Over the years, we have gone to and from Palia on various platforms. The first time around, we previewed the PC and Switch versions of the game when it was still being developed. What we found with those impressions and previews was a massive multiplayer online experience that had the attitude of Wizard 101 but the backbone and gumption of an MMO that would long surpass expectations. What we were certain of during both preview periods was that this game had plenty to offer and more room to grow.
As months have passed, the first big sign of growth came in the form of the game’s first expansion, Elderwood. It takes a deep dive into making Palia a bigger game that offers more quests, variety, and a new set of elements to collect and use. And trust me when I say this, Elderwood is so much bigger than its predecessor. Not only is it large with its spread out girthy landscape, but it’s also tall with its multi-tired towering trees and encouragement to go explore a different type of land.
So, get your glider ready, and let’s go explore the treetops of Elderwood.
Where we started
We have been watching Palia closely over the years. Our previews are from 2023, where we received a taste of this MMO. At the time, it showed its typical MMO pattern of play. The main quest was to discover how your character arrived in Palia and how your presence relates to ancient ruins that have mysterious powers.
One can assume that the main quest of the original game, while long and not too difficult, rather sometimes cumbersome than not, was put in place to give gamers a purpose for playing Palia. And that isn’t a bad thing. The original quest was light in comparison to other MMOs of this type. You will find more complicated quests within games like Final Fantasy XIV or Black Desert Online, but that is to be expected because those audiences are far older and one-sided in age comparison.
Anyway, the quest of discovering and uncovering ancient ruins to tell you more about the land and what happened to humans helps to motivate and settle the player into the game. It does a good job while not creating frustration. There is a lot of back and forth, but that is expected with games like this. It helps to keep the gamer focused on the MMO landscape and mildly pushes them to explore.
BUT! While the main quest is intriguing, and it takes quite a few hours to finish, it won’t be the reason you stay with the game. The biggest reasons are for discovering items that you can craft through exploration, building out your perfect dream home to your liking, including growing veggies and fauna, and playing with others along the way. All these combined mean longevity for Palia in its vanilla form. You will spend an abnormal amount of time gathering, collecting, and coveting items that make your landscape huge and unique. For example, when you go on quests or side quests, you can obtain items, including wallpaper and flooring, that you can use for your home. You can also gather material to build furniture and knick-knacks for your homestead. Believe me when I say this, spec-ing out your home is incredibly addictive, as you have a plethora of ways to make it your style.
In addition to the crafting and customization options of the game, it also features a good amount of exploring. My MMO gaming addiction was born from the fires of LucasArts Club Caribe way back in the 80s on the Commodore 64/128. Exploring a huge land to discover hidden secrets and goodies was an established and forward-thinking construct back then that has been carried over and converted into a motivating factor in Palia. While you won’t find Star Wars heads for your avatar to try on, the benefits of being LucasArts, you’ll still find wonderous creatures and goodies lying around, some in deep caves. For example, while running through Palia trying to complete a quest, I was out hunting animals. I had been hunting on and off for a period, but I picked it back up to level up my character to a respectable place so that I might join the Hunter’s Guild in the game. Anyway, while hunting, I came across a deer that was glowing and erratic. I had not seen it before that moment and was wowed by its presence, and had to hunt it down to see what came from it. It was a random occurrence, and it motivated me to keep exploring areas of the game that I might have missed in hopes of finding something like this deer. And there were a few spots that sprang up some unique fruit.
You can also find things through exploration, like an underground black market with games and such. You can discover ancient ruins with mysterious markings and oddly placed pools with new fish. There’s a lot to be said about Palia’s exploration, as the land is huge and wide, but we’ll stop there, as it is a treat to run around and find new items of interest without needing a map or reason to run around. You certainly don’t need a reviewer ruining it for you.
Again, while the main quest is good enough to build out the world of Palia, the staying power of this game lies within crafting, customization, discovery, and co-op. People who love these categories will fall in love with this title.
Some shortcomings
While the game is still freshly under development, one of the faults it suffers from is the lack of content. While the user-driven content is fine, good side quests and limited-time random events are absent from this formula. For example, one of the first side quests that you run into in Palia is building out your home to make it worth a certain amount of money. This means expanding your land, adding furniture, flooring, and wallpaper. The more you expand your home, the easier it is to complete this side quest.
While I love the push this side quest makes you get in the mood to play the game and focus on what you’ll eventually be obsessed with, it just is more of a tutorial than it is meaningful. And most of the side quests feel this way. Although you will run into the occasional one that creates some intrigue and mystery, such as a dog that steals newspapers and hides them from a resident. Figuring out why the dog does that is fun, and it adds additional context and shape to the characters involved.
Regardless, there is far less of this in the side quests than in the main ones. I’m sure this can be corrected and improved over time. Pushing limited-time events would help with this issue. That’s one of the few things that Bungie’s Destiny 2 got right. Throw in a random occurrence, and people will flock to it out of curiosity. Palia needs to go this route as well.
The only other shortcoming with the game so far is the server it runs on. There have been a handful of times when I waited in a queue for the game to start. A few times, the queue went from waiting for 5-10 people ahead of me to waiting on thousands. The latter of the bunch occurred around 2-3 times during this review period over the last couple of weeks, which gives me some concerns about server load. I’m sure that it will smooth out as the game gets settled, but it did happen a couple of times, including during a load screen, and once during play (it booted me). Again, this will eventually smooth out over time. A lot of MMOs start this way, even Club Caribe.
Beyond these complaints, I still consider Palia to be in a very vanilla state. Even though it has launched an expansion, it still has some items to sort out, and it looks like it has progressed since our previews in 2023. I’m hopeful that this will push forward and become the next Wizard 101 and maintain some solid longevity among generations of gamers.
Until then, let’s talk about what it is doing now – adding a new land.
Elderwood expansion
A few months back, we were privy to a preview of Elderwood. At the time, I was happy that Palia had progressed far enough to warrant an additional land/adventure. When it was shown, I couldn’t have imagined that the devs would go in the direction they did. While Singularity Six could have thrown in the towel, added more of the same landscape, new quests, new items, and a new way of building your house out, they didn’t.
Instead of just extending what they had created and making a similar landscape that we were all used to seeing, the devs decided to make something bigger, darker, and different. Starting with size, the girth of Elderwood is impressive. You get a stretched land that sprawls every which way, and that feels bigger than the original game. When you see the map of Elderwood for the first time, you’ll be blown away by how much land you’re able to explore. It’s a massive amount of land.
In addition, the devs also didn’t make this girthy landscape flat, as that probably would have been a towel they could have just thrown in. Rather, Singularity Six built the girthy land into a tall land as well. If you had fun riding on your glider in the vanilla game, then you’re going to lose it with how much fun you’re going to have jumping off tall trees and just floating around a dark and mystical landscape. I like wasting time, so that was truly a fun option for me when reviewing this portion of Palia. It spirals upward impressively.
Beyond the size of the land, Elderwood also features new animals, new materials, and new ways to customize your homestead. While I may not have tapped into everything you can do with this expansion, from what I witnessed during my time, I can see how the expansion is going to add more to the experience. This is a methodically thought-out expansion that adds more context and world-building to Palia. For example, when you chopped down a tree in the original lands in the game, you gained sapwood from it. When you chop down the magical trees in Elderwood, you get ancient wood. How that is going to be used down the road and what that means possibly for new tools or weapons means that the overall game becomes bigger, as does the motivation to explore and gather.
While I thought there was a lot of elbow room for the original game to grow, I couldn’t have imagined it would grow this big, this quickly. This is a good expansion to the original game. Beyond the above new features, you get a new main quest, side quests, and new faces (and old ones). Ultimately, Elderwood makes the overall Palia experience far bigger than imagined.
Much like my thoughts on making the original part of Palia more exciting, I’m hoping for random, limited events in this place too sometime down the road. It has such a mysterious Dark Elf feel to it. R.A. Salvatore would be pleased as punch with its design and its future possibilities.
Anyway, I’ll be back with more Elderwood and Palia updates, but until then, let’s wrap up this review.
Conclusion
Palia and its Elderwood Expansion from developer Singularity Six is a budding MMO with all sorts of green flags waving toward a long future. While the main quests may not catch your attention too hard, the customization, exploration, and new free Elderwood expansion will be enough to motivate you to give this a shot. It still has some growing pains, but right now, Palia is a solid game.
