They iterated on a stale formula in a way that those customers had wanted. Palworld is also far more competently designed than you'd expect from its premise, but that premise is the kind of satire that only people familiar with Pokemon would write in the first place.

I love the Pokémon franchise, even grew up with it. And Palworld was just a way better experience than let’s say Scarlet and Violet.

Yes, it was made for PC, which is way more powerful than the switch, yet it ran perfectly fine with ~50 fps on high on my 10 year old PC, while the switch struggles to keep 30.

Granted, a lot of the monsters look like amalgamates of 2-3 Pokémon - but they looked good, like Katress, that fire-gyrados, even that Dragonite-Goodra-Altaria mix looks good IMO.

The world was generic, but unique enough to be explored - and it is too big for the amount of Pals that existed.

I had fun with Pokémon as well, but I only got to play the DLC after I finished Palworld. I did not catch the legendary turtle as of writing this comment because the game is just… boringly slow.

I mean...it is, literally, factually better than pokemon is at its own formula. Not really a disrespectful take, and far from a strawman. And you're kidding yourself if you think being inspired by something is the same thing as theft. Fun fact: pokemon lifted off of dragon quest. The fact that it is so successful is literally because it does pokemon better, but sure, "flippant accusations" lol. Congrats, you are the exact type of fanboy I'm talking about