I was utterly hooked on Once Human last year, and really loved the horror vibes and tense gameplay. Sadly, as I figured out some builds and got more powerful, enemies became minor annoyances instead of tangible threats, and the magic was largely lost.
That doesn’t mean I don’t give it a go every now and then, just to see what’s happening. So, color me surprised when I opened the game recently to find that it now has a Pokémon-like scenario running.
Yep, you can now capture and battle Deviations in true creature-collector style, and the gameplay is a lot like Palworld. Which makes a lot of sense, considering the coming Palworld x Once Human crossover coming at the end of this month.
I don’t know why seeing the Manibus and the Wanderer (the walking bus) roll up on a Cattiva excites me so much, but it looks pretty dang epic.
So, in this scenario, you’ll select your starter Poké Deviation and then create a few Binding Grenades, which are super cheap and easy to make. You then head out into the world and battle other Deviations in the wild. If, like me, you’re tempted to take one on with nothing but a knife, don’t. Get your Deviation out and make a crossbow, at least. Some of them can be pretty tough and will one-shot you.
Once you’ve weakened the Deviation, chuck a Binding Grenade at it, and voila, it’s yours. You’ll need to add it to your stock manually, or else it just stays a normal deviation that functions like it used to.
Once you’ve captured a Deviation and added it to your PokéDex Symbiosis, you need to battle other Deviations to level up. So yeah, it’s really familiar, except that you can have three Deviations active at the same time, so that’s a nice twist.
So, should we expect a lawsuit?
One of the patents Palworld got sued for is the ability to throw balls and release creatures contained within, which is why Pals now spawn out of thin air when we summon them. I see that Once Human has taken the same approach with that mechanic.
That alone likely won’t stop Nintendo, though, and you can bet that if the company finds anything worth suing for, it probably will. We all know how Nintendo operates with such things, so it’s probably only a matter of time.
Regardless, it does little good to speculate about such things. In the end, Once Human has turned into SCP Palword, and it’s actually recaptured my interest for the time being. Definitely not something that was on my bingo card, but we knew all along that the potential was there for Once Human to take this sort of approach eventually.
Honestly, I’m only surprised that it took them so long.
But I’m really keen to hear from you guys—will you be checking out Once Human again? And do you think this latest move opens them up to a potential lawsuit?
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