Indeed. There's virtually no chance that the similarities to existing Pokemon are accidental. Some of the Pals are just vaguely "Pokemon-like," and that's a consequence of having a shared aesthetic more so than directly ripping them off, but many other Pals are very blatantly ripped off from existing Pokemon. It's obviously a matter of being lazy and working from existing designs instead of coming up with all-new ones.
But then even if they actually just used ripped Pokemon models with no changes (which would be 100% a copyright violation and they would be rightfully sued), they've still built a unique game around them that people want to play, and that's what's important. The lack of artistic originality or integrity is worth criticizing, but at the end of the day they've effectively created a *good* asset flip: They've used pre-existing assets to shore up the studio's deficiencies so they can focus their effort on realizing the good ideas they had for a game. Using pre-made assets is not inherently wrong. The problem with most asset flips is that they don't do anything to actually make a worthwhile game out of duct taping the assets together, and Palworld doesn't have that problem. The only issue is that the assets they may have used weren't necessarily available for their use, but even then they probably haven't actually crossed the line into violating copyright (unless they did rip models).
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