Black Desert Mobile First Impression: Definitely Promising

Black Desert Mobile is a Korean-made MMORPG that has enjoyed a successful period in the country and is now set to make its way to the global market in the near future. In fact, the game has already soft-launched in certain regions of the world, and here is our first impression of it.

First, though, we want to disclaim that we have not played the original Black Desert on PC too much, so we are not going to compare the two. Instead, we’ll focus on answering the question that probably a lot of people are wondering: Is Black Desert Mobile worth playing?

Black Desert Mobile Trailer

Customization

Black Desert Mobile still features the same insanely detailed character customizations of the original Black Desert. You can adjust basically everything about your character including facial features, hairstyles, hair colors, and more.

One nice thing about this entire system is that it has been optimized to better fit the touchscreen. This means you can drag on your character’s face to change the shape of his/her eyes, nose, mouth, etc. Yes, Black Desert Mobile is not the only game to offer extensive customization options, but it is definitely one of the best when it comes to this aspect.

There’s also a photo mode with which you can pose for pictures and show off how good-looking your character is to other players.  It’s true that not all players care about the appearance of their characters, but for those that do, this level of detail is a big plus.

Gameplay

Summarizing the gameplay of Black Desert Mobile is not an easy task because it feels like multiple games rolled into one. In terms of the visuals and world designs, it’s somewhat similar to The Witcher: You get to roam around freely on horseback. The combat, meanwhile, has a Dark Souls vibe to it with boss encounters requiring you to learn their attack patterns in order to dodge effectively. The attack system is still cooldown-based like many other mobile RPGs, though, so you’ll have to wait after unleashing an ability if you want to use it again.

Auto-play is present here as well, but since this is a controversial topic, we’ll leave it to you to decide whether that’s a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, it can automatically take you to quest locations, saving you the trouble of running around. On the other, it might take you out of the gameplay.

Unique features

Black Desert Mobile offers plenty of things to do aside from the main campaign. The same thing can be said for tons of other MMOs these days, we know, but this one is particularly packed with content. There’s PvE raids, PvP arenas, and also a camp that you can build and expand.

The camp is your own territory. Here, you can build structures, recruit workers, and unlock unique game modes. The buildings you construct are not just there to make your camp look bigger too, as you can refine Black Stones with them, which are material used to upgrade your equipment.

Running the camp involves a lot of micromanagement. Sometimes you might get a lazy worker and will have to put him in his place, or you may be required to change what jobs your workers are doing. After you’ve established a functioning camp, you can start to trade with other players for items and resources.

Final Thoughts

Overall, we are still too early into Black Desert Mobile to give a detailed review, but our impression of it has been a pleasant one. We can see this game sticking around for years to come.