I can't speak to the legality of it, but a great many of Pokemon's earliest monster designs seemed to take... "incredible inspiration" from a variety of Dragon Quest enemies.<p>Plus, the best parts of Palworld are the parts that do things with the game formula that Nintendo would never do -- yes, sure, guns, but also consequential crafting, base building & defense, survival elements, automation, and such. Sure, people grow attached to the design of the various monsters, so changing them now would be hard without drawing the ire of existing customers, but the game is absolutely not "Pokemon with Guns", it's an entirely different game that has creatures that bear a resemblance to popular Pokemon.<p>(Oh, and the models are nicer with more unique animations than anything GameFreak has put out yet, too. I dunno, I find it hard to consider being a "Nintendo Loyalist" in this particular instance.)