Choose My Adventure: Falling in love with the Lahn in Black Desert

As much as I was hoping for some time with the Guardian that I pre-made ahead of the class’ arrival, the Choose My Adventure voting public’s will be done, and that will is to take up the Lahn class. Honestly, though, I think your collective wisdom is merited here, because holy crap is the Lahn fun.

I should perhaps set the scene for my previous experiences with Black Desert, this month’s chosen game, before I go too much further. I’ve tried to hop into this game a number of times, having purchased it during one of its many moments it went on sale. Every time I’ve tried this game, I’ve always bounced off of it, due to either having a potato machine or not finding the gameplay compelling to not really giving a toss about the story it was trying to tell; I was basically being told to care about a demonic fart cloud with horse teeth. That’s… asking a lot.

Time away has healed up at least a few of those divides, though. I still am not finding anything compelling about Chompy McCloud, but my machine (and, presumably, the Remastered update) has improved things in terms of game performance, and the Lahn class has begun to endear itself to me.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I started making my Lahn. All I knew for sure is that she appeared to be a kung fu artist of some sort who dislikes wearing pants. On those fronts I don’t appear to be wrong, but the style of kung fu that the Lahn uses is incredibly engrossing.

I’m not sure what the weapon the Lahn uses, but it’s effectively a slicing blade on the end of a length of silk. She, effectively, is swinging around a weaponized belt buckle. I know a few guys from one of the high schools I went to who would kill to be able to do that. This basically means that most of her attacks involve long, sweeping arcs, huge circular slashes, or strong, arcing whips in a straight line or vertically. It also means that she’s constantly in motion like this sort of stylish, dancing dervish of death.

She’s karate Simon Belmont. She’s lady Kratos. She’s also the kind of combat class I didn’t know I needed. At last, there’s a compelling kung fu artist class and a class that uses a flail or whip-type weapon. I don’t know that any of you can truly appreciate how long I’ve been waiting for something like the Lahn.

Of course, most of that wouldn’t really matter if the actual act of using my cloth whip on some fools wasn’t fun to do, and holy goodness is this fun to do. I don’t recall the combat of BDO being this satisfying, but this really is one of the most fluid action combat models I’ve seen in an MMO.

Most of that is probably attributed to the general flow and sense of motion of the Lahn, but I also think a great deal of that is linked to the way combat controls work. It’s not quite hotbar-based so much as a series of combination button presses, either using left and right clicks, the F key, and the Q key in combination with movement keys or shift keys. I’m pretty sure you can drop skills into hotbars and push buttons in classic MMO style, but I am having way more fun using button press combos.

The way BDO fighting works feels less like an MMO and more like a fighting game. I’m actually looking at skills as openers, linkers, and closers. I’m considering what buttons to press in order to create combo paths and having fun finding which ones are best. I’m keeping an eye on animation timing to appreciate when would be the right time to hit my next buttons. I’m not learning a class so much as learning a character.

I’m also entirely possibly overthinking things here, but this is what’s fun for me right now.

Considering the game’s story is not fun, I’ll take whatever enjoyment I can get. I’m maybe being led along by the nose here, in my defense; leveling in BDO feels lightning quick, and the game has auto-pathing from objective to objective for an extremely on-the-rails feel. This would be a complaint in other games, but so far in BDO’s case, this is a boon, as it gets me to the next series of fights and the next few moments I can get to learn more of what my pretty little Lahn can do.

I took a moment to consult with Carlo, our resident Black Desert columnist (check out his awesome Desert Oasis write-ups if you already haven’t), and it would seem that it’s not too early to plan for the future in terms of what I’m going to do next, so that’s the subject of this week’s poll: to Succession or to Awaken.

I might be counting my chickens before they hatch here, but I was assured that progression should continue to be simple. I’m going to continue to blitz through the levels and get more acclimated to the attacks that are at my disposal. I just need to knuckle down and focus. Which, really, I don’t think is going to be a problem because hot damn is the Lahn just silky to play and watch.

Basically, I want to do more twirly, whippy, spinny moves. I don’t want to lose my flail. I love my flail, but if the Awakening is better by leaps and bounds, then I bow to the already demonstrated wisdom of you fine folks. So, what do I do next?

As per usual, polling is going to wrap up at 1:00 p.m. EST this coming Friday, February 7th. In the meantime, I’ve got more paths to automatically follow along and more groups of baddies just standing around minding their own business to carve through. I can’t wait to continue stylishly whipping faces with a pretty fashion accessory.