The success of a long-term game has to do with knowing how to add meaningful content regularly and consistently. No matter how successful you are at the beginning, if you want to maintain a loyal community that keeps throwing money in your direction, you need to keep them happy. And that’s no easier than making the game in the first place. But it seems that Pocketpair, the creators of Palworld, know how to do it. And not just with April Fools’ jokes.
With patch 0.2.0.6, Pocketpair has added the first raid for Palworld. Announced last March, it has appeared practically by surprise, adding a new Pal, called Bellanoir, which is a powerful evil Pal, that we can summon at an Invocation Altar using a new item, the tiles. When summoned, a battle will begin between you, your Pals, and Bellanoir, with the possibility of summoning an “extreme” version of him, if you want a greater challenge. Among other rewards, Bellanoir can drop Pal eggs when defeated, but cannot be captured like other Pals.
On the other hand, although Pocketpair seems to want to please its audience, they don’t seem to worry about being accused of plagiarism. Because Bellanoir bears a more than suspicious resemblance to Gardevoir, a psychic/fairy type Pokémon from the third generation, and particularly to Mega-Gardevoir, its mega evolution introduced in the sixth generation. Something that neither Nintendo nor Pocketpair have commented on yet.
If you want to enjoy the first raid of this game, we have good and bad news. If you are a Steam user, you get the good news, as patch 0.2.0.6 is already available, and you will be able to install it the next time you run the game. If you are a Microsoft Store or Xbox console user, you get the bad news. According to Pocketpair, the patch for Microsoft platforms is not yet available and will be released “when it’s ready”. We don’t even have an approximate date of when we can expect this update.
Taking advantage of the opportunity, Pocketpair has also pointed out that an update with much more content is coming. Planned for the summer of 2024, it will include a new island, with new Pals, as well as new buildings, weapons, and final enemy towers. It is still to be seen when exactly it will arrive and if it will reach all users at the same time. But what is evident is that we will have Palworld for a while.
