Review: Paleo Pines Is Hindered by Poor Execution

When I started up Paleo Pines on my Nintendo Switch for the first time, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony of the first line: “Welcome to Paleo Pines, a peaceful island full of dinosaurs!” I began to wonder if I could suspend my disbelief enough to truly appreciate the world I was thrown into. Though I was hesitant, I remembered that this is an alternate fictional universe in which evolution took a less brutal turn, and pressed on.

After customizing my character, I found myself riding atop a particularly adorable blue dinosaur to my new home. His name was Lucky. The world is bright, colorful, and makes me feel happy to be a part of it. The ranch was in shambles, but I was feeling optimistic about turning the place upside down. A few good renovations tend to do the trick in these games.

Screenshot by Siliconera

The next morning, a few strangers invaded my private ranch and proceeded to tell me just how lucky I was (see what I did there) to have such a rare dinosaur as a companion. A companion, specifically, not a pet, even though I’m the one making sure he’s well fed and cleaning up his dinosaur poops. I guess he did help me out a lot when it came to cleaning up the ranch, since I couldn’t do any of that on my own. They then led me to the game’s main town area, Pebble Plaza. From there, I met even more of the NPCs and the game let me loose from here, for the most part.

The main appeal of Paleo Pines that sets it apart from other farming simulation games is, as you might expect, the dinosaur taming feature. To my squealing delight, I soon realized I could pet the noses of even more dinosaurs as long as I managed to befriend them. Having the option of naming them also made me happy. I was even required to feed them cupcakes, or else they wouldn’t like me. I felt a little conflicted by this level of peer pressure, but it was adorable nevertheless.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Thankfully, there are a lot of cute dinosaurs to appreciate in the wild. Each dinosaur has their own likes, dislikes, and care needs. Although taming dinosaurs is one of the game’s main features, actually befriending one is more difficult than it appears. You really have to earn your dinosaurs, then win their trust, and finally make sure they stay happy at your ranch after that.

To befriend a dinosaur, you need to match their rhythm on the flute by pressing a sequence of buttons. This can actually be extremely difficult depending on the dinosaur. For some of them, I even had to pull open a notepad and write some notes down. Even if you manage to clear that, that’s only the first step. Then, you have to manage the dinosaur’s excitement levels by feeding and soothing them into a sweet spot. After that, you need to feed it a cupcake. Only then will you be able to walk it back to your ranch, where you will need to build it a pen using materials you found out exploring. Finally, you place a dreamstone in it (which are actually pretty rare). The amount of dreamstones you can collect are limited, and you need those to collect more dinosaurs. So, for the completionists who love collecting, I can’t see any possible way to get all of the dinosaurs.

Screenshot by Siliconera

As you can probably tell, I found all of this really tedious and often annoying. For those who love pet-taming mechanics, maybe this level of complexity sounds fun to you. For me, I clicked my tongue whenever a dinosaur got too over-excited. I also became stressed pretty easily at the notion that my dinosaurs would up and leave me if I didn’t take care of them properly. Did our time together mean nothing to you? (That’s probably just a skill issue on my part, though.)

Though this game is technically a farming simulator, that element can really take a backseat when focusing on exploration and caring for your dinosaurs. It works like your average farming simulator where you can grow crops, but there aren’t that many crops to grow. This aspect is fairly limited, and it doesn’t get easier since your stamina depletes so fast without the ability to cook unlocked. The dinosaurs help out again here, but that only reiterates the fact that they truly take precedent over farming.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Another aspect that makes this game feel slow and tedious is that there is no automatic tool switching. You have to go in and out of the inventory to equip and unequip different tools to use on your ranch. An automatic function or shortcut would have been appreciated.

In terms of exploration, the world itself can feel a bit empty oftentimes. You also have to go into your inventory, equip your journal, and use it to take notes on materials before you can even collect them in the wild. In order to do that, you have to dismount your dinosaur by holding the B button to poof onto the ground in a magic sparkle cloud. This also happens when you interact with items, such as  when you sit on a bench. I assume this was done to avoid playing an even slower animation, but it’s already slow as is. I sound impatient here, but all of these small annoyances really added up to make the game feel like a slog.

Image via Modus Games and Italic Pig

You really need to make use of your dinosaurs if you want to get around quickly, and there are specific dinosaurs meant for that purpose. There are places that seem like you should be able to easily access, but they’re locked behind an invisible wall and your dinosaur’s abilities.

You also have to be the one to make yourself comfortable with the world of Paleo Pines. The game won’t do it for you. There is no quest tracker or even a mini map to track your progress. The map is just an unlabeled image, so it’s a little difficult to get your bearings at first. The game looks like it would be gentle and hold your hand a bit to help you get accustomed to the world, but it really doesn’t do that much. Some people may be a fan of that. I wasn’t.

Screenshot by Siliconera

Many of the quests in the game are fetch quests. Though I got a small sense of satisfaction after clearing these quests, they didn’t really lead me anywhere that made me want to continue playing, personally. Some quests are locked behind friendship levels for the NPC’s. I haven’t figured out a way to check my friendship level with a particular NPC. I don’t believe there is a list of all of the NPC’s or any character bios, either. Probably because they aren’t really of any consequence to you, the dinosaur-loving enthusiast. None of them are romanceable, so I was surprised to see that there were quests unavailable to me based on how well I knew them, even though they were on the map. I don’t personally mind that there aren’t any romance options here, but I know that can be a popular feature when it comes to farming sims.

You have to travel back and forth to Pebble Plaza to sell your goods and even to craft new items to decorate your ranch with. Your own stamina depletes far too quickly and you can’t take dinosaurs into Pebble Plaza to help make completing the fetch quests any faster. I haven’t figured out a reason as to why you can’t do this. It would be helpful to have a crafting menu and a shipping box, but neither of those are present here. It was just another aspect to this game that made it feel more like a chore than a fun time. The slow loading times on the Nintendo Switch made it even worse. The game runs fine in most cases, but the lag tends to spike on the Nintendo Switch when you start customizing your ranch. It’s not anything game-breaking, but it’s very noticeable. 

Screenshot by Siliconera

By the way, you have to go home to save your game. So, you could easily lose a lot of your progress if this slips your mind. Also, from what I’ve seen, there isn’t an ability to fast travel in this game. For those who enjoy decorating, there’s a lot of items to decorate the ranch outdoors, but you can’t decorate inside of your house.

I get that Paleo Pines is supposed to be appealing to the cozy game boom, but there is a lot about this title that makes it more annoying to play than it is relaxing. I wish there was a quest tracker visible on the screen at all times so I don’t have to go through the trouble of opening the menu, navigating to the quests page, scrolling to which quest I’m on, and figuring out what to do next from there. Call me lazy, but that’s how I feel, for the sake of convenience. Some people may be a fan of the fact that you really have to integrate yourself into the world of Paleo Pines. You need to be the one to familiarize yourself with the locations and mechanics. For me, the game was too tedious to enjoy thoroughly, but those who are satisfied with just running around and caring for cute dinosaurs may find enjoyable experience.

Paleo Pines is available on the PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and PC.