Palworld Review: 287 Pals Later, Is the 1.0 Worth It?

This Palworld review comes 56 hours deep into a save file I started the day the version number quietly flipped from Early Access to 1.0 on July 9. That's the actual question I'm answering here. Not whether the original pitch works, Steam settled that two and a half years ago with a launch spike that topped two million concurrent players, but whether the finished version holds up under its own claim to be finished.

TL;DR: Palworld's 1.0 exit from Early Access, live since July 9, 2026, adds 72 new Pals (287 total), a floating region called Sunreach, and an actual story built around the World Tree and a poaching syndicate. The game holds a Very Positive rating across 488,310 English Steam reviews (95% positive). At $29.99, the scale is real, while September maintenance shows the polish is still evolving.

Current status: September 2026

Steam currently lists the Windows release at $29.99 with 488,310 English reviews and a Very Positive 95% score. The page lists 75 achievements, full controller support, online co-op, cross-platform multiplayer, and Steam Workshop. The official news feed's September 6 v1.0.4 update added two sub-missions and progression, fishing, multiplayer, and World Tree fixes; v1.0.5 on September 14 followed with additional bug fixes. The 1.0 content claims remain current: the official launch changelog still documents 72 new Pals and 287 total.

Key Takeaways

• Exited Early Access and launched 1.0 on July 9, 2026, after roughly two and a half years since its January 19, 2024 Early Access debut.
• $29.99 on Steam, unchanged since Early Access; the only DLC so far is a $5.99 soundtrack, no paid content expansion has shipped.
• Developed and self-published by Pocketpair (Tokyo).
• Very Positive on Steam across 488,310 English reviews (95% positive).
• 1.0 added 72 new Pals (287 total), the Sunreach region, and a real story built around the World Tree.
• 56 hours logged for this review, all of it inside the 1.0 build.

Does Palworld review well after the 1.0 relaunch? (quick answer)

Yes, with a caveat worth naming up front. The 1.0 update turns Palworld from an open-ended survival sandbox into a game with a real campaign, a new region, and an actual reason to keep pushing forward. The official feed is still recording targeted progression, multiplayer and display fixes, so "finished" describes the content milestone more confidently than a frozen technical endpoint.

Overview: what Palworld actually is now

Pocketpair is a Tokyo studio that built its reputation on a string of smaller, stranger releases before Palworld became the one that stuck. The pitch that made the game a phenomenon in January 2024 hasn't changed at the core: you land on the Palpagos Islands, catch creatures called Pals, and decide whether to treat them as companions, workers, or, per Steam's own description, dinner. What has changed is everything built around that core loop.

The 1.0 changelog frames it directly: "the journey that began in Early Access reaches its climax, and from here, a new Palworld begins." Concretely, that means a story now exists. The Steam listing describes it as choosing between peacefully living alongside Pals or driving off "a ruthless poaching syndicate," and the changelog reveals the actual hook: the Palpagos factions have spent the whole game fighting over ownership of the towers scattered across the islands, and the World Tree is where that fight gets explained. It's a real narrative spine layered onto a game that used to be pure systems.

First impressions after the September maintenance pass: the promise mostly lands. The early hours still play like the Palworld people remember, catch things, build a base, automate the boring parts. It's what happens after that changed.

I'll admit the "or eat them" line in Steam's own description still gets me every time I read it back. Palworld has always leaned into that tonal collision on purpose, cute creature designs sitting next to factory labor and, if you want, a stew pot, and 1.0 doesn't soften that at all. If anything the poaching syndicate storyline leans harder into it, since the wildlife sanctuary rework turns "should I capture this endangered creature" into an actual stealth decision instead of a punchline. Whether that's dark comedy or just uncomfortable probably depends on how much you think about what you're doing to your own base roster at 2 a.m.

Gameplay: automation still carries the game, but now there's somewhere to go

The core loop is unchanged and still works. You capture Pals with spheres, assign them to jobs they're statistically suited for, and the base runs itself as long as someone keeps them fed. Watching a Pal you caught two hours ago start hauling ore on its own is still the moment that hooks new players, and it hasn't lost that effect at hour 56.

A working base built around automated production lines, exactly the kind of factory loop Pocketpair leaned into for 1.0.

What's new is Sunreach, a set of islands floating above Palpagos and kept aloft by Paldium according to the official changelog. It adds new Pals, new tower bosses, and ores that require specialized equipment to mine, giving the base-building loop from our Subnautica 2 deep-sea base guide a genuine parallel: both games eventually gate progress behind gear tiers instead of just grinding more of the same resource. Sunreach's towers feed directly into the World Tree storyline, so exploration finally has a narrative payoff instead of just another checklist of collectibles.

The 1.0 patch also reworked Wildlife Sanctuaries, previously throwaway small islands, into stealth-based conservation areas patrolled by defense drones. You can sneak past searchlights to poach rare Pals or go in loud and fight your way out; it's the most mechanically distinct addition in the update, and it's the kind of specific system detail that a generic "is Palworld good" writeup tends to skip past.

Combat itself is unchanged in feel: it's a competent third-person shooter wrapped around creature abilities, closer to an action game than the deliberately slow turn-based structure fans of traditional monster-taming titles might expect. If you've played Voidling Bound, Palworld's combat sits at the opposite end of the genre from that game's direct-control creature combat, here you're commanding Pals from a distance more often than embodying them.

New Pals inherit the Awakening and Mutation systems introduced in 1.0, letting you push a Pal's stats past their base ceiling instead of just breeding for better rolls. Breeding itself is unchanged in structure but now has a longer tail of viable endgame builds to chase, since the 72 new additions widened the gene pool considerably.

State of the game after 1.0.5

This is the part most day-one coverage can't tell you, because it requires waiting.

Palworld's launch population is no longer the useful freshness signal. The better current marker is the official patch trail: v1.0.4 added two sub-missions and changed World Tree fishing, while v1.0.5 fixed texture loading and map-filter behavior. Those notes show a live 1.0 build still receiving targeted maintenance rather than a project that has gone quiet.

The patch cadence tells its own story. Version 1.0.2 targeted disconnects and crashes during the Panthalus boss fight on dedicated servers, a teleport bug that could make Victor & Shadowbeak vanish mid-fight, and missions where interrupted dialogue could leave the screen stuck faded out. A July 30 hotfix fixed an infinite loading screen after defeating the World Tree boss. September's v1.0.4 and v1.0.5 notes show that the work continued with new missions, progression fixes, and display fixes. Read plainly: the game's headline story content needed a substantial early stability pass, and the live build is still being maintained.

Reddit's r/Palworld tells a more upbeat version of the same period. Posts celebrating "500,000 players on Steam" and hitting the #1 Steam seller spot appeared within the first two weeks, alongside a steady stream of base-building showcases and DPS build breakdowns that suggest an engaged, long-haul community rather than a launch-week crowd that bounced. A fan-made mod adding ray-traced lighting reportedly passed 18,000 downloads within days, which says something about how much goodwill the base game still has for people willing to dig into mod support Pocketpair only patched into a stable state on July 30.

Palworld's tonal whiplash in one screenshot: fluffy livestock Pals running heavy weapons.

None of this is damning on its own. Live-service-adjacent survival games patch constantly, and a studio fixing story-critical crashes and then continuing targeted maintenance is doing the job correctly. It does mean the word "1.0" describes the content milestone more cleanly than a frozen technical endpoint, so anyone buying in should expect a maintained live build rather than a finished-and-forgotten release.

Verdict: how this Palworld review lands

Buy it now if you either skipped Palworld entirely during Early Access or bounced off it early. The 1.0 update isn't a content patch, it's closer to the game the Early Access build was always gesturing at: a real story, a genuine second region in Sunreach, and enough new systems in Awakening and Mutation to make the endgame worth reaching. Base automation remains the best hook in the genre this side of factory sims, and at $29.99 for what's now a much larger game, the price hasn't moved even as the scope roughly doubled.

Wait for a convenient update window if you're planning a dedicated-server co-op run with friends specifically to clear the new story content. The official v1.0.4 and v1.0.5 notes show that progression, multiplayer, World Tree and display issues are still being tuned. That's a narrower complaint than "the game is broken," but it is specific and current.

This isn't for players who want the deliberate, turn-based structure of traditional creature collectors; Palworld is action combat first, and the creature side sits closer to Ark: Survival Evolved's taming loop than to anything slower-paced. If you want that direct-control, embody-the-creature feel instead, our Voidling Bound review covers a game built specifically around that itch. For co-op-focused survival crafting with a different structural hook, our Outbound guide hub and Romestead wiki are both worth a look if base-building-plus-friends is the draw and Pals aren't a requirement.

Rating: 8.0/10

Related Reading

• Palworld Best Pals: Top 20 S-Tier Picks After 1.0 (2026): Our tier list ranking the strongest Pals for combat and base work after the 1.0 relaunch.
• Voidling Bound Review: Monster Taming Meets the Abyss: A direct-control creature-taming shooter that takes the opposite approach to combat from Palworld.
• Subnautica 2 Deep-Sea Base Guide: Power and Hull Depth: Another base-building loop gated by gear tiers instead of raw grinding.
• Outbound Guide 2026: Van Builds, Co-op, and Biomes: A co-op survival crafting alternative built around a mobile base instead of a fixed one.
• Romestead Wiki 2026: All Biomes, Gods, Raids and Co-op Guide: A different god-gated take on survival building for 1-8 players.
• Palworld Alpha Boss Locations: 25 Confirmed Spawns (2026): Every confirmed Alpha Pal spawn point, mapped by faction and level.
• Palworld Breeding Guide: All 5 Cake Types Ranked (2026): Which cake to feed for faster breeding, ranked by ingredient cost and effect.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Palworld still in Early Access? No. Palworld exited Early Access and launched version 1.0 on July 9, 2026, after roughly two and a half years in Early Access since January 19, 2024. The Steam store page no longer carries an Early Access label.

How much does Palworld cost on Steam? Palworld is $29.99 on Steam, the same price it launched at in Early Access. The official Steam news feed is the better place to check the current maintenance trail, because v1.0.4 and v1.0.5 both shipped after launch.

How many Pals are in Palworld after the 1.0 update? 287 total. The 1.0 changelog added 72 new Pals on top of the Early Access roster, alongside rebalanced stats and abilities for every existing Pal.

Does Palworld 1.0 have a real story now? Yes. 1.0 built an actual campaign around the World Tree and a poaching syndicate storyline, with named story bosses like Panthalus and Victor & Shadowbeak. Early Access never had this; it was closer to an open sandbox.

Does Palworld have co-op multiplayer? Yes. Online co-op play mode supports up to 4 players, and a dedicated server can host up to 32. Cross-platform play is also supported, per Steam's own listing.

Is Palworld still buggy after exiting Early Access? The official feed shows continued maintenance: v1.0.4 added two sub-missions and fixed progression issues, while v1.0.5 fixed texture and map-filter bugs. Earlier v1.0.2 notes documented Panthalus and World Tree fixes.

How long does it take to beat Palworld 1.0? There's no official completion time published yet. My own campaign clear, first island to the World Tree's final boss, took about 42 hours inside a 56-hour 1.0 playthrough. Full base automation and Sunreach exploration add well beyond that.

References

• Palworld on Steam
• Palworld official Steam news
• Pocketpair official website
• Palworld 1.0 Official Launch Trailer on YouTube
• r/Palworld community on Reddit