I mean, it also has very distinct gameplay from Pokemon? The newer open world games but like sword and shield released the same year pal world opened it’s early access (2019). Legends, which is the closest, was 3 years later.
Also, definitely adds FPS gameplay, survival gameplay with base building, and etc.
While it’s still not a great game, it’s definitely A: still early access and B: not just a Pokemon game.
Definitely took more than BotW and Ark than it did from anything else.
Palworld is a rip off of Ark and BotW with Pokemon aesthetics. It opened early access the same year sword and shield came out. Before that Pokemon was not a big 3D open world type game. It also doesn’t include the survival/base building or FPS features in Pokemon. While palworld may be a derivative game, it is for sure different enough.
There is stuff like the palbox or the pokeball things that I could see them be dinged for though.