Black Desert Review

The famous MMORPG Black Desert in 2026 is a strange, almost unnatural product that has somehow miraculously survived in an industry where projects with budgets rivaling space missions die in less than six months. The game is not just alive — it functions steadily, receives updates, and retains an audience that either genuinely loves it or simply can no longer stop. But what if you decided to try this hit today? After all, the much-talked-about Crimson Desert was born from its online predecessor, so getting acquainted with Pearl Abyss’s original project is at least interesting. What does Black Desert feel like for a newcomer in 2026, especially on PS5 — I’ll explain in this article.

First, let’s establish the basics. I have never been a fan of Black Desert and only knew about the game that it supposedly had incredible graphics for an online project. I also haven’t spent even a minute in Crimson Desert; everything I know about it comes from our review and streamer videos. This is important to understand in order to evaluate how well Black Desert immerses a newcomer unfamiliar with the lore. At the same time, I am somewhat familiar with the Korean MMO approach and even tried a couple of projects in my younger days, like Lineage 2 and Aion 2. I also have something to compare it with, as I devoted a part of my life to World of Warcraft. That’s why I believe I can assess Black Desert more or less objectively, since I understand the genre’s traits and have seen how others do it. If you’re also interested in older MMOs, check out our Lost Ark review and Gran Saga review.

Let me remind you that the famous Korean MMO was released in 2015. At that time, there were plenty of similar projects on the market, so the newcomer had to face tough competition. Riding the wave of free-to-play online games, most of which differed little both conceptually and visually, Black Desert offered two fundamental things: an incredibly detailed character creator by the standards of the time and an action combat system where you had to swing your sword in real time, like in something like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which, unbelievably, came out the same year. These two features set Pearl Abyss’s game apart from dozens of others, ensuring its initial survival and later success. Now Black Desert has turned into an old-school game. Many MMO principles it was built on no longer work, yet the player base remains, and updates are released regularly. By the way, free-to-play games are still being released. We even have a list — The Best Free PC Games in 2026.

If you try to describe Black Desert’s development over the years in one word, it wouldn’t be “evolution” or even “development.” It would be accumulation. And the kind where no one really bothered to carefully integrate the old into the new. Features were simply layered on top, like dust settling over time until it started to resemble architecture. Once you accept this idea, many of Crimson Desert’s recent issues start to feel logical, expected, and even inevitable, since it too was originally meant to be a game with a strong online component.

At launch, Black Desert felt relatively simple compared to its current versions. A limited number of regions, a standard set of base classes, no overloaded systems, and clear progression. Now, the game resembles a museum where exhibits continue to function even if they are already outdated.

The first thing that stands out is the scale. The map has grown to the point where movement is no longer just travel but a logistical task. New regions have been added regularly. The problem is that these zones do not always feel like parts of a cohesive whole. Sometimes it looks like a collection of separate maps, each existing on its own. Yes, they are beautiful. Yes, they contain content. But they do not create a unified world.

The number of classes has also grown to a level that can easily trigger panic. Each class seems unique, but you won’t notice that at the beginning of the game.

There is significantly more content, but at its core, this is still an MMO straight out of 2015. In my opinion, even World of Warcraft now looks less like its classic self than Black Desert does. Moreover, so-called peaceful activities have evolved from optional side content into full-fledged systems that you are forced to understand whether you want to or not. Previously, these included fishing, crafting, and trading. Now all of this is a complete alternative to combat. You can build an economic empire, engage in production, trade between regions, or construct houses. For many players, this is the main way to play. They log into Black Desert not to fight, but to… work. Sometimes even more efficiently than in real life, which sounds slightly alarming.

The economic system has become deeper and more complex, but with that depth came overload. To truly understand how to make money, you need to spend a lot of time and study dozens of guides.

As for convenience, this is where the comedy begins. Despite years of development, the interface remains terrible, and information is presented chaotically. Feeling those Crimson Desert vibes? Not a coincidence. The developers did try to improve things, but judging by what I saw, they didn’t succeed.

That’s roughly how the game has changed over 11 years. Now, I suggest discussing what I personally experienced.

Once the game is in your hands, you’re faced with choosing a character. I already mentioned this issue above, but in reality it runs much deeper than it might seem. The game allows for mistakes so archaic that you barely see them anywhere today. There are a great many classes, yet absolutely no one explains how they actually differ from one another. Who fights in melee, who uses pistols, who uses magic and what kind exactly? There’s nothing in the hero selection that clarifies this. Moreover, you can’t even choose your gender. Each gender is somehow tied to a specific class, which I consider a massive oversight. Maybe I just didn’t find some secret button, but I did try, honestly. As a result, right from the start you, a person who has no idea what the world of Black Desert even is, get buried under a ton of chaotic, non-specific information. I picked a class, but even after several hours I still couldn’t tell whether I was playing some kind of magical paladin, a warrior, or an equivalent of a dragon descendant. And are there even dragons in this game?

Then it gets worse. The much-praised character editor does offer quite a lot of interesting settings, but everything feels oddly designed, and turning your character sideways requires holding down two buttons. That alone was enough to raise suspicion. Once you get to sculpting the face, it turns out that none of the dozen head parts can simply be adjusted in a straightforward way. Either the difference from the default state is too extreme, or it’s not noticeable at all. Because of this, digging into the editor becomes completely unappealing, so you end up picking some relatively standard preset or even borrowing one from other players (yes, that’s possible). Just a reminder, I was playing on PS5.

Next came selecting poses and other cosmetic fluff. And once again, it’s unclear why any of these options even exist. The last character creator I genuinely liked was in Baldur's Gate 3. Yes, its options are limited without mods, but at least you could more or less create what you wanted. In Black Desert, this supposedly intuitive first step turns into a trial that, as a newcomer, I had absolutely no desire to endure. You can create something impressive, sure, but it will feel like torture and take an absurd number of hours.

Once your character is ready, it’s time to begin the journey. I was immediately warned that I would be placed on a server with faster progression, like any new player. It sounded like a plus — a chance to see more… That assumption didn’t age well.

The game starts exactly like Crimson Desert does — abruptly, without explaining anything. The protagonist is simply walking through a desert with some woman, doing things based on her instructions. Who they are, where they’re going, what is even happening, and why any of this matters — all of it remains a mystery. And no, not all MMOs do this. I clearly remember the tutorial in World of Warcraft or Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, where each race began in a small starting location, and the player gradually learned combat, progression, and quest systems. You never had to question who you were, what you were doing, or why. And yes, I know that story is traditionally not considered important in games like this, but at the very least the introduction should give the player basic motivation and a goal. If it doesn’t, why stay in the game at all?

Very quickly, you’re introduced to the combat system, which we’ll discuss later, after which the protagonist is either killed or knocked out (I never quite figured it out) and left lying in ruins for many years. Eventually, completely different people dig the character up — researchers studying ancient relics. They’re searching for something called black stones. You’re sent to gather these stones, and that’s when you meet the black spirit, which either exists independently or emerged from one of those stones. The spirit wants to help you become the strongest, while also conveniently keeping the black stones for itself. Meanwhile, the character suddenly recalls a fragment of their past (of course they have amnesia) and unexpectedly sees a cutscene with that same woman from the beginning, who for some reason is fully dubbed in my native language, while the rest of the game only has subtitles. You can feel the chaos, right?

After that, the gameplay becomes more or less standard MMO fare: you kill a dozen of these and those, and eventually encounter a boss. This is effectively the tutorial. Saying I felt disgust would be an understatement. As a veteran gamer, I’m perfectly fine with slaughtering boars or sentient plants, that doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is when the game clearly doesn’t care whether I’m interested or not.

I still had no idea where I was, who all these people and non-people were, what they wanted, or why. The general idea is clear — the writers are trying to recreate the feeling that both you and the protagonist have been lying in the ground for decades, the world has changed, and now you have to adapt. But beyond that idea, there’s nothing. It all strongly reminds me of a mobile online game where characters automatically run from point to point, while you accept quests without reading, wipe out required enemies in pre-highlighted zones, and distribute experience points. If you actually try to pay attention to what characters are saying, the sheer lack of substance and mediocrity of the dialogue becomes physically painful. It doesn’t just fail to engage — it actively pushes you away.

In dialogues, characters regularly forget to open their mouths, and movement animations are either missing or glitchy. Altogether, it creates a persistent feeling that you’ve stumbled into someone else’s party where no one was expecting you. At the same time, even in the starting areas you encounter other players, meaning there are still newcomers — which honestly surprised me.

The active combat system, where you manually input every attack, is one of Black Desert’s core features, but there’s a catch. Right from the start, the player is bombarded with a dozen combos, displayed on the right side in such tiny text that they’re practically useless. The combos vary and include both attack directions and additional button inputs. On average, you’ll need a combination of three different presses. On a gamepad, that’s not really a problem, but there’s another issue — for a newcomer, all these skills differ only visually.

There’s no real strategy or understanding of what each attack actually does. When your character gets knocked out and wakes up years later, the number of combinations hasn’t decreased. As a result, you just mash all the buttons without any training or purpose, just to make something happen and see the enemy’s health bar go down. You can open the menus and study what everything does, but that’s a separate kind of suffering. On top of that, there are simply too many skills to juggle quickly like in a proper slasher. Yet they function according to MMO logic, not like something in the vein of Devil May Cry.

In DMC and similar games, there are also plenty of combos, but every move produces an immediate, tangible result. It might be an area attack, a knockback, or a launcher. Black Desert has none of that. Like in old-school MMOs, all the punching bags just stand in place and barely react to your actions. Even something like a fiery whirlwind you unleash only affects enemy health, not their position or behavior.

If you dig into the combat system settings, it becomes clear that certain attacks enhance others and generally function like a typical MMO progression system. But, for example, there’s no dodge roll, even though it feels like it should be there. This creates a sense of artificiality. You can perform impressive moves like in Ninja Gaiden, but enemies won’t scatter, and the only way to quickly create distance or escape an attack zone is to simply walk away. No evasions, no proper dodging mechanics. There is a block, though it’s unclear why, since there’s no real tactical positioning in combat, and regular enemies attack with the same animation at fixed intervals.

This is where the accelerated experience gain comes in. First, the game provides no clear visual feedback when you level up. By the time I was told to visit a trainer, I had no idea how many free points I had. The progression system is, let’s say, an acquired taste. On top of the dozen skills you already know, new ones are added. Upgrading existing ones isn’t exactly straightforward.

Healing potions are even more confusing. They exist in your inventory, but no one tells you how to use them quickly. Which brings us to another problem familiar to Crimson Desert fans — absolutely terrible menu navigation and interface design.

Even at the character creation stage, I noticed that many basic actions in the game can’t be done just like that. You need to press multiple buttons, open several submenus, and so on. In the actual game, the situation is much worse. At the bottom of the screen, you have an entire row of circular menus. I suspect things are somewhat better on PC, but on PS5 the developers clearly didn’t care about ergonomics at all. These endless circles open dozens of interface submenus, but that’s not all. The pause button opens yet another menu with a full list of settings and stats. Immediately, you’re hit with activity rewards, some mysterious war table, and other things that should normally be introduced gradually. On top of that, none of the menus or text are adapted for TVs, remaining small and uncomfortable to read.

Characters frequently engage in dialogue, and each time this opens an additional window. At the bottom, there’s always a button to repeat the final line or exit the dialogue. Which means you can’t just press the usual circle button on a gamepad. First, you have to select the active button using L1–R1, and only then press Exit. I’ve rarely seen a system this clunky and inconvenient. And again, updates are still being released, but the developers seem perfectly satisfied, constantly improving things — just not the ones that actually matter.

The same goes for the graphics. If Black Desert is considered beautiful, it’s definitely not on PS5. The visuals aren’t just bad or blurry — they’re awful. It looks like the lowest settings from ten years ago, with overexposed colors and textures covered by a hazy blur that smears everything. If your PC delivers a similar experience, you might want to check out our list — Best RPGs for Low-End PCs and Laptops in 2026 — TOP 25 Role-Playing Games. You’ll definitely find something better there. After 30 minutes, my eyes started to hurt. There is an option in the settings to download improved textures, but the game asks you to restart to apply them. When I did, all graphics settings were reset to default, and the menu once again suggested downloading textures and restarting. In other words, you simply can’t fix the visuals. Right before publishing this review, I decided to check the graphics again, and high-quality textures were already installed. The only problem — I still couldn’t see any difference. The final touch was that at some point the screen randomly dimmed several times, as if someone lowered the brightness. There was no reason for it, and I hadn’t changed any settings.

As a result of this experiment, I came to the conclusion that Black Desert doesn’t need new players at all. It survives on the fanatical loyalty of veterans who feel too invested to quit. It truly is a dinosaur from a past era — impressive in size, but still operating with a tiny brain inside. Moreover, many of its existing problems carried over into Crimson Desert, and now Pearl Abyss is rushing to fix them after facing feedback not from loyal fans, but from new players. Meanwhile, the developers themselves were perfectly fine with everything for 11 years. Immersing yourself in Black Desert in 2026 is practically impossible. The situation is probably better on PC, but the fact that nothing has been properly fixed for consoles over so many years speaks for itself. More does not always mean better, and this MMO is a perfect example of that.