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 466,000-plus Steam reviews (94% positive). Three weeks later, patches are still landing to fix crashes during the new story boss fights. At $29.99, the scale is real, the polish is still catching up.

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 466,000-plus reviews (94% 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 three weeks 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. But three separate patches shipped in the first three weeks after launch specifically to stop story bosses from crashing multiplayer sessions, so "finished" is doing some marketing work here that the patch notes don't quite back up yet.

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 three weeks in: 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, three weeks after 1.0

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

Palworld's second weekend after 1.0 saw it climb to nearly a million concurrent players, per gaming press coverage picked up on Steam's own news feed. Pulling live data today, three weeks after launch, SteamCharts shows roughly 359,000 players active at the moment of checking and a 24-hour peak around 600,000. That's a meaningful drop from the second-weekend number, but 600,000 concurrent players three weeks post-launch is still a huge live population for any game, let alone one that already had its viral moment two and a half years ago.

The patch cadence tells its own story. Version 1.0.1 shipped July 15, fixing general bugs. Version 1.0.2 followed July 29, specifically targeting disconnects and crashes during the Panthalus boss fight on dedicated servers, a teleport bug that could make the Tower Boss Victor & Shadowbeak vanish mid-fight, and two missions where interrupted dialogue could leave the screen stuck faded out. A same-day hotfix on July 30 improved mod stability, and another the same day fixed an infinite loading screen after defeating the World Tree boss. Read plainly: the game's headline story content, the exact systems 1.0 was built to sell, needed three rounds of fixes to stop breaking in the first three weeks.

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 within days of finding them is doing the job correctly. But it does mean the word "1.0" is carrying more marketing weight than technical precision right now, and anyone buying in expecting a fully settled release should budget for a patch or two before the World Tree fight behaves.

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 a patch or two if you're planning a dedicated-server co-op run with friends specifically to clear the new story content. The exact fights the update is built around, Panthalus and the World Tree, were still getting stability fixes as of this review's writing. That's a narrower complaint than "the game is broken," but it's specific and it's real.

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

• 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.

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 only DLC is a $5.99 soundtrack, no paid content expansion has shipped as of this review.

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? Somewhat. Three patches landed in the first three weeks after 1.0 (v1.0.1, v1.0.2, and a same-day hotfix) fixing crashes and disconnects during the Panthalus and World Tree boss fights specifically.

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