I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This

Crimson Desert

Pearl Abyss

At about 50 hours into Crimson Desert, I wondered if it was even possible for me to finish the campaign in time for embargo. At 70 hours, I stopped wondering and knew that I wouldn’t. Now, at 100 hours, I don’t even care that I have made it maybe two-thirds down the main questline, endlessly diverted from its path. I’ll be here for a hundred more.

There is no way to begin describing Crimson Desert other than to reference its unprecedented scale. Much fuss was made about its map being the size of Skyrim and Red Dead Redemption 2 combined. That’s true, easily, but the question then becomes: Why? Anyone can procedurally generate a planet it takes five real-time years to drive around, if it’s empty or full of garbage. Crimson Desert is neither empty nor full of garbage.

A hundred hours into this game, I have never been bored. There are so many things to do, so many avenues of progression and questing and crafting and puzzles and boss hunting and territory takeovers and—the list just does not end. My itch to play has not been driven by this review; as I said, I knew I’d never finish in time, but because I just want to keep exploring Crimson Desert. I know I’m not alone, and speaking to other reviewers, I don’t think more than 1 in 5 of the people who got codes will have finished the main storyline by the time you’re reading this. I wouldn’t trust the judgment of anyone who has put less than 50 hours into the game, honestly. That may not even be enough.

Crimson Desert is, as expected, a mish-mash of a lot of games, but in a way that does not work to its disadvantage and makes something that does feel new on the whole. The world is a little Witcher-ish. The story, unexpectedly, echoes the Assassin’s Creed games. Its sky zone full of puzzles is largely Breath of the Wild. Combat is a blend of things, but at times? A little Dynasty Warriors, when they really pack the enemies in there. I won’t go so far as to say boss battles are Dark Souls, but they do get incredibly difficult at times. They’re the reason you can’t just mainline the central mission line even if you wanted to, as Crimson Desert does not scale to your power at all. You are not going to experience it “just for the story” in some 15-hour run. No way.

The story is the weakest element, which is no great shock. You are Kliff, a clan leader whose clan, the Greymanes, is decimated by a rival, the Black Bears. After the slaughter, Kliff is somehow given a way that lets him access the trans-dimensional Abyss, which is really not abyss-like at all, given that it is shiny islands floating in the sky.

The goal is finding out what’s going on with the Abyss and why it and the world are in danger, but moment to moment a thousand feet below on the ground, you’re mostly rebuilding your forces and helping local towns push out bandits or goblins or your much-hated Black Bears.

Kliff still feels like something of a non-entity all this time later. Geralt he is not, and there’s no Triss or Yennefer in sight. (I don’t think I’ve seen him flirt a single time.) I have, however, enjoyed reassembling his Greymanes as the giddy greetings from his lost brothers never get old when they see him alive for the first time. I do like quite a few of them. Kliff himself is largely a blank slate, and I’m not quite clear why he isn’t just a custom character, something Pearl Abyss is known for with Black Desert Online.

You may note that the game has advertised three playable characters, a large orc-like guy, Oongka, and a quick-striking woman, Damiane. At 100 hours, I just got access to Oongka. Damiane will join your squad early on. I have used her for about 10 minutes. It’s a pretty weird aspect of the game, as eventually you will be forced to fight with those characters in the main story, like it or not, but you have spent dozens of hours investing skill points and gear upgrades into Kliff, not them, with little carryover.

It’s an odd system and feels like it could have been better handled. Or just not needed at all, instead just giving Kliff himself more playstyles. It feels like a remnant from a time when maybe this game was something else.

Combat is a range between 1:1 face-offs with tougher foes to bouncing around lower-tier enemies like basketballs. The scale, there’s that word again, of some of these moments, including an entire chapter that’s just a siege on a single castle, is unlike much else I’ve seen in the genre, with hundreds of enemies and allies on the map as you cut through dozens and dozens, reducing forces until they flee and you square off with the boss.

The physics here are great and a mix between badass and hilarious. The forceful kicks never get old, sending a bandit collapsing into a realistically folding ten. You can take a greatsword and knock over an entire tower to kill that annoying archer you can’t reach. I just unlocked the ability to give enemies a Stone Cold Stunner.

The kinetic feel of combat ramps up over time with more and more moves, and while it will take many, many hours, you will start understanding “endgame” builds and how crazy they can get. You get unique weapons from bosses, but you can take those unique aspects, remove them and stack them in different combinations in completely different weapons. I have a sword right now, for instance, that shoots homing crows on heavy attack and ejects a poison arc on RB + Y stab in addition to doing bleed damage.

This unique loot is few and far between, and while most of it is limited to bosses, the “exploration” finds can be legendary. Right before I wrote this, I found the coolest-looking helmet I’ve seen so far in a random ruin that buffs the heavy attack I use the most by 35%. Incredible. And legendary doesn’t just mean gear. I accidentally found a legendary horse after spawning at a remote camp, and it took roughly 45 minutes to attempt to tame him before I could call him my own. Worth it, considering he has triple the stamina of my old one.

Did the game even tell me there were legendary animals before this? No. Does it tell you much of anything? Also no. There is little to no handholding in this game, not so much as a white line to follow to your destination, and certainly no yellow paint to be found.

Generally speaking, this is great, and a breath of fresh air in the genre. In others, Crimson Desert can be way too obtuse. It took me hours to understand if you solve a puzzle, you can now fast travel to that puzzle, as the map icons for regular fast travel and puzzles are entirely different.

Other times, the advice it does give you is actively harmful. There is one main story boss relatively early, where the game teaches you a certain skill beforehand. That skill actually does nothing in that fight, and it instead gives you an entirely different ability you have never used before, and that you won’t even know you can access.

On top of that, fail that fight, and you have to redo an entire puzzle-solving process and watch the ensuing cutscene each time. That’s the worst example I can think of, but normally, yes, I would consider the mystery the game lays over everything a very good thing.

Crimson Desert gets some basics wrong, which is surprising given how many complex systems it throws into the world that it does well. Inventory management for a game this big is terrible. Pearl Abyss knows it’s terrible and during the review period they patched in several dozen more inventory slots for us, which everyone will now start with. Organizing your gear is a mess, and even the new max slot range clearly isn’t going to be enough. This is also a game with a million items, and a camp you expand a half dozen times that does not have base storage, though we were told that’s now coming in a later update. It seems like a huge oversight.

Another issue is fast travel, not because of the puzzle thing I mentioned (well, not just that), but the game refuses to do very basic things like give you a fast travel point at each major city. There have been multiple times where I’ve had to ride around a new location for half an hour to find where the actual fast travel point is, and sometimes it’s a puzzle I can’t solve. This even applies to the main Greymane base, where your best option there is to skydive out of the Abyss and land in the middle of your camp, terrifying everyone. And you do this literally every time to get back there. Wild.

Speaking of diving out of the sky, yes, you literally jump off the side of Abyss locations, glide or dive down and the map below instantly loads and you can set down wherever you want. Sure, other games may be able to do something similar, but this is a world 30x bigger and more resource-intensive than say, Breath of the Wild. It’s one of many tech miracles on display here. I am playing on the 3080 I am stuck with since you now have to take out a loan to buy a new graphics card, but my performance is rock solid, and the visuals are excellent. Not the highest of high tiers, but you can understand that the engine Pearl Abyss has made for this is something we’ve rarely seen in this endless landscape of Unreal Engine 5 titles.

Even not much more than halfway through Crimson Desert, I could probably write another 5,000 words here. Do you want to hear about how you can tame loads of animals to be pets or mounts? The Greymane mission, building and resource-gathering assignment systems? The royal trading wagon hauling across provinces? The faction-specific research trees? The enchantment gambling witch coven?

I have never seen a single-player game this big, and it is not particularly close. It is no surprise that Pearl Abyss is the maker of Black Desert Online, given that this absolutely feels like a single-player MMO. This might be bad if the world felt empty or the game wasn’t fun to play. Neither is the case. I wish Kliff himself made more of an impact, but I’ve grown to like him well enough. There are some baffling mechanic/system decisions in here, but I’ve watched them actively be patched out of the game as I was reviewing it, so clearly these developers can act quickly.

Crimson Desert will no doubt overwhelm some. The sheer size and the absurd time commitment to make a dent in the map may be more than some players want. But if the question was if Crimson Desert could really be that big and really play that well and really keep you entertained the whole time, the answer, for me, is unequivocally yes.

9.5/10

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.