Palia

I loved this game for the first 200 hours. It felt like they put time, effort and love into their world and their characters. Now, it is a barely functional, buggy disaster where the micro transactions and Cash Shop talk and everything else walks. Huge pass from me until something changes. Also, ranching is garbage.

I Want to Love This Game, But I Can't Recommend It Right Now. The update cycle increasingly feels like: New update → new bugs → “We're investigating” → next update → new bugs → repeat. At some point, this stops being reassuring and starts becoming a pattern. Bugs happen. This is a huge live-service game, and I don't expect everything to work perfectly. But after around two years of beta, I expect the testing and development process to be improving. Some bugs are especially frustrating when they affect things players already paid for. S6 previously said they wanted to focus monetization on cosmetics, yet we're now getting paid storage. If you're going to charge players for features, those features need to work reliably. There are also issues with players not receiving titles and other rewards they're supposed to get. These aren't things that should repeatedly slip through testing. And whenever people bring up these problems, there's always the same response: “It's a free-to-play game, the devs need to eat!”, “It's still in beta!” How long can we keep using those arguments? Being in beta should mean the game is actively improving and the development process is getting more reliable. It shouldn't be a permanent excuse for recurring problems. Deadlock is a good example. It also chose the beta/early-development approach, yet still showed a huge amount of progress within its first year. The problem isn't that Palia is in beta. The problem is that the same patterns keep repeating. I don't expect Palia to be perfect. I just want better post-update testing and more consistency, especially when real money is involved. I really want Palia to succeed. There is a genuinely great game here, and a community that clearly cares about it. But that goodwill isn't unlimited. I'm leaving this as a negative review because I want to see the game improve, not because I want to see it fail. Right now, though, I simply can't recommend it.

They lied about not monetizing core aspects of the game. This used to be a cozy free to play game but now they put storage and plushies behind paywalls, also if you have a horse or more guess what riding them is also behind a paywall too. I now regret spending money on this game for cosmetics to give support to the creators who seem to have gone greedy for money. For now I recommend Starsand island for an actual free cozy game that doesn’t hide core gameplay behind paywalls.

A neutral review, I love this game but toxic positivity is killing this game. Therefore, I am writing my review here where it cannot be deleted. This game now pushes constant updates that are not really meaningful to keep you playing this video game by introducing the bulletin board which feels more like a chore that I have to focus on if I want to get time limited rewards rather than being able to do things that I actually want to do in this game since I play casually. The introduction of more storage behind a paywall is slimey, however, I am more worried about the fact that the revenue from this game does not seem to be spent on this game which is evident from constant bugs that continues to infest this game. Therefore, I can only assume that the revenue goes to Daybreak who only want to line their pockets rather than the actual devs of Palia who are the only ones that can make this game better for all of us. With the introduction of more storage placed behind a paywall in a time where I feel that I have to hoard more things for the bulletin board(as I play periodically), I feel this game is trying to introduce a more fomo-like structure and gods know what else they will place behind a paywall(more decor limit perhaps? Crafting Limit?). As someone in this community, I would like to say I do not accept this step in direction.

Paid storage (P2W)

I got this game and have many hours on it. I was hooked for a month straight. as of June 2nd update, I have been unable to play my game and don't think I will bother to try and fix it with their recent updat of putting storage behind a paywall, which they said they would never do such a thing or become that kind of game. Game was great until you got greedy.

Negative monitization practices that just get worse and worse with every update. Used to be a great game, but devs are more concerned about penny pinching their player base than expanding the game with real content. Ads are even placed on the loading screens and obstruct the screen.

They added paid storage. We have already been requesting more storage as the game is grind heavy and rewards the players that keep at least some of every item in storage. Now you have to pay to get more than the free max which is about 8k items. This game has consistently been releasing ALOT of cosmetics, but not alot of new gameplay, quests, events or storyline. The game has always had cosmetics which to an extent is fair as the game is free but the promise of never putting gamemechanics behind a paywal was there and now they've made it very clear they no longer have any morals. DO NOT PLAY. The game is beginning to go P2W and unless they roll this back they will continue to put basic mechanics behind paywalls. The cosmetics have also been getting more and more expensive to the point that this game now has one of the worst in-game stores for cosmetics when it comes to pricing and also amount. There is HUNDREDS of cosmetics you can buy and they add more every update but the game itself barely releases content as is.