Crimson Desert review – a beautiful, shallow world

Crimson Desert starts well. A story of revenge is something I can get on board with; it’s simple and effective, and gives me a real focus. The big guy there, he’s the one who ruined everything, and he’s the one I have to get to. Fast forward about 50 hours, and he’s nowhere to be seen – I’m being asked to hunt for bugs to create dye to turn my cloak the same shade of red my face is getting.

Meandering is something that Crimson Desert does extremely well. It’s the most videogame of videogames I’ve ever seen, and while its beautiful environments and awe-inspiring vistas fill the tank a little, it doesn’t take long for me to realise that there isn’t much under the surface to get excited about.

An RPG that takes its cues from probably anything else you’ve played in the last 20 years, Crimson Desert tells the story of Kliff Greymane, a man who comes back from the brink by means of a mysterious bangle. I’m tasked with getting the gang back together and doing a lot of odd jobs along the way.

On the surface of it, I can do pretty much whatever I want. The first place I find myself in has green fields, lovely forests, and a really nice-looking coastal area, so I go for a bit of a wander, as is my wont. I really enjoy finding the edges of these types of games – seeing how far I can get, seeing who I can meet, and what kind of trouble I can get myself into. This is where my wonder began to falter.

I explored as far as I feasibly could, looking for landmarks on the (again, beautiful) horizon. I reached some of them, too, but what I found wasn’t much more than a diorama. It was a port with a population of people that I couldn’t interact with other than giving them a generic greeting. There was no incidental story; I stumbled across nothing.

Turns out that anything to do in this port town, and most other far-reaching settlements for that matter, is gated by the main story. These places don’t have any worth other than aesthetic until the story tells you they do, which makes this huge open-world game feel a little on rails. The exploration started to feel pointless, which made the playground on show feel a lot smaller.

When I think back to playing games like The Witcher, or even Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, there was always something to be found at the far edges of nowhere. Some crone who leads you into a little jaunt, or a man who is tied up, and you eventually find out why. Fun character moments, occasionally some powerful rewards. Bright spots that occur outside of some sort of main narrative. Without these, anything outside of your quest list begins to feel a little sterile.

I explore the opening city and am asked by the locals to help out (I must look the sort), so I do. Gathering wood and bits of rock, I help and eventually gain the favor of a city bigshot. My tasks are a mix of gathering resources and bashing skulls, something Kliff was born for.

Crimson Desert plays a bit like a mix between the Arkham games and Assassin’s Creed, with a bit of Elden Ring thrown in for good measure. The combat saw me dance between enemies, unleashing flurries of attacks, utilizing whichever one of the many special attacks I could remember to end with a flourish. It’s quite satisfying, fighting mobs that stand little chance – Kliff feels suitably powerful when it comes to regular people.

Eventually, though, I got to a boss fight. The spike in difficulty was enough to give me whiplash. I had been sorting out local bandits and picking flowers to this point, so when faced with a real challenge, it blindsided me. Thankfully, one of the first bosses I faced came with a compelling tale. The Devil of the Reed Fields has a suitable tragic backstory, a cool design, and an unbelievably frustrating moveset.

I am not a top-tier soulslike player, but I do play a lot of games, so when I say that some of the early game bosses had me questioning my own hands after a while, it makes me worried. Crimson Desert asks for finesse during a lot of these boss fights – split-second parry timings and precognitive dodge roll windows at a minimum, not taking into account the gimmick fights – but the issue is that Kliff often feels like he’s on skates, and the level of control you have over him doesn’t always feel accurate.

Mileage is going to vary here, of course, and some will take to these spikes in difficulty like a duck to water, but most of the tougher fights, for me, devolved into a battle of attrition, taking as many food items with me to suffer through the seemingly endless barrage of blows. An unentertaining slugfest, for the most part.

The trailer shows all manner of the raddest stuff you’ve ever seen. I don’t believe that those antics are going to be the experience for many who try Crimson Desert. We see dragons and jetpacks and swinging around on an ethereal grappling hook while dodging molten lava. Most of my experience was prescribed normalcy, and although this does get more fantastical as it goes along, asking for 70 hours before things get interesting is like that person who tells you that the TV show they watch gets really good in the 8th season.

I found some joy in abandoning my task and exploring the Abyss network above the sky. These are a series of floating islands, each housing a different puzzle, requiring it to be completed before I could move on. These were, on the whole, satisfying to solve, and I got a fast travel point and an additional skill point for my trouble.

I struggled to connect with Crimson Desert. I’ve spent tens of hours with Kliff, and I have no idea who he is, really. It feels like Pearl Abyss was going for a Geralt man-of-few-words type of thing, but it comes across like he’s bored and uninterested. Alec Newman, the voice actor for Kliff, did a fantastic job in Still Wakes the Deep, so I know he’s got it in him, but the script seemingly gave him very little to work with here.

I will say Pearl Abyss has done a fantastic job of creating a land that feels alive (albeit fairly noninteractive for the most part). Animals frolic through fields and weave through trees in dense forests, with impressive foley work creating a depth of feeling when you’re walking around doing nothing in particular. It is genuinely beautiful, it’s interesting to look at, and I got some pleasure from taking in the sights, but sights are all they were for a very, very long time.

With a world that limits exploration except for discovering environmental puzzles, a narrative that got less compelling and more convoluted as it went, and immense difficulty spikes, I didn’t have the best time with Crimson Desert. I wanted to love it, I wanted to have that power fantasy that the trailers advertised, and most of all, I wanted to immerse myself. Instead, I got busywork with an occasional beatdown. Those vistas, though, are truly spectacular.