#Black desert online full

You gain knowledge by meeting new NPCs, slaying beasts and discovering new locales. Knowledge is Black Desert’s way of determining what your character knows and is the key component to unlocking new dialogue trees with NPCs. You’ll approach them to receive quests, trade goods and garner knowledge. NPCs in Black Desert Online will be essential to your progression. It’s not clear whether this character’s dialogue features developer Pearl Abyss’s unique charm or if the localization is weak, but judging from conversations had with other NPCs, it’s probably a little more of the latter. The sidekick-like character is only visible by you and is seemingly obsessed with acquiring more power. It’s yet another source of plot but this one is perhaps the most perplexing. You’re accompanied by a sentient black smoke cloud that feeds you simple progression quests. Luckily, massively multiplayer games don’t necessarily need a great story to be engaging, but a poorly constructed one doesn’t help. The story never takes ahold of you and often feels out of reach even when given the chance to double back on text. You’re bombarded with name after name and it’s impossible to determine where your focus should be. This is indicative of how you’ll experience the story throughout the rest of Black Desert Online. Instead of solidifying the current happenings it attempts to foreshadow the future by speaking on the past.

#Black desert online full

The game opens up with a cinematic full of fantasy vocab and whisperings of a dark power causing people to disappear. MMORPGs are past that and there’s no way that this is simply an oversight by the developers. You’ll be killing large groups of enemies throughout your travels and it’s more than annoying to have to individually click each body and select loot. It’s also embarrassing that the only way to unlock a gimped version of area looting is to buy a pet from the cash shop. This isn’t a new way for developers to make money and fund new content for the future, but Black Desert Online is buy-to-play title so it’s disappointing that your attire isn’t a main focus in that purchase. The only assured way to drastically change your characters armor is to purchase sets from the cash shop. Some items will affect your appearance, but there’s no rhyme or reason as to what does and what doesn’t. Secondly, you won’t see your character’s armor change much as you level up and acquire new items. This is unacceptable for any game let alone one that features a create-a-character as robust as Black Desert’s. If you want to be a Ranger, you’re going to have be a female Human. For example, if you want to play the Berserker class, you’re going to have to be a male Giant. Firstly, classes are gender and race locked. It’s a testament to the game’s beauty when taking a shortcut through one of the city’s alleyways treats you with kids playing or mothers ringing out laundry.įor all the eye candy Black Desert Online has to offer, it falls short on visual progression for your avatar and many players in the game end up looking similar. Characters are expertly placed and distributed throughout the taverns, inns, shops, etc. Stepping into a city is a distinct atmospheric change from that of the wilds or forest trails. Besides the texture pop-in, the world is vibrant and teeming with life.

We have never seen an MMO this visually stunning.

Black Desert Online isn’t for everyone, but it is very much for some people.Īs you can see from the screenshots or virtually any gameplay video, Black Desert Online is quite the technological masterpiece. Certainly not everyone will have the endurance and that’s OK. If you are able to stick it out and climb that hurdle, you will be rewarded. The amount of information you’ll need to acquire before feeling any semblance of control is staggering. The freedom you’re gifted is simultaneously exciting and intimidating compared to other games in the genre and elsewhere. It’s a massively multiplayer role-playing sandbox and if you’ve never played one before it’s going to be hard to fully convey the experience you’ll have. On a scale of playground tag to American football, Black Desert is approximately the Quidditch World Cup. Black Desert Online is a complicated game.