This is a big game.
By Ameer Ammar
Crimson Desert is a game that I have been obsessively playing since its launch last month. I have about 115 hours in, and I am nowhere near completion. This is my experience so far:
Crimson Desert has changed a lot since last month. In a lot of ways, it’s a very different game from the one I played on release, and it’s a very different game from the one I played 2 weeks ago. It has had one of the most rapid update cycles I've been witness to. Core mechanics are being overhauled entirely at what feels like a weekly basis, so this review probably won't be fully accurate to what the game is in another month. Keeping that in mind, Crimson Desert is one of the finest open-world games I have ever experienced.
The entire highlight of Crimson Desert and why you should play it is the open-world exploration. Simply put, this is one of the best open worlds ever created. There is something unique to find behind every single corner, whether that's a secret boss fight, some cool piece of gear, some upgrade, or puzzles to unlock fast travel points and skill points. The world of Crimson Desert feels like a modern take on Skyrim, where the scale of the world feels almost impossible to even believe. In my 115 hours, I have only focused on Pailune and Hernand, only two of the five regions in this game. Overall, they make up about 40% of the map, which at 115 hours feels almost impossible to believe, but this game has entire cities and unique environments, biomes that I have not seen yet myself. Apparently, one of the regions even has a train. I could not praise Pearly Abyss's work more on this open world. I have not been this impressed with exploration since Elden Ring and Red Dead 2.
There is a ridiculous amount of detail across every corner, for example, I was sending out comrades to repair a building in an old town, the most insane part was when I realized this building was actually... being built. Like every time I'd revisit that town, I'd see it had made progress and was slowly becoming complete. This is the kind of detail that you see in a 30 hour game, not a 200+ hours one that is as massive as this.
On the gameplay front, Crimson Desert started off confusing. The controls take a long time to grasp, and it’s an overall strange layout as this is a game that wants to allow you to do everything, which means there are many button combinations that you need to keep in mind. Thankfully, this got pretty simple, and the controls feel natural about 8 hours into the game. The combat is a blast. It is very responsive and has an almost "Dynasty Warriors" energy as you take on what feels like hundreds of enemies at a time in these major forts and just cut through them. The animation work is spectacular as there is a huge variety of finishers here that always keeps combat feeling impactful. Being able to pull off WWE-style unarmed finishers in the middle of combat is one of those hilarious additions that works ridiculously well. Suplexing an enemy so hard that the ground quakes and all their buddies stumble over allows you to chain the suplex into finishers. Never got old.
Where the combat stumbles is in the boss fights. The problem with the boss fights is that the parry windows are generally too short. Too often, these boss fights feel more like a battle of attrition of how long you can tank damage and spam heals until the boss falls rather than having to learn their combos and parry windows. The dodging also runs into this exact same issue where it’s far too inconsistent in boss fights to make timing actually useful to learn. As a result, CD's combat shines in group fights and major encounters but is overall disappointing in boss fights. That's not to say the boss fights are boring. They are usually visual spectacles that are amazing to look at, but not very fun to play.
As pretty much everyone who played the game knows, its biggest flaw is the story. While it eventually does get going and there are some truly great massive battles, I am now at Chapter 9, 115 hours in, and the game only now introduced a proper plot for its wider world and a real conflict. For most of the game, the story feels like it was an afterthought. Especially in its first 8 hours or so, where there is frankly no story, and you are stuck doing meandering fetch quests until the plot eventually gets going. I don't think this is an awful story, but it isn't a good one either. It kind of just exists. I personally wasn't too bothered by this, however, because everything else about this game, in my opinion, is spectacular. So bad writing has felt more like a small blip in the experience rather than a major flaw. I highly recommend speedrunning through to Chapter 4, which is when the camp system opens up, then forgetting about the main story until 70 hours later when you finish up Hernand and upgrade your camp to its fullest.
Crimson Desert has gotten so many patches, so quickly, that it’s likely they'll fix all my personal complaints very shortly as they did with the camera, for example, which was a major issue for me as it’s far too zoomed out and high up, feeling like mission control from space rather than a normal camera. Thankfully, they added camera customization in a patch, and now I have my RDR2-style camera.
Overall, Crimson Desert's flaws are far too minor for me personally to complain much about. The exploration and gameplay are impeccable, with the best open world I have played in many years. This is a game that should not be missed. 115 hours in, and it somehow still feels like I've seen nothing of Crimson Desert. I still have more than half the game left to explore and see. And somehow, I am not even close to being bored yet. So I'll see you for my final review whenever I finish this game, likely over the 200-hour mark.
CURRENT VERDICT - 9.5/10 - MUST-PLAY