Still playing Black Desert Online. What finally sparked a bit of interest out of my boring life as a professional kunoichi fisher is the fact that I got a cute penguin to help me fish!
This game serves as an interesting case study on how such a large game can be so empty, especially when compared with many other lesser games who focused on getting their limited game mechanics right with less bugs. Will try out all the game mechanics just for the sake of learning what to not do when creating a game.
Trying to have fun and make my own stories, which is what I usually do and what the game apparently tried so hard to do, but it's near impossible, with nothing memorable at all.
Lots of things to do in game, but every "mini game" they included only makes me wonder: "Am I suppose to be having fun doing this? I'd really rather read my old calculus textbook." The overall design is terrible too. The environment design for cities and towns are not clear or iconic. If you walk a small bit and wait a minute, you'll forget where you came from because every place looks the exact same from every angle, even in small settlements where there are less than 10 buildings. You lose track of the very place you came from a few steps ago because there are no visual cues that hint at what every building is, or their relationship in space with each other. I still have to resort to using the map because I can't find my way around any of the small setup settlements that I've visited over 100 times already. From far, a building can look like a warehouse, a fish market, a storage area, a forge, a bank, etc. Whether it's a large or small settlement, buildings block each other so one can't tell where one is. Contrast that with games like Witcher 3 or Skyrim, where you know where every shop is despite the size and complexity after a few visits. In BDO, I have to walk close enough to see the text on top of the NPC to know what the heck it is, when small design choices can easily solve said issues. It's almost like the game devs never explored the cities they designed to realize how frustrating the place is. Audio design is quite poor too. Many confusing sounds that make me think I did something when I didn't, while not offering me any feedback when something important happened (did I hit? Did I miss? Blocked? Dodged? Knocked down?). At the very least, please don't make that annoying negative "blop" sound used for errors
the same exact sound for positive actions like confirmation or receiving money. Is it really that hard to make one more sound???!!
I took a look at some Korean videos of the game. The UI is a
lot less claustrophobic for one so who knows. Maybe the guys responsible for Westernization really screwed up badly or something. The music and stupid mini games are the same though.
Will try to make this my last rant on BDO. Quite hard to hate games as this is what I study, so I can always find something to appreciate in games from a technical standpoint, even if the game wasn't that enjoyable. However, I can't help but be traumatised by how fundamentally flawed this once highly anticipated game is. Perhaps they had big ideas, and it took them a seriously long time to realise just how little they can accomplish, and they can no longer turn back. However, to have issues in so many aspects, issues that a student studying in any of those fields might not even be accepted in a program if their portfolio showed such things, is totally unacceptable.
Review of BDO: 1/10
A beautiful but empty shell. Good for trailers and screenshots, terrible for everything else.
PS: My penguin is now flying. Lord save me, a flying penguin happily sliding in floating ice in a desert where you are constantly struggling against a heat stroke... 0_0;
