Obviously it’s a very hyped up game, and I was apprehensive posting this as they have sufficient marketing behind them already. It’s meme’d as “Pokemon with Guns”, but at its core is a very heavy survival play style.
Have you tried it? How many hours in are you?
If you have, what do you think? How does it stack up against other survival games for you?
My view is in the comments…
Edit: First 2 votes are downvotes and into minus immediately? I get you may not like the hype. Say it, but this is to also stimulate debate and build this community. We’re off the lemm.ee first page and any downvote is just going to contribute to keeping this community buried when it needs a little oxygen. Do we really want another dead small community? It’s also an opportunity to bring folk into survival games…
Honestly I think the whole “exploiting innocent creatures” thing is overexxagerated for the fun of it. Yes you can throw them around, yes you can butcher them and leave them to starve, but you don’t have to. At it’s core the only “necessary” mechanic is having the pals do work for you, which is never implied to be bad. A collectible log even explains that they seem to want to help people and do it on their own without being forced.
Personally I don’t mistreat mine as I also prefer the wholesome adventure vibe, when they get angry or depressed I take care of them and pet them, etc. And it’s not like mistreating them is an actual mechanic, there’s no “slap” or “punish” button, it’s just you not engaging with the mechanics to treat them well, if that makes sense.
It does feel slightly jarring to headshot a fluffy sheep with a musket, but is it really worse than having a lvl. 100 Charizard use Flamethrower on a lvl. 2 Caterpie, just because the violence is explicit instead of implied? Feels kind of hypocritical to me.
There is something you can build that you can use to force them to work like slaves but it’s really not necessary and I never really used it. The existence of that implies that they will do ‘normal work’ willingly tho, and the game does show them having fun with each task completed.