After dedicating over 20 hours to the Windows PC build of Crimson Desert, I find myself staggered by the sheer scale of its world—and equally struck by its profound vacuity. This single-player epic from Pearl Abyss promises a sandbox overflowing with possibilities, yet it seems to have overlooked the fundamental requirement that those activities be engaging.
More than six years post-announcement, this standalone venture from the minds behind Black Desert Online has finally emerged. Two things are immediately evident: the weight of expectation is immense, and a definitive verdict would likely require hundreds of hours of play. Given the tight window between the review period and launch, these impressions focus on Crimson Desert’s opening act. While my technical playtime sits near the 30-hour mark, much of that was spent stress-testing mechanics; my “organic” experience is closer to 20 hours. My stance remains firm: if a game fails to spark joy within 10 to 20 hours, it has failed to respect the player’s time. This critique comes from a veteran of the genre—someone who hailed Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 as a pinnacle of the RPG form just last year.
Meet Kliff, a protagonist who feels like he was pulled from a catalog of “Generic Fantasy Heroes.” Looking more like a high-fashion model than a battle-scarred veteran, Kliff leads the Greymanes—a band of mercenaries currently embroiled in a gritty, yet narratively thin, conflict with a rival group known as the Black Bears.
Console Performance Remains a Mystery
Review access was strictly limited to the Windows PC version of the game.
The narrative kicks off with Kliff perishing in a skirmish, only to be inexplicably resurrected within a surreal “abyss.” He treats this metaphysical event with the emotional depth of a man checking his mail, casually navigating the void before respawning on a riverbank. When a local suggests he rest, Kliff offers a stoic “I’ll be going now” and wanders toward the town of Hernand. What follows is a disjointed series of events: a mandatory sewer excursion to rescue a noblewoman, chores involving chimney sweeping and cat retrieval, and another trip through a portal to the abyss. The storytelling in Crimson Desert feels like a chaotic patchwork of random incidents featuring a lead who seems entirely immune to human emotion.
While the “silent warrior” archetype can work—Geralt of Rivia is a prime example—Kliff lacks the wit, history, or charisma to pull it off. He is essentially a hollow vessel, offering little more than generic inquiries about bandits. If there is a compelling backstory hidden here, ten hours of gameplay failed to unearth it.
Attempting to find engagement elsewhere, I pivoted to side activities. Cooking, fishing, and mining felt like rote busywork. Bounty hunting initially seemed like a saving grace, but it quickly devolved into a tedious loop: track the target, click once to subdue, click once to punch, and then—the real kicker—manually carry them back to a guard station. In Crimson Desert, there are no shortcuts. If your bounty is across the massive Hernand region, prepare for a thirty-minute commute on horseback while hauling a body. Fast travel is forbidden when “on the clock,” turning what should be a thrill into a grueling chore.
This cycle of excitement followed by immediate deflation defines the experience. Discovering the Pororin village—a whimsical, hidden forest community—felt like a breakthrough. But the quest for entry was a standard fetch task involving a massive, sentient tree (an Ent). The interaction was non-existent; I climbed the unresponsive giant, grabbed the item, and returned to a village that turned out to be little more than a storefront for crafting recipes. Even the homesteading feels lackluster; the Greymane Camp is a resource sink that currently offers no tangible benefits or personal connection.
Exploration should be the game’s heart, yet the vast distances between points of interest make it a slog. While there are scenic vistas and the occasional clever puzzle, the traversal mechanics—limited by a restrictive stamina bar and sparse fast-travel points—make reaching them feel like an endurance test rather than an adventure.
The control scheme is perhaps the most significant barrier. It is a labyrinth of unintuitive button combinations. To lift a specific object, you might need to hold Y+B, but for others, it’s a sequence of LB, aiming, X, and then Y. Even basic social interactions are fraught with risk; holding X might greet a villager, but doing so while moving can accidentally trigger a pickpocket attempt, leading to a murder charge for a simple “hello.” Even the simple act of quitting the game requires navigating through four layers of menus and multiple “hold to confirm” prompts.
If there is a diamond in the rough here, it is the combat. While grunt fights can be mashed through, boss encounters are genuinely thrilling and require a mastery of elemental imbues and diverse move sets. The character-swapping system is also a highlight; when you switch between Kliff and the agile Damiane, you teleport to their specific world location. This adds a layer of strategic freedom, though it’s hindered by the fact that the story clearly treats Damiane as a secondary participant.
Ultimately, Crimson Desert feels like it is suffering from an identity crisis. It lacks the narrative depth of The Witcher 3 and the environmental wonder of Elden Ring. There is a decent game buried somewhere under the fetch quests and cumbersome mechanics, but in its current state, the most remarkable thing about this world is how much of it is occupied by nothing at all.
Source: Polygon
