Crimson Desert REVIEW

Crimson Desert is upon us and the hype levels are astronomical. So, the question is: does it live up to that? The short answer: Yes and No. Okay, bare with me here because, much like Crimson Desert, this review is gonna be a wild ride.

And just to clarify: this is a review of the PC version of the game as sent over by developers Pearl Abyss.

First up, what is Crimson Desert? Well it’s an open world actioner (not RPG) where you play as a character called Kliff, a skilled swordsman who is part of a group called the Greymanes. Some shenanigans unfold and you are essentially thrust into the GIANT world of Pywel in order to reunite your lost brothers and sisters in arms.

When I say thrust into this world, I mean that quite literally because there’s not a lot of hand holding here. The game encourages you to explore at your own pace, and it doesn’t get bogged down by long-winded tutorials or cutscenes. You do the intro, and then you have full reign to explore this vast landscape.

Before getting into the meat of this review I want to address the RPG statement that I made earlier. Crimson Desert seems like it would be the perfect setting for a heavy RPG, but this isn’t that. You do have some options here in terms of building your character to your specific play style through skill trees and upgrades that are available to you for completing side activities and collecting special artefacts. But there’s no creating your own character or having different dialogue options. The things that are all staples of the RPG genre just aren’t present here. So you have to keep that in mind if that was something you were looking forward to going into it.

At first I was a little sad that you can’t customise your own protagonist, but hey, not every open world game has to be an RPG. Also as a side note - if you don’t like the look of your character, there are multiple different outfits and helmets you can kit them out in. You can also find dye in the world to change the colour of your gear which is a nice touch. There’s also more than one playable character, so you do have options if Kliff isn’t your thing.

Now let’s talk combat, because that is a huge part of Crimson Desert. At first it starts basic, but there’s plenty of opportunities to upgrade your skills and arsenal as you progress. At the core you have a combination of light and heavy attacks, and you also have a shield for blocking and parrying. Then there’s the dodge mechanic as well. Combat isn’t as dodge heavy as say a Souls game but once you start fighting the tougher bosses, you’re gonna have to get comfortable with the full range of combat options in order to overcome them.

On a basic level, this game does the fundamentals fine. But it really clicks once you start unlocking the different moves, weapons and traversal options. You’ll fight a variety of different enemy types from bandits with spears, to some… bigger enemies that I don’t want to spoil, and there’s PLENTY of bosses waiting for you in the harsh lands of Pywel.

The last thing on combat is that sometimes you’ll be fighting the camera more than the actual enemies on screen because it has a tendency to be a bit erratic during combat segments, which can feel a little annoying at times.

Moving on to the narrative, I can’t say it completely hooked me. I can’t give anything away in terms of what happens but I think the environmental storytelling and world building here outshines the actual main storyline. The things I love often come down to how you have the freedom to interact with this world and what you do in it. If you don’t really fancy doing the main questline then you don’t really have to, you have the option to go and do a million other different things to pass the time in this world and it feels like everything you do choose to do matters.

Your actions have consequences, with the reputation system built into each faction, and what you do affects the world around you. If you want to be a menace, you’re going to make life difficult for yourself as bounties will be placed on you, and the locals will fear you. This system has weight and encourages you to be more good than evil and in my play through, the few times I did commit crimes it was usually by accident. For example I was getting a little overzealous riding my horse through someone’s fields and ended up knocking a few fences over. Well, that’s not gonna fly here, it’s vandalism and that’s a crime. So I ended up getting captured and put in jail. You can do more severe things too which can totally alter the reputation you have for certain factions. These instances make the game world feel immersive and you have to think about your actions otherwise it can come back to bite you in the ass.

Now lets talk gameplay, because there is a LOT to this game. First up I want to mention the sheer amount of different mechanics that are assigned to your controller buttons. In the pre-release kit, the devs recommended playing on controller, which is fine but the amount of different shortcuts, inventory managing and button combinations are huge, and it just feels like there’s too many actions and not enough buttons. One thing that really bugged me about the control scheme is the jump button being X (Square on PS5), which is fine but then the interact button is also X. So I constantly found myself jumping away from people when I was trying to talk to them. It gets a little bit frustrating when it keeps happening and it feels like the game doesn’t know how to prioritise what actions you’re trying to do.

We also have platforming in this game too, which… isn’t the best. There’s a mechanic that let’s you precision jump, which in theory is neat, but it totally breaks up the flow of the gameplay having to stop and manually aim your jumps.

I also wanna briefly touch on the puzzles present here because some of them really had me scratching my head. Sometimes the solutions are a convoluted gameplay mechanic you learned 10 hours ago and sometimes they’re literally just spelled out for you. I’m not against hard puzzles, but the game doesn’t offer up solutions incase you get stuck. Of course this will be remedied post launch with the advent of guides, but with some of them I really struggled with what I had to do. In my experience, it becomes more frustrating than rewarding.

Crimson Desert is a really interesting game, it’s hard to make comparisons of what this actually feels like because it does a little bit of everything. Sure I can’t point to one specific thing that this game does that is better than any other game, but it’s the sheer number of gameplay options available that make it unlike anything I’ve ever played before. You wanna ride a dragon? You can do that! You wanna sit and fish for 30 minutes? You can do that too. Wanna become the armwrestling champion of a particular town? This game has you covered. You can hunt, you can cook, there’s even a strategy game within this game thanks to the stronghold mechanics. The list goes on and on, and truly before playing I thought this was going to be too good to be true.

This game is huge, it has action and it has spectacle but it also has heart. You can tell the development team really tried to make the smaller moments matter. There’s a beauty to just stopping for a moment to take in the scenery. It's the way they handle the mundane. You can just get lost in doing simple tasks like mining or fishing. You're always allowed to get distracted by the smaller things and that’s what really makes this game stand out. Options.

But then on the flip side of this if you have a limited amount of gaming time, it might not be right for you. First of all it takes a while to start kicking into gear, and that’s if you just make a beeline for the story missions. The sheer amount of mechanics, button combinations and different information that’s thrown at you can be very jarring. It’s one of those games that you kind of have to dedicate all of your time to in order to get the full experience and to some that might sound like hell.

One of my biggest issues is just how it treats your time. Sometimes it’s just too slow. There’s a lot of just following characters while they talk (sort of like Red Dead 2), the dialogue in the quests is very waffley but there’s no option to skip. There is a fast forward button but it’s not quick enough. Sometimes when you’re doing side quests and you just want to get to the action, the long winded dialogue really halts the pacing.

Another thing is the saving and re-loading files. When you load into the game there’s this big long loading screen disguised as a cutscene and this plays every single time. It seems to last forever and it would be so much nicer if the game just loaded you in without that. Also when you die, you may be thrown back into the world much further away from the location you died at which at the start of the game, when you don’t have as many traversal options, can be very frustrating.

So in terms of performance I played this on Steam with a machine running a 4080, and had absolutely no issues with performance. The game ran smoothly and I have no complaints about that. BUT I think what’s worrying people is the lack of footage from the console versions. It almost feels as though the devs are hiding which doesn’t really spark confidence with consumers. I am hoping the console versions of this game run as well as the PC version does because it’s buttery smooth and its visuals look genuinely impressive.

Overall Crimson Desert shines when it’s letting you do your own thing. There’s something beautiful about seeing a mountain in the distance and deciding ‘yeah I’m gonna go there’ then getting distracted by 20 different things on your journey. The fun is in the adventure, and when you’re not tethered to the story I think this game is absolutely fantastic. It’s a chunk of a game and fans of this sort of genre are going to be eating well with this one.

It’s big, ambitious and it really does do everything so props to Pearl Abyss for making an awesome game.

Review Score: ★★★★½

Game code supplied by publisher for review, played on PC.