Highlights

  • Palworld's open world could benefit from more variety in biomes to prevent environmental monotony.
  • Adding new elemental affinities to Pals could lead to a more diverse and engaging open world experience.
  • Pocketpair's commitment to regular updates leaves room for enhancing Palworld's open world diversity.

Pocketpair's Palworld has already proven its worth in a plethora of ways, but that doesn't mean it's perfect by any means. Being in early access, it has a long road ahead of it full of additions and improvements, many of which have been and will likely continue to be requested by fans. In light of that, there is one area the developer should give more attention to as it works on completing Palworld: its open world.

Palworld's open world is undoubtedly beautiful, and it serves its purpose as much as it currently can. For the most part, it works as designed, and is home to a variety of Pals for players to battle and capture. However, if Pocketpair chooses to develop Palworld's open world beyond where it is now, it should consider adding more variety to it to increase its environmental diversity.

Palworld character holding an award with Enshrouded in the background
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Palworld's Open World Could Use More Variety

Palworld's Open World Currently Only Has Four Biomes

Currently, Palworld's open world only has four biomes: Forest, Desert, Snow, and Volcano. While four biomes may seem like plenty for an open world of Palworld's size, after so many hours in the game, everything starts blending together and the once-beautiful environments begin feeling rather bland. This is largely due to the type of game Palworld is, as successful open worlds such as that of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (which features the same four biomes that Palworld has), rely less on the elemental aspects of their environments and more on simply being diverse enough to break up monotony while players complete various activities.

In some cases, these open worlds can add another layer of challenge to exploration. In Tears of the Kingdom, for example, players are required to wear certain armor pieces to withstand severe cold or heat without taking damage. This is fairly common in survival games, as their environments are often considered enemies just as much as any other foe. As a survival game, Palworld also adopted this mechanic by encouraging players to change their outfits when they enter harsh biomes, or they risk gradually losing their health. Although Palworld is indeed a survival game, its primary focus is the various Pals that inhabit its world, and this is precisely what Pocketpair should consider as it continues to develop Palworld's open world.

Palworld Could Add More Biomes in Future Updates

One of the key features of Palworld's Pals is their various elements. Each Pal is associated with a different element, with most of them being almost identical to their Pokemon counterparts. However, unlike Pokemon's eighteen types, Palworld currently only features nine elemental affinities, so there is still plenty of room for more. If Pocketpair chooses to continue adding elements to Palworld's pool of elemental affinities, it could simultaneously use that as an excuse to tune up the game's open world in the process.

Palworld could still add more element types, even if they continue to be based on those present in the Pokemon series, and this could also pave the way for a more diverse open world. For example, if Pocketpair chose to eventually add Poison Pals to the roster, perhaps a swamp biome would be in order. Additionally, if it wanted to lean even more heavily into its Tears of the Kingdom inspiration, Palworld could see floating islands added that double as homes for unique Pals.

Pocketpair has made it clear that it is committed to giving Palworld regular updates, but its open world isn't currently included in the roadmap. That being said, the developer has stated that it should take around a year to finish Palworld, which may leave plenty of time for it to increase the diversity of the game's open world.