Crimson Desert review: A beautiful hot mess

It's a hard game to vibe with despite the gorgeous world

Crimson Desert was released back in March on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC, with plenty of conflicting opinions surrounding the game. I was personally looking forward to it for some time, and now that I’ve had the privilege of playing for over 200 hours, I can say I’m glad to finally share my thoughts, from what feels unnecessary to what’s integral to the experience. The best way to describe the game is a jack of all trades, but master of none. It is undoubtedly the biggest open-world title I’ve ever played, and I’m not just referring to the map size; there’s so much to do. The issue is that a lot of the gameplay lacks depth. Playing does feel very much like Pearl Abyss’ first game, Black Desert Online, which makes sense, seeing as Crimson Desert was originally supposed to be an MMO. There’s a lot of good in the game, just gatekept by the bad stuff, but in its best moments, Crimson Desert will have you exploring the map while hunting down all kinds of secrets, maybe even spending your time decorating your house while you improve your settlement.

Now, the main reason this review is coming out so much later after the game’s launch is twofold. I wanted to make sure I could experience basically everything the game had to offer before I wrote about it, and I wanted to give Pearl Abyss a chance to fix some of the things that they knew were wrong with the game at launch. As it stands, the Crimson Desert has been patched ~30 times since launch, and in my opinion each update has offered substantial improvements, and I feel enough of these fixes have accumulated to finally judge the game in earnest. 

Opening landscape

A confusing story with no direction

Crimson Desert may have one of the most perplexing, incoherent, messy stories I’ve ever played. The very beginning introduces us to our protagonist, the bad guys, and teaches you the game’s controls, which are questionable to say the least (we’ll get to that part later). While it does a good job introducing the game’s characters in a pretty cool way, it doesn’t give us much to get invested in. Kliff, the star of the show, is taken away from his clan soon after, and we spend most of the early game slowly gathering our compatriots back together.

Once the “tutorial” concludes, we are transported to a place called the Abyss (essentially a palace in the sky) and are provided little context as to how we got there or why, though we are instructed by a witch who can turn into a bird, alongside a mysterious bookkeeper, that we are to keep anyone else from entering. No reason as to why exactly, just that we need to. After which we jump from this sky island and fly back down to the landscape of Pywel. How? With the power of the Abyss, of course.

^{The mysterious witch who is also a bird}

The worst part is that a lot of these otherworldly characters who come from the Abyss speak mostly in riddles, so things inherently don’t make much sense. Unfortunately, this trend continues much further into the game, providing more questions than answers. I think this is mostly due to how the game was developed, with the story literally the last thing they worked on. Narratives are important and can definitely take a game like this to the next level, and I hope the developers work on that more in their next project, ‘cause the story is pretty rough in Crimson Desert. 

There’s more than one playable character

Believe it or not, there are 2 optional characters you can play to add some variety to the game. But to be completely honest, they don’t do a whole lot to shake up your gameplay, considering Kliff can do almost everything the other two characters are capable of; they simply use slightly different weapons. One of your companions is Oongka, who’s an Orc and Kliff’s best friend, or at least he’s presented in such a way. He specializes in using two-handed weapons and Cannons; one fun piece of gear he gets that Kliff doesn’t is a Jetpack to traverse the world. The next character is Damiane; she’s got a decent story being an ex-noble seeking revenge for her teacher. Damiane’s gameplay is mostly straightforward; she’s built around speed and quick movement. Unfortunately, Damiane doesn’t offer anything unique to the experience beyond her story.

While additional playable characters are cool and all, the feature more so feels like a nothingburger. Extra playable characters don’t add much of anything to the core game. And maybe if the characters weren’t as bland as Kliff, we might have something to work with, but that’s not what we’re given, which really stinks. If the devs wanted to add different playable characters, here’s how I would go about it. Provide the option to play through the full story with these characters, or at least give them more than one small story arc each that can be finished in a handful of minutes. Another route they could have taken would be to make the characters actually feel different to control, because they play so similarly there’s not much of a gameplay reason to swap from Kliff. As it stands, there’s no actual reason for this feature to exist.

^{Kliff, Oongka, and Damiane}

Great combat, but poor controls 

As an action game, Crimson Desert’s controls and combat are very important, and I have to say the developer dropped the ball here. Many of the controls are either unintuitive or clunky, and in some aspects they don’t make sense. Like, can we please not bind the jump button and interact button to the same button? The number of times I jumped when just trying to interact with an item on the floor is absolutely infuriating. With that being said, I do want to note that Pearl Abyss has gone to great lengths to reduce the friction provided by the poor design of the controls, an example of which is giving players the option to customize their keybinds, which helps a ton, especially when many of the inputs have dual functions that can lead to the wrong move. Combat thankfully doesn’t pose too many issues, at least initially, given there aren’t that many moves early game. There’s a skill tree to unlock more, but it’s a bit lackluster due to its small size. The tree is broken up into 3 branches, one for attack-related moves, one for your flight/mobility moves, and one for your more magic-type attacks. Each of these provides a meaningful impact to the gameplay, keeping combat fresh at the very least, though I wish there were more options to create crazier builds. 

So your skill set does broaden with the new abilities, not to mention the gear that you’ll earn from exploring, leveling up, and completing quests. There’s also tons of gear you can earn from defeating bosses and exploring the map, which offer many different powerful effects and abilities. A personal favorite is a sword that allows you to summon a swarm of crows with each heavy attack. Kliff can also eventually unlock a Spider-Man-like swing ability using his abyss technique, and can also unlock improved unarmed strikes, say if using a sword isn’t really your thing. This is good as it provides players with a few different ways to tackle combat/exploration in meaningful ways. Its diverse combat is where the game shines; that and plenty of exploration go hand in hand.

^{Kliff’s skill tree}

Challenging fights

This is either going to be the most fun part of the game or the least fun depending on how you do with challenging bosses that punish you for small mistakes. There are 2 types of fights in the game: first is horde-style combat where you just fight what feels like endless mobs, and then there are the boss fights. When taking over forts or bases, you are more than likely going to fight off mobs first, followed by a boss at the end. These specific activities take the most time to perform, taking roughly 30 minutes on average to complete. The boss fights on their own used to take just as long, if not longer, though Pearl Abyss believed them to be over-tuned because within the first week or so the devs nerfed the lot of ‘em. Lowering both their health and damage. While I agree that some of the bosses went a little bit overboard before they were patched, I don’t think such a drastic change to the other end was necessary. It’s a new game; give us time to figure stuff out, learn mechanics, gear up, and maybe even find some cheese. 

^{Multi-man combat}

The Reed Devil, for example, originally did way too much damage and just took way too long to kill. Combined with his ability to summon clones to attack while you’re busy doing the “boss mechanic” destroying his totems, he ultimately felt nearly impossible to beat.  I was stuck on him for about two and a half hours, but that’s not the best reason to nerf him into oblivion. It reminded me of my time in Elden Ring trying to overcome its ridiculous bosses; I needed to git gud. Though I do see how such difficulty can be a problem, I believe it’s good to reward players for prepping for the more powerful boss they’ve been eyeing. Most of the game’s bosses, aside from the challenge they provide, do a great job making their fights a spectacle; big flashy moves and small transitional cutscenes add a lot to the immersion and grandeur of it all. 

^{Kearush the Slayer and The Reed Devil}

Not to spoil anything, but my favorite boss is one you will find in Pailune; it has just about everything that I touched on and blends these mechanics together perfectly. The cutscenes aren’t overdone, the dialog isn’t too on the nose or cringy, it’s just a perfect balance of gameplay and story. Overall, I think Pearl Abyss has done a pretty good job with the boss fights both before and after the patch, though I do miss the original balancing at times. 

There’s a beautiful world to explore with fun things to do

^{Different areas in Pywel}

If there’s anything I want to really drive home, it’s that the world of Pywel is absolutely beautiful with many gorgeous environments to explore. The devs even managed to make a desert look appealing, somehow. They added so many different biomes that indeed keep the game fresh. Despite the name Crimson Desert, you don’t actually get there until roughly 30+ hours into the game, which is admittedly a little weird. Aside from that, I have nothing but praise for the game world. Coupled with optimization that’s truly baffling in this day and age, where every AAA game releases and barely functions, Crimson Desert runs silky smooth and looks gorgeous doing it. There were some bugs initially, but with the amount of patches the game has received since launch, things run much better these days. 

^{Snowy mountain of Hernand}

Each area also contains plenty of secrets that provide powerful gear with all kinds of fun effects, often unlocked through challenging puzzles that reward you when you properly explore. Aside from the game’s exploration, there’s plenty else to do, from gambling, racing horses, contributing to the stock market, decorating your house, and my personal favorite, fishing. The world and world-building are by far my favorite parts of the game, and if there is ever a sequel, I really hope the devs expand on this exact kind of sandbox. 

^{Open grasslands of Pailune}

I love this game but…

I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time with Crimson Desert, about 200 hours worth, just casually wandering, uncovering the mysteries of Pywell, and fighting tons of bad guys. Honestly, if we just removed the “main story,” the game would probably be better off. There’s already so much that the game offers, and most of it is pretty engaging as a sandbox, but being left with Kliff and his poor narrative really hurt the overall package. I truly do hope whatever comes next really sticks the landing in the narrative aspect and doesn’t change anything about the overall world-building. Things may have started a little rough, but Pearl Abyss did a good job fixing a lot of the game’s issues, and to this day, they are still patching the game, fixing bugs, and adding quality-of-life features. For anyone looking for a big adventure filled with bosses to fight and puzzles to solve, this game is for you. If you are looking for a strong narrative or characters to invest yourself in, Crimson Desert will likely miss the mark. Ambition almost struck this game down, but diligence and listening to the fans saved it from falling into the Abyss.

Pros

• Beautiful visuals
• Fun and engaging combat/puzzles

Cons

• Poor narrative
• Uninteresting cast