Black Prophecy: Revisited

About 4 months on from my original preview of Black Prophecy I have came back to see how the game is after its release in Europe

When I left Black Prophecy closed beta in January, it had the basis of a great game but felt rather shallow in depth and despite a thoroughly good fun prologue/tutorial, if a little buggy and lengthy, it definitely lacked something to keep a user drawn in. Add on top of this multiple patches, server downtimes and server lag issues, it was quite clear that the beta testers were in for a rough ride early on.

To start with, the server numbers have been increased from 1, a single German server, to 2, a German erver and a UK-based server. This, in amongst some other improvements, has reduced the lag by quite a bit, though with any MMO there are areas which collect people like a spiders web and everything slows down around there.

Bugs, and missions... There are still some bugs in there and the mission variety is still disappointing but improvements have been made and it feels less repetitive than before. The balance between mission difficulties and rewards seems to have been addressed too with still some room to improve.

Ships? They still fly around, they still blast things quite happily. The flight style still feels weird but after an hour or two of adjusting then you'll be tearing the AI to pieces unless they have one of those seriously overpowered weapons which you can't seem to dodge and will vapourise you in about 5 seconds flat. Yes, that 'balance issue' is still there.

Well, what can I say about Black Prophecy in it's current state? Okay so it is still laggy in areas and rather buggy when it feels like it or in certain missions, though there have been some significant improvements in both areas. It is also still rather shallow with not enough depth in missions or options for the player to explore, but once again this area has seen some improvement. I still feel that Seeker Cannons are a touch overpowered in comparison to other weapons but it could just be that I'm rusty and out of practice in the cockpit.

Sad to say that it feels like most other MMO releases; Unfinished with some lingering bugs and lacking in overall content. Hopefully it improves soon.

Point that made me grumble: I was forced to play through the Prologue yet again as my characters had been wiped since closed beta. It's long, it's frustrating after multiple plays and when you can't skip it, it's not very helpful. Whilst I understand that things had to be wiped, it's still a bit meh!

ElcomeSoft Score:  6.0/10