I’ve played nearly 40 hours of Crimson Desert ($69.99 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S), and I am absolutely hooked. Developer Pearl Abyss has crafted an action-RPG that effectively blends Dragon’s Dogma’s punchy combat and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s awe and wonder, with notable elements from other modern open-world games. The result is a rare release that successfully borrows from the best, while still retaining enough uniqueness to feel like its own weird, wonderful thing.
First Impressions: A Steep Learning Curve
In Crimson Desert, you play as Kliff, the leader of a mercenary squad called the Greymanes. As the band regroups to pay their respects to recently lost members, it’s attacked with no time to mourn, thrusting the protagonist into action. After a series of fights, the Greymanes are scattered, and Kliff is killed. It’s only thanks to divine intervention that he’s plucked from death to serve a greater purpose.
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To say Crimson Desert is ambitious is a massive understatement. However, that ambition comes with a steep learning curve. It’s a systems-heavy title that uses every gamepad button (and even button combinations) to unleash Kliff’s abilities. On the one hand, this leads to unique ways to interact with the world that haven’t been seen in some time, namely its Ocarina of Time-style targeting system. You even use it to focus on NPCs to engage in conversation.
On the other hand, developer Pearl Abyss adds unnecessary complexity to simple controls, which leads to confusion. For example, I spent the game’s early hours stumbling around in the dark because I couldn’t figure out how to pull out my lantern. The lantern can’t be used while armed, so I needed to sheathe Kliff’s weapon first. Unfortunately, I forgot which button did that, so I explored the dark caves, forested woodlands, and even a snowy mountain near the starting area without a light source for an embarrassingly long time. This could have easily been remedied by making Kliff automatically sheathe his weapon when selecting the lantern, but that’s just not how Crimson Desert works.
You see, Crimson Desert is a very hands on, “manual” title, at times to an obtuse degree. Crimson Desert’s controls have other quirks, too, like requiring you to tap a button to sprint, rather than simply holding it. In fact, it took me several hours to build muscle memory and become comfortable with the controls, since I essentially needed to relearn mechanics that are genre-specific staples. It’s like spending your life driving an automatic car, only to be handed a new one with a manual transmission. But the controls are worth learning, as Crimson Desert is incredibly fun.
(Credit: Pearl Abyss/PCMag)
A GTA-Like World With Consequences
The game world is a dynamic, lived-in backdrop that feels heavily inspired by Red Dead Redemption 2’s realism, but filtered through a fantasy lens. Like that Rockstar Games classic, Crimson Desert features impeccable attention to detail, including dynamic NPCs who go about their daily schedules and react to many of your actions. Even mundane actions like petting animals, sitting on benches, or just leaning against walls help bring the world to life.
One element that surprised me is the Grand Theft Auto-style wanted system. You can bully and assault NPCs, but you’ll be flagged as a criminal who must flee the crime scene before being caught by guards. I learned this the hard way when I tested my suplexing ability on a hapless peasant wife strolling down the road. Until then, I assumed NPC reactions to me drawing my weapon were just visual fluff. I was wrong and deemed a criminal for my actions. The game warns that failing to escape or further escalating matters puts your freedom at risk. I still haven’t been arrested, but it’s on my bucket list. Stealing and pickpocketing are other aspects I haven’t experimented with nearly as much. There’s an entire criminal element to the gameplay that I fully intend to explore in due time.
I experienced somewhat generic quests and story beats, but the excellent voice acting breathed life into what would otherwise be banal busywork. Sure, rescuing a cow from bandits may not seem all that interesting, but the way the farmer described his plight made the task all the more intriguing. This adds to Crimson Desert’s realism and atmosphere, further cementing that lived-in feeling.
Familiar Movement, Weapon Creativity, and Puzzles
Like Tears of the Kingdom, Crimson Desert lets you climb almost any surface or use a glider to extend jumps and dives. This also applies to larger enemies, so I scaled those big boys to do battle as I did in Dragon’s Dogma or Shadow of the Colossus.
(Credit: Pearl Abyss/PCMag)
The game engine’s physics and properties also foster creativity, recalling the modern Zelda titles. For example, I lit my arrow on fire by holding my bow over a sconce. Then, I shot it to burn vines that choked a doorway. I liked that my curiosity was rewarded.
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Many puzzles involve using the magical grapple ability, Axiom Force, which I tapped to snag and levitate objects. In my playthrough, I leveraged Axiom Force to move blocks and shift massive, ancient gears on an island in the sky.
Because there’s very little hand-holding, properly applying those mechanics was entirely on me, giving Crimson Desert an old-school “figure it out” vibe that I haven’t enjoyed in quite a while. On top of that, there are many oddities that only add to the experience. For example, I climbed a small rock formation to mine for ore, only to be attacked by crab-monsters mimicking said ore. In my mad dash to escape, I climbed to the top of the rock formation, where I noticed pretty flowers—and promptly dropped dead as I approached. Curious, I returned from the nearest checkpoint to investigate further, and dropped dead again. Was that a bug? Were the flowers cursed? I don’t know! That said, it made for an awesome little story among my many other misadventures in the world of Pywel.
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Combat: Wrestling Mooks and Wrangling Bosses
Crimson Desert is by far the biggest departure from any recently released open-world RPG. While there are basic light and heavy attacks to employ, the real fun comes from unlocking new abilities in the beefy skills tree. For example, you can upgrade Axiom Force to pull enemies toward you for easier crowd control, as Nero does to foes in Devil May Cry. Similarly, I opted to learn wrestling moves, including the lariat and suplex, to utterly style on hapless bandits. Some of these fancier moves don’t work against larger enemies and bosses, but I grappled and scaled those foes to dispatch them effectively.
Thanks to all of these abilities, Crimson Desert’s action is open and free-form: it rewards the effort you put into it. You can play methodically, like a Souls game, and use your core attack and block skills to chew through enemies. That said, you can invest in several other skills to broaden the action. Every new ability felt like a new toy for me to experiment with, and the more I played, the more I enjoyed using them in battle. It’s everything I enjoy about Dragon’s Dogma, without the restrictive class system that stymies the action.
(Credit: Pearl Abyss/PCMag)
PC Performance: A Gorgeous Romp Through a Fantasy Wonderland
I played Crimson Desert on my test PC, a rig outfitted with an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 CPU, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, and 16GB of RAM at medium settings and 1440p resolution. This let me play at roughly 60fps. The frame rate dipped to 40fps in hectic, action-heavy areas; even 30fps, at times. I didn’t want to lower the resolution to 1080p, so I was willing to make that performance compromise.
Crimson Desert is beautifully dense. Reactive foliage, moody and dynamic lighting, and visual flourishes across the board make it a showstopper of a game. I also loved how the sun and moonlight reflected on surfaces, illuminating objects differently depending on you location. A forest at night is inky black, while a moonlight stroll across a mountain is filled with gentle, cool blue rays that reflect off the glittering snow. This is true for towns and villages, too. The lighting and visual design make even a humble stone on a wall pop with detail. That’s to say nothing of the wonderfully weathered cobbled streets or the plastered walls in the old post-and-beam buildings that fill the world.
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Crimson Desert Is The Ultimate Genre Mashup
Crimson Desert has the potential to be the next landmark action-RPG, alongside Breath of the Wild, Elden Ring, and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. It’s an impressive buffet of gameplay ideas that manages to charm, impress, and inspire. Although the early game moments present a steep learning curve due to the unusual controls, the experience becomes vastly more intuitive once muscle memory takes over. Likewise, the combat freedom is almost overwhelming, but finding new ways to clobber enemies is an absolute blast. The atmospheric detail and hyper-realistic interactions add to the game’s appeal. Crimson Desert has delivered more than I ever expected, and I can’t wait to sink more hours into it.
About Our Expert
Gabriel Zamora
Senior Writer, Software
Experience
In 2014, I began my career at PCMag as a freelancer. That blossomed into a full-time position in 2021, and I now review email marketing apps, mobile operating systems, web hosting services, streaming music platforms, and video games as a senior writer. I’m a graduate of Hunter College, a hard-core gamer, and an Apple enthusiast.
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