Palworld Early Access Review - Xbox/PC Game Pass Version

ign.com:

Note: This review is specifically for the version of Palworld available on Xbox and through the Microsoft Store on PC . If you haven’t seen our review of the Steam version , go check that out first! Nearly everything we said there still applies to this review, which will instead focus specifically on what’s different with this version.

Palworld has taken the world by storm! And with good reason: shooting cartoon animals with assault weapons then forcing them to mine ore for you all day is alarmingly fun. But those playing on the Xbox and Microsoft Store versions that are widely accessible through Game Pass have been treated to a noticeably different experience – one I’ve seen firsthand after playing over 50 hours on Xbox since wrapping up my time with the far more polished Steam version. Unfortunately the Xbox build has quite a few additional bugs and performance issues, a missing feature here and there, and multiplayer that’s limited to just four players with no option for dedicated servers. Those blemishes are expected from an Early Access game that’s still very much under development, but it definitely feels like a significantly less complete package.

The most immediately noticeable way this version of Palworld differs is that it consistently performs worse. While graphical bugs, pop-in, and framerate dips are certainly present on Steam, they’re much more glaring on Xbox, and flying around the world for any length of time is bound to lead to extremely blurry textures that sometimes never fully load even when you get really close to them. In a few instances, a weird lightning-like light started flickering and didn’t go away until I went back to the main menu. The worst among these discrepancies, though, are the sound effects on Xbox, which are all over the place in terms of quality. Some noises are extremely low quality and sound like you’re listening through an old walkie talkie, while other sound effects are just missing altogether. None of these issues were