RPGWatch Feature - Black Desert Online Review

[Myrthos]

Aubrielle received a copy of Black Desert Online and found out why the game isn't your average MMO in this review.

http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/article&articleid=371Killing hordes of enemies in spectacular fashion with lightning-fast moves and bloody combos is, for me, one of the game's high points. At the moment, the character I've played most aggressively is my ranger. She's a heartstoppingly hot redhead with girl-next-door freckles and a milkmaid complexion. She's also one of the deadliest characters I've played in any game. When whole squads of rebel soldiers or filthy imps step up, my chick is gracefully dancing past killing blows and showering a killing rain of arrows on her enemies. If they get too close, the daggers come out and I chop them into fine mincemeat. If I'm feeling snarky, I start kicking. And by kicking, I mean, like...in the air, Bruce Lee style. Then I'm doing backflips, the bow is out faster than you can blink, and they're sinking to the muddy ground with three arrows in their throat. Lining up and trading hits until that mob dies is so 2004. Combat in Black Desert is entirely about your personal skill, and depending on your class, you may not need to get hit at all.

...

One difference you'll quickly find between MMO staples like WoW and avant-garde games like BDO is the combo system. See, you're not just limited to hotbar rotations anymore. Depending on what's happening in combat - and no two fights are ever the same - you'll need to change how you fight. Each class has its own button combinations that feel oddly natural to use. As a ranger, holding down shift and pressing your left mouse button fires explosive arrows over and over. That's super easy to do while you're in the flow of dodging a heavy blow and getting in position to launch a powerful attack by pressing another two buttons. It sounds complex but it becomes second nature. If you're absolutely uncomfortable with not using your number keys to unleash special attacks, many classes offer you the ability to bind your fun skills to those number keys.

More information.

 

[Myrthos]

Thanks Aubrielle!

 

[Couchpotato]

Thanks Aubrielle!

I concur another good article from you to read.
Now I just have to find time to play another MMO game.

 

[Nyx]

Great read, well written Aubrielle!
I do miss my badass sorceress. Really enjoyed the game myself and only reason I stopped playing for the time being was due to wanting to focus on singleplayer games for a while because mmo's do tend to give a braindead feeling at times.
Planning to get back to it for sure at some point though.

 

[Aubrielle]

Thank you all so much!

And yeah, I feel you, Nyx. I'm trying out HOI4 right now, but I'll probably go back to BDO in earnest once they finally introduce kunoichi. That's the class I've really, really been looking forward to.

 

[Zogar Sag]

Sorry for spitting some venom in your post, but just can't resist.

To me BDO is blatant Korean cashgrab grinder, same as any other Korean MMOs made to squeeze as much money from you as possible.
Yeah, the graphics and world is beautiful, top notch animations and cool character creator, but that's it!
As with any other Korean grinders its main purpose is to upgrade your armor and weapons to some +15 +20 etc to be competitive and able to progress further. To do that you need millions and millions of ingame cash, because it is pure RNG - the higher you go, the less chance to be successful.
The rest of the game is just a minigames to get you that cash for upgrades. And just listen: you pvp with other players for grind spots to be able kill mindlessly monsters for hours to get next level!!! How more absurd this can be!
Also as pvp oriented game this one is overrun with hackers and bots. The game is built in a way that you can easily hack it - there is hack sites and programs everyone can use and developers can't do nothing about it, because their game is built that way!
I can go on, but you get my point.

PS.
I understand that Aubrielle loves and plays that game, but cmon, if you write constant news about such cashgrab grinder, why it is only BDO - there is many Korean games out there, why not write about them too? Otherwise it looks like this site favors some games while ignore other similar ones, no?
Hope I not ruined your day completely

 

[Aubrielle]

Hope I not ruined your day completely

Don't worry. You didn't ruin anything.

It's fun. And it's not pay-to-win. You buy the game and that's all the money you ever need to spend.

I'm sorry you didn't enjoy BDO.

 

[lostforever]

As with any other Korean grinders its main purpose is to upgrade your armor and weapons to some +15 +20 etc to be competitive and able to progress further. To do that you need millions and millions of ingame cash, because it is pure RNG - the higher you go, the less chance to be successful.

This is completely accurate however I have clocked in over 200+ hours and didn't even take part in that side of the game. I am still running around the game in rags …

What set this game apart from other Korean or even Western cash grab is that it has many different activities which you can take part in leisure. These are not "min" games unlike other MMOs. They are fully fleshed systems which you can have lots of fun with…So I think this game deserves a mentions compared to to other MMOS here.

Think of it like Skyrim... you can mess about for long time and have lots of fun without actually doing the main quest.

 

[Aubrielle]

Lostforever has played it lots more than I have (and so has Nyx, I think). They're the real experts around here. They'd know even better than I would.

 

[Zogar Sag]

I played BDO for few months back on Russian servers. Yeah, its fun at beginning, when it's new - all those little things you can fool around, like fishing, gardening, horse breeding, but then I reached lvl 50 and game showed its true colors and i uninstaled it.

Im not saying BDO is pay to win, at least not yet, but its mechanics is built to suck money out of you:
Run out of energy for today - here, buy energy potions.
Want to look diferent - buy armor for same price as whole game and just for one character, not accountwide! Buy dyes with random colors and hope youll get one you want.
Your beloved horse have bad skill - here, buy recpec scroll etc and so on.
There is a lot of negative points I can write about, but too lazy - you can read it on their official forums or MMORPG com.

BDO isnt any special or super innovative, there is this game Archage and it has almost the same mechanics and things, only not that good graphics being older game.

I mean, if we start to cover Korean MMOs here, then lets be honest and write about others too, because lately I see only BDO and a lot of posts about BDO.

 

[Lev]

I don't think that making money is something that people or companies shouldn't do. I look at it from opposite point of view. If someone does something for free, it is nice, but I consider it as one-time present and not a long-term business. In case of MMO and CRPG I'd rather prefer to have business than to have present.

I stopped play BDO after about 100+ hours. The game is nice, it has a lot of new features. Yet, somehow I've found myself doing the same quests over and over again, running the same roads again and again, talking to the same NPC's again and again. I quit. It is probably my fault, but yeah, too late, now I play something else...

 

[fadedc]

Personally I enjoyed the review, especially since this a game I was very curious about. I don't think that the fact that the game was made in Korea should have any relevence to whether it is reviewed or not.

 

[lostforever]

I played BDO for few months back on Russian servers. Yeah, its fun at beginning, when it's new - all those little things you can fool around, like fishing, gardening, horse breeding, but then I reached lvl 50 and game showed its true colors and i uninstaled it.

Im not saying BDO is pay to win, at least not yet, but its mechanics is built to suck money out of you:
Run out of energy for today - here, buy energy potions.
Want to look diferent - buy armor for same price as whole game and just for one character, not accountwide! Buy dyes with random colors and hope youll get one you want.
Your beloved horse have bad skill - here, buy recpec scroll etc and so on.
There is a lot of negative points I can write about, but too lazy - you can read it on their official forums or MMORPG com.

BDO isnt any special or super innovative, there is this game Archage and it has almost the same mechanics and things, only not that good graphics being older game.

I mean, if we start to cover Korean MMOs here, then lets be honest and write about others too, because lately I see only BDO and a lot of posts about BDO.

Unfortunately every MMO out there now days is designed to milk as much money out of you as possible. I am not saying BDO is an exception to that. In fact I complained in another post that the cash shop prices are very high etc. However compared to many other MMOs of this nature (so called F2P or B2P + cash shop), BDO still allow lot of game time for the box price without asking you to go to the cash shop. I also think this game should have been sub and it will be even better..

I have not played Archage but BDO was hugely different from all other MMO I have played. I have played EQ2, WOW, GW1 and GW2, Rift, TERA, Aion, Conan, Blade & Soul etc so I found it interesting…

Lack of coverage of other MMO is not some conspiracy to promote BDO. Aubrielle plays BDO so she writes about. I don't believe other staff members plays much MMO at all or don't care much to write about them

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Thanks for a great review. After reading it all it helped me make up my mind on whether I should try it or not. Based on your descriptions of combat and the pros/cons decided it wasn't for me. I was borderline about it after some reading. Character creation appeals but I have poor reflexes and do very badly in any twitch style combat that tends to be fast paced and have a lot of combo moves. Also do enjoy more in-depth lore and quests and the like.

Review was well done though and enjoyable to read - you have an engaging writing style.

 

[Deleted User]

Great review, well-written and informative. Nice one.

I do love that you can take up all those professions and stuff. Be a farmer, a merchant, etc. I love that.

However, I don't think this game is really for me given what I read in the review.

If I play another MMORPG again it would likely be a return to Project: Gorgon.

 

[henriquejr]

Great review Aubrielle! You're really a talented writer

Sadly the game is not available in Latin America.

 

[Aubrielle]

Thank you all so much!

I'm happy I managed to help you come to a conclusion about BDO, even if it was that it wasn't for you. No one game is for everyone, and I think that's especially true for MMOs. It's gotta be just right.

RPGWatch has a lot of smart people, and smart people tend to like more cerebral games. While BDO has a certain genius in how it is designed - especially how intuitive the combat is - it isn't necessarily a thinking kind of game, if that makes sense. I'll be the first to admit that. But it's still hella fun, and if any of you who aren't all that interested ever get a chance to play on a free weekend or something, I'd still urge you to give it a whirl if you're looking for excitement.

Thank you so much for reading. You're all so awesome. <3

And Henrique, I hope they fix that soon. It really sucks that it's not available in your region.

 

[lostforever]

Thanks for a great review. After reading it all it helped me make up my mind on whether I should try it or not. Based on your descriptions of combat and the pros/cons decided it wasn't for me. I was borderline about it after some reading. Character creation appeals but I have poor reflexes and do very badly in any twitch style combat that tends to be fast paced and have a lot of combo moves. Also do enjoy more in-depth lore and quests and the like.

Review was well done though and enjoyable to read - you have an engaging writing style.

Unless you are going to be competitive PvPer, there is no need to worry about the twitch combat at all. The combat is very easy and you can just press a button and easily go to max level.

 

[forgottenlor]

Thanks for the review Aubrielle. I really enjoyed reading it. You would have probably convinced me to play this 7-8 years ago. But my days of online gaming are behind me. I recently tried Path of Exile, and though it was good, it reminded me of everything I hate about online games. Besides there are so many good single player games on the market now, that I don't have enough time to play them all.

 

[Alaric]

I was searching for free trial codes last night, and so google served up this suggestion to me this morning:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...ay-5-000-7-day-passes-for-black-desert-online

I redeemed one by following Eurogamer on twitter and am going to give it a try. Thanks for the review Aubrielle!