Palia

Steam Reviews

Read all reviews on Steam

• Recommended Posted July 11, 2025 on Steam I like that it promotes kindness and helping others. I think some of the players can use this guidance. I like that it has an unstuck button. I wish I didn't feel so lost at times. As a senior player who didnt have the childhood I should have. I'm enjoying this at a late age but my eyesight is not what it used to be and I shot someone's pet & luckily it didn't die. Thought it was a chappa.. My friends that are living don't play sadly. So I mostly play alone. If you are a senior and play this game say hello. I may not be as good as the younger one's but I like that I parent myself and make myself earn playtime. It works for me. it's better than watching TV all the time. Wave hello or say hello if you are a senior player.
• Not recommended Posted May 17, 2026 on Steam Imagine grinding through every quest the game has to offer, finally earning a rare black horse with a flaming mane as a reward for your dedication… and then the developers turn around and say: “Nice horse, mind coughing up €25 if you actually want to ride it?” That’s honestly what Palia’s monetization feels like right now. Cosmetic cash shops are one thing, but locking features or meaningful rewards behind absurd pricing after players already earned them through gameplay just feels insulting. It completely kills the sense of achievement.
• Not recommended Posted July 27, 2025 on Steam It kind of breaks my heart to not recommend this game. Palia is the dream cozy game—almost. There's so much to do and the relationships with characters are adorable, though your interactions with them tend to become irrelevant once you level up your friendship or romance fully. The aesthetic is great, skills and crafting are mostly fun, building mechanics are pretty good. [b][i]So what's wrong with Palia?[/i][/b] [h3] Low building item limits[/h3] There are very low building item limits for your private plot (3500 items isn't much when you can plant trees and gardens, stack dishes in the cupboards, and custom blocks all count too. It adds up quickly). [h3]The RNG is BAD[/h3] A lot of decor items are locked behind random prizes with atrocious drop rates. No way to win or earn them otherwise besides grinding away at it (not very cozy). [h3]Building limits that cost $[/h3] Plots (which are purchasable in the cash shop), are completely cosmetic backdrops and do not allow you to build on the whole map. You may buy a beachfront plot with cool, explorable areas like a pirate cove, romantic rowboat scene, epic cliffs, wrecked pirate ships, a lava pool, a lighthouse-worthy promontory, and more, but you can still only build in the small central rectangle for absolutely no reason. [h3]THE CASH SHOP[/h3] Look, we all get it. It's a free game. And they need to turn a profit. But these prices are mobile-game bad. You want an outfit besides the 16 or so really bland vanilla ones? There are a few in the 13$ range. Anything remotely fancy starts at $17-25 USD and the newest or fanciest are 34$—[b]for [i]ONE[/i] outfit[/b]. Want all the color variations of outfits? 51$. The aforementioned building-restricted plots are $17-25. Pets, glider skins, and tool skins all in the $13-17 range. You even pay for emotes. I should mention—there are no other ways to obtain outfits. And for the most part, any of the other paid content. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the devs don't seem have much to say about addressing any of these issues (except item limits, which used to be 2700(?), I believe. [h3]Takeaway/TL;DR[/h3] For a game that is centered around being, having, and doing cute and cozy things, a lot of it has either artificial limits, or costs too much money for the value given. [b]A final note in case devs ever read this and care:[/b] [i]You're likely to sell more IAPs to more players overall, bringing in more of a profit than you currently do, if your prices were more reasonable. With the bonus of more satisfied players spreading the word about how much they love your game. Do a survey?
• Not recommended Posted February 4, 2026 on Steam As someone with unholy hours on the game, the thing that made me fall in love was the lore and story that was different from the usual cozy games. However, it seems the game forgot about the story and lore and kept releasing "updates" that were only paid skins. Now, with the added monthly boards and such, the game became more and more grindy than it is cozy. The FOMO is real, fear of missing all the decor and stuff. If the boards were there even if I left for months, it's fine, but it's gone after a month, so... yeah. Especially with the newest animal being locked behind completion of the monthly board. Mind you, the animal caring is already not the best. I remember the first quests had passion that weren't just fetch quests, and they had good story and cinematics, but now it's lazy. Truly sad. I kept asking for mounts, but knowing them, it'd be locked behind a paywall for skins and not a whole new mechanic where you hunt for it and collect, though I pray they prove me wrong. They already don't do the best job with their "MMO" idea. overall, grindy game, FOMO, overpriced skins, no new stories or lore or new NPCs or updated NPCs...enjoy cutting your 100th tree and the plushies no one cares abt ig. I hope they prove me wrong with the best update someday i really do.
• Not recommended Posted March 6, 2026 on Steam For any considering this game: The game itself is (was) a beautiful concept that has long since lost it's luster beneath the heavy focus of mini "content" releases that are really just dangled bait to keep those who loved the game from the start to keep playing in the hopes that some kind of serious content drop is coming. The game I fell in love with is gone. In it's place is a FOMO nightmare of timed event chores. Coveted plushies and nameplates and achievements are locked behind a ridiculously high RNG rate. Ranch animal grow old and become useless if you are offline for any significant length of time. And the devs have turned to the number one sin that kills most games (especially EA) microtransactions. The absolute shift in focus to creating paid store content rather than real playable content should be sign enough to walk away. It certainly feels like the Devs have. Every micro-release only brings more of the same. Yes, it is FtP. But that doesn't excuse the fact there has not been a major content release in over a year. A year. The storyline just - falls off a cliff - and what remains leaves no point in continuing once you reached the end of it. Yes, it is rumored that the devs were bought out by another company which proceeded to fire most of the staff. If that is true - that's enough red flags for me to walk away for good. Maybe one day I'll be proven wrong and something will change - but I cannot in good faith recommend or continue to support this game in any respect.
• Not recommended Posted June 1, 2025 on Steam Example of what you should not do in game development. - Palia had a 50 million dollar budget. - Team consists of 20+ employees which come from big companies like Blizzard, Sony, Epic, Zynga, and Riot. - Development started in 2018. - Palia was released more unfinished than Stardew Valley, a game that only took 4.5 years to make and was designed by one person who was working as an usher for a cinema. - Originally claimed to be an open world MMORPG focusing on the social aspects, which the game is literally anything but that. - After the backlash of the false MMO claim, the devs created a condescending blog to tell us what they think MMO means. - Devs then released a highly requested feature, pets, which they put behind a paywall. - Instead of providing free and paid pets, the devs released another condescending blog stating they would not do that. - Over the months instead of adding more meaningful content or even multiplayer content, they kept releasing useless content that wont have you playing longer than a few more minutes, such as: Obstacle course, romancing more NPCs, more NPCs, crops, cooked foods, and quests. - Noticing they are losing many players, mainly due to not even considering MMORPG fan's wishes, they began trying to push out the game to every platform possible. - Now that they're getting negative reviews on Steam, they made a blog stating they're just an early access game, simply just to hide behind it. First I'm going to talk about the 'MMO' part of Palia. Palia is not an MMO. It really isn't. It's not 'massively' multiplayer, objectively. There are 25 players on a server and there are currently two in game areas, excluding your plot. That's a small world, and a small section of players to interact with. Secondly, the 'multiplayer' part. Palia has no business being multiplayer in its current state. It's a complaint people have had since day 1. I'm not sure if there are two different visions at odds with one another in the dev team, but it certainly feels like it. Palia has almost no multiplayer features. It feels like a single player game with other players as background. You don't really do things together, you do things alone while standing next to other players. The only exception to this really is cooking, which is very well done and fleshed out. Even things like flow groves or flow trees, that require multiple people, are really at odds with what makes a good multiplayer game. The only required multiplayer activity is a chore. You will find special trees you need two people to chop, and you have to call it out and wait for someone to help. There have been multiple instances where nobody even comes, so you're then locked out of chopping it, or animation cancelling for 5 minutes to do it yourself. The one good multiplayer feature was tied to an event - it was a minigame called Hotpot. Why this was tied to an event and they don't focus on the core game, I have no idea. Finally, I want to talk about the main reason I'm leaving a negative review. Whenever I've had criticism of the game there will inevitably be a lot of fanboys coming out of the woodwork to screech "But it's in BETA, what do you expect?" Except, it's not. All references to the game being in BETA were removed from their website. The steam page does not say the game is in BETA and the 'BETA' descriptor under the main title screen was specifically removed from the switch version. (Small update to this: prior to posting this review I checked the discord and a mod was warning someone for discussing this subject, make of that what you will). I also encourage people to look at the company reviews on Glassdoor to see that some of what I'm saying here about mismatched visions, poor communication and obsfucating the truth seems to have some weight to it. EDIT to this: S6 put out new that the game is in fact still in BETA. No mention of why this tag was removed from switch but at least they're taking steps to be clear and clarifying things which is definitely a step in the right direction to being more communicative. I do recommend trying the game, because it is fun for a while. I just want people to be aware of some of the issues and to not get their hopes up that this game is sustainable as a long term game like other 'MMOs' are. I do have hope for Palia in the future but as it currently stands it needs some serious changes and the devs need to listen to the community, and faster. Whoever was responsible for hotpot - it was great, well done. Add stuff like that to the base game and don't lock it to an event. Whoever added the new trees/ flowers to be grown on plots - also a great step. Now actually focus on making this a community focused game. Let people sit down in town. Add games or different card games to the inn. Palia has so much potential that's being wasted.