I noticed an ad for this on the Xbox store last night. Anyone planning on trying it? Standard edition is $30.
I played it extensively on the PC when it launched.
Gameplay is fun, there are so many ways to go about the game. If you just want to fuck around and don't really care about progression you have options like crafting, farming, basically being a producer of goods.
The exploration was my favorite part. There are a ton of different enemies to fight and a massive overworld to explore with some of the most varied terrain I've seen.
The problem with the game is that it starts off quickly, then becomes a massive time sink. I reached a certain point where I was playing for hours just to move ahead a small step when I finally just gave it up. I basically had to choose between paying for shit in the cash shop or making BDO a full-time job. I chose option 3 and said fuck it. I still haven't seen the whole world, and they've added significantly to it since launch.
Character creation and editing is a hard pill to swallow as well. While there are plenty of armor types in the game, changing colors or getting cosmetic pieces costs real money. If you want a remotely unique character it's going to cost money.
The other issue that game had when I was playing is with the streaming environments. When this game was released my PC was running anything at max settings with no issues whatsoever, usually with massive headroom. Despite my PC indicating that I had plenty of Vram to spare and my temps were down in the low 50s, this game's frame rate would tank randomly. The environment LOD pop-in was all over the place. A tree a mile away would LOD up full while a tree ten feet away would look like the trees a mile off should look then pop back to normal. You can get screenshots from this game that are insane, but in motion shit was all over the place.
I think is Pearl Abyss was a little less Pearl Abuse, this game could have had some real legs on it. I still kind of want to get back into it but I know it's not going to work out in the end.