REVIEW: Black Desert Online (PS4)

Although MMOs are a new genre to me, I have played a few in my short videogame playing career. When I was 10, I played RuneScape. After a long day at school, I tried my hand at World of Warcraft. I also played some Guild Wars 2 after the Heart of Thorns DLC was released. I loved The Elder Scrolls series so I continued to play Elder Scrolls Online once the subscription ended.

However, I never felt the same way when playing them. At heart, I am a single-player gamer. I enjoy a good story, great characters, and compelling themes and stories. For me, MMOs have never provided that experience. I was more interested in raising numbers than the storylines being told to me. But I enjoyed spending time with my friends on RuneScape back in the day, setting fires to make more fires and chopping trees for the Grand Exchange to get that sweet, sweet GP.

Black Desert was the latest MMO I tried to enter. Black Desert was developed by Pearl Abyss, a Korean developer. It was released in North America and Europe in March 2016. The PS4 port was made available worldwide in August last year.

Black Desert was 's first port for the PS4. I had one question in my head: Why a console port? MMOs are a PC-dominated genre. As such, their target audience would prefer to play them on a PC. To make maxing and min/maxing their characters easier, players love the ability to use a variety of keys to modify the HUD and set up macros. Why did Pearl Abyss decide to port the console version? I believe they are trying to reach players who aren't part of their primary audience. Some may argue that my initial stance on MMOs might have tainted my review. But I would argue the contrary. This port is exactly what they want to make me feel.

The game is quite appealing from all angles and makes a good first impression. For a game of its kind, the graphics are impressive. Although the character models are clean, they have a persistent sheen that makes them appear like they are only 3 minutes away from the shower. Landscapes look nice and textures are impressive, but only when compared with other MMOs.

The game begins to exhibit its weaknesses on a performance level. It drops below 20 FPS frequently in framerate. If you're playing on a PS4 Pro or Xbox One/S, performance issues may occur. Due to the high amount of small particles, framerates are often lowest in areas with many players.

It also has a confusing HUD that makes navigation difficult. It's clear that MMO players love all the information displayed on the screen. The port seems to be targeting people like me who don't normally play MMOs and the HUD is very off-putting. The HUD is too big considering how far away you are from the screen when compared to playing on a desktop computer. I have yet to find a way of turning it off. The chat window is large. I don't care about what "xXDarkScythe99Xx is doing" or who they are speaking to in global chat. I tried to find a way to turn off chat but the most popular solution on Google didn't work.

You also get a lot of information. During the first sections, there are so many tutorials that tell you how to hit R2 (a brilliant concept, I know). This is combined with the HUD that dominates the screen, the fact I am further away from the TV than I am on my couch, and the FPS-destroying rain effects and I have trouble understanding what's going on. You have the annoying "voice" of a reverse-Navi in your ear, telling you what to do, and where to go, while you're playing.

How is the gameplay? It is actually much better than many of the MMOs that I have played. Many MMOs follow a similar gameplay pattern. You can move your character around freely, lock onto an enemy, and use your class' abilities on the hotbar. World of Warcraft was one of these MMOs and is arguably the first to use this style. Black Desert is a different route. It features more real-time combat and more similar to a single player RPG such as Final Fantasy 15/7 or Elder Scrolls Online.

After being dissuaded by the presentation, the gameplay was what brought me back. The "Striker", Black Desert, was the class I chose to play. It is a renamed version of the traditional Monk class. You hit the Striker with your fists until you feel they stop moving. You know what? It was quite fun. After I was able to tune out my HUD and tunnel-vision the actual game, I started to enjoy the free-flowing combat system.

Despite this, the action-oriented gameplay doesn't require any special skills and won't blow your socks. The camera moves with the right stick. You can aim your attacks by using the crosshair on the screen. You can perform combo attacks by using different input combinations via the bumper/trigger button. For more difficult enemies or bosses, you can also use the dodge roll feature with invincibility frames. Combat can sometimes feel very easy because you can cancel most basic attacks and make a dodge roll using the i-frames. Even if your timing is wrong, you can still dodge and avoid getting splattered on the nearest cave wall.

For the purposes of this review, I created two characters. The character creation screen revealed something strange: the class you choose will determine your character's gender. If your chosen class is shown on the screen as either a male or a female, you will get it. There's no way to change. The Striker class is a male class that focuses on attacking the enemy with punches and equipping oneself with a gauntlet/vambrace instead of a sword. The Striker was the most interesting of the two classes I tried. Their attack animations were fluid and easy to execute in combat. Strikers can also be very mobile and pull off powerful hitting combos without needing to reposition.

The naming process is another annoying aspect of the character select screen. You must create a "family name" before you can make a class. This is basically a username that will be used for all of your characters. This must be unique to your character. You must name your characters individually, but this also needs to be unique. This made it seem like the purpose of the family names was lost to me. I thought the family name was meant to differentiate you from other players. You can name your characters however you want.

The Guardian was my second character, whom I named Clunky because that's what the game is. It was the newest class in this game at the time I wrote this review. The Guardian is a barbarian-like female class that uses a large axe to their primary weapon. The Guardian is a powerful striker per swing, but they have a slow attack speed and lower combat speed. They also have a high health pool.

No matter which class you choose, you will always have the same story, the same location, the same NPCs and the same quests. It would be exhausting to do this many times while leveling up different classes. To alleviate the boredom, World of Warcraft offered different questlines and starting areas depending on which race or faction you were.

The story is not worth your time. While it may seem like the MMO is standard, I found this to be a very boring experience. Microscopic text is used to tell the story in relation to other HUDs. The content isn’t very interesting. You are a chosen warrior who is constantly harassed by an enemy with red eyes. There's a war going. It didn't matter to me. When I knew the only thing I would be rewarded for was continuing to cling to grey wolves in twain, there was no motivation to do so.

The combat system is original, but it's stuck in the same gameplay loop as most modern MMOs. This means that the game offers nothing new. The basic idea is to go to an area and do some quests. After you have achieved your level, kill the same enemies repeatedly, you can move on to more quests. This cycle continues in different meadows. "Ooh, that was just a meadow of green. But this one is autumn-ish and I'm now in a high-fantasy generic city!" What an innovative idea!

Black Desert Online seems to have an ulterior motive to appeal to a wider audience by releasing a console version. I find this mixed bag. I would not want to play Black Desert again on the PS4 because it was clunky, uninteresting, and technologically limited.

This MMO is accessible to all, even those who have never played one. It has a unique combat system, appealing graphics, and great gameplay. However, you might want to convert to the PC to enjoy the full experience. Maybe that's the goal of Pearl Abyss: to get you to purchase it twice as soon as you are hooked. That's great! It's still not worth it to play on PS4 because it's just too unsuitable for sofa use.