Black Desert Online launched in North America and Europe this week, giving many players their first taste of that character creator everyone’s been raving about. This is what happens in the 30 minutes following character creations’ end.
Now that the bumps have been mostly ironed out and Daum Games’ massively multiplayer role-playing game is available to the general public, it’s time to take a look at what exactly all of those painstakingly-crafted characters are doing inside the world. Unlike previous iterations of the game, Black Desert Online in the West requires a one-time purchase to play (like Guild Wars). Since folks have to shell out at least $US30.00 ($40) to gain access, I made the video atop the post in order to give them an idea of what to expect.
Apologies for the darkness in the video. I was at the mercy of the MMO’s day and night cycle.
Your player wakes up disoriented in a strange town, guided by a strange dark spirit that apparently has it out for any creatures lurking in the surrounding tall grass.
He’s kind of cute, at least until he gets teeth.
After introducing yourself to a few townspeople and learning an attack skill or two, the slaughter begins. Combat is fast, fluid and very combo dependent. It uses a combination of mouse and keyboard controls to initiate positional attacks, dodges, spells or counters, depending on your character class.
I am become Death to wolves.
Though movement feels a bit sloppy and unresponsive overall, combat is quite lovely, at least on the Valkyrie I created for the video. My main character, a Ranger, is a bit more methodical in her attacking, having to maintain a certain distance between her and her targets. Letting loose up close and personal as a melee class is a bit intoxicating, as evidenced by my wholesale wolf slaughter around the 15:20 mark.
And then we rested.
Between the extra two minutes of wolf killing and the grass beetles, weasels, foxes and imps that died to make this video possible, the majority of the first 30 minutes was spent slaughtering all of the things. Towards the end of the vid I make it to the Western Guard Camp, advancing the story and picking up quests for a lovely break between bouts of sensible killing.
Over on my main character I’ve played about four or five hours of the game, and so far most of it has followed the pattern of killing and questing. I’m looking forward to getting into more of the extracurricular activities Black Desert Online has to offer — housing, fishing, that sort of thing. But as far as killing digital enemies goes, this is pretty satisfying.
Anyone else playing? How are you finding it? Let’s talk in the comments.
Comments
4 responses to “There’s A Lot Of Killing Things In The First 30 Minutes Of Black Desert Online”
The combat system is great. Story ain’t that great. But the graphics are jaw dropping gorgeous. Loot is there, but your appearance doesn’t really change all that fast unless you purchase an actual costume to put over it. I do like how as your durability goes down, your armor actually becomes worn and broken on your character. Overall like the post says, great for killing stuff mindlessly. Love the combat mechanics.
The combat was pretty fun for the time I could spend with it in the beta. I tend to level through one MMO every year; could consider this if I had more time.
This looks remarkably alot like Guild Wars 2
Is that said as a good thing or bad thing?
I’ve just started delving into a few other areas to see what I want to focus on, it looks like there’s quite a few ways you can play it aside from the kill/ quest cycle, once you get to about lvl20 you get a lot of options opening up with horse breeding, trade, manufacturing, etc and they can be done without endless grinding, there really is a lot to take in.