I’m really excited about Crimson Desert! It’s a massive open-world game – seriously, the scope is huge. It definitely feels inspired by some of my favorites like Red Dead Redemption 2, Breath of the Wild, and The Witcher 3, but it’s forging its own path too.
While games like those three immediately show you what they are, Crimson Desert throws a lot of different systems and features at you right away, and it takes many hours of playing to really understand how it all works. In many ways, it’s a completely unique experience.
This game can be both incredibly rewarding and frustrating. At first, it feels overwhelming; the early hours are filled with tutorial quests that don’t flow together into a clear story. This is especially surprising considering the game starts with a dramatic prologue where the main character, Kliff, is unexpectedly killed.
Let’s be honest: the story isn’t the main reason to play Crimson Desert. While the narrative does begin to take shape after the initial hours, it remains a collection of loosely connected character stories and a world that doesn’t feel fully developed.
The story itself is often quite boring, saved only by fantastic British voice acting and a lot of strong language. It’s hard to care about Kliff’s quest to bring his Northern warrior clan back together because the characters and plot feel very flat and lack depth.
Luckily for Kliff and his companions, the game takes place in a massive and beautiful open world that’s fun to explore. Crimson Desert truly shines when you forget about the main story and simply wander around the landscape.
Pearl Abyss has created a remarkably lively and detailed open-world environment. It feels truly alive with moving creatures and people, enhanced by a beautiful and realistic day-night cycle. The game is often visually stunning.
The map is consistently vast and impressive, with incredibly far views that really bring the world to life. It’s the kind of open world where you can see something in the distance and immediately head towards it.
While there’s a lot of verticality to navigate, Kliff can climb cliffs much like Link in Breath of the Wild, which creates a really liberating feeling.
The main thing stopping you from exploring freely is that many places don’t feel important unless a quest sends you there, and there are a lot – hundreds, in fact – of those quests.
Most of these tasks feel like the repetitive chores you’d find in a typical online role-playing game, but the immersive world makes them surprisingly enjoyable.
This is where Crimson Desert starts to become frustrating. Finishing these simple quests gives you more room in your inventory, and you’ll definitely need the extra space.
Each item you collect takes up space in your inventory – one slot each, unless it’s something that stacks, like arrows. It quickly becomes a problem! Picking up a simple poster, accidentally catching a bug, or looting a defeated enemy all eat up valuable space, and you can’t even choose what to grab – it’s frustrating!
It wouldn’t be so frustrating if the inventory system was better. Right now, it’s just a huge, disorganized mess. While categorizing items is a good start, it makes navigating the inventory more complicated. You end up clicking through two menus instead of one, and the second menu is just a long list of small icons.
Crimson Desert feels needlessly complicated. The menus are confusingly layered, with options hidden within other options, and navigating them is frustrating. Switching between tabs often sends you back multiple screens, making simple tasks much harder than they should be.
The game’s interface feels unfinished, like a work in progress. The menus and controls are overly complicated and would likely be simplified based on what players think.
Despite numerous small annoyances throughout the game, we found ourselves completely hooked on Crimson Desert – unable to stop playing, or even thinking about it. If you can look past some strange design choices, it offers an incredibly immersive experience, almost like living another life.
This game is incredibly deep; you can easily lose hours to activities like hunting, fishing, collecting resources, building up your base, and making money through trading. There’s almost limitless freedom in how you play, and that’s before you even get to the many minigames or the detailed crime system where you can steal from caravans and rob banks.
A lot of the game’s features aren’t really explained well. You might get a brief introduction when you first try something, and that’s all the help you’ll get. It’s surprising to discover whole parts of the game that many players will never even find.
Honestly, the fighting seems pretty typical at first – you’ve got your light and heavy attacks, blocking, dodging, and trying to time those perfect parries. But then you peek at the skill tree, and wow, things get wild. It’s not long before you realize this combat system is way more complex and crazy than it initially appears!
Kliff is a unique fighter – he’s skilled with a sword, but also trained as a pro wrestler, and eventually gains elemental superpowers. It sounds strange, but mixing wrestling moves like clotheslines and suplexes with sword fighting creates an incredibly effective and clever combat system.
It takes a lot of practice to master Kliff, with many button combinations to learn, but the effort is really rewarding.
The combat is really unique – it’s tough to compare to other games. It has some similarities to recent Assassin’s Creed titles, with special moves triggered by the situation, but it’s much more complex and detailed overall.
Kliff’s combat pulls enemies towards him, making it feel different from a fast-paced action game like Devil May Cry, though it still offers a lot of ways to play. Like much of the game, the fighting mixes familiar concepts in a way that feels surprisingly fresh and original.
As a player, I’ve really noticed that a lot of the battles aren’t about taking down one tough enemy, but fighting tons of weaker ones – which is pretty different from what most games do. You can usually defeat the basic enemies quickly, so the trick is really about managing the crowd and making sure you don’t get overwhelmed. It’s all about keeping them at bay!
Eventually, Kliff becomes so skilled that most challenges feel easy, creating a sense of overwhelming power when he fights ordinary enemies like bandits, soldiers, or monsters.
We really like that the game lets you clearly see how your skills are improving. It’s also clever that you can learn new moves just by observing enemies – it gives you a great reason to explore every corner of the game world.
Okay, so a lot of us are gonna struggle with the boss fights in this game, that’s just the truth. I can totally wreck regular enemies – seriously, I feel like I’m in Dynasty Warriors when I’m mowing down grunts – but things get way different when you face a boss. They really throw a wrench in things!
The game has some surprisingly tough challenges, and because there’s no way to tell how strong enemies are – you can’t level up, you just improve your gear – you’ll likely hit frustrating roadblocks often.
Some of the boss fights are truly impressive, but they feel very different from the rest of the game because they suddenly require a lot more skill and precision. It’s strange to easily defeat large groups of enemies, then struggle to survive a surprise boss fight and use up all your healing items.
Crimson Desert isn’t overly difficult, but it could really use better guidance. The world is large enough that you can come back to challenging areas later when you’re stronger, similar to Elden Ring. However, a simple suggestion of the appropriate level for each quest – like what The Witcher 3 does – would be a huge help.
Despite its imperfections, we’re willing to excuse Crimson Desert’s flaws because of its captivating open world. However, we can’t ignore the game’s technical issues, particularly on the PlayStation 5 and, to a slightly lesser degree, the PlayStation 5 Pro.
We played the game on both consoles and the experience was dramatically different. Currently, on the standard PlayStation 5, there are two ways to play.
The game offers two modes. The first prioritizes speed but suffers from noticeable visual issues like screen tearing, inconsistent frame rates, and a blurry picture. The second mode aims for a smoother experience with a locked 30 frames per second, but this isn’t fast enough for a fast-paced game, and the graphics still look unclear due to low-resolution textures.
To put it mildly, the performance is unacceptable. Players shouldn’t feel forced to buy a PS5 Pro just to get a playable experience in new, large open-world games if the standard PS5 struggles to run them well.
As we mentioned, the Pro model runs Crimson Desert significantly better. You’ll see much smoother frame rates, particularly when v-sync is turned on. Plus, the Pro’s updated PSSR technology really enhances the level of detail in the game’s open world.
Even the high-end Pro version isn’t without its problems. Players will frequently notice things suddenly appearing in the distance – like trees and bushes popping into view. Additionally, the way the game handles lighting can cause distracting flickering shadows, especially at medium distances.
Indoor scenes are the biggest weakness of this technology. The upscaling process struggles when it tries to recreate lighting and shadows on textured walls, resulting in noticeable visual glitches and unrealistic lighting. This can even make characters appear with an unnatural, metallic look, clearly showing the upscaling isn’t working correctly.
Honestly, the biggest disappointment is that even on the PS5 Pro, the frame rate can still take a serious hit depending on where you are in the game. I’ve noticed that when I’m fighting in big enemy bases, things can really slow down, sometimes dropping below 20 frames per second – which is super noticeable when you’re trying to survive! The same thing happens in crowded cities, and it’s clear the game is pushing the CPU too hard in those areas.
Crimson Desert is a hugely ambitious open-world game, but its performance issues are significant. We can’t recommend it to most players until these problems are fixed, as they currently impact the overall experience.
The game feels a bit like an unfinished early version, and while Crimson Desert has the potential to be amazing, there are a lot – and I mean a lot – of things that need to be fixed and polished.
Another big PlayStation 5 game has launched needing fixes and improvements after release. Players deserve games that are fully polished and working well from the start.
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2026-03-26 18:09