination. In addition to traveling between stables, you can also fast travel home once every 30 minutes. It’s not my favorite method of travel, but it does add a bit of difficulty to the game, especially since a lot of the difficulty in quests is the time it takes to travel between tasks.

Quests

You progress through Palia through a series of quests. I think the system is great; you can have up to four active quests, and a lot of them serve as tutorials. Most are fetch quests, and many of these quests feel quite grind-y. However, there are a few quests that follow a general story. I haven’t gotten far with those quests since I’ve been very distracted by all the tutorial quests, which introduce the main mechanics. Palia features bug-catching, gardening, crafting, cooking, and fishing.

The fishing mechanic isn’t half bad. It took me a while to figure out since I skipped over the explanation (oops), but now I actually enjoy fishing! That’s actually a big plus in my book, since usually I hate fishing minigames. I guess fishing mechanics are getting more creative lately! I really liked the fishing minigame in Coral Island as well.

Some other mechanics have unique spins too. Palia incentivizes you to cook by giving you “Focus Points,” although I had to look up what they were for (they increase experience gained). The bug catching mechanic is essentially the same as in other farming sims like Coral Island or Stardew Valley, but it’s tweaked a little by nature of 3D graphics and the use of smoke bombs!

After around 20 hours, I still haven’t finished my house or gotten the glider. That’s probably a skill issue on my part. In open worlds, I tend to avoid the main quest and I should have prioritized gathering and processing the materials for the house. Emphasis on processing, because it just takes so long to process 100 sapwood planks. Otherwise, I do enjoy the calm monotony of chopping trees and mining ores. It reminds me a little of making a step mine in Minecraft (but maybe that’s just because I’ve been playing Minecraft lately).

NPCs

Besides needing to grind a little to get where you want to go, I have enjoyed exploring the world. It feels very empty right now, but I imagine with more players in the server and after a few updates the land could easily feel much more full. I’m excited to explore the lore, which is clearly very rich and well-constructed. I love running around the ruins in Bahari Bay. I was absolutely delighted when I found a very interesting-looking witch deep in the wilderness there too! The NPCs have unique designs and I really enjoy talking to them. It’s even better that sometimes they give hints about what they would like as a gift, and when you give them a gift they don’t like, you get to try again with another one without losing the item.

In spite of being in Beta, most of the NPCs have well-defined personalities that are apparent in their dialogues. Occasionally, they will ask you a question. There are always four options to answer with, each associated with an element. I really like this system, because even though it doesn’t have any effect on the actual gameplay, it shows that the devs are thinking of how to help the players identify with their character.

Cosmetics

Dressing up is one of my favorite things in games like this. I love decorating my character, and usually I feel mostly satisfied with the default clothing options. I don’t often feel the need for mods or extra packs when playing the Sims, for example. However, I feel like the non-paid clothing options really feel default. While I get that making the non-paid clothes slightly unattractive can incentivize people to purchase paid clothing, I really hope they will eventually revamp the non-paid clothes, or at least have a couple of rotating new ones.

This issue with the clothes may seem small, but it stems from a big issue I take with games that feature microtransactions. The main thing that bothers me about Palia is the microtransactions. They don’t affect gameplay; all the microtransactions are cosmetic. I really appreciate that Singularity 6 didn’t make Palia pay to win! But it would be nice to be able to have a pet without buying one, for example, and maybe having cooler pets be paid. I do understand, however, how Palia uses the Palcats and other little guys to incentivize players to make in-game purchases, and it makes sense why they would choose this strategy for monetization. Microtransactions also just leave a bad taste in my mouth because of bad practices by other games that rely on microtransactions.

So Is It Worth It?

While I really want to love Palia, it is hard for me to get into it. The world is beautiful, there is plenty to do, and I like playing the numbers go up game by selling my loot, fish, and bugs. The economy makes sense, and it’s fun to craft items, decorate my plot (even though I don’t have a house yet), and run around meeting NPCs. I love the little bits of lore scattered in every nook and cranny. The game does a great job of incentivizing players to explore by giving plenty of fetch quests and reasons to forage or catch bugs.

Without friends, however, it feels difficult to accomplish some of the quests, mostly because the world is so big and it takes a while to craft individual items. Maybe I just haven’t been online at the right times, because I’m certain that the Palia community is welcoming and wholesome, but I also haven’t had much luck making friends on the game either. It seems that a lot of people who are playing either already have friends to play with or they’re not interested in the interactive aspect of the game. I would really love to experience Palia as a fun chatroom similar to Runescape or other early 2000s MMORPGs.

In any case, I have really enjoyed the time I’ve spent playing Palia and I hope that once I convince my friends to play, I’ll enjoy it even more! I think that Palia will only get better with time, so long as they keep the microtransactions at bay. As of now, I don’t think I’ll play much of Palia, but I’ll check back in on it from time to time to see if it will pique my interest with new updates!