I have been playing Crimson Desert for about three weeks now. I have somewhere around 80 hours logged. I still do not know if I love it or just cannot stop playing it, and I am starting to think those might be the same thing.
Pearl Abyss made a game that tries to be everything at once. Open world exploration like Breath of the Wild. Combat like a Souls game. Story presentation like The Witcher. The scale of an MMO. The physics of Red Dead Redemption 2. Waterskiing shoes. Yes, waterskiing shoes. It does not always succeed at being all of those things, but the fact that it tries and mostly holds together is kind of remarkable.
The world is genuinely incredible
Let me get the easy part out of the way. Crimson Desert is one of the best looking games ever made. That is not hyperbole. The environments are so detailed that I have spent entire play sessions just riding my horse across the map looking at things.
The continent of Pywel is massive and it is rendered as a single continuous space. You can climb to the highest peak and see the entire world stretching out in front of you. Mountains, deserts, forests, a clockwork city where machine beings tend farms. Every region looks and feels different. The art direction is absurdly good and the technical performance matches it. On a decent PC the game runs at 60fps with high settings and barely stutters.
What makes the world work beyond the visuals is the density of things to find. I am 80 hours in and still discovering entirely new types of puzzles and encounters I had no idea existed. There are over 300 crafting recipes to discover. Over 110 factions to interact with. Hidden caves, buried treasure, secret boss fights tucked away in places you would never think to look.
If you like exploration in games, Crimson Desert is going to ruin other open worlds for you.
The combat is excellent with a few catches
Pearl Abyss knows how to make combat feel good. They have been doing it in Black Desert Online for over a decade and that expertise shows here. Every weapon type has weight and impact. The animation work is top tier. Fighting at night with ray tracing on, watching sparks and light scatter across the battlefield, is genuinely beautiful.
The boss fights are the highlight. They range from human sized duels to massive creatures that require Shadow of the Colossus style climbing and strategic attacks. Learning patterns and finding openings feels rewarding in a way that reminds me of the best FromSoftware encounters.
The catch is the camera. In group fights where enemies come from all directions, the camera does not always keep up. You will get hit by enemies you cannot see and it feels cheap every time. Pearl Abyss has already patched some of the control issues since launch but the camera remains a work in progress.
The story is fine and that is okay
If you are coming to Crimson Desert expecting a narrative masterpiece, adjust your expectations. You play as Kliff, the leader of a mercenary company called the Greymanes. He gets killed, gets resurrected by mysterious forces, and is tasked with saving the world. He takes all of this surprisingly well.
The overarching plot is serviceable but not compelling. Characters have roughly one dimension each. Kliff himself is stoic and reliable and not much else. The dialogue is solid in a Game of Thrones accent kind of way, complete with liberal use of strong language that helps establish the tone.
But here is the thing. The story in Crimson Desert is not the point. It is the connective tissue between exploration and combat encounters, and in that role it works fine. You are not playing this game for plot twists. You are playing it to crest a hill and discover something unexpected, fight your way through it, and then do it again for 80 more hours.
The price and whether it is worth it
Crimson Desert costs £54.99 on Steam. That is full AAA price and given how divisive the reviews have been, some people are understandably hesitating. The Metacritic scores range from 50 to 90 depending on who you ask, which tells you everything about how subjective the experience is.
My take is that if you like open world games and you have any patience for janky systems alongside brilliant ones, you will get your money’s worth many times over. There is genuinely more content here than in most games that cost the same. The question is whether the rough edges surrounding the excellent parts drag down the experience enough to bother you.
If the price is making you wait, it is worth knowing that you can buy Crimson Desert for around fifteen to twenty pounds less than the Steam listing at several authorized key retailers. You get the exact same Steam key either way.
More broadly, if you are buying PC games regularly and not comparing prices across stores first, you are almost certainly overpaying. There are sites that let you compare game prices from dozens of shops in one view and it takes about ten seconds to check. Worth doing every time.
Who should play this
If you loved Elden Ring’s sense of discovery but wished it had a more approachable combat system, play Crimson Desert.
If you want a huge open world that rewards curiosity without drowning you in map markers, play Crimson Desert.
If you need a tight narrative to keep you motivated and get frustrated by inventory management that feels like it was designed in 2012, maybe wait for a few more patches.
Pearl Abyss has been updating the game aggressively since launch, fixing controls and quality of life issues on a near weekly basis. The game three months from now will probably be noticeably better than the game today. But the game today is already something worth experiencing if you have any affection for the genre.
Crimson Desert is messy and ambitious and beautiful and frustrating, often within the same ten minutes. That is either going to drive you crazy or make you fall in love with it. I am still not sure which one happened to me, but I keep launching it every night, so that probably says enough.
