Couldn't make Sifuu my wifuu so I romanced her son so I could at least call her Mommy.

Daybreak bought Palia studio Singularity 6 and aims to bring the game to launch and I thought this would be a good time as ever to leave my review. ♥

First, a little background.. I have been active in the Palia community on discord since June 2021. I have met so many awesome people! *waves* hi guys :3 I was also a part of the Alpha 2 the testing. I had 150 hours easy before the public launch. I only just recently started playing on steam, but you can see by the achievements, I have closer to 500 hours in game between PC and the switch.. give or take. lol I brought several friends to the game and even my sister. I have purchased store items and unlocked all the Palia cat skins from my purchases. Just so everyone understands.. I do love this game... like a lot! HOWEVER, I also want to be honest, this game has a lot of bugs and issues with support and communication.

Bugs that have plagued this game in Alpha are STILL in the game. OGs know what I mean. The broken party system, getting stuck in walls... Endless falling from the ground and yet getting stuck in the sky..... Resources disappearing... Just to name a few. Most of these can be ignored and aren't a huge deal when you factor in the game is *free*. But others make the game unplayable. Like the build bug....

Myself (and others) have had rooms stuck in the "build" stage on our plots for nearly a year. I am talking the Public launch of the game in Aug 2023. The bug happens after giving the supplies (wood and brick) to build the room... it just gets stuck. It never builds. It can't be destroyed (because the game reads it as "building"). I put my first bug report in the fall of 2023. I put in another in December. These bug reports went unanswered. In January I saw a reddit user mention they finally got through to someone by requesting to open a ticket. So I opened a ticket and kept reopening it until I finally got a response;

"I'd like to inform you that our team is aware of this issue, and this typically happens when a hallway is constructed right before the launch of an update patch where the server goes down for maintenance. Unfortunately, we have no workarounds for this issue. Please construct a Harvest House on an unused corner of your Housing Plot, and connect the bugged Narrow Hallway to it for the meantime. I have forwarded your report and the information you've provided to our dev team for their investigation. They may need additional time for a definite fix for this bug, but rest assured that this will be resolved as soon as possible. We humbly ask for your patience and understanding on this matter. I will now be closing this ticket, but once the patch is made available, it will be announced on our official Discord server and News page."

That was six months ago. (And yes, I have lots of receipts) Mind you, we have had two patches since then..... I personally only have the one room stuck (a hallway) but a quick look through the discord and reddit you will find users with multiple buildings stuck.

The next big patch is supposed to come with a new system that allows users to visit our plots for house tours. They just added new plot landscapes that can be purchased in anticipation for the new system. The beach one is SO COOL (I mean that, it's beautiful!!!) and I was so excited like "yessss please take my money" until I remembered... Oh yeah... um my plot is still broken... I have an ugly open room just sitting there like an eyesore. Why buy a cool landscape for my plot or invite people to see it?

That's just the bugs... I'd also like to talk about some of the things they promised but have yet to follow through on....

The community system. One of the first talks they did about the game in phase two was the promise to set up a really nice community (guild) system. It was supposed to be ready by switch launch. To their credit, there is a community system in the game of sorts. From beta launch we have been able to create the community, add our friends and a motto. But that's all you can do. There used to be a cute little messaged that popped that said "coming soon" on the community tab. But at some point they simply removed the "coming soon" and stopped talking about it. lol what?

We were promised a cozy community sim mmo that we can have adventures with our friends. In reality, there are NO quests that can be done together. It took them an entire year to add loot sharing when hunting or mining together. (Seriously it was just the last patch this was added lol) You can't even do the temple quests with friends. You phase completely out. We still can't openly trade with friends... You can't craft things to give to people.

You can play the HOT POT mini game with your friends... and that is.... Fun? But the game needs more.

The story is fun, the world is BEAUTIFUL. The characters are unique and well done... But we can't deny it's not in a good state right now. It always feel like any criticism towards this game is always met with "but it's free" And I take that into account when making this review.

Steam's rating system is only Recommend or Not... This game has lovely bones that I put a lot of hours in...(and over $30 of real money fml) So of course I won't down vote it. But it needs help. Like 911 someone please save this game! lol

I really hope Daybreak (as they just bought the game) sees this review and takes the kindness that myself (and others) have given by not down-voting and just asking for them to do better.

The trailer looked really amazing and it sounded like it had basically everything my friend and I could ever imagine on a game. Inspired by several games we like. It might be for someone playing solo, However we were highly disappointed to find out a couple of things.

It was a huge letdown to find out that cosmetics are locked behind a paywall. The worst part is that the currency required to buy said cosmetics will cost you like $40-50 bucks just for enough to buy one set, and the currency is obtainable without spending money. I wouldn't have an issue with this if these weren't the only Cosmetics available and I could at least shop with in game currency that I can earn, create my own clothes, etc. But the only options you get come from the starter wardrobe you see at the beginning. Avatar customization is one of my favorite things in video games and when the character customization is good it has always been a huge selling point for me. If I can't go beyond the starter options it's no good to me. I like to grind for cool cosmetics.

While we decided that we could get over the fact that cosmetics were behind a paywall, what really turned us off from the game was the fact that you can't share plots. I don't see the point in playing with my friend if we can't have the same plot and build simultaneously. Without shared plots, playing co-op is essentially pointless as the reason we play together is to build and do our activities together. It makes no sense to play together when we can't even see what each other is doing unless we leave our plot. You can set your friends as a creator on your plot, but their roles are still very limited and you won't progress together.

I could possibly come back to this game once there are shared plots. It would be even better if there was a way to obtain non-premium cosmetics as well. But like I said earlier, I suppose that's something we could play without as long as we can play together.