Palworld is $30 on steam. It’s a litttle expensive for an indie game but I’ve gotten my money’s worth already. It’s not perfect but I wasn’t expecting a AAA title. Honestly I’m just impressed multiplayer works as well as it does. I also appreciate that they didn’t shoehorn any awful cutscenes in. No story > bad story. It also runs pretty great, even though my computer is older and I’m using proton/linux.
Compare Pokémon scarlet, $70. Laggy. Unpolished. Missing features from previous games. Unskippable cutscenes with characters just standing around talking to each other. Boring basic story. Nothing to do at the end of the game (no battle tower). No new fun features (the open world feels empty and ugly, compare BotW/TotK). It’s too open, there is no Mt Moon to get lost in.
Even if the team makes no further improvements I’m still having fun with palworld. I don’t see myself ever replaying scarlet.