In progress since 2010, Black Desert Online is a MMORPG developed by the Korean team Pearl Abyss. Since the first videos that began to circulate online a couple of years ago, Black Desert Online has immediately distinguished itself for the great care given to the graphics sector and for the presence of an incredibly versatile and detailed character editor. The title will finally be released in Europe in the course of 2016 by the publisher Daum Games, who allowed us to try the last closed beta session for a few days. Let's find out together how it went.
Let's redo our eyes
The first thing that strikes you about Black Desert Online is certainly its graphic impact. Made with the help of a proprietary graphics engine, the title is probably the most visually impressive MMO currently on the market. The game features a fully sandboxed setting with high fantasy hues, featuring a full atmospheric simulation with large-scale events such as typhoons and storms and a day / night cycle enhanced by a dynamic lighting system. These are features that we are now getting used to finding in many single-player games, but which are very rarely implemented with such care in an MMO. The game world has a considerable extension and is of great impact for the player, both for the aforementioned dynamic lighting that gives particular realism, and for the artistic decision to take a more southern European medieval setting as a model, almost " Mediterranean ”, which is not the abused forests of Northern Europe.
A very powerful editor
The strong point, however, are the characters, cared for down to the smallest detail and customizable by the player to a manic level. The powerful editor allows you to act not only on basic settings such as the build, the shape of the face, the color of eyes and hair, but to modify the shape, size and positioning of dozens and dozens of individual parts of the body, face and even the hair. Impossible not to notice the beauty of the basic models, with faces so perfect as to make photomodels pale, even if the almost total control that is offered to the player even allows, if we wanted, to create ugly characters or with more or less evident physical defects. One of the few limitations, actually quite annoying, is that the character's gender and general build are locked based on class. The enchantress, for example, can only be female, while the warrior or berserker are exclusively male. It must be said that Pearl Abyss has promised the doubling from 6 to 12 classes, with some variations of sex, but we do not know if this will happen in time for the official release or at a later time. In any case, we remain confident, also because this limitation is really the only drawback in a truly superlative character editor.
Monotony take me away?
From the point of view of the gameplay Black Desert Online puts in place some interesting ideas, starting from an interaction system with obstacles and environments inspired by the parkour, somewhat Assassin's Creed style. Combat is fully real-time and requires the player to aim, dodge and perform combos manually, almost we were in an action-adventure. To reinforce this impression there is the fact that the title seems to favor, at least for the first large portion of the game, the solo-play. The game does not feature the classic triangular healer / tank / DPS system, making collaboration with other players unnecessary. In fact, the presence of guilds in the game seems to be justified exclusively with the unlocking starting from level 40 of the PVP component and, consequently, of the battles between guilds. Questing is standard in many Asian MMOs and is heavily focused on monster extermination missions. In Black Desert Online you fight a lot and level up pretty fast. The bad news is that there is a certain monotony in the quests and things to do. There are crafting and farming components, the ability to trade equipment with other players, to buy and manage homes for yourself or your guild as well as to tame a riding animal, but 90% of the time you inevitably spend fighting. monsters. Which is not bad, because the combat system is satisfying and adrenaline-pumping, but the absence or lack of relevance of features that should be standard for an MMO in 2016 leaves, if not disappointed, at least amazed.
Comment Our test of Black Desert Online brought out the lights and shadows of the promising Korean MMO. To impress us the most were undoubtedly the graphics level, excellent even on non-high-end PCs, the richness of the character editor and the freshness of the combat system. On the negative side, however, there is an excessive preponderance of combat in the quests, almost leading to wild grinding, and the almost total absence of social elements. No dungeons, no raids. For the first 40 levels Black Desert Online is mostly solo-play, while from 40 onwards PVP is of particular importance. While we find the choice of the development team interesting, we cannot help but notice that as it is Black Desert Online has a feeling of incompleteness, which could have been avoided by developing the ideas differently in the design phase of the game. In all this, the real unknown is the endgame, the one that interests the most for the longevity of the game community. Although we have not yet been able to experience this portion of the game, the limitations of Black Desert Online and its simplistic approach to the world of MMOs unfortunately make us fear in this sense. It will be the task of Pearl Abyss and Daum Games to dispel our doubts in the time that still separates us from the final release. Pros and cons ✓ Great graphics
✓ Extremely complete character editor
✓ Adrenaline-fueled combat system x Too much focus on grinding
x Absent and / or limited standard MMO features
x The endgame is likely to be thin
