Recent reviews by Boiled Spud

EDIT: They finally updated the games description to list Multiplayer as "Coming in 2025", so updating this to positive now that they're no longer marketing it as an existing feature.


------PREVIOUS---------
I really, genuinely, love this game. The world is stunning and the combat feels superb. I cannot, however, recommend it at this time.

For the last year, and for the indefinite future, Moon has left "Online Multiplayer" here in the games feature list on the store page. There's been no multiplayer from the start and no indication as to when it'll be included beyond a roadmap that's been entirely disregarded.

When it comes to digital goods, their sale page is their "box". If an item's box says something is included, and it's not, that's dishonest. I'm sure it'll be included eventually, and am aware we're still in EA, but it's incredibly misleading to use a non-existent feature as a sales point.
I've raised this point to the devs and been acknowledged with "yeah but it's coming" which is nice, but it's terrible practice to market a feature that isn't actually shipped. Delays are one thing, but misrepresenting the current state of the game for a whole year is simply false advertising.

The game equivalent of sitting out in the sun with your dog on your lap. Mightn't be quite what you need when you've too much energy and want to be super active, but when you want to just relax and be happy, it's brilliant.

Most of the complaints regarding this game are from people who've either barely played it, or expect it to be more runescape. Spoiler, it's not. This game is it's own thing, go in with no expectations of it being x or y, otherwise it won't meet those you already have.
It's also EARLY ACCESS WITH LITERALLY ZERO UPDATES SO FAR. It's in it's most rudimentary state possible with zero chance to improve as of yet, and these fools are expecting a day one masterpiece... Just be patient, or wait for a full release.

The biggest complaints have been:

No central banking, you travel to each facility to bank the appropriate resources. This is false, in episode two you unlock remote banking, at which point having the resource banks at the skilling facilities is a *convenience*. If the complainers had their way, every inventory of crafted goods would require running to a whole seperate building.

Combat resetting between acts. It doesn't. You get a new combat skill per region, so the gear progression starts from zero. This is lore based, as you attune gear to a regional obelisk for a buff, but also practical as unlike any other mmo you won't end up with a whole bunch of outlevelled mobs covering half the map.

Too many clicks per action. This one is actual kinda valid, a lot of this functionality should be reserved for rightclick.

Just... Relax. Enjoy exploring the world

Perf issues fixed since launch, switching this to a recommend. The game is great fun

















Old review:

TL;DR: Awful performance

First off: the game is fun. Dirty MTX being snuck in post-review to a single player game asides, if you enjoyed the first game and go in to this unbiased, you'll have fun. Probably a ton of it, depending on how playable the game is for you. HOWEVER, warning to anyway with an older CPU: This game is HEAVILY CPU-bound. My system is a Ryzen 2600 which for the most part is still relevant enough for any current game, coupled with a modern GPU, but in DD2 performance is ABYSMAL. Turning graphical settings, even raytracing, on and off makes no major difference in any way but in the main city where you spend a tremendous amount of time handing in quests, managing inventory and recruiting pawns, it stutters, freezes and drops down to a framecount that can fit on one hand.

The other semi-major gripe is vocations are bound to a single weapon. No more daggers and bow right out of the gate, which can be frustratingly limiting when you can't headshot a cyclops, etc.

Am I going to refund? Nah, I still enjoy myself outside of the city. Would I recommend buying the game? Hell nah, not when it runs slower than my morbidly obese grandmother. Especially for such an extreme pricepoint. Should the game recieve the optimisation pass it needs however, it'll be an absolute banger of a game

A horror game for poultry, in which your ex won't stop DMing you. Brilliantly creative, 11/10

Cool campaign but not getting the WITCH QUEEN dungeons despite buying the WITCH QUEEN is a giant yikes and super scummy

It's a pretty solid game but the MTX (microtransaction) costs are absurd. If you want a house that is specifically crowns only (the ingame MTX currency) you're looking at 100 dollars. For a house, and an empty one at that. 2 hours of a dev's time simply placing recycled assets.

You can clearly play without MTX, but so much aesthetically nice stuff (and even some functional stuff, such as xp boosters, race/name changes, potions and so on so forth) such as housing, mounts, skins etc are stuck being MTX. Hell, a single lootbox, which 99.9% of the time only gives absolute junk, is like 5 bucks. I'm not a big fan of MTX but I wouldn't care if they were only selling cosmetics... Except for the fact that you have to be IRL royalty to even consider being able to afford a peanut ingame. ZMO are some greedy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, that's for sure.

2020 EDIT: I used to have an extremely poor review of this game which I'll leave below as reference. I've recently returned to the game after a long hiatus however, and I've never been more happy than wandering through the world with my partner enjoying the beautiful world. Here's why.

Things that have improved:

A lot of the localisation has seemingly improved and more VA work introduced.
The old P2W (investment banks when the money was worthwhile etc) are now redundant due to the economy having moved on.
Some pets are now obtainable for free. They have an autoloot feature which used to be primarily cash shop only but can now be gained through select quests.
The markets are global now, making purchasing items a lot less trouble without hauling ass over a continent.
The UI has been overhauled, which is a bit overwhelming TBH (some stuff is quite tucked away and hard to find until you know hotkeys) but looking super slick.
A lot of the pop-in with objects and NPC's seems to be lessened. Whether this is a game improvement or today's hardware being better I'm unsure, but it's great.

Beyond those, the game at its core is fantastic.
There's no fast travel or meditation. The world ticks by, and you must travel through it to reach your locations, engaging with/admiring the world on your way.
There's a plethora of things to do. Many life skills, incredible action combat, PvP activities, guild stuff, you name it.
But the thing that grabs me most? I can't state this enough, the world is STUNNING. Graphics aren't everything, no, but they're the icing on the cake. The game is absolutely breathtaking, especially with the introduction of Remastered (lighting/shader overhaul). If you enjoyed wandering through the world of the Witcher then welcome to your wet dream.

For what is often only $10 this game has more value for money than almost any other title on steam. Give it a shot, and welcome to Black Desert Online.





Old negative review (no longer relevant, but for context):


I have hundreds, if not a few thousand hours logged in BDO prior to it being moved to steam.

The game itself is phenomenal, however if you don't live in the US or Europe (Aussie, NZ, etc) you'll be plagued by horrendous desyncs and lagspikes that'll set you back hundreds of metres of movements. Been waiting since the game first came to the west for Daum to do something about getting some OCE servers and fixing the abysmal netcode and yet they never have and by the looks of things, never will. After moving flat to somewhere that doesn't have a top-tier fibre connection (in NZ) the game is only playable in the sense that I can afk fish, and even then *barely*.

If you're an OCE player don't bother wasting your time or money.
Here's a little proof:

https://youtu.be/_CE3TaCCbW8