I don’t know anything about Bless Unleashed, really. I mean, I’ve been keeping a sleepy eye on it ever since I stumbled on a trailer video by accident, but other than that, all I know is that it’s another MMO coming to consoles.
Why I’m a sucker for free-to-play MMO’s, I’ll never know. There’s something appealing about a relatively risk-free romp around an open world using any variation of hero you wish (I prefer the leggy female types, personally). So whenever I hear of a “new” (most of them have already been on PC for ages) MMO hitting the consoles, I usually try them out at the first opportunity.
Well, I missed my first opportunity. Bless Unleashed held its first closed beta a few months ago, and I wasn’t even aware of it until I saw players streaming it. By then it was too late to get in, but when they announced they would be having another and opened sign-ups, I made sure I threw my name in there. And now it’s time! Or, it’s almost time. Pre-loading began today, July 10, but the beta won’t begin until tomorrow. I’ve already entered my beta key, and am currently downloading it to my X.
As I mentioned above, I’ve tried my share of MMO’s, and honestly few have held my attention for long. The ones that have, incidentally, have been those of the not free-to-play variety. The “free” ones, well they usually keep my attention for a while, until the pay mechanics start getting in the way of my enjoyment.
The latest one on my list has been Black Desert, the Xbox version. I never got to play the PC version; I tried to run the benchmark test back in the day and my computer was like “fuck this” and turned itself off. So that was that. The reason I mention Black Desert though, is that aesthetically, it looks very similar to Bless Unleashed (and on top of that, I think they’re both Korean). It will probably be the basis for comparison when I’m checking out the beta tomorrow.
It’s not like it won’t be a high bar to hit though; Black Desert is fun in short spurts, but the game is horribly janky on the console, and the lack of UI customization options leaves the screen much too cluttered for my tastes. I play it from time to time, but not nearly as often as I was hoping. That and the economy system in BD is much too convoluted and intricate for me to bother with. I like MMO’s when they’re at their most basic. Give me quests, let me go do those quests. It’s in that regard that Black Desert is fun, but then you can’t even get some quests until someone “likes” you enough, through a mini-game that can get quite annoying after a while.
So we’ll see. If they keep all that extraneous crap to a minimum, and keep the frame-rate at a decent number, they’ll already be beating Black Desert, in my opinion. It’s just a question if they’re willing to put in the time to optimize it.
