Crimson Desert

By now, everyone and their uncle have had something to say about Crimson Desert. The consensus that I have seen is that people will either love it or hate it. I don’t hold to this opinion as I feel that the gaming population are way more nuanced than that. Sure there will be a vast amount of people who will either love the game, but I feel for most people it will be a good game with amazing elements hampered by numerous annoying issues that lead to frustration rather than a dislike for the game as a whole. Each person will have something about this game that they will love and something they will hate. One person’s irritation will be another person’s thing that makes this game special. The game has so many systems, little interactions with the world and small things that add to the experience that you can swing from wanting to uninstall the expletive game to smiling like you are 6yr old again. I heard someone state that this game is the type of game that you would have made when you were a little kid. I have never agreed harder with anyone. There are so many bits to this game that a younger me would have added just because it was cool. That is the overarching takeaway I have for this game. They did it because it would be cool and no other reason. Everything that people have to say about this game stems directly from this design philosophy. When asked if the guy whose job it was to rein the developers in, cut content that was surplus to what was needed and generally be the adult in the room to ensure the game was achievable was ignored, Will Powers the marketing director for Pearl Abyss stated that that person never existed. It shows.

I love this game. There are so many rough edges it reminds me of games of old. We look back with rose tinted glasses at games of old, but most shipped with bugs and idiosyncrasies that we overlooked because we didn’t know any better or, more importantly, we just didn’t care and worked around it. Pearl Abyss creating a game that's main design focus is ‘just pure fun’ has paid off, it doesn’t always but in this instance it has. The developers have many years experience of creating MMOs and have had to iterate and create content, often on a short timeline for content devouring fans, for over a decade now. I am sure they have multiple ideas that have either been added to Black Desert Online, a game I never tried as MMOs are really not my thing, or were left on the cutting room floor that I feel that, when they were making this game, they just went for it. Crimson Desert started as an MMO and then moved to single player and in many ways it shows. There are so many systems, add to this the side quests that, especially in the beginning, are glorified tutorials that seem to go on forever just because of the sheer number of these systems. I was still getting tutorial messages recently and I have played 52hrs, some of these are for extremely basic things like stamina. 

My favourite thing about the game is the little things that happen. Things that show the developers have thought about little interactions within the world. I was in a fort and after I had cleared it I jumped over the wall and inadvertently landed on my horse, who I didn’t realise was on the other side of the wall, and immediately started to ride off. It was seamless as with many things in this game. On the reverse side of the coin, it is always a small thing that makes it more infuriating or more clunky than it needs to be. In a sea of well thought out, game defining interactions and systems that could define a new game direction for future games, there are a wealth of frustrating, game destroying and rage inducing churning waves that destroy any wholehearted love of this game. This is where I believe that all the comments on the game, good, bad or frustrated, are all correct. There are not many times in gaming where everyone’s opinions are absolutely valid. I have yet to come across a criticism or compliment for this game that isn’t true. We may disagree on the importance of the opinion, but we will agree that it is true. 

The easiest thing is to start with the agreed positives of the game. The graphics are amazing. The draw distance is a sight to behold. This leads to a feeling of childlike wonder and an excitement to explore, which is the game's primary design. I remember leaving the lift for the first time in Elden Ring and looking out and seeing all the glints in the distance, buildings tops poking over the hill, movement in the trees and structures inviting exploration and this led me to the belief that was later upheld, that Elden Ring was different to all other Dark Souls games. That same feeling was repeated here in Crimson Desert. This is where the Elden Ring comparison ends as it is a very different game but the reason so many non soulslike players loved Elden Ring and were drawn into that world was the exploration. The performance of the game engine has been widely praised and there have been very few reports of performance issues from stuttering, graphical bugs or crashes that have plagued new releases in recent years. The infamous shader compilation that is a staple of the modern game engine is a minor inconvenience that only takes a minimal amount of time when you initially load in. 

The ability to move seamlessly through the world with no loading screens or hitching. You can move between the open world and indoors as we have wanted for many years. No secret loading happening or little tricks such as shimming through gaps in the rock face or slow door opening animations just constant movement in and out all spaces. This also is apparent through the world as you just constantly move no matter how quickly you traverse the world. I personally like the climbing and, although it is stamina based, is generally very good. The speed with which the developers update and iterate the game is amazing. Included in this is the fact that they are actively listening to the players and adding new things or altering things that majority of players don’t like. 

Moving onto the complaints:

Many people complained that Kliff is not your own character. People would prefer to create their own character, even if this is their own Kliff. Personally this is not a bother for me but I can’t see a reason this couldn’t have been a thing. There are many games where you play a set character and this has not been a problem, but having your own character does add personal connections can helps to pull you into the world. It wouldn’t surprise me if their next game includes a character creator for you to create your own protagonist to explore their world with. 

There has been a lot said about the difficulty. I feel the game isn’t overly difficult, some boss fights are difficult, but you do need to fight the controls, a lot. There was a boss I was fighting and it often felt like the doge/roll button just wasn’t working. I also found that if I locked onto an enemy, something I only do with bosses, the lock on would randomly disengage. You do need to make sure you are scaled with the difficulty. I tried the Crimson Mist boss and died in 2 hits. Did other things for a few hours and then had no issue after upgrading my weapons and armour and added skills. The reviewers have received a lot of criticism for complaining about the difficulty spikes in the game and there are difficulty spikes. I feel you can see the issue here if you were asked to complete a 100hr plus game in time for a review and add to this the fact that the developers were adding, changing and tweaking the game as you were playing it. Boss fights and controls were tweaked at release so the game we played at release was not the same game. There are, of course, reviewers who are quite rightly being called out but many were playing under different circumstances to us. 

Dual wielding looks cool but the attacks don’t lock onto enemies and I often found myself flailing off into the distance as as opposed to attacking the person I was aiming for. I wish this was better as dual wielding in games is really good.

There were a few reviewers that described an empty World. I feel that this is just not true. You may not  like the things you find but there is something around every corner. There are so many puzzles and little things all around including caves and secrets that often you are not ready for but you will come back to later. There is life all around. 

I have seen complaints of boring same three hit combat is a common complaint. There was a comment that said you can complete the whole game using a power kick. This is down to the player as there are multiple button combos to access if you want. I have heard the game described as having almost fighting game combos. There are grabs and throws to add to your arsenal, using your abyss hook to reel in enemies, using kicks and other enemies to manipulate the battlefield and of course the environment as a weapon to either damage enemies or to create space for yourself if you are getting overwhelmed such as bringing down a tower mid fight on top of enemies. Add to this weapons and armours with special abilities and you have a combat system that you can tailor to your own personal playstyle. You can engage with this as little or as much as you want to. 

There is really bad onboarding in the game and this is the most valid complaint. I felt as a person who has played many different games for many years, some of the systems are self explanatory and you can figure out how to do things. But there are systems that they have created or altered so they don’t work as expected and they are either sloppily explained at best and more often than not, not explained at all. This doesn’t excuse it and it should have been better, but it isn’t as if the game is that different from what is and has been available. I figured out most stuff with only a little difficulty. 

The lack of a story has been a major complaint. There isn’t much explanation of the story or just the basics of what is going on. The story is there but often you are left with the thought of ‘Oh OK’. I am not that bothered personally and in the marketing of the game it was made clear that this is not an RPG with a deep engaging story, but rather an open world sandbox with a story that helps move your experience along. It was never the focus. Now would I have preferred a deep story to add to everything else the game has to offer, absolutely. It would just have added to it and pushed the game into a completely different level of quality. 

The quests, especially at the beginning of the game, are just fetch quests or as the old saying goes, ocean wide puddle deep. When we have played games like Cyberpunk, Kingdom come Deliverance, Skyrim or the Witcher you slowly become accustomed to interesting, well written side content where a writer has been let loose to write a short story that is engaging and will often surprise you. This is not what Pearl Abyss have focussed on and they chose to deliver gameplay over narrative, which is a perfectly valid choice. But as with the main story I can see why people would have wanted both.

Overall the draw of the game for many is that it lets you play the way you want. There are multiple systems but you don’t need to use all or majority of them. You engage with the game in the way you want and engage with the systems in the way you want to. Don’t want to fish or hunt or anything like that? Don’t want to spend time collecting resources or mining or being a lumberjack? Don’t, you can buy the food items you need. It is a mechanic in the game that is there for those that want it. There are so many systems for you to connect or engage with that there is bound to be something for you. 

I was amazed how you can do things in different way. For one boss I have seen people use their green punch ability to stun the boss and then attack them. Others used their Abyss hook to reel the boss in and then attack it. I just dodged the boss’s diving attack and wailed on it until it’s stun meter was high enough and then attacked while it sat on the ground. The Sparta kick, grabs and shield bash attacks add to the complexity of the combat and add variety you can dip in and out of. Switching between one handed to dual wielding and then changing to using a bow or a two-handed weapon is a nice change, especially when fighting trash mobs. You can switch weapons on the fly so if you are not feeling sword and board, bring up the contextual weapon wheel as swap the shield out for a second weapon or change to a two handed sword or a pickaxe if you feel the need. 

There have been multiple games where the control scheme is crap and people have railed against those controls only for those control schemes to become the norm after a time and iteration. These are controls that we now see as the norm and complain if others don’t include and iterate on said controls. To be clear this does not mean that Crimson’s Deserts controls are going to be the new norm but I do think with iteration, heavy curation and slimming down of the control scheme, this could be an amazing newer different and alternative scheme for other developers can use as a basis to iterate and add their own spin to. Or not as the case may be. I usually play on keyboard and mouse but the control scheme on there was just too all over the place. It may just be too much for people for this to become normal. It may just be that it is just too convoluted and confusing for it to be of any use to anyone to play with or to develop from. All I know that when the controls did what I want them to do, this was some of the best combat with the lightest touch that enabled me to do badass stuff that just looked cool. This is said with a heavy use of the word ’when’ because it was more often not the case. It was more often the case that I almost did the cool thing and then the controls messed me over at the last. 

As gamers we are constantly complaining and asking for games that take risks that meet us where we want to be. We ask for games that innovate and move away from the stale old systems that we are bored of. Yellow paint everywhere. Ubisoft style open world icon alphabet soup on their maps that lead to predictable repeated events. Collectathons that are there just for content. Sidekicks that tell you what to do before you even encounter the puzzle. Cookiecutter characters. And so on. This game has resonated with many players and for good reason. It is one of the first games for a while that does it purely for the fun of it. This will not be game of the year material at all for anyone (unless the rest of the year is appalling bad) but it will be a game people will still be speaking about at the end of the year. GTA6 is a-coming after all. Maybe this year will be it’s year? My advice to anyone who is on the fence about this game is simple and the same advice I would give about any game. Don’t fall for FOMO, nothing good ever comes from that. Read reviews from people you trust, watch a few YouTube videos (there is unlikely to be any major spoilers based purely on the plethora of content) or streams, speak to people who have played it. Educate yourself as much as possible. I would recommend this game to most people on the big proviso that you go in expecting for the game to be what it is and not what it is not. Be aware of the flaws and hopefully that way if you give it a try you will be prepared to see it as it is and be open for those moments that everyone is speaking about.