Black Desert Online

Black Desert Online has many faults, but the sheer scope of the game’s systems and variety in your day to day MMO life can more than make up for its shortcomings. So far, Daum and Pearl Abyss have proven very receptive to Western gamers’ wants and needs, and I’m hoping that in time Black Desert Online will be an even better experience for all. But for now, it’s still easily one of the best MMORPGs on the market, and the best non-traditional experience any fan of the genre could hope for.

It is a pleasure to find a new sandbox oriented MMO in the market. While the beginnings are tough and confusing, the game rewards our patience with lots of combat and non-combat activities, a fascinating world to explore and fantastic graphics.

Black Desert is one of the few MMORPGs that sees all professions as equals. Some days you can have fun fishing on a boat, while others you might enjoy hunting trolls on the ground. This is an MMO unlike anything we have seen the last few years.

The biggest issue for me is how dense the complexity makes the game. Crafting, particularly cooking, requires a lot of experimentation or wiki-diving, and finding out the game’s systems isn’t always represented, even in the quests. There are always quests that give you reasons to gather or play the many mini-games—moving a wheel-barrow requires you keep a cursor in between two points, and the fishing system is actually rather fun.

A gorgeous world that feels truly alive, Black Desert Online is a solid entry into the sandbox subgenre of MMOs. Benefiting from having been launched in a major market for a year before coming to the West, it offers an open world to explore, and an especially deep tradeskill and trading system mixed with an action-oriented combat scheme.

Black Desert Online has proven to be a real, nice surprise: an action title that hides a top-notch managerial, with tons of activities to keep you busy. It's a title worth to be tried, but only if you're ready to invest a lot of time, patience and dedication.

There are so many interesting elements to it, each of which could provide you with many hours of enjoyment. Ironically, its strengths are not PvE battling, dungeon crawling, and other things most MMORPGs are known for. But it makes up for those shortcomings with so much other deep content and a gorgeous, polished visual experience, that it is still a great game – provided you are willing to put in the time learning.

With it's massive and unique open world, Black Desert Online is inviting you to a great adventure.

Unusual MMORPG that will surprise and captivate with a variety of fresh features. Although it can disappoint you with its random element, it can also please you with the astounding amount of options and activities and the huge, completely open world. Phenomenal visuals have no competition in the genre in the moment.

Black Desert Online is the most refreshingly unique MMO around. Introducing many new game mechanics and ways to play in a world that's so exquisitely designed, with characters, building, monsters and even the weather all working together to make the best looking MMO to have ever been released, BDO is only really let down by the game's unwillingness and/or inability to properly explain its mechanics.

Black Desert Online is an addictive and interesting game full of changes. It is so huge and it is so full of options, that it might scare away a few gamers. That would be a pity because this game is worth your money: after 138 hours there is still so much to discover.

Black Desert Online is a different kind of MMO, less focused on character progression and full of side activities that can hook you for a long time. Its visuals are incredible but obviously not without a cost.

Black Desert Online is a sandbox MMO with a great action combat system, an incredibly powerful character editor to give shape to every fantasy of yours, and spectacular world filled with life.

Black Desert is a game full of content that offers many things to do in a way that feels refreshing. It's hard to get into it, but once you're in, you'll find a great RPG.

Black Desert Online is impressive on the technical standpoint, and sets a new standard for MMOs. On the other side the character progression is heavily based on grinding and the structure is complex and somehow overwhelming. The game has a well designed gameplay and a solid endgame; the fans of the genre should definitely give it a try.

Not all the activities in Black Desert Online are interesting or coherent but it’s still a cut above the masses of boring MMORPGs that dominate the landscape. The gorgeous visuals are a big plus too. [april. 2016 / page 62]

Black Desert Online had potential to be ground breaking, but suffers from a monotous PVE grind and some questionable practices regarding its cash shop. [Oct 2016]

A beautiful and complex sandbox game full of activities without a real endgame, lots of grind and weak PvE.

Black Desert Online comes to the table with an intricate character sculpting tool, gorgeous graphical presentation, and a nuanced, exciting combat system overlying a less immediately apparent, but very unique, sandbox-style resource management simulation. Those looking for a rich narrative, complex or groundbreaking PvE questing, or highly unique monster design may be disappointed, but those seeking a mechanically rich, visually striking MMO will find themselves at home.

The game itself is solid, but just not quite there enough to be a strong recommendation as of this publishing.

Quotation forthcoming.

An absolutely beautiful MMO from developer Pearl Abyss. The beauty is backed by a complex sandbox MMO that offers a lot of freedom, but doesn't explain its systems to players all that well. If you're into starting up a second fantasy life and have the time to spend learning the mechanics, Black Desert Online might be the game for you.

Black Desert is a fully fledged epic MMO that can compete with the biggest and the best in the genre and is absolutely the prettiest one of them all. The world is a bit strange and gamers will need time to adjust but reasonable amount of interesting gameplay mechanics should interest experienced players and newbies don't need to be afraid - Black Desert is very easy to get into.

Developer’s inexperience hinders the game enough for it to not be an instant recommendation, especially to newcomers. But, for experienced MMO players, Black Desert Online offers months or even years of content. Considering that's how long it takes to just see everything that's on offer.

Black Desert Online is a beautiful game marred by inept tutorials and an impenetrable story.

Black Desert Online will attain greatness when it can provide good answers to those and other questions. Yet even now, it's hard not to heed it's call, which it sounds out the moment you enter its robust, genre-best character creator. I imagine that it will be even harder to tear myself away when player-versus-player siege wars are in full swing.

Black Desert Online is a MMORPG game with gorgeous visuals and a great and versatile combat system, but the game needs to solve several problems.

Pearl Abyss’ Black Desert Online is an incredibly detailed, visually gorgeous MMORPG that succeeds at nearly everything but having a beating heart and soul.

Black Desert Online is a MMORPG which provokes mixed feelings. A great and versatile combat system and beautiful graphics are being diminished by the countless bugs and a confusing user interface. Maybe a little too much information with too few tutorials.

Those desperate for a way to stay busy will find a seemingly inexhaustible number of grains of gameplay here.

The best you can say about Black Desert Online is that it has an impressive character editor.

Overall, Black Desert Online is a typical MMO in every single way. While I disagree with their claim that it’s the “next generation” of MMOs, I did find the character creation to be the most robust of any MMO out there. Unfortunately, the character customization is the game’s biggest highlight, and many of the other elements of Black Desert Online can be found in many other MMOs.

It’s one of the most beautiful MMO games and it offers a really cool combat system, but as a whole it is simply boring and most of the time I spent with it I was considering going back to ArcheAge. [05/2016, p.46]