Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluetidepro | Hacker News Reader

First off, look into how much IP/character design Pokemon stole from Dragon Quest. Pokemon isn't the "og" of this style. Also, the Palworld creator is already known for this style of "rip-off" game. Their other title, Craftopia, was a game they basically ripped directly from Zelda's Breathe of the Wild. They also have a title, Never Grave, which is basically a rip of Hollow Knight. They seem to know how to toe the line without getting sued.

View on HN

Nearly every element of Palworld seems to be a very blatant imitation of another popular franchise.

- Pokemon, obviously.

- The text when you enter a new area, the fonts, etc all scream BOTW/TOTK to me (among other things to a lesser extent like the into sequence and climbing mechanics).

- The immediate visual of a larger-than-life tree looming over the world is evocative of Elden Ring, and to a lesser extend the emphasis on dodging is very similar to fromsoft games.

- Basic crafting/base-building mechanics from every other early access game released in the last decade.

I'm still really enjoying Palworld, I don't want to sound like I'm being overly critical. It's fun to have all of these elements combined into a fun game that people will forget in a few weeks. It's just obvious that there wasn't a ton of original thought put into the game. It also lacks a lot of very basic features relating to multiplayer progression and team mechanics.

This is the first time I’ve heard Pokémon accused of ripping off Digimon, the Tamagotchi clone released in 1997 that pivoted to becoming a Pokémon clone afterward. Or do you mean that later generations of Pokémon ripped off Digimon?

Sorry, fixed it. I meant Dragon's Quest.

Ah. Still not a very relevant comparison considering the evidence. There's inspiration, and then there's "ripped elements of the model and didn't even bother modifying the vertex count." https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1749618893448982776

They don't have the same vertext count, and you can't just create a different model using the same number of vertices and moving them about anyway*. The author clarifies here:

https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1749679557387358667

*Or, you can, but it does not make it any more simple to copy a different design. Maybe the hair could use a brush or something to change it quickly but for the rest of the Pal it would be useless.

a lot of the original pokemon were blatant ripoffs of dragon quest's monsters too

Yup, exactly.

I keep seeing this claim repeated without a citation. I just looked at Wikipedia and could not find any examples, except as it pertains to Dragon Quest Monsters, which does seem similar to Pokemon, but came out in 1998, after Pokemon. Regular Dragon Quest -- which I have not played -- looks like a normal JRPG like Final Fantasy. Dragon Quest Monsters appears to be a monster collector, but the timeline (as mentioned) is wrong.

Care to provide any evidence for this claim? I'm starting to think this is another case of "Kimba the White Lion is a ripoff of The Lion King" and someone is going to have to make a 2.5 hr long YouTube video debunking the Internet's idea that Pokemon is a ripoff of Dragon Quest.

This is the picture going around that this claim seems to be based on. Not a JRPG guy, so I can't tell you which game those DQ designs are from or when they actually debuted, but that doesn't seem to be stopping people from accepting it at face value. https://twitter.com/kelskiYT/status/1749243751460188233

the original dragon quest (and also dragon quest 2, which came out before pokemon) still had monsters in it, whose designs were blatantly ripped off by pokemon. the source is the game, feel free to go check out some dragon quest 1/2 gameplay and look at the monsters.

Scrolled through this longplay and the closest one I could find was Golem, which bears some similarity to James Turner's design for Golurk from Gen V, I suppose (in that they are both stone bipeds). Is that what you're referring to? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmzHrNVelL0

one of several examples, yeah. off the top of my head i can think of dracky, chewlip, cobra kaiser, and bubble slime, but there are lots of others.

I can see a resemblance to Golbat in Dracky, but not sure where you're going with the others.

in that case you must not too familiar with pokemon? chewlip = victreebel/gloom for design and colour scheme respectively, cobra kaiser = arbok, bubble slime = grimer/muk

I mean that I don't look at any of those monsters and get that "oh wow that's obviously just a _____" reaction like I do when I see this green Cinderace. https://twitter.com/byofrog/status/1748890830495010870

If you think "large snake" is on the same level as that, you are free to hold that opinion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com