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Palia on Switch Impressions: A Cozy MMO With Promise
19.12.2023 - 17:18 / mmorpg.com / Palia
In Palia, humanity is the past… or at least, humanity was the past. Palia starts with a giant purple void and a halfway-decent character creation tool. I do love a good character creation tool. After crafting the perfect human, I was thrust into a world where the legendary human race was supposed to be extinct. No one seems to know exactly how or why humanity died off or, more importantly, why they’re reappearing from nowhere. One thing is certain: this cozy little town just got a lot smaller.
Ever since Palia went live on PC in August, people can’t get enough of this cozy MMO adventure. It plays like a hybrid of several other games in the genre, like Animal Crossing , Disney Dreamlight Valley, and Stardew Valley . It only makes sense then that Palia would come to the cozy game machine itself, the Nintendo Switch.
There’s nothing better this time of year than to snuggle up with a good video game under the covers with a cup of hot cocoa. Palia opens up a world of endless possibilities as players build their own relationships, homes, and communities. But how does Palia hold up on the limited hardware capabilities of the Switch?
To answer that question properly, we need a baseline for comparison. There is definite bugginess in Palia . The Nintendo Switch caps the framerate for Palia at 30fps, but there were many times when it was clearly much lower than that. Other times, things in-game that I should have been able to interact with like animals, trees, and NPCs were completely unresponsive. Nothing is more creepy than having a sentient cat-like creature who stares blankly into your soul without actually responding. It’s like dealing with a real cat.
Another such instance of this was during a hunting session. Hunting requires arrows. Arrows are not free and have to be bought from the shop 20 at a time. They aren’t expensive, but that’s not the point. I kept shooting at animals that weren’t really there. The arrows would then have no effect, and the animal would eventually just disappear. Other times, It would react and run and I would give chase. Palia made a point of telling me that chasing is an integral part of the hunting mechanic, so I should wear good shoes. So why, then, would the animal just bug out and disappear mid-chase?
Having only played Palia on the Switch at this point, I wondered if these problems were isolated to the Nintendo Switch version or if this is a game-wide issue, so I downloaded it on my laptop. My laptop isn’t a powerhouse, but it’s definitely better hardware than the OLED Switch I use. I expected the PC to look and perform much better. It certainly renders a nicer image, but the performance was much more stable on the Switch than on my laptop.
T
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