Black Desert Review in 2024 - Should You Play BDO

Is Black Desert worth playing in 2024:
Black Desert is an open world sandbox combat MMORPG, with a huge focus on life skills, action combat and end game grinding. And in this video, I go over my first impressions returning to the Black Desert in 2024.

Black Desert has released a bunch of new quality of life features, that make the game more fun to play and easier for new and returning players. So I wanted to go over if now is a good time to try Black Desert in 2024. Black Desert is one of the most visually aesthetic MMORPGs out there, but with one of the most grindy and punishing end game systems. So does it still hold up as one of the best MMOs.

This will be aimed at new and returning players in Black Desert, giving an an unbiased review including why you should play BDO, why you should avoid BDO and if now is a good time to start. I'd love to know what you think in the comments.

0:00 Intro
0:56 New Player Experience
2:41 Why Play Black Desert
6:54 Problems with BDO
10:04 Is BDO Pay To Win?
12:15 Black Desert Is Changing
15:31 Summary and Outro

[MedievalMarty]

Now is a great time to get back into Black Desert! Happy to answer any questions if you're thinking about trying it :)

[Ziegeri]

Biggest issue with BDO is that there is no group PVE content, no raids, no dungeons, nothing what most mmo players like.

[dexfanai]

Long story short, Combat, graphics doesn't matter.
If you like Grindy Games, It's for you. If you don't like grinding, don't even bother.

[Gallaheim]

This game went on sale on steam for just under a dollar, and being the Asian I am, I still had to watch a video to know if that under a dollar is worth it. Guess it is. Thanks for this super informative video, this is really well made. Bravo! Liked and subbed.

[snohiyy]

Thank you so much for this! I was browsing on steam, and saw this, it was one dollar, so I didn't think much of it and bought it. Now seeing this, I'm super exited to play! Immediate sub.

[cheat]

Thank you for the video! I'm not into MMO but it explained me why Crimson Desert looked like a too good to be true scam from nowhere xD Pearl Abyss used every assets and mechanics from BDO to build a Crimson Desert, that's why the devlopment is so fast and the trailers so insane.

[beyasal]

Excellent review. I just want to add that a lot of the pvp content is now structured and gear capped/equalised, while open world pvp ganking is now almost non existent outside of the pvp focused Arsha servers, due to the radical changes made to the karma system.

[Voeluspa]

Thank you for being honest about the downsides of this amazing game. I am not playing anymore but I enjoyed it more than anything for quite a while.

[joshuaradloff]

Man I already tried playing this game like 3 times and everytime I just cant get past the ui, it's just so cluttered and overwhelming

[MechaMan]

Picked up the game a few years ago and dropped off early, but I should probably give it another shot sometime soon.

[AngelSanchez-igjt]

I played this for a few hours and had no clue what to do, or where to go or what I was supposed to do. Yea the fighting is satisfying but starting up was a chore.

[HeadpatBDO]

There's also a really elaborate music system that recently opened up to all classes. It can be pretty fun and you can play solo or with other players.

[jetstream_jimbo]

I went through 2 characters on BDO on PC and console. Genuinely, I enjoyed the game. My biggest issue and why I stopped playing was not only the forever grind but it genuinely felt like a pointless grind, what I mean by that is you finally upgrade your gear and get more powerful just to continue doing the same thing you've been doing. I've gotten both my characters to a respectable place, and a hard plateaued both times with them just feeling like "why am I trying to get more powerful? What's the point?" It just wants you to enjoy doing that but I would like there to be more of a reason if your not interested in PVP. I miss it, just can't go through it again

[MrDromp]

What let me down at BDO was the wired account movement from one Publisher to another or whatever this was. I initially started playing BDO during the last closed beta and for some reason I quit playing and missed all about this transsion. Was kinda sad discovering my account lost a few weeks past the time limit for the transfer.
But may I will start a new journey. Now the game looks way more convenient as it was back when I played it.

[majicweather]

I love the world of BDO, I just wish they added massive update to include tons of pve co op content like tons of dungeons and things. I know they have that one PVE dungeon now but that's old news.
This games main focus is PVP and yes it's p2w

[billybo]

Nice video, easy and pleasant to watch!! Well done! Now I want to give this game a chance again.

[Azraelst]

I left the game because there was literally no PVE content to do. I think another comment said this and there is no solo dungeons or solo anything. Life skills is probably the best PVE thing to do 😂.

[josephlane]

Played at launch and my main issue was that it feels like combat is one sided in the players favor. I couldn't find an enemy who could bring a challenge. They all dropped so quickly and their attacks are easy to dodge. I was hoping to have someone fight back. The sandbox idea isn't horrible, but i think the issue games have with sandboxes has got to be the limited rewards for grinding lifestyle fields. Like, i get it this meal can give me a temp boost, but i'm already curbing everything i face without it. So why put in the effort to get these great boosters that aren't actually influencing my gameplay?

[thelastvigil]

My kid plays a young person's version of this, based on horses. And you know what?

After so many AAA single-player games have failed to click lately, I'm starting to think she's on to something.

Trying several games a year isn't exactly cheap. They haven't always been refundable either.

Anyone that has played a MMO knows there's a unique appeal to the simple relaxation of just zoning out with pleasing asthetics and a well-designed loop.

Always something else you can do if you have the time, but just as important, it's no big deal if you don't.

Maybe it is more satisfying for some players to drop occasional cash into one game or work towards their own objectives.

Versus buying a game regularly, and being disappointed by broken launch after launch and other problems.

I'm starting to understand why this appeals to many players.

And unlike a title like FFXIV or even WoW.. the combat in BDO is not Mind-Numbingly Boring.

[samaaaa]

15, 000 + hours here. I'll make this easy for you. BDO has a FANTASTIC combat system. But it suffers from massive desync and a high skill ceiling- It takes awhile to learn. The best thing about bdo is how most of the grinding and rng can involve not a single other player. This is a massive con depending on what game you're coming from. There is generally not reason to ever interact with out players outside of pvp. - Aka if you're coming from ff14, for example, you will find yourself lacking a huge social aspect of mmos here. The game is not built for dungeons, raids, and etc. The world bosses aren't too interesting, mobs are braindead. If you want high skill, fast, and exciting people play bdo. If you want a social mmo (like mmo's should be imo) you'll play for a month, then likely quit.