Recent reviews by Elzariel

An absolutely zen 5ish hour gameplay experience. I didn't go deep into breeding different loddles, but the fact you don't *have to* is just a bonus. You can! But you don't have to.
Absolutely worth the price and I have a feeling I'll be replaying the game more than once in the future, just to chill for a few hours.

I played on the storymode and aside a couple hickups I had with controls (keyboard and mouse) I give the game a solid 9/10.
An exceptional 20+ hours spent and worth the money.
Story is phenomenal and I'm gonna be doing a second playthrough right after I sleep for 10 hours.
If you take nothing from this but one thing, let that one thing be ACTUAL. REAL. CHOICES.
Not Skyrim choices. Not Fallout choices. Not even Dragon Age choices. Actual choices that matter and change things. Genuinely roleplay elements. In our lords' year 2023! PHENOMENAL. (I'm crying.)

If you like minesweeper and connect3, this is your game! Go for it!]/b]

Part minesweeper, part connect3, this game has this odd notion that giving the player a tutorial is "not cool" and having settings is "for lame individuals". Unless you enjoy a cryptic game that makes you sit through a rimworld level hard learning curve on survival, don't buy.
Outside the issues mentioned above, the gameplay isn't bad. If I could turn the sound down or off and if the death-scene didn't take forever to reset me to the start of the level, I'd give this way more leeway.
I love connect3s and especially if they try something new, but this just makes me annoyed when I lose. A game should make me think "I should have done XYZ differently, I'll try again!" not "I don't know how to play minesweeper?? Did I buy minesweeper by accident?"

A++ for graphics (outside the glitch effect being an accessability issue) and cute style.

Its rimworld. Whats there to say.

I'v played a lot of MMOs and a ton of RPGs. What Black Desert Online WANTS to be, is many, many things. And because of this, it fails in all of them.

BDO says its a Sandbox Open World RPG kinda deal, which is not a lie. But it also means there is little to no story at all. Your character has no motivation or reason to do anything. All you're given is a vague NPC and the casual "Oh you have no memories before you woke up here?"
Thats all.
But if that was truly its only problem, I'd be fine. I'v played games with little story before and been fine!
But it isn't. It just so, so isn't.

When I'm at lvl20 and I have no idea I can put skills on quickslots instead of forcing myself to use the "combo key" system, where somehow pressin shift+space is supposed to be easier or faster than just pressing 4, something is badly wrong.
When I was given a horse, I realized very quickly how annoying it can be to have a living creature with me at all times. You take for granted in other MMOs that a mount if there to use to move fast from A to B. In BDO that mount takes you from A to B, then you dismount and it sits there while you do your thing a bit farther away, so your mount doesn't get killed while you murder goblins, then you go back and realize halfway back to A to return a quest you're supposed to give it to the Vague NPC instead, not the person who gave the quest to you, and you return to B because the quest tracker didn't tell you you aren't done and suddenly you realize how much you hate this game and want out.

BDO is like a pretty pile of gems you dive into thinking "Hey this looks really nice! Its got so many great shapes and colors and ideas!" only to realize its got sixteen billion sharp corners too.

TLDR; Game tries to do all the things, can't do even one right. Has great ideas but can't bring even one into usable fruition. This is like The Sims of MMORPG, in the sense that you have to make the story yourself, or there is none. 4/10, might be fun with a guild. At the current 4,99 it might be worth the money if you're fine with the finicky control scheme and are fine reading walls of text to find out how to even play.

Before I go into my rant on what made me think this, disclaimer! DO NOT GIVE THIS GAME ANY MONEY. For free, its a fun time killer, espec. if you get a friend to quest with you. But do not, in any case, give this thing any money. It needs to die in wherever old MMOs go to perish.

Onto a story!
So, me and my buddy are in a dungeon, as the game is a bit weird, we need to do quests inside the dungeon. Yes, talking to NPCs and everything. This particular dungeon has two big bosses. First is not needed for the quest, but between first and second, you need to talk to an NPC at the start of the dungeon, then you need to run to the other end and start a protection quest for 5 minutes. After this, you need to kill the last boss to go forward.
Guess what. Nobody waits for questing.
We were left without the protection quest, with the end boss dead. Our only way was to either try to get back into finding someone to do the dungeon with (which is neigh impossible as nobody plays anymore) or try to re-start the dungeon somehow without needing to go out. We reset the dungeon, it spawns us OUTSIDE the dungeon. Apparently still in the queueue of never ending nightmares (thank ♥♥♥♥ I was a healer, there are no tanks in this game anymore) and decide that its faster to just exit the queue and start over.
Get slapped with a debuff for 15 minutes that makes it impossible to use queue for dungeons.
"You are a quitter!" it says.
You get to sit around for 15 minutes holding your beans, wondering who the hell said this was an ok thing to do.
Like, proper SEETHE in the rage of knowing the quests in dungeons thing this game thinks is okay just made you waste 15 minutes.

I say again. Don't give this game any money. Its fine for free time-killing, but do not think its worth any of your cash at this point. I was there at the start when TERA started, this ♥♥♥♥ was already in then. They haven't fixed anything.
The game is 90% moving from NPC A to NPC B, more than once. The monthly sub costs 13 bucks, 6 years after release. Their buyable currency is ridiculously high and most of the items are for the boob- I mean the girls. I mean the elin. And a little bit to the castanics.

TLRD; Old game, bad mechanics, god awful mechanics. Play to kill time, do not put money into it. Send help. You need to aim to heal. AIM TO HEAL. SEND HELP. WHY WON'T THE DPS STOP MOVING. Oh wait they'll die if they don't....