After 150 Hours With Crimson Desert It Feels Like A Deeply Flawed Diamond

I’ve played Crimson Desert for 150 hours now and have only just finished the main storyline. This game is massive, and not designed for the casual player. It’s an MMO that you play by yourself. The grind is enormous yet insatiable. I woke up every day and needed to play more, and even though at times it frustrated me to the point of walking away, I can’t help but admire what Pearl Abyss has created here. I’ve never played anything like it, and chances are, neither have you.

I have been asked by Pearl Abyss not to include any story information beyond Act Four of Crimson Desert, and I will not mention any names, places, or story beats that happen after what we've already been shown in various showcases. The beauty of Crimson Desert is the freedom it gives you to explore on your own, and I wouldn't want to spoil that.

Let’s start with what sits under the hood. Crimson Desert is a technical marvel, and Pywel is one of the most immersive and breathtaking game worlds I’ve ever seen. The way water moves along the babbling woodland brooks, or how rain dashes across Kliff’s worn armor while moonlight shifts between the dappled leaves in myriad forests is utterly gorgeous. I spent dozens of hours alone in the woodlands hunting for butterflies, pausing to ponder over gorgeous vistas before resting underneath violently shaking trees (everything shakes a lot in his game due to the engine’s representation of the wind). But beauty isn’t everything, and beneath its glitzy surface, Crimson Desert is deeply flawed.

You play as Kliff, a Geralt-like protagonist who often grumbles, mumbles, or says “Aye” when an NPC tells him the world is ending, and maybe he should be a smidge worried. For me though, Kliff is an angel sent down from the ‘Abyss’, saved from certain death to bring peace, happiness, and love to a grisly medieval world. This is not an RPG. There are no difficult choices to make nor sorceresses to pursue. You’re just a big bloke who can hit things hard and everyone wants to be your mate because you’re really strong and cool. I’m not that bothered by this simplicity. Sometimes you just want to play as a badass trying to save the world.

Unfortunately, Kliff often isn’t the badass he claims to be. He moves like an eighteen-wheeler, runs out of stamina frequently, needs to eat forty-eight cows every time he fights a boss, and has no concept of storage. The world of Pywel is not a masterpiece of open world game design like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3 (despite looking better than both of these), it’s a single-player MMO, meaning the grind is relentless and the difficulty spikes are random. I lost count of how many times I had to step away from my desk because the game was just too frustrating. I have so much to get into regarding Crimson Desert that I need to stop waffling and just get on with it. So, let’s start with the good.

The World

Pearl Abyss’ BlackSpace engine is outstanding. I’ve never experienced a video game world like this before, and even if this technology becomes the norm moving forward, I will always remember Crimson Desert paving the way. Early on, I was felling trees near a stream, and when the logs shattered, the pieces fell into the water only for me to follow them all the way downstream to a larger body of water where they became stuck in the thick reeds. Small details like this make Crimson Desert feel alive.

The world is so beautiful and so immersive that the simple act of exploring it is pure joy. I crossed rolling hills and sprawling deserts, explored deep forests with enormous trees populated by dancing mushroom creatures, discovered tiny hidden villages inhabited by magical children, and climbed along windswept cliffs overlooking roaring seas filled with untold mysteries below. I have met many inhabitants of Pywel, from pirates to machines, that reside in bustling cities. As you can already tell, the possibilities are endless.

It inspires a sense of wonder in me much like when I played Skyrim for the first time. There are secrets everywhere, and often where you’d least expect them. The world is full of menial tasks to complete, from cleaning someone’s chimney to rescuing lost sheep, which ground you and your actions in the world despite how magical and larger than life it can often seem. While the narrative does start to branch out and become epic eventually, the game gently introduces you to the world of Pywel with the narrative framing of common folk.

I also have to mention the incredible music. It’s dynamic and shifts depending on where you are and what you are doing in the world. The cooking music is an absolute jam.

The weather effects are equally exquisite, and rather than visual set-dressing, the change in weather provides unique ways to play. If it’s a dark and stormy night, you can use the cover of the shadows to sneak up on enemies and quickly assassinate them. In a more general way, the change of weather makes the world feel diverse. It’s cold in the north, so your character regenerates less stamina if you aren’t wearing heavy clothing; it’s hot in the desert, so you better wear lighter clothing so you don’t accidentally overheat.

While I’m certain some people will figure out the ‘optimal’ way to progress in Crimson Desert, I highly recommend that you take it entirely at your own pace. The magic here stems from exploring the world in your own way. Climb that mountain and take a look over the sprawling expanse of Pywel.

The Combat

Combat in Crimson Desert is outstanding. I would not have waded through so many of the campaign’s more frustrating sticking points if it wasn’t for the fact that going into battle is pure fun. I played the entire game with a sword and a shield, which are Kliff’s bread and butter. He has a range of moves, from the natural magic of Force Palm to the more grounded ability to dropkick his enemies off cliffs. Once the combos start to become natural, the combat is fluid and satisfying. It’s the best I’ve ever experienced in an open-world game, and I’m not even sure the competition is close.

This is all thanks to how meaty it feels. When you punch a bandit in the stomach, he will fly through the air, barreling through nearby crates and knocking over his companions. As you progress, you will unlock the ability to infuse your gear with passive abilities, like a swarm of crows that chase your foes, or summoning an enormous spectral knight to squish them flat. And that’s just one weapon: you can use spears, halberds, maces, guns, rocket launchers, muskets, there is so much on offer here.

I love the enemy design in Crimson Desert too, and while often the bosses feel unbalanced - more on that later - I was constantly amazed by how many unique enemies are chucked at you. Each region has its own variation of bandits, local guards, and boss types, and I loved exploring snowy mountain passes only to be set upon by a pack of wolves. You never know what is going to hit you next in Crimson Desert.

No Handholding At All, Yet Satisfying Progression

This will prove divisive, but for the most part, I enjoyed that Crimson Desert was never explicit about telling me where to go or what to do next. It made the adventure feel more my own, and while some parts are frustrating, the payoff when you figure things out for yourself is more than worthwhile.

Crimson Desert scratches the itch that comes from gradually progressing in MMORPGs perfectly, which makes sense considering Pearl Abyss’ storied genre heritage with Black Desert. This is not a typical RPG with an experience-based leveling system, but rather a system that rewards exploration and everything that comes with it. While exploring, you will defeat bosses, and those bosses have unique cores that can be slotted into your weapons to provide you with new and interesting abilities. You will also find Sealed Abyss Artifacts, which, when you complete a challenge, will reward you with more of these cores. Rinse and repeat.

I also enjoyed the progression of the Greymane Camp, a hub area of sorts that Kliff can take charge of. As you complete quests and discover more of your fellow Greymanes out in the world, your camp grows in size with ranches, citizens, and every vendor you could ever need. The house decoration system is currently a little broken, with items sometimes just disappearing, but with a few more tweaks I can see this being a big reason to stick with Crimson until the very end.

Now, let us get onto the bad. Keep in mind that I can see a lot of these issues being patched or at the very least addressed or improved with future updates.

The Inventory System

There are no storage chests. We have been told by Pearl Abyss that these will arrive later, but in the current version of the game - the one you will play at launch - there are no storage chests needed to store countless armour, weapons, and more. I simply do not understand the design philosophy behind this. Crimson Desert is a game full of unique items and hundreds of individual resources. There is nowhere to leave the rare items you find, or stockpile cabbages so you can produce more food for your ever-hungry Kliff. How was such a key feature ignored?

Most bosses in the game drop unique gear, the sort of stuff that I usually love to hoard because they are visually interesting and, you know, one day I might want to use them. To keep hold of these items I have to carry them around on my person at all times. There is no encumbrance limit, but rather a limited number of slots available to you.

This issue does resolve itself as you play more. In the end, I had well over 200 inventory slots. But I can see this being a real frustration for players just starting out.

Boss Balance Is Not Great

I struggled a lot with the boss fights in Crimson Desert. Not because they were difficult in the traditional sense, but due to the fact they often feel unfair. I’ve powered through Elden Ring multiple times, and even though it might sometimes take hours to defeat a boss or master its many machinations, its hardest encounters have nothing on how frustrating Crimson Desert’s boss fights can feel. This is particularly an issue during the first few major bosses you encounter on the main quest and those towards the very end.

Since the early preview stages, I’ve shared this concern about the game’s boss fights in general. One particular fight against the Staglord, which has been showcased several times now, has Kliff being thrown around with little means of fighting back. Sometimes it feels impossible to block, parry, or dodge in time. This results in a frustrating spiral where you are thrown around like a ragdoll, despite moments before slicing through thirty bandits with ease.

It’s jarring and often immersion-breaking, and while you can eventually emerge victorious - I’ve worked my way through 30 of the game’s 76 bosses in my 150 hours - it doesn’t feel particularly rewarding. Not all bosses are built the same, however, and there are some truly fantastic boss fights here. Though some, particularly in the last chapter (oh my god), did almost do my head in.

Rather than mastering patterns and overcoming your opponent with skill, your best bet is to hunt deers for one hour, turn them all into Hearty Grilled Meat, and hope that you can heal your way through the damage by sheer attrition. When the advice is ‘just heal’, you know something isn’t quite right.

Food In General

I love that there are so many unique recipes in Crimson Desert using a wide variety of different ingredients, but I despise how much of your journey relies on having enough food on you at all times. You can purchase food from vendors, which is good, but these are limited to a certain amount each day, which means you need to wait a couple of in-game days to restock fully after a particularly punishing boss fight. Ingredients are hard to come by, and even as I’ve started to develop my ranch and farm, I haven’t found this to alleviate the issue.

The key problem is that even if you’re really damn good at the game, you’re still going to take a lot of damage during boss fights. Some attacks just can’t be dodged or blocked or parried. That means you need more food, so you either need to grind for recipes or head out into the world to various vendors dotted around the map to get more food. What happened to good old fashioned health pots?

Repetitive Quests

There is a narrative in Crimson Desert here, but it’s functional rather than memorable. Kliff is going to save the world. But he’ll need help, and a significant part of the story is about acquiring that help and rebuilding the Greymane Camp after your comrades are decimated and scattered by an evil force from the north. But most of the juicy lore is hidden inside menus, and at times the story jumps around in quite a jarring way if you’re not reading all the bits of ‘Knowledge’ you acquire as you go. As a result, it’s hard to really care.

Many quests are very rudimentary, MMO-esque affairs. Go here, pick up an item, take it to another NPC. The style of quests are repeated in each of Pywel’s five regions, and while they do have their own flavour and good mocap/voice acting for the NPCs, what you’re doing never truly changes. The issue is that completing these quests is a requirement to enjoy the game, as inventory slots are earned by accomplishing such repetitive tasks. You can purchase small bags from various merchants, but these only reward a single inventory slot. Completing tasks for random villagers gives you three.

There are some good standalone side quests, including the one that takes you to fight the aforementioned Staglord. Others are just frustratingly impossible, like the detective tasks that I only managed to complete one of, and that was just through pure chance.

You need to listen to several different accounts and piece together five or six dialogue options, but every time you fail to deduce who the culprit of said crime is, you need to repeat each of the dialogue options. Over and over again. Not for me. I’ll keep ignoring those, I think. And beyond both the good and the bad, is the downright ugly.

The Puzzles

I have nothing against puzzles. When done correctly, they make you feel like a genius beyond compare, but in Crimson Desert they are largely unintuitive and needlessly frustrating. Much of this comes down to the clunky controls that Kliff needs to use his ethereal powers. There’s the Axiom Force arm that can move objects, and Force Palm that can be used to assemble items and jam parts of a physical puzzle together. Some are quite well-designed, but there are so many of them to solve that the overall impression is glaringly inconsistent.

In one puzzle, you need to activate tiles on the floor, but if you step on the wrong tile, the entire playing field resets. I figured out how to complete the conundrum relatively quickly, but the puzzle reset several times because Kliff decided to moonwalk onto another tile for no good reason. So much of Crimson Desert is like this. Whether it be trying to move a piece of a puzzle, climbing a rock, navigating the parkour of the Abyss (the mythical land that floats above Pywel) it quickly becomes insufferable.

Most people will end up searching for the solutions to these puzzles and, thus, one key part of my friction with the game has been eliminated. But as someone who was exploring the world alone, these puzzles were poorly explained and annoying to complete. And you shouldn’t need to look up the solutions to puzzles like this because they aren’t enjoyable in a game filled with them. If it ends up being your only recourse, something’s gone wrong.

Kliff’s general controls are annoying. It’s ‘X’ to pick up an item, but that’s also the jump button, so you will sometimes spend an extra minute or two just trying to pick something up without jumping into the air. These minor annoyances stack up over a game this long.

Minute Frustrations That Build Up Over Time

Unfortunately, it often feels like Crimson Desert does not respect your time. Take the Bounty missions, for example. These are dotted across the map, and you can get a good deal of silver for them, but you need to go to the location, pick up the target, and then carry them all the way back to the single jail in the region, which is sometimes a couple of thousand metres away. The entire time you’re doing this, the person on the back of the horse repeats the same three voice lines over and over again. I did three of these missions and gave up.

Here’s another example: if you commit a crime, sometimes even when NPCs are nowhere nearby, you’ll accrue a bounty. To get rid of this bounty, you need to visit a church and pay it off. Sometimes I’d commit a crime and not really understand how it happened, like Kliff would lock on to a random villager in the middle of a fight and decapitate them for no reason, or my horse would knock over a sheep and then suddenly I’ve got a price on my head. This hinders the joyous exploration at the game’s core, which, in ideal circumstances, would be its greatest asset.

Crimson Desert is also riddled with bugs in its current state. A late mission involved a key item that goes missing forever when destroyed, and as far as I’m aware, it’s meant to respawn. But it didn’t. What should have been an epic moment in the story is reduced to tedious grinding and repetition.

I had several more quests that didn’t really seem to work, or became broken if they weren’t completed in the perfect way. It felt like I was testing the game for Pearl Abyss, and countless more bugs are bound to surface when the public gets their hands on things.

Pearl Abyss has already been fixing things on the fly during the review period, and I'm certain that most of these bugs and annoyances will be patched out in the coming months.

Gatekeeping Of A Power Fantasy That Never Really Arrives

Despite everything else I’ve mentioned in this review, by far my biggest issue with Crimson Desert is that even after dozens of hours of grinding, the game never delivers on its promise of the ultimate power fantasy. The final chapter is an utter slog, with bosses that are unintuitive and enemies that will beat the living hell out of you, even though Kliff at this point is an utter machine with highly-leveled gear and stats. Despite the beauty of Pywel, I unfortunately found the payoff for all that grinding through tedious puzzles and repetitive quests to be unrewarding.

Final Thoughts

I blasted through 150 hours of Crimson Desert in a little under two weeks. So, it’s possible I simply burned out on the experience before reaching its end and now find myself jaded beyond repair. Putting this aside though, there is so much that Crimson Desert does well.

Combat, exploration, and the sense of progression are all top-notch and have the potential to be crafted into something masterful with future updates. And yet, many of its more frustrating elements are impossible to ignore and are in dire need of refinement.

It’s highly ambitious and one of the most intriguing triple-A games I’ve played in years, but I just wish so many parts of the whole weren’t inherently flawed. Now my journey in Pywel has come to an end, I’ll be leaving this one on the shelf for a while.