Ladies, gentlemen, and pals of all ages, since Power released to the world just over 100 days ago, many people have played an absolute ton of this game. There were literally 1.3 billion player hours spent within this time frame, and while a good number of people are still playing the game right now, a lot of people played for probably around a month and then just sort of moved on.

So, what I want to do here is talk about any updates that have happened for the game over that time frame and also talk about the actual news going on with the game right now, especially with well-known companies seeming to be getting more and more aggressively tight with their copyright protection over time.

New Game Trailer and Features

Starting off, before we even dive into the changes that have happened, we should talk about this brand new trailer that just dropped yesterday, showcasing a whole host of new pals being added to the game pretty soon.

There’s a beautifully derpy martial arts frog, who will likely become one of my own personal favorites, a neat little fiery looking pheasant type creature, and a cool hermit monk style fox-like creature floating around as well. On top of that, they sort of sneak two whole biomes in that I don’t think we currently have, which is like a forest of cherry blossom trees with a lovely shrine as well, and there’s also just a much more mushroomy, swampy forest looking area.

New Weapons and Biomes

In the trailer, we see two new guns: something that looks like a laser assault rifle type of thing in the opening shots, and then what seems to be a flamethrower as a full-on weapon rather than just getting this type of effect from a pal skill. I am personally a massive fan of this. This is all given the release date as well of Summer 2024, so next major update pretty soon: four new pals, two new weapons, and seemingly two new biomes or full-on areas as well.

Recent Updates Overview

With that covered, let’s talk about the pre-existing game updates themselves. There have been five updates since mid-February. The first one had some more overarching changes to the game, adding save game backups as a safety feature.

There were some changes to pal AI as well, as well as letting you just condense pals that already have bonus ranks for more condensing points, which is especially useful if you start condensing into one pal and then find a better version of the same one, or a better version of your favorite pal while optimizing them along the process, and want to upgrade. Then there were some balance changes.

Gameplay and Economy Adjustments

To buff dig toys as a partner skill for mining, nerfing the cell price of nails so you can’t just mass-produce them for a gold mine of selling materials, and they adjusted the danger of the police as well. This includes making them chase you on sanctuaries even while mounted and increasing the number of police that will chase you when you are wanted. The patch following that was fully just bug adjustments, so nothing overly major there.

Major Updates and Raid Boss Introduction

This was followed by over a month of no updates to the game itself, which is where a lot of people dropped off. However, there was a trailer released during this time ahead of an update on April 3rd, a major update including the first raid boss encounter being added to the game: Belloir, who is summoned using a new item added to the ancient technology tree, the Summoning Altar. What’s especially interesting about this is that it needs to be built within a base setup, which is both a positive and a negative.

Raid Boss Mechanics and Challenges

The fun part about this is it means that it is balanced to fight literally a full base of pals, up to like 20 at a time, so you should expect a tough fight if you aren’t fully kitted out yet. But it’s level 30 at least; the base version is, so it’s worth noting there is also Belloir Libero, which is level 50 and has like a 450,000 health. It’s a ridiculous challenge, even for people that have been farming this game like hell since release. You can’t capture pals in a raid boss fight, so you can’t catch these actively, and you can’t breed down into either Belloir or Belloir Libero either.

New Items and Crafting Materials

But you can collect both of these pals specifically when you beat the raid; it will drop an egg, and that egg will hatch into that pal specifically. So, to have them, you must defeat the raid fights they are associated with; there is no other way, which is definitely doable for most level 50 players, at least the base version, but again Libero is just a whole other can of plant-based worms.

The other rewards that you get from defeating the raid boss are also new to the game and quite potent. There’s the multiclimatic undershirt, which protects against both climates in a singular slot so you never have to think about temperature once you have these sorted out.

Then, it also drops ancient civilization cores, these are a new crafting material required for two new items in the ancient technology tree: the ability glasses, which let you visually see pals’ stats so that you can look at them while you’re wearing them, even wild pals, and the electric egg incubator, which consumes electricity to automatically adjust temperature for optimal egg incubation, which is a pretty neat and reasonable addition to progression.

Major Update and New Items

A very major update, 0.2, introduced a significant number of new items. These include items that straight up give experience to pals, a new item found in dungeon chests that provides ancient technology points, and recovery meds that offer slow healing over time. Additionally, a new item called homeward thundercloud, a consumable that costs quite a hefty amount to craft but can teleport you to your nearest base whenever you choose, as long as you are not in a dungeon or a tower type of separated instance.

Specialized Items for Capturing Pals

Another notable introduction is the ring of mercy, tied to a new passive called Mercy Hit. Both make their user unable to reduce an enemy’s health below one, which is incredibly important for capturing pals as the capture rate chance increases significantly the closer to one HP the opponent is. This item allows players to take advantage of this mechanic properly and in interesting ways, such as applying statuses to 1 HP enemies to further increase the capture chance.

New Building Site and Game Mechanics

The update also included a new building site for your base, the ore mining site, along with its upgraded version. Given that ore is extremely important for pretty much every craft in the game past level 10, having an automatic, farmable source of ore in your base, just like we have for wood and stone, is absolutely great. This addition is bound to impact gameplay positively, especially for players focused on crafting and building.

Balance Changes and UI Improvements

Following these additions, there were more general balance changes; some pal abilities were shifted, and some UI elements were changed, which are quite welcome. For instance, now players can see how many of a pal they have caught before while aiming a sphere at it.

Further adjustments included giving all armor in the game some level of base cold resistance, reducing the risk of being killed by cold weather in starting areas early on. They also reduced the power of the partner skills that multiply player damage by a significant amount, which, although sad, was accompanied by other nice changes like ensuring all wild eggs—not eggs that you breed—have a chance to be enhanced.

Recent Game Updates and Fixes

Alpha Pals were introduced for a big statistical bonus, followed by a few bug fix patches, including a major one that literally made pals deal half of their intended damage before it was fixed. This issue had been ongoing for ages, so it was a significant correction. Additionally, more bug fixes were implemented, and a major update was made to the electric egg incubator, which now has a 50% faster hatch rate in general than regular incubators, making them solidly worth having whenever possible.

Power World versus Pokémon

Let’s discuss something a bit different: the curious case of Power World versus Pokémon and the ever-looming question of whether Power is safe long-term from Nintendo. Will this game be allowed to continue? There is no definitive answer. The longer we go without Nintendo trying to take down Power World, the less likely it gets, but it is entirely possible they are just building up information to make a proper case.

Analysis of Competition and Copyright Issues

There are three major points to consider regarding future expectations. First, while the player base overlaps with Pokémon, Power World caters to different people with different gameplay styles. Initially, the game hit a whopping peak of over 2 million concurrent players on Steam, but it has now settled to under 50,000 daily peak players. Even with the raid being added and the massive 0.2 update, this only temporarily boosted numbers to around 140,000 for a week before dropping back down. Realistically, this game isn’t a long-term Pokémon competitor; it hasn’t drawn players away from Pokémon permanently.

Secondly, Pokémon did send out takedown notices to modders who created Pokémon-skinned mods for Power World, indicating close attention to the game and potential legal action.

Lastly, Nintendo has shown a remarkable commitment to protecting their copyrights to the fullest extent allowed, issuing many takedown notices recently.

Impact on Garry’s Mod Community by Nintendo’s Actions

To the creators of Garry’s Mod, an 18-year-old game built almost entirely off the creations of its community, Nintendo issued takedown notices a few months ago, nearly two decades after the game had been running. As a result, developers have spent months sifting through thousands of player-created mods to remove any content involving a Nintendo character or reference, because they legally have to. While Nintendo has the right to do this legally, it can seem excessive.

Implications for Power World

This situation illustrates two points: firstly, if Nintendo felt they had a guaranteed way to take down Power World, they would have done it. Secondly, if they are willing to take such action against an 18-year-old game over mods made by the player base, it isn’t necessarily over for Power World just because Nintendo hasn’t attacked soon. Just because Nintendo hasn’t found a viable reason to challenge Power World yet doesn’t mean they won’t ever try in the future. While Power World is likely safe for now, Nintendo will always pose a potential threat.

Updates and Community Reflections

This wraps up a look back at the updates Power World has had since its player base began to decline and how surprisingly major these updates have been. Additionally, there’s the separate issue of Nintendo and Pokémon that people have discussed since even the first trailer for this game dropped years ago. For those out of the loop or just curious, these updates might spark renewed interest in the game or simply provide a deeper understanding of the ongoing situation.

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