Crimson Desert review

Crimson Desert is the "Yes, and" of videogames. It's stuffed to the brim with just about every mechanic and idea that has ever existed. An overwhelming ocean of things to engage with, discover, and explore.

There is so much MMO DNA running through its veins, too: an army of obtuse systems, a breadth of build variety, and mediocre questing. Pearl Abyss has truly crafted a game for the sickos.

But it's also full of archaic design choices that only make sense when you remember Pearl Abyss has been maintaining an MMO for 12 years. I've spent 75 hours oscillating between fascination and irritation, while still feeling like I've barely scratched the surface of what it has to offer. It's easily the biggest game I've ever played, and the hardest time I've ever had sorting out my thoughts.

Off a Kliff

So let's start with the easy stuff: Kliff's a gruff Scottish lad (excellently voiced by Cyberpunk 2077's Adam Smasher, Alec Newman) and member of the Greymane faction. After an ambush at the hands of a rival faction, the Black Bears, Kliff finds himself with a slit throat and his comrades scattered like ashes across the continent of Pywel. Crimson Desert wastes absolutely no time chucking you straight into the action… and then promptly chucking you straight off a cliff.

From there, it's all about rebuilding. Reuniting with those lost along the way, forming new alliances, and carving out a space for a new era of the Greymanes. It's an interesting enough premise, though not a particularly original one.

The story is not exactly riveting. At least not the way Pearl Abyss tells it. I have to wonder if there was a shadow creature lurking behind me while I played and giving me a good thwack on the head every time I watched a cutscene, because Crimson Desert's narrative pacing makes me feel like I was suffering from pockets of amnesia.

Characters talk to—at?---each other, but not in ways that tell the story. It certainly doesn't help that it's thematically all over the place—Western fantasy, sci-fi, steampunk, and Eastern themes collide and fail to cohere. The first chapter throws me into a strange, futuristic magical sky world called the Abyss filled with white cubes and obtuse puzzles, and then spends the next 30 hours pretending it doesn't exist.

It's stilted and disjointed, and an oh-so-stark reminder that Pearl Abyss has exclusively been an MMO developer up until this point. It's the genre's exact brand of serviceably bland and nonsensical. There's no clear timeline of events, and I'm never sure of any character's motivations, even my own. It's little more than a vessel to funnel you around and give you some purpose. It's certainly not one that can stand alongside other similar, frighteningly gigantic adventures like Red Dead Redemption 2.

What's more frustrating is that I know Crimson Desert's main story can do better, because all the charm it's missing can be found in its side quests. I put off getting to know my fellow Greymanes in favour of devouring as much of the main story as I could for this review, but after hitting a roadblock I hoofed it to my camp and decided to get chummy with my comrades.

And you know what? They're so bloody endearing despite suffering from a mild case of flanderisation. Yann is a vile potty mouth—seriously, I am a master wielder of the f-bomb and even I was shocked how many swearwords he could stuff into a single sentence—Naira is bossy and a dab hand with a bow, while Andrew's nervous disposition grounds the crew.

It's a relief to have moments where the story doesn't take itself too seriously. Yann sends me to gamble on his behalf, Naira wants to craft dyes because she thinks Andrew will look dashing in red, and we go and craft some bows so that the camp's children can learn to shoot even though Andrew fears for their safety. It makes a very-not-normal game feel refreshingly down to earth.

Systems galore

They are, mind you, thinly-veiled attempts to get me to engage with Crimson Desert's utterly ridiculous number of systems. Because holy crap, y'all, you can do just about anything in this game:

• Invest in stocks
• Steal goats and sell them on the black market
• Chop down trees
• Mine ore
• Go arm wrestling
• Tame a horse
• Expand your camp through resource management and missions
• Package goods onto a horse-drawn wagon to sell at trading posts
• Decorate a house
• Run full-whack into a bird, tackle it and grab it, just to walk around with it for a little bit
• Ply a dog with enough meat and pets until it likes you enough to follow you around forever

Crimson Desert would probably take in all your mail while you went on holiday or file your taxes if you asked nicely enough.

It's an infinite trail of gumdrops, one where every new step contains a new sugary treat for me to pop into my mouth. Not all these systems are made equal: retreating to the criminally obvious gambling den residing above Hernand Inn to dabble in sticks-and-numbers game Duo was a surprising highlight for me—as was getting to take a hammer to cheaters' hands. And I absolutely love the completely unnecessary ability to pick up any small animal.

Horse taming, on the other hand, made me wonder who at Pearl Abyss wanted us to suffer. Tilting the left stick in the opposite direction the horse is facing sounds fine until you realise both the horse and camera angle erratically bounce around, making it an infuriating task. It's also explained horribly—as is much of Crimson Desert—and I was only given a proper tutorial around a dozen hours after my first horse taming attempt all the way back in the first chapter.

For everything I can do in Crimson Desert, it makes the things I can't do even more bewildering. Like store anything I find on my journey in a chest. In a game that demands I hold on to so many resources for upgrading my gear and crafting potions and food, all while throwing a bunch of cool, unique armor my way for defeating bosses? It feels like the maddest oversight.

Pearl Abyss says that storage options are coming eventually (like, seriously, I have a house with cabinets and I can't put anything in them?) but won't be present Day 1, which is a huge bummer.

I also take umbrage with Crimson Desert's teleportation system. Fast travel points are scattered across the game's gigantic map—seriously, it is the biggest map I've ever seen—and are often locked behind puzzles or tucked away in strange places to find. The puzzles are incredibly obtuse—a theme that carries throughout their appearances in the main story, too—and trying to parse exactly what Pearl Abyss was thinking when it cooked these up is an exercise in frustration. I'd say 80% of the time it feels good when I finally catch onto what I'm supposed to do—like rebuilding pillars and then smushing them down with an aerial attack— other times I'm left with my head in my hands wondering how the hell the developer expected me to figure it out.

Like one puzzle where I have to shoot lasers at little blue blobs, but then figure out that two wires somewhere else in the giant puzzle have been cut and need me to put them back together for the whole thing to work.

They're also situated in wildly inconvenient locations. There are no direct fast travel points to cities or the main camp. If I want to go to Hernand to upgrade my armour, I have to fast travel and then sprint over to the city for about 45 seconds. It takes a minimum of four chapters to get a fast travel point close to the camp, and even then it still tries to inconvenience me by placing a giant gap between me and my destination—though I am eventually able to build a bridge over it.

It doesn't sound that bad, but for how regularly I'm retreating to these safe spaces it's small time wastes that add up. One of my closest teleports to a city is currently in the middle of a giant lake surrounded by an equally giant cliff. Kliff's swimming ability is appalling and slow. Why can I not just go straight to the goddamn city like a normal videogame?

Crimson Desert should count itself lucky that I find exploring Pywel so wonderful. It's easily one of my favourite parts of this game. It helps that the world is downright gorgeous—rich with foliage and wildlife, winding rivers and babbling brooks, vast deserts, snow-capped mountains, towering spires that you can ascend and witness all these biomes in one glorious panoramic view.

Despite the fact I can go incredibly long stretches without seeing any other soldiers, pedlars, or even bandits, Pywel still manages to feel lively. Trees rustle and flowers billow as the wind whooshes. Bonfires crackle, birds caw in the sky and squawk as I approach them on land, their wings flapping to escape. I delighted in riding my horse through thick forests, scaling craggly near-vertical cliffs to grab chunks of ore, and stalking through tall grass to shoot down deer for my next meal.

Its beauty is clear in these moments of respite, but Crimson Desert equally excels in grand set pieces for boss fights. I loved the setting for Crowcaller in particular, ascending into the skies to a dark battlefield flocked with crows, cages hanging from leafless trees, the looming feeling of a cemetery despite the lack of gravestones. And then there's the large-scale liberation battles where I have to take on entire armies across burning cities, wrongfully-occupied mining quarries, and sprawling castle grounds to put them back into the right hands where I can let rip with its wickedly fun action combat.

Hack 'n' slash

Crimson Desert's combat absolutely rips. I can rapidly combo together light attacks for some quick damage, or spend stamina to chuck in a harder-hitting heavy attack. Kliff's skill tree lets me put even more pizzazz into these—like a button combo that lets me do a quick forward stab to inflict bleed, or a giant swooping arc attack that can send bundles of bandits flying. It felt like every time I pressed buttons in a slightly different order, Crimson Desert had bespoke animations or action chains for it.

Unarmed combat was a surprise hit for me. Being able to run up and clothesline someone never got boring, and I was grappling and flying kicking folk almost as often as I was slashing away at them with my sword. There's even magic that I can put to use, like the thundering Force Palm that sees Kliff do an insane nature-powered palm strike combo straight to the sternum, winding even the heftiest of foes.

Things get even more interesting when Abyss Gears are thrown into the mix—items I can slot into weapons and gear. Sometimes they're just straight stat buffs, but they can also house unique, game-changing abilities. Dodging immediately after a hit leaves behind an orb of damage that can catch a stationary foe with one Abyss Gear, and my ride-or-die sends a murder of crows towards my target with each heavy attack, like an avian missile.

Something I haven't spoken about much is the fact that Kliff isn't even the only playable character. As you play through the main story, you'll also recruit agile swordswoman Damiane and towering axe warrior Oongka. The reason I haven't mentioned them until now is because… well, I hardly played them.

I do wonder why Crimson Desert went for a Grand Theft Auto 5-style trio (complete with that same transition where switching whooshes you up into the air and then brings you back down to wherever your chosen character has ended up) when this is very clearly Kliff's story. I did try to play around with Damiane when I first got her—her ranged lightning attack and quick movement genuinely rules—but the game so often demanded I switched back to Kliff to continue the story that I quickly gave up on switching around.

It feels even more obvious by the fact that the two non-Kliffs have significantly pared-down skill trees and access to gear in comparison. Crimson Desert rarely gave me a compelling reason to play as them, but then punished me for focussing on Kliff. There are occasions where you'll have to play as the other two, and I had to struggle through them with non-upgraded armour and untouched skill trees.

It's even worse when these forced character changes occur during boss battles, easily my least favourite part of Crimson Desert. While combat is largely flexible and accessible, boss battles buck this trend by being brutal and occasionally a little unfair.

While I look back fondly at some of them—battling the Reed Devil across a sprawling reed field felt incredibly badass—I dreaded the moments in the main story where I'd have to face one. By far the worst offender is giant gorillaesque monster Kearush. I love the idea of taking on a frantic giant inside the claustrophobic confines of a castle, but it's a fight that feels straight up BS.

Can't dodge or parry a hit in time? Oops, you're dead. Knocked down and dealing with a gazillion recovery frames? There's a good chance you'll get hit again, locking you into an infuriating loop until your death. It's unnecessarily punishing for all the wrong reasons.

On several occasions I thought to myself "This would slap if it wasn't trying to be a soulslike fight." Attacks are relentless with little time to determine patterns or wind-up animations. I wanted to try and experiment with all the different skills I'd acquired, but often found myself resorting to basic attacks and frantic dodging or blocking.

It's a deadly combination when combined with Crimson Desert's clunky controls. It feels like there's a strange delay to certain buttons, and dodging two identical attacks often yields different results. These fights ultimately boiled down to whether I'd crafted enough food to heal my way through all of the bullcrap, and I desperately wish it had been more thoughtful.

The good news is that no matter what I was doing—fighting bosses, getting into large-scale battles, rambling around the open world—I never had to worry about performance issues. I'm shocked at just how well it all ran on my relatively mid-range PC—even when the game was rendering hundreds of warriors and horses all at once.

For how stunning the world is and how many things are happening at once, frame rate stability feels like one of Pearl Abyss' biggest triumphs. There are some obvious sacrifices—character models look a little plasticky and soulless, and texture pop-ins regularly greet me. I'll take shell-shocked Ken dolls and crusty lookin' meat over nightmare performance any day, though.

Crimson Desert is a game that tries to do it all. A jack of all trades. Master of some, perhaps. If you can think of it, this videogame probably has it. While it creates a lack of focus in parts, I also can't help but feel weirdly endeared to it all. It's not as shallow as an open-world collectathon, but doesn't quite have the mechanical intricacies of, say, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 or Red Dead Redemption 2. If those games are Forza, Crimson Desert is Forza Horizon.

It's by far one of the most interesting games I've played. Do I think it's a masterpiece? No. But its scale is genuinely something to marvel at. Trying to dissect and critique its imposing mountain of systems and features is like trying to explain how I feel about each individual leaf on a redwood tree. Small fragments of something grand, and whose foliage I'm still yet to take in as a whole. But I'm desperate to continue studying it nevertheless.