I’ve seen enough gameplay to be able to draw informed conclusions, and I’d rather not reward the developers financially for their sketchy practices anyway. There are much better survival crafting games out there which have their own unique art style and mechanics.

It seems like you’re just willfully ignoring my actual meaning to defend the game.

Yes, creature capturing existed prior to Pokemon, but not capturing by weakening the creature and throwing a ball at them.

Yes, cell-shaded graphics existed before Pokemon, but Palworld explicitly copies the style of creature design from Pokemon, mixing and matching parts to make something that is different enough to not be a direct copy of any one design, but similar enough that a casual observer would be hard pressed to tell them apart. There’s a good reason that pretty much every review of the game refers to it as “Pokemon with guns.”

The developers knew exactly what they were doing, so to claim it wasn’t intentional is disingenuous at best.

It’s one thing to draw inspiration, and another to directly copy the art style and mechanics of an established franchise to piggyback on their brand recognition.

Where is the line drawn between borrowing and copying?

So you don’t catch “pals” by weakening them and throwing a ball at them?