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Black Desert Launch Review

Black Desert Launch Review Feature
Critic Score: 5 out of 5
User Rating: (454 votes, average: 3.74 out of 5)

Community

Black Desert has a mixed bag when it comes to community. Due to its large popularity, it’s managed to attract just about every type of player there is. If you’re the type that doesn’t like trolls, politics, racism, etc… you’re probably better off switching off ‘Channel’ chat and sticking to guild chat. If you’re a role player, head to Orwen on the Calpheon 02 channel and you’ll (hopefully) find a home. Both PVPers and PVE’rs will find their niche in this game, though the PVPers get the better end of the stick.

Zerg guilds are not uncommon. On Orwen alone, there are several guilds that are so large that they have to have two or more guilds to be able to keep all their members together. This is because there is currently a hard cap on how many players can be in one guild and it’s not particularly large. In general, the community as a whole is pretty nice and helpful. I’ve had some great (And not so great) discussions on the forums and sub-reddit. In the end, the Black Desert Online community is average for an MMO.

Gameplay

Black Desert is the latest in a newer breed of games known as ‘sandparks.’ These are titles that have elements from both Themeparks and Sandbox MMOs. Black Desert Online has both the linear level progression of most Themepark MMOs, but at the same time it has the freedom and options often offered by sandbox games. While you may spend an hour or two leveling up at a level-appropriate grinding location or completing a line of story-rich quests, you may end up managing your merchant empire for several more hours. And while it’s not nearly on the level of EVE Online, Black Desert can certainly be deserving of the title, “Spreadsheet Simulator” at times. I’ve personally spent hours researching and developing plans for my own little empire, trying to figure out the best ways to make money and maximizing the use of my energy.

When you play Black Desert Online, you’ll certainly know it was developed by Koreans. Just like a vast majority of Korean MMOs, it relies heavily on grinding. That’s not a bad thing, really. Thinking back, a lot of my favorite games required an (un)healthy dose of hardcore grinding to be ‘on the top.’ But it’s not all grinding. There’s tons of activities to partake in, such as crafting, gathering, developing a merchant empire via the node system and clever use of the Marketplace, NPC Trading (which isn’t what you think), Open World PVP, Guild Wars (with Territory Control and Sieges becoming available in the near future), fishing… There’s too many things to list, honestly. And even if I do list something, chances are that it’s so complex that I could easily write a stand-alone featured article just focusing on that one element. I won’t do that, however, as most features have had a ton written on them and it’ll still leave you scratching your head trying to figure out all its complexities. Really, just check out the Black Desert Online Bible.

Black Desert Launch Review

You can play some wild games of tag if you're so inclined.

There’s a ton of little things that make the game feel absolutely unique. For example, in most games the jumping you can do looks dumb and doesn’t serve much of a purpose. In Black Desert, the ‘parkour’ system allows you to vault over low stone walls or climb up onto a roof. The system feels closer to Assassin’s Creed (though not nearly as impressive) than anything else. In fact, it’s not uncommon for players to joke about “playing Assassin’s Creed” when they’re doing some vertical exploring by climbing.

Then there’s some of the least impressive features. For an MMO, it often feels like Black Desert Online is trying to restrict any type of player-to-player interaction as much as possible except when it comes to combat. For example, there’s basically no direct player-to-player trading. All trading is done through the Marketplace, which is heavily regulated by the game. And all transactions on the marketplace have a massive 35% tax, making it almost not worth the effort to try and sell things. The only other game that is near Black Desert’s level of hating player-to-player interaction is Elite: Dangerous.

Black Desert Launch Review

This is a fun and addicting little mini-game once you get the hang of it.


 

But then there’s incredible things like conversing with NPCs. Some NPCs will only give you knowledge if you gain a certain amount of Amity with them. This can be done by having conversations with them, or if you want to go the slow route maybe you’ll just greet the NPC (which costs energy) a few times a day over the period of a month or so. Conversing with an NPC will require that you hold knowledge they’re interested in. If you don’t, maybe they’ll refuse to talk to you. If your knowledge on a topic isn’t complete, you probably won’t be able to please them and won’t get far if you try talking to them. Other things such as ‘Amity Shops,’ quests, item rentals, and even impressive buffs can be unlocked through the Amity system as well. I have a list of a few NPCs that I’m really buddy-buddy with due to their Amity shops or buffs they offer me. I also have another (much longer list) of NPCs I want to befriend so that I can gain access to the knowledge they have. I’ve been trying to get onto Alchem from Calpheon’s good side for quite some time now so that I can gain his knowledge on Trolls.

Combat

Combat in Black Desert Online is action-based. The pace is fast, to the point that you almost feel like a majority of combat takes place OUTSIDE of the fight in terms of your preparation. In PVP, an encounter can be over in seconds, or it can last several minutes. It all depends on a mixture of how prepared you were for the encounter, your gear, and your ability as a player. It’s very possible for the same encounter to end in two completely different ways if you change just a few things. If you have a full set of high-enchant gear and get ganked by someone, chances are you’ll have a bit of time to figure out what’s going on and hopefully respond. However, if you’re wearing trash gear and are grinding mobs, forgetting to re-apply your buffs or allowing your mana to run out, chances are you’ll die in just a few seconds.

Black Desert Launch Review

Combat can be very fast-paced at times.


 

Each class plays completely different from the others. Playing as a Valkyrie is completely different than playing as a Witch, and playing as a Berserker is much different than playing as a Warrior. Sure, both Berserker and Warrior are melee classes, but you’re going to have a bad time if you try to play the Warrior as you did with your Berserker. In the Russian beta, I played the Berserker class and reveled in the nearly constant movement and fun combos. It was great to be able to pick up an enemy, slam them down, and then punt-kick them.


You can almost feel the two giant axes in your own hands.

In the North American release, however, I decided to play a Witch as I’m normally the type that enjoys casters. The differences are jarring, to say the least. While mobility is even more important for a Witch than a Berserker, it seems like everything in the Witch class is trying to keep you rooted in one place with all of the cast-timers. There are ways to reduce the cast timers through gear and buffs, however, and there’s even a temporary buff that removes all cast timers. It really does make the Witch class feel like a glass cannon, but with the mobility abilities you are given (such as teleport) and CC spells, you feel like a very fluid glass cannon. So I guess you could say I have a glass half full appreciation for the Witch.

Speaking of CC… In most games, there is a ‘universal rule’ of, “CC is King!” That’s true even in Black Desert Online, for the most part. Getting stuck in a Crown Control(CC) loop can be completely devastating, and I would go so far as to say that 90% of combat is just those that are participating trying to avoid CCs or recover from the times that they let themselves get caught in CC’s. As a Witch, you rely on spell effects such as Freeze or the Knockdown from Fireball quite a lot. You’re going to spend a lot of time Evading and Teleporting in order to get behind your enemy and hit them with a CC or two so that you can get off a few of your burst-damage spells.

Black Desert Launch Review

I love playing this class.

This is also one of those games where you will end up having max alts, but will easily fall into playing just a single class most of the time. Mastering multiple classes is something difficult that you’ll have to work towards. Hell, mastering one class requires tens of hours of study, hundreds of hours of practice, and potentially thousands of hours of preparation in terms of getting Best in Slot gear for a specific class with maximum enchantments and optimal socketing. And that is to say, combat in Black Desert Online is VERY gear dependent. It’s not impossible to get the gear you need, but you’ll certainly have to work for it. If you’re the type that can’t stand games with an over-dependence of gear quality and stats, you may want to avoid this title.

Continue on to Crafting!

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  • Shelby Reynolds

    Kinda funny I posted a comment telling the truth about this game instead of the bias info in this article and the publisher marks it as spam…

    Past comment was as read: There are some key factors left out of this article. The game is unfinished, still alot of updates for Daum to do to put in some grinding mechanics in the game that other regions already have. Corrupted download files, an issue that has plagued the game since CBT1 and has not been addressed or even been discussed by any of the devs. This issue is so bad that you may not even be able to play the game from disconnecting every 5 mins. The box that appears that tells you to use the file repair tool just rubs salt in the wound because the tool does not exist on the launcher for this region, maybe 1 day it will. And poor customer service and poor compensation for grievances. I’m not saying people should get everything for free. But when a launch that promises early access that you paid $100 for is botched due to items getting sent to wrong servers. People not receiving said items altogether or being put on servers for another region w/o selecting that server, then it leaves a bad taste and you would hope they had the merit to give you some sort of compensation. They gave us compensation in the way of costumes or dye that expire in 7 days. Wow, shows how much they value their player community. If anyone reading this has any doubts to these claims just browse the forums for any of these issues and you will see what i mean. Make your own judgement from what you see in the forums of BDO, not what is written here.

    • Wakana Satou

      This is just as I thought. Black Desert isn’t as “perfect” after all. It’s only a hype.

      • candesco

        Newsflash; no game is perfect. One who is saying that is lying through his/her teeth. And it’s not a hype at all. I can think of other games being more a hype. First try it yourself and then you can say something about it.

    • ApocaRUFF

      Not sure why your comment was marked as spam, but I also have no power over the disqus stuff.

      First, you’re right that the game isn’t ‘complete.’ It’s an MMO and is never complete. The updates are coming quickly and we’re almost on par with the other regions as of 1/26/17. (I know it’s been 10months since you left this comment, but I never saw it). Second, your issue about corruption did not effect 99% of the community, so I don’t see it as a massive negative. Software is hard, especially when your goal is to let everyone across all hardware and OSs play. Sometimes there’s issue. A quick fix to initiate a repair is to delete your ‘version’ file in the folder BDO is installed on.

      The issue about botched item sends out were true, but I never experienced, nor did anyone that I knew. It did take a while to get my items, however, which isn’t a huge issue. At the time I was quite angry about it, but after the fact I realize that the anger wasn’t really worth it.

      Also, after game launches the forums will be disproportionately filled with complaints. Even after launch the same is true. It’s a proven fact that those that have an issue are more likely to visit and post on a game forum compared to those that are content or happy.

    • candesco

      Forums are filled with biased kids, trolls and plain hatebeards. Not a good place to make any judgement. Especially the patchnotes and general discussion are filled with kiddy comments, like “kamasylve when” or “first post” and the ever dumb word p2w.
      That marks unfortunately also what kind of community it is; toxic to the bone and greedy. Only exception are the class and the PvE and PvP sections of the forum, which contains guides and tips. Rest is filled with utter garbage.
      If you want to make a judgement, then go play it yourself. Try it first with the 7 day trial. That makes judgement more fair instead of believing biased forumposts.

      Next to that i don’t recognize the problems with the pre-order packs, at least not for myself. I have, just like you, purchased the conquerorspack (€100 here). But i did got my items, all of them. I know that the NA servers had more problems then the EU one, so problaby the problem was there. The compensation was more then that though. Got some free horses, T5, as well as skillbooks, blessings of kamasylve (7 days) and some other items. Yeah, when the game was released many things weren’t there. But over the past time many things were added. Currently the game has alot to offer and we’re almost on par with korea.

  • candesco

    Black Desert got more content in the meantime. Mediah was added, later also Valencia and Magoria. New classes were added, like the musa and maewha, ninja and kunoichi, dark knight and the latest addition is the striker. A new class is revealed recently to come at Q4 this year and that is the mystic. Classes got awakening skill. There are now guildwars and nodewars and there are sea battles. EU and NA are now almost on par with KR servers. Speaking about servers, they got merged in October last year. For EU we had Croxus, Jordine and Alustin. Now it’s one EU server with 36 channels, which got increased lately with the release on steam. Playing the game myself since cbt2 and started on the Croxus server.
    I like the game so far. Much to do and much to see. Though endgame is a bit disappointing, as you have no real goal then anymore. And Valencia is kinda empty. Biggest problem of the game is the community. I have never seen such a hostile and greedy community, with sometimes even racism as well. Often stupid jokes are made, which are called memes. Most heard oneliners are “is this game p2w?”, “alienware” and “traps are gay”. The behaviour of the community in a nutshell. And then i forgot the ever lame “spot taken”. People tend to claim a spot instead of working together.I’m used from Aion to form groups to finish a quest or clear a dungeon. Nope, not here. Instead, they pk you. Next to that bots are used and there are scammers around. But you can’t report them directly. Have to make a screenshot then and hope Kakao and Pearl Abyss do something about it. And so far the scamming with pre-gifs continues, as the spam with boosts and such. It is really a shame that this otherwise good game got such a community.