1. Most games have repetitive gameplay, and its the story which keeps you entertained. In this game, there is no story but-
2. The pals differ and get better as you progress through the game. As you find new pals at increasing levels, they get better work stats, different attack skills, etc.
3. Exploring is the core part of a monster catch/hunter game. Its at its vanilla stages, maybe with time, exploration will involve random world events or stuff. Even now, world is filled with stuff; repetitive yes but you find new pals.
4. Still hvnt unlocked flamethrower, useful, but you arnt gonna use the same pal for the rest of the game. I think every pal has a different partner ability.
5. There is nothing more to do apart from collecting pals and defending the base. As you level up?, the level of invaders keeps increasing which forces you to increase the level of your pals at the base. This implementation is raw, needs qol update.
6. On top of that, its survival implementation is better than Ark. To build base, you have yourself + 20 pals + your pal. If you transtion to multiplayer, you get a meager PC + their pal. So, its survival is very much SinglePlayer oriented. Multiplayer is just a bonus. This mechanic has a massive demand, a game for SP players who cudnt play an MP survival type game like Ark
7. Its exactly an open world monster catch-em game.
It needs a lot of qol updates but still, for an EA game during a time when BG3 set very high standards for how a game should launch, Palworld has done exceptionally well. Hats-off to Pocketpair.