There are more than thousands of concepts for harvesting wave energy, and wave energy converters (WECs) are diverse in operating principles, design geometries and deployment manners, leading to misconvergence in WEC technologies. Among numerous WEC devices, the point absorber wave energy converter (PAWEC) concept is one of the simplest, most broad-based and most promising concepts that has been investigated intensively all over the world. However, there are only a few reviews focusing on PAWECs, and the dynamical advancement of PAWECs merits an up-to-date review. This review aims to provide a critical overview of the state of the art in PAWEC development, comparing and contrasting various PAWEC devices and discussing recent research and development efforts and perspectives of PAWECs in terms of prototyping, hydrodynamic modelling, power take-off mechanism and control.