Exception, Not the Rule
There are games that are like roller coasters. But Crimson Desert is a case where, after climbing to the top, the car suddenly derails and flies in the void for a long time before reluctantly returning to the next round. This is a clear example of how a project with colossal potential can lose itself along the way and turn into an ordinary open-world grind. However, let's not jump the gun — first, let's figure out what this South Korean beast is.
The events of Crimson Desert unfold in the fantasy world of Pywel, where the Middle Ages, steampunk, and ancient magic intertwine, and the continent is torn apart by conflicts between dozens of factions. The story follows Cliff from the Gray Wolves squad — part of a united people of barbarians who guarded their native lands until everything collapsed in one night.
The Gray Wolves camp is attacked by the Black Bears clan, and the skirmish almost immediately turns into a massacre. The squad is defeated: some people disappear, the rest die — along with Cliff. But the story doesn't end there. He wakes up in the Abyss — one of the mystical floating islands. Who pulled him from the other world and why is unknown. One thing is clear: Cliff returns to gather the survivors and try to win back his homeland.
Initially, Crimson Desert was conceived as a prequel to the MMORPG Black Desert Online, but over time it turned into an independent project. It would seem that the plot should come to the fore — however, this does not happen. The developers did not hide that the story here is just a backdrop for the adventure. This was said in early previews, but only now the scale of the problem becomes obvious.
If ideally the game should captivate from the first minutes, then Crimson Desert acts exactly the opposite. The first chapters hardly advance the plot, and the first 10-20 hours (depending on your pace) are more exhausting than exciting, showering the player with a heap of mechanics and systems without clear explanations. Formally, there is training, but it is presented clumsily. Cliff rushes from task to task, helping everyone he meets — and the locals have plenty of problems: one had a cow stolen, another had a goat stolen, the third lost a ram. Mmm... this is, of course, an epic.
Only by the third chapter does a sense of progress appear. Having earned the trust of the local Marquis, Cliff gets the opportunity to set up a new Gray Wolves camp and with renewed zeal takes up the search for comrades. Gradually, interest awakens: camp dynamics arise, individual scenes are reminiscent of Red Dead Redemption 2. But all this is implemented just as mediocrely — through monotonous chains of quests in the spirit of "bring-serve..." and so on.
The atmosphere is generously poured, but Cliff remains an emotionless log — and after a dozen hours of training, this no longer saves. At some point, you want to exclaim: "Can there be at least some variety?" — "Yes!" — the developers seem to answer and immediately slip in a three-phase boss, who clearly explains: you won't be able to complete the game by moving only through the plot — you will have to master other activities as well.
We will talk about them later, but it is important to immediately stipulate: I did not reach the final of Crimson Desert. I simply did not have enough time for a full playthrough — I had about four and a half days at my disposal, taking into account downloads, updates, and text preparation. During this time, I spent a little more than 50 hours in the game and reached the ninth chapter.
How many chapters there are in total — we will find out after the release, but for now it is difficult to say what part I saw. Judging by the amount of open territories, the number of bosses and activities, it feels like this is only a quarter or a third of all the content. The game is really gigantic — and there is no end in sight. How much "content" I mastered in 50 hours can be seen in the screenshot below.
Perhaps this is one of the key problems. There is no point in going into a detailed analysis of each chapter. Suffice it to say that the game "opens up" only after 30 hours — around the sixth chapter, when you finally get a sense of the scale and epic that it was all started for.
The sixth chapter is a full-fledged military campaign. Lengthy, multi-hour, exhausting — and at the same time truly exciting. You are constantly on the move and continuously changing roles: you break through the thick of the battle, scattering dozens of enemies, pull out the wounded, raise banners, strengthening the morale of allies. Then — artillery, sabotage, raids into the rear, work as a gunner. Battle with a mini-boss, an operation to destroy local "tanks", a siege of the castle — and, finally, a battle in the throne room.
This chapter made me fall in love with the game and forgive it for many flaws for a while. Such epic, staged medieval battle scenes, where the player becomes a direct participant in the events, with due scale and direction, are rare.
The problem is that this is the peak. The brightest episode for all the time spent in Crimson Desert. After it, the pace drops again — not as dramatically as at the beginning, but quite noticeably. And that's the whole point: everything that the game was sold in trailers is really here. But such moments are exceptions, and in between them there are protracted failures. So let's get back to our sheep. And not only.
A Mighty Set of Activities
The developers are frankly stretching the playthrough, forcing the player to be distracted by side activities and secondary systems. Sometimes the main campaign simply stops and requires, for example, to upgrade the camp — this takes several hours. But in an attempt to assemble the "game of dreams", Crimson Desert has crammed dozens of mechanics. On paper — an impressive scale, in practice — constant frustration.
In addition to the standard collection of resources — logging, mining, hunting and fishing — there is camp management with sending comrades on missions, home improvement, mini-games, trade between regions. You can rob caravans, steal carts, steal livestock and hand it over to buyers. And this is only part of the list. Even in 50 hours, I didn't have time to open everything. For example, I saw that you can grow crops and breed livestock, but I never understood when exactly this is unlocked.
Some activities are reduced to one-button primitive and quickly become boring, others are performed frankly sloppily. The same advertised bounty hunting in fact turns out to be a dummy. They promised tracking the target, a tense chase, but in the end everything comes down to a banal scheme: took an announcement, drove to the mark, tied up the criminal, handed over to the authorities.
The mini-game with taming horses gives the impression that no one has really tested it. The player is forced to constantly deflect the stick to the side opposite to the movements of the animal. The horse twitches chaotically, can suddenly spin in place, and the hero's stamina melts before our eyes. As a result, you are not so much taming the animal as fighting with the controls and the very logic of the mechanics.
The problem is that all this does not remain an optional entertainment for those who want to "live" in this world. Even basic health recovery is tied to cooking, and improving equipment requires hunting, logging and mining. Ignoring these systems will not work — sooner or later you will run into a boss that you simply will not pass.
At the same time, side activities are not built into the economy in such a way as to give the player a choice. It would seem that you can focus on trade or hunting for criminals and just buy food. But traders have limited supplies, so even with a full wallet, you won't be able to buy for the future.
Crimson Desert has inherited too much from its MMO past, and this works against it. The systems here exist not to deepen the experience, but to occupy the player. They fragment attention, stretch the process and create the illusion of saturation. At some point, I caught myself thinking a simple thought: what would remain if you remove all this tinsel? A huge open world, unprecedented in scale, but almost empty.
Beauty Without Content
Pywel is really impressive in scope, especially at the moment when you first make a long jump from the Abyss, soar over the world and see how mountain ranges, forests and fortresses unfold under you, assembled into a single seamless space.
Crimson Desert easily sells itself through the visuals, and in that sense, it doesn't deceive. Visually, it's one of the most impressive games of recent years: vast spaces, high draw distance, dense detail, and complex lighting.
Among the technological achievements, the water system stands out, built on FFT simulation of the ocean and shallow water. Waves, river currents, and surf are calculated physically, making the water look voluminous and naturally reactive to the environment. I often found myself wanting to dive into this water—it's that convincing, but the game doesn't allow for it. However, rain leaves puddles with reflections of the sky and architecture, clothing and items get wet depending on the depth of immersion, and then gradually dry.
Even in battles with dozens of opponents, I didn't encounter any freezes or noticeable frame rate drops. The game remains stable throughout long sessions, and in terms of optimization, this is perhaps one of its main strengths.
But the devil, as usual, is in the details. Without ray tracing, the image noticeably loses quality: dirty transitions appear, overexposure occurs, and the scene loses depth. With scaling technologies enabled, the situation is also far from ideal—in certain moments, the image starts to "crumble" and blur, especially with an abundance of small objects like grass, and meadows sometimes turn into a green mess.
Despite the impressive draw distance, objects sometimes load right in front of the player. In the first few hours, this is noticeable, but then you get used to it. I was ultimately satisfied with this compromise: it's about details underfoot, while in the distance, the world looks so vast that it takes your breath away.
However, the longer you spend time in this world, the clearer you realize: there's almost nothing behind the scale. Payel is beautiful like a postcard, but it doesn't work well as a game space. Instead of a living system where events unfold on their own, there's a set of arranged activities: enemy camps, rare chests, or primitive puzzles—or so overloaded that you don't want to solve them because the reward doesn't justify the effort. All that remains is to nostalgically sigh, remembering how successful the "question marks" on Skellige were in The Witcher 3.
Even with the stated hundreds of factions, the world doesn't feel dynamic. They exist more as decorations than as real forces. Their influence is reduced to whose flag is flying over the next outpost, rather than changes in the world itself. The most I observed: after clearing an outpost, allied troops occupy it, and some faction quests lead to the formal conclusion of alliances. But what this gives, the game doesn't explain even after 50 hours.
Formally, there is also factional equipment here, allowing you to disguise yourself as members of different groups and complete certain tasks covertly. But this idea also stumbles upon implementation. Stealth exists more nominally: basic crouching movement, hiding in bushes, and the simplest stealth kills with a button. No variability, vertical gameplay, or complex scenarios are provided, so even a potentially interesting disguise mechanic quickly turns into another system that simply exists.
As a result, the gameplay in the open world boils down to two pillars: side routine and battles. And if the first works with varying success, the second carries a significant part of the game.
Between Musou and Soulslike
The combat system is the main attraction of Crimson Desert beyond the graphics, and it really tries to surprise by mixing techniques from different genres. Cliff combines the skills of several classes from Black Desert Online: he wields swords, a spear, a bow, basic magic, as well as fighting techniques and grabs. Most of these abilities are optional and specific, but it is precisely because of this that the battles are truly spectacular.
The main mass of battles takes place against crowds of enemies—sometimes several dozen at once, and in such moments the game frankly gravitates towards musou-action games. At the same time, the crowd rarely piles up all at once: if you competently deal with opponents one by one, the others momentarily "get lost"—freeze or fall, giving a respite and the opportunity to switch to the next target. A separate emphasis is placed on the physics of the environment: decorations are destroyed, enemies can be thrown at each other, dropped from a height, and elements of the landscape can be used in battle. All this helps to keep the situation under control even with a serious numerical advantage.
Battles with bosses are also not disappointing. I haven't seen all of them, but each of those encountered is memorable for its features, although battles with humanoid opponents are largely similar. At the same time, the mechanics vary noticeably: somewhere it is important to consider that the boss destroys columns, which can then be raised with kinetic abilities and "bonked" on the head with a swing, significantly simplifying the fight. In other cases, you have to climb on the opponent himself and hit vulnerable points or use spiritual magic against an enemy invulnerable to ordinary attacks, while fending off his minions.
And yet, battles with the crowd and with bosses feel like two different modes. Against ordinary enemies, it is often enough to hold down the attack button and let the system work for you: the character himself performs a series of strikes, effectively finishes off opponents, and automatically switches to the next target. With bosses, this approach does not work—here the game noticeably gravitates towards soulslikes.
You have to wait for windows to attack, not be greedy, and carefully read the opponent's behavior. Mistakes are punished quickly, and the fights themselves are prolonged due to several phases with full restoration of the boss's health. Moreover, three-phase battles with several health bars are commonplace here, which even by soulslike standards looks like overkill. Therefore, it is not surprising that food becomes a key resource: without it, such protracted battles simply cannot be survived.
At the same time, battles with bosses do not always feel fair. Many attacks are accompanied by fine-tuning: you dodged a split second earlier—and the boss is already turning around in the process of animation and still hits. Additional chaos is created by the camera, which more often looks for spectacular angles than helps to control the situation. It got to the point that I simply did not see either the boss himself or his attacks—the screen was flooded with effects, and all that remained was to frantically throw food, trying to survive the onslaught.
As a result, the combat system works in two planes. On the one hand—a spectacular attraction where you can relax, deal with crowds, and experiment with the environment. On the other—demanding battles with bosses, where accuracy and knowledge of timings decide. This contrast itself benefits the game.
The key problem remains the same—in how the game works with content and builds progression around it. There are no difficulty levels here, and new abilities are unlocked for Abyss artifacts, which are given for quests, exploration, trials, and battles.
But the exploration is weak, the side quests are monotonous—in the end, all the most valuable things are concentrated in battles. Theoretically, you can focus only on them: both food and resources for leveling fall from opponents. A little, but enough to stay afloat. But in this case, the game finally turns into a grind, where the same cycle is repeated again and again.
Variety is introduced by Cliff's companions—the fencer Damian and the giant Ungka. They have their own sets of skills and weapons, and in certain story missions, control passes to them. If desired, they can also perform side quests that do not require Cliff's participation. But here, too, there is a limit: even the most spectacular combat system is not able to hold attention for two hundred hours—and that is exactly how much, judging by the scale, a complete playthrough may take.
Small Problems of a Big Game
Up to this point, we have talked mainly about large systems and their interaction, trying to form a holistic impression of the game. But my thesis that Crimson Desert can be disassembled as a guide on "how to spoil a potentially great game" goes far beyond the macro level. There are also quite basic, almost "childish" errors in game design here.
A simple example is my favorite sixth chapter. After a protracted battle lasting several hours, you need to light a fire on the signal tower with a burning arrow. The task is elementary, but the developers did not take into account the obvious: by this point, the player may simply have no arrows left. That's what happened. I had to go down from the tower and spend several minutes scouring the area in search of a single arrow. Why a quiver couldn't be placed right there is a question without an answer.
Dozens of such examples can be given. Individually, they seem like trifles, but in total they add up to a feeling of an unfinished project: the main strokes have been applied, but the details seem to have been forgotten.
The problems don't end there. There are also more serious failures in the game related to the logic of saves and the state of the world. After loading, the character does not return to the point where they were, but appears at the nearest checkpoint and rolls back to the beginning of the task stage. As a result, situations arise when the condition has formally already been met, but after loading it has to be repeated - and it is no longer possible to do so.
It was after one such case in the ninth chapter that I sat down to write this text. In one of the missions, it was necessary to restore a destroyed column with the help of spiritual forces. I found the fragment, put it in place and completed the stage. Then I died in battle, loaded - the column is destroyed again, but there is nothing to collect it from. The only way out is to roll back to an earlier save, before the start of the task. Therefore, the advice is simple: if you decide to play, save manually as often as possible.
Some of these problems can certainly be fixed with patches. Somewhere to adjust the logic, somewhere to close the holes in the quests, somewhere to refine individual systems. Theoretically, modders could also help, but given Pearl Abyss' own engine, it's not worth seriously counting on it.
But even if the technical roughness is smoothed out over time, it will not change the foundation. Crimson Desert was originally built according to the logic of MMO - with stretched cycles, redundant systems and dependence on routine activities. Here they simply removed the online and left the player alone with this construction.
Therefore, the main question is not whether the game will be fixed. The question is whether you are ready to spend hundreds of hours in a project that is essentially an offline MMO with all the ensuing consequences. The answer to it depends on what kind of relationship you will have with the game, and whether it will develop at all.
At the same time, I admit that I myself could have missed something or that the game still opens up closer to the finale - after all, somewhere there should be flights on a dragon, which I never got to. But if a project designed for 200 hours of gameplay, in the first 50 hours is not able to clearly explain itself even to an involved player, it is difficult to expect that the mass audience will be more patient.
Our editor-in-chief, for example, deleted the game after 10 hours. Already by the middle of the third chapter, he was tired of everything that I stretched out for 50 hours for the sake of writing this review. And he, by the way, is still a fan of open worlds and clearing "question marks" in Ubisoft games. Think about it.
Verdict
Crimson Desert is a clear example of how the ambitions of developers can simultaneously elevate and destroy a game. The project is striking in scope: a fantastically beautiful world, a spectacular combat system, mountains of content. The creators really poured "everything and more", and at times the game even begins to resemble the epic myth that has developed around it. But it is this myth that ultimately works against it.
Instead of a complete work, Pearl Abyss got an overloaded, disjointed project with a disparate set of activities, many of which either do not work properly or do not give a tangible return. Crimson Desert constantly requires time, but too rarely justifies it, keeping the player with the feeling that "something" really large-scale will begin "soon", and pushing this moment back again and again.
Someone may love it for this strange spirit of offline-MMO - it is possible that this was the idea: to give the "pensioners" of Black Desert Online a quiet haven. Others will abandon the game halfway, tired of the endless grind and disappointed in the vague plot. It's easy to spend a dozen hours here, close the game and not be able to clearly answer what you were doing all this time. Therefore, it is worth recommending it only to those who are willing to put up with a high level of friction for the sake of rare but bright flashes of real pleasure. The rest would be wiser to spend these 200 hours on something else.