Palia Review – Stunning Worlds, Relaxing Vibes: But Is It Fun?

Stepping into Palia Review, a cozy MMO that blends life-sim mechanics with an open-world adventure, feels like entering a dreamlike escape crafted for relaxation. With its vibrant landscapes, player-driven economy, and a strong emphasis on community, Palia Review aims to redefine the genre by offering a uniquely social experience. But does Palia Review truly deliver on its promise of an immersive, relaxing MMO, or does its charm wear thin over time? In this Palia Review, we’ll break down its gameplay, world-building, and overall appeal to help you decide whether this enchanting village-life adventure is worth your time. Let’s dive in and explore whether Palia Review is the perfect blend of cozy escapism and engaging gameplay.

Palia Review Pros:

• Awesome graphics.
• 9.5GB download size.
• Own in-game achievements.
• Free to play.
• Graphics settings – HDR (not supported), and all the brightness and gamma sliders, you can change the game time to test them out.
• Supports cross progression by creating an account.
• A full 3D game world, and you have full 360-degree camera control.
• MMO adventure gameplay.
• Tutorial pop-ups, menus, and missions to ease you in.
• Play how you want, and this is encouraged; you can take on main story missions or take on the many varied side missions.
• A full character creator for male or female, no items or styles are locked to a gender.
• In-game cutscenes and character interactions, but they do these awesome flyovers of an area, and it’s breathtaking.
• Third-person view.
• A workbench lets you craft.
• The hotbar lets you quickly select items and gear.
• When farming resources and materials, you get a bar to show how much is left.
• Handy clear pop-ups of progress and anything you loot or get rewarded with.
• Building mode is where you can place items, and it launches a grid view on the ground, and items will go green for good or red for no, you can’t place it there.
• Controller settings – Invert axis and sensitivity sliders, and you can remap the controls.
• Inventory is hotbars, and you can unlock new ones by upgrading your pack. When you are full, you can still collect things in an emergency hotbar, but it’s a limited thing.
• Mission’s main and side will show on the screen at all times.
• Radial menus are used for emotes and weapon/tool selection.
• Hacking at trees and rocks is fine, but as they get bigger and stronger, you have to upgrade your tools.
• An excellent introduction that the gameplay loop.
• Full day and night cycle with different weather types.
• The game starts with you getting your own little piece of land, you can do with it as you please.
• Earn exp and level up tasks like foraging and crafting.
• Collections is where you can view and equip collected and earned emotes, stickers, saved outfits, pets, tool skins, and nameplates.
• Relationships play a huge part in the game, levelling up relationships can reward items, and you get daily gifts, and each character has their own weekly wants.
• Buy and earn recipes for crafting.
• It’s the MMO experience but without all the subscription costs.
• Multiple choice questions and answers.
• The map fills in with missions and points of interest as you find or trigger them.
• The compass at the tip of the screen shows objectives.
• In-game chat interface, and you can mute and block players.
• Create communities so you can interact and play with others easily.
• Find and pay to use fast travel points.
• In-game shop using real money for cosmetics.
• The map does allow you to freely load back to your land.
• Gardening lets you set where you want to work, you then hoe the ground and plant, and water flowers and food.
• When out in the open social world, you can still find and farm resources and materials.
• Fishing can be done, and whilst it’s different from the usual system, it works well.
• Any food you eat can give a temporary buff.
• The shipping bin located by your house is where anything you put in will be sold that night.
• Collect stickers, open sticker packs, and display them.
• A very cozy game world to explore.
• The game is very sociable, but it is also perfectly fine for solo play. You get to control how much interaction you have and how the chats show up.
• Find different people to get new or other recipes and items.
• Actions have bars to show how much you’ve done. Watering plants will bring up a bar, as will hitting rocks or chopping trees.
• The game is going for a cozy atmosphere, and it nails it and then some.
• Buy writs so you can expand your land.
• Once you have a house, you can fully customise and edit it.
• Puzzle elements like riddles and quests with some brain power are scattered around.
• Buy new blueprints and recipes.
• Bugs will be seen going about their business in the world, and you can hit them with rocks and smoke bombs to capture them and add them to a Pokémon-like pokedex diary.
• Level up each skill and activity in the game by simply doing them over and over.
• You can go and visit other players’ home plots, you don’t even have to be friends or anything, and fear not, you cannot be or do the griefing.
• The world has a slight Dreamlight Valley vibe and feel to it, and I like that.
• Every interaction I have had with people through chat has been pleasant and helpful.
• You can put out a call for help with materials and resources, and likewise, you can send resources and materials to other players to help.
• Full quest management system.
• The Elder Wood expansion is a free addition to the game that adds a whole new beautiful area and has its own battle pass-like system, in that you complete quests and build up the rewards bar for unique items.
• You can scale the side of mountains and some walls using your stamina bar.
• There is always something to find or do in the world.

Palia Review Cons:

• Very slow to load each time. Even when the game says press a button to start, it won’t initially work until the screen has loaded.
• Never sure when it has saved, and you don’t get notified when quitting.
• The game shows HDR, but the Switch doesn’t support it; it’s there as it seems all the settings are universal for all versions.
• Slowdown happens frequently, and when others are around, it can get very bad.
• When you have stuff in the emergency hotbar, it doesn’t automatically add those items to your hotbars when you make room.
• Your plot of land is technically seperate from the game, so when you leave, you are joining an online server. The issue is that you can be stuck in a queue to join a server, and depending on the time of day or traffic, it can be a while.
• A lot of other players and some game characters don’t always load or show or they will just pop in.
• Lag and slowdown are the main issues when in a server.
• There is a noticeable button lag on actions.
• In-game shop using real money for cosmetics.
• The compass is messy and chaotic; not all symbols show on it until you are close.
• I had a few times where I would just be stuck in a conversation or loop, the major issue being that I couldn’t use the unstuck command.
• I didn’t find the character creator particularly good or varied.
• No touchscreen support.
• The missions and markers are not clear, and it’s all very confusing when you have multiple missions running at once, which you usually do.
• I am just not a fan of the mission structure and how the loading works.
• I get why, but having so many crafting items done in real time, it does take a lot of fun out of the game, as you’re just clock watching.
• Everything just takes a large amount of time to get done, even just upgrading your storage so you can be competent takes a while.

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Palia:

Official website.

Developer: Singularity 6

Publisher: Singularity 6

Store Links – 

Nintendo