Many of the innovations in Black Desert are refinements

Black Desert Online is a Korean MMO, which means you should expect a lot of grinding (killing repeatedly) enemies. It also has a cash shop for players to spend real money for items they can use in the game. There is much more to the game than simply killing enemies over and over again, and the cash shop does not currently offer much to make the game P2W (Pay to Win).

Many of the innovations in Black Desert are refinements of familiar features in the MMO genre. It’s a high fantasy setting with established quest chains to help you learn the game and escort you through the world. As players venture from town to town, they have tasks to go out and smash a certain number of some local monster. The tasks range from the familiar - fending off encroaching imps - to the somewhat bizarre, like attacking bees.

Once you get in-game you will be introduced to an initially confusing yet wonderfully detailed action combat system that revolves heavily around combos. The game features a hot bar like many others, but it is actually something you will rarely touch. Instead, most skills have an input combo that will perform them more effectively than assigning them to the hot bar. There are a few anomalies, but you’ll have a lot of combo memorization to do in this game for the most part.

Thankfully this unusual combat system creates an extremely fun combat experience that will keep you actually wanting to grind some levels just to experience the combat some more. By far, the game’s character creation tool is the most powerful in any current game, genre aside. The level of photo realistic detail that can be manipulated is simply amazing and made me wish that this tool could be used in other RPGs or a game like The Sims, where creating a lifelike and distinct character is so important.

It’s a huge bummer then that when tossed into the world, my character was wearing the exact same starting gear as every other in my class, which to me is one of the most immersion-breaking things an MMO can do. I get the need to start with newbie-level gear, but why not allow for some small degree of customization, especially given the tools available? Character models are hands-down the most detailed and charming in the market.

They would honestly not look badly in a single player game, especially due to the attention to small design minutiae of clothes and accessories. Consider the Warrior, who benefits from a huge range of combos to deliver a less flashy but nevertheless satisfying experience. After several false starts (complicated by the one-day wait to delete a character), I eventually stuck with the Ranger, who dodges enemies with flashy back flips and and deals damage almost as competently with her dagger as with her bow.

MMOs are notorious for having terrible combat. World of Warcraft and The Old Republic, two of the most famous American MMOs available right now, have the most boring, uninvolved combat of any game, I’d probably get more out of playing Punch Club, and in that game the combat is composed of watching your character fight, without any input from the player. Black Desert looks at all those games, with their uninvolved combat and terrible controls, and realizes thats NOT what you do.