{"id":12579,"date":"2026-03-20T23:15:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/03\/20\/crimson-desert-review\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T23:15:00","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:15:00","slug":"crimson-desert-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2026\/03\/20\/crimson-desert-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Crimson Desert Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Crimson Desert feels like it was designed in a lab by someone who wanted to combine elements of all their favorite big budget open-world games into the ultimate video game. It\u2019s got the adventuring of The Witcher 3<\/u><\/a>, the slow horseback conversations of Red Dead Redemption 2<\/u><\/a>, the open-ended puzzle solving of Tears of the Kingdom<\/u><\/a>, and the do-whatever-you-want dynamic world of something like Skyrim<\/u><\/a> or Grand Theft Auto 5<\/u><\/a>. And while it\u2019s genuinely impressive that developer Pearl Abyss even attempts to smash all these things I love into a single package, the result ends up being a jack of all trades but a master of none. The exploration and combat fall far short of the best open-world adventure games, the dialogue, characters, and story are laughably bad, the puzzles are unintuitive and janky, and the reactivity of the world around you is underwhelming. But despite all the frustrations I\u2019ve faced across the 130 hours it took me to complete the main story and do a good chunk of the side content, there were still many moments where I was left stunned by the sheer magnitude of the uneven world that\u2019s been created here.<\/p>\n

In its best moments, Crimson Desert has you wandering around arm wrestling, fishing, gambling, completing side quests, and just getting lost in an absolutely gorgeous open world where it feels like anything is possible. One moment I was playing a mini settlement builder, managing resources and sending my allies out to earn loot and resources on my behalf, and the next I was hunting wild animals and grilling them into a pile of meat to prepare for a big battle. But there were an equal number of occasions where I was absolutely dumbfounded by annoying choices, like how combat encounters almost always go on way too long, or how your paltry inventory space constantly fills up and forces you to part with items you\u2019ve worked hard for. (That space was more than doubled during <\/em>the review period due to an overwhelming amount of feedback and still <\/em>doesn\u2019t feel great.) Many of these issues get far worse the longer you play, as later on the size of enemy groups goes to ridiculous, Dynasty Warriors<\/u><\/a>-levels, and a complete lack of storage chests to keep your hard-won loot in means you have to get rid of cool, unique gear when collecting fun items feels like a major part of the draw here. That\u2019s right \u2013 if you can\u2019t fit it on your person, there\u2019s no way to keep it at all. Pearl Abyss has said it plans to add storage later, but it not being available at launch is a pretty wild miss.<\/p>\n

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The world itself is definitely one of the most impressive aspects of Crimson Desert, as you can see people walking around town and actually living out their days in real time. For example, if you send a caravan of followers to go build something, you can drop by during work hours to see them toiling away before heading back to bunk at night. In another instance, you might see a bounty posted for a known pickpocket, then find them one day practicing their trade in a completely different town, and can then choose to bring them to justice or let it slide. Traveling around the massive regions, hunting for loot, solving puzzles, and liberating areas can make for some seriously good times, especially if you\u2019re like me and try to do things it feels like you aren\u2019t supposed to do, like wandering far off the beaten path before you\u2019ve even explored the starting area. It\u2019s a kind of freedom that only games this absurdly large can pull off, and makes for some really memorable moments.<\/p>\n

While the world you\u2019ll explore is full of fun stuff to do, the stories you\u2019ll find in it are consistently bad. From the moment you\u2019re introduced to the first of its three playable characters \u2013 Kliff, a viking-coded warrior who is on a low stakes revenge quest against another group of barbarians \u2013 there\u2019s very little to become invested in, and it only gets worse from there. The story is aimless, the characters are forgettable across the board, the dialogue is often pretty hard to listen to, and there\u2019s an entire multi-chapter arc in the main questline that\u2019s centered on a character who dies offscreen before the story even begins \u2013 they continually try to make you care about this person through multiple<\/em> funeral scenes separated by hours and hours of game time. It\u2019s odd because, with long sequences of talking to your companions and a lot of time spent watching cutscenes as part of the main story, it does seem like Pearl Abyss wanted people to care about this stuff, but almost none of it is really worth paying attention to and much of it is actively cringe worthy. That said, there are also a lot of cutscenes full of cool, anime-style fights \u2013 those are pretty sick.<\/p>\n

This world is full of fun stuff to do, but the stories within it are consistently bad.<\/section>\n

Crimson Desert\u2019s world is also hindered at almost every turn by jankiness and puzzling design choices. Some of the biggest misses are the boss fights, which abruptly take you out of the fairly casual action game combat that surrounds them and drops you into straight up soulslike fights against multi-phase enemies that feel extremely out of sync with the rest of the adventure. In one of the earliest examples, you carve your way through scores of bandits with ease, before concluding with a super long, three-phase boss fight that includes some segments where you\u2019re just mercilessly swarmed by the bad guy while you have to dash around destroying totems. The only reasonable way to get through it is to have a ton of healing items on hand to eat by the fistful as you whittle down the enemy\u2019s health bar. I love soulslikes and consider myself a tryhard who enjoys mastering perfect parry mechanics, and even with my background I found the vast majority of these boss fights to be unfun, poorly balanced, and downright annoying. It\u2019s kind of wild how out of place they feel, and they are common enough to regularly hurt the pacing. It\u2019s worth noting that Pearl Abyss has already put out a patch that nerfed at least one of these encounters, and I suspect more will follow. I\u2019m not sure patches alone will be able to make these numerous, sluggish fights feel all that good, but it\u2019s at least a start that they seem to be aware of the issue.<\/p>\n

Part of the reason I doubt boss fights will be fully salvageable is because combat is pretty uneven in general. A big part of that is in how Crimson Desert simply never knows when to end a fight! Most begin with a dozen or more enemies surrounding you, and then dozens more showing up as you take down the first wave, dragging things out for minutes on end. This is fine when you\u2019re taking on some major quest, but when you\u2019re just trying to cross a bridge and are expected to stop and fight 20 samey guards first, it really eats up your time. Even worse are the war scenarios that arrive in the middle and later stages of the adventure, where you\u2019re asked to do ridiculous things like plant a flag in the ground while surrounded by dozens and dozens of enemies, completely unable to defend yourself while you slowly move a giant banner across the battlefield. It\u2019s especially annoying that, although you can level up your weapons and armor to make all this combat easier, you\u2019re constantly outnumbered by loads of dudes who can take you out with a few lucky shots. As you can imagine, starting an already-too-long fight over again feels especially bad.<\/p>\n

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Beyond combat, there\u2019s tons of stuff Crimson Desert tries that just doesn\u2019t work at all, from extremely ill-advised stealth sections (which are exactly as bad as you\u2019re imagining) to puzzles that often feel like you\u2019re brute forcing your way through them rather than coming up with a creative solution. In one section, I had to climb to a higher area to solve a puzzle, but couldn\u2019t reach that high due to stamina limitations. After searching for the \u201ccorrect\u201d way to climb up to the next floor, I ended up just cheesing my way up by finding a ledge that let me take a breather in a way that seemed very much unintentional. When I got to the top and solved the puzzle, it felt like I\u2019d done something wrong, but apparently that\u2019s just what you\u2019re supposed to do to get through that section. In trying so many things, this adventure often feels like it’s bitten off more than it can chew, resulting in pockets of gameplay like this that feel very underdeveloped. <\/p>\n

As you complete quests, earn loot, and level up abilities, you\u2019ll at least gain access to some pretty neat abilities that change up the way you play. One branch of each playable character\u2019s skill tree is dedicated to flying or gliding around to improve your mobility, while another unlocks new combat tricks, like the ability to bash enemies with your shield or dropkick foes and send them flying about 50 feet. Many of these unlockables are really interesting, like one that lets you grapple yourself across long distances and scale sheer walls in the blink of an eye. The other half of them are things I never really had any interest in buying, like basically all of the archery skills, which didn\u2019t feel good no matter how much I invested in them. There are also a huge number of combat abilities that seem like they\u2019re almost clones of one another, which would require me to memorize a whole new button combination to use them that I\u2019d surely never remember.<\/p>\n