A vast world and even vaster array of MMO-like activities mix with glittering fidelity in Crimson Desert, but what good is it without much character, texture or charm?
Crimson Desert is big. So big, it turns out, that this open world game requires not one but three loading screens. The first is a simple bar loading shaders and the like; the second whisks you away to a blocky realm with a twinkling star sitting on its horizon, a strange and tantalising lead-up for a game that bills itself primarily as a high-fantasy action romp. The third sees the gruff, Scottish-accented hero Kliff walking along a kind of geometric gangwalk towards a door of celestial white light. Kliff’s destination is ostensibly the game world, Pywel, yet his entry into it is framed as something more profound – like stepping into heaven.
The allusion, intentional or not, is partly justified. The game’s first major area, Hernand, frequently feels heavenly – particularly, I suspect, if you have been fantasy-pilled to the extent that South Korean developer Pearl Abyss seemingly has. Here is a bucolic realm of winding pathways lined with wicker fencing where industrious peasants partake in all manner of agricultural tasks: beekeeping, husbandry, fishing, and growing vegetables. Deer graze in shaded woodland; ducks swim in clearwater rivers at the foot of flinty chalk cliffs; the petals of wildflower meadows sway in gentle breeze. Even with murderous bandits ready to turn Kliff into mincemeat at the earliest opportunity, the vibe is quintessentially lovely and inviting.
But Crimson Desert isn’t just a game of picturesque prettiness but madcap mechanics. It demands that you become savvy with a plethora of abilities given confusingly similar proper-noun names: Axiom Force is a magical grappling hook (which functions a lot like the Ultra Hand from Tears of Kingdom); Force Palm causes you to unleash supercharged physical blows. These abilities are bestowed upon you early in the game after a mysterious beggar leads you to a floating technological sky fortress where you’re given a cloak of feathers which means you can [checks notes] transform into a bird-like creature. The opening hours are breakneck: the sheer mass of mechanics is chaotic and overwhelming. But with these initial tutorials out of the way, Crimson Desert assumes a more familiar rhythm – namely, fetch quests and other rote tasks. It adds up to an experience that feels distinctly modern, oscillating between whoop-inducing bombast and utter brain-smoothing banality.
We begin in turmoil: Kliff and his ragtag faction of Greymanes have been disbanded after a bloodying encounter with another animal-themed cohort, the Black Bears. Kliff awakes alone on a river bed having miraculously survived a sword straight through the abdomen. No matter as he quickly sets about scrapping with local knights, hunting criminals and, more pertinently, finding and reassembling his Greymane comrades.
Attribution
This disheveled group curse and swear as if Pearl Abyss’ writers are aiming to outdo even Game of Thrones: the c-bomb is a common refrain; at one jolting point, somebody shouts “cleanse my arsehole” before somebody else shouts “c*** flaps.” And yet in spite of the colourful language, Kliff and the other Greymanes never convince as actual people: the rugged, tousle-haired star scowls, pouts, and offers words of reassurance to his beleaguered friends, the kind of thing a modern blockbuster star is want to do – yet he is more vanilla avatar than vivid action hero.
That is, until Kliff actually starts cracking skulls which, despite pesky camera issues and an erratic lock-on system, are terrific fun. These steely showdowns, in which Kliff wields both melee weapons and a taekwondo moveset, crackle with cadence of fighting games. Strikes land with weighty aplomb thanks to judicious hit-stops: the swing of Kliff’s sword – bang! – followed by bone-crunching pow: it’s like Devil May Cry with even more oomph. This bearded hulk executes shield bashes and special moves amid volleys of martial-arts kicks – and what fun there is in blinding enemies with glinting light from Kliff’s sword before peppering them with slashes. Death typically arrives with S-tier style – doled out via fastidiously mo-capped finishing moves.
But wait! There’s more to this sandbox carnage (whose excess of mechanics is a microcosm of this biblically gluttonous video game as a whole). You can grapple and throw enemies, lob trees and other heavy objects at them, and even turn Klliff into a Sonic the Hedgehog-style flurry of spinning attacks.
The mechanical complexity is dizzying, though one welcomingly elegant aspect of Crimson Desert’s design is how Kliff (and two further characters: flintlock gunslinger Damiane and axe-wielding bruiser Oongka) partially learn combat moves by seeing other enemies doing them. An evasive roll? That can has to be learned. The pump kick? That too. This extends to everything else in the game: you learn about food ingredients and other items by hovering over them in shops; you learn characters’ names by actually speaking with them. The sheer informational vertigo this singularly massive, multifaceted game is inherently disposed to induce is tempered by this inventive way of doling out information. It’s also a neat way of encouraging curiosity.
And yet, this informational hack aside, Crimson Desert cannot help but sag under the weight of having to explain all these systems. The story, broken up into digestible chapters, naturally slows down. The lustre of the ravishing presentation – which shines through even on my aged PC which merely meets the recommended specifications – wears off. But brilliantly barmy moments continue to manifest, even after many tens of hours: at one point, I launched my horse off a gigantic ledge and upon landing, Kliff bounced high into the air, primed to launch an air attack or transform instantaneously into that feathered creature.
It’s these kinds of eccentric moments that have led me to seesaw on Crimson Desert over the past few weeks: is its maximalist fever-dream approach to game design – in which your horse can also drift around corners à la Mario Kart – actually genius? Or is Crimson Desert one of the most shameless games I’ve ever played? Pearl Abyss seems to crib many unique mechanics from many of the most beloved action-RPGs of the past decade into one harebrained uber-game while also infusing it with the attention-devouring grind of their previously successful 2015 MMORPG, Black Desert Online. I felt this most keenly through the painfully slow resource harvesting and crafting, which is a prerequisite to upgrading gear. The need to craft distorts what could be a sharper role-playing action experience: rather than being swept away by Kliff’s exploits as I gallop through another resplendent environment, I’m scouring cliffs like a prospector, keeping a beady eye out for precious iron ore.
The game’s cynical approach to the player’s time also finds expression in its regressive quest design. Some bandit-clearing missions require you to go to a specific spot – a quarry for example – and kill hundreds of enemies as a ticker in the bottom right corner tells you precisely what percentage you have left. A question flutters across my mind around minute 10 of this activity: is this time-devouring monster of an open-world blockbuster actually just a prestige take on Candy Crush?
Attribution
The feeling compounds as I spend more time in each distinct area, from dank marshes to towering redwood forests. Crimson Desert is plenty capable of delivering emotionally stirring moments through its settings: the tucked-away village of Sunset Valley which gave me Rivendell-reveal vibes when I first saw it; a centre of learning called Scholastone located high in the mountains where rabbits and ostriches run free, like Dr. Doolittle meets Snow White. It’s not that there is nothing to do in these places, but, beyond major story beats, these activities are not especially engaging. I have spent too much time finding objects for people who have less personality than the game’s pristinely rendered cabbages.
My mind invariably drifts towards the Dragon’s Dogma games, whose similarly generic fantasy elements sustained a crystalline, clockwork experience of rules and systems that whirred together to deliver something close to the essence of pure fantasy adventure.
Crimson Desert, by contrast, is baggy. The developers at Pearl Abyss have attempted to summon a world of inexhaustible things to do, including – take a deep breath – buying a house, managing and expanding your Greymane camp, taming horses, dying armour, riding dragons, doing Breath of the Wild-style cooking, and more (in addition to everything I’ve already mentioned). This is the promise of a life-dominating MMORPG transposed to a glittering single-player experience which can last anywhere between 50 to 100 hours (and likely even more depending on playstyle and ability). Even past hour 15, I was still being fed tutorial screens.
The game’s audacious pitch feels like one laser-targeted at the current demands of the attention economy; every frame, menu, and interaction seems to radiate this commercial ideology. Still, moments of joyful, swaggering artistry manage to cut through: the showdown in a swaying grass field in a secluded valley gleefully evokes classic martial arts cinema. I have a major soft spot for the towering trolls who gently potter about Crimson Desert’s multi-species world, making all the humans look tiny, Kliff included.
Make no mistake, Crimson Desert is a technically proficient game with killer combat (pesky lock-on aside). Yet its characters and story are fatally undercooked. And for all Pywel’s spectacular visual construction which impresses in its gigantic scale and gleaming prettiness, it lacks a certain distinctiveness. Think of The Witcher games: you can practically taste the fetid water, churned-up mud, and hunks of charred meat dined on by noblemen. Those are works of grit, texture, and a genuinely idiosyncratic sense of place. How does Crimson Desert taste? Well, it is not nearly so flavoursome – imagine, instead, a banquet where almost every dish has the faint taste of cardboard, and you have to eat it for what feels like forever.
A copy of Crimson Desert was provided for this review by Pearl Abyss.