Crimson Desert review – a beautiful mishmash of gaming nonsense

One of the most graphically impressive video games ever also has some of the most fascinating open world exploration, but it’s not the all-time classic many were hoping for.

As video games take longer and long to make, it seems the gap between new open world titles is becoming wider and wider. That’s probably not a bad thing, especially given how time-consuming they can be, but with a new The Witcher game still a long way off there is definitely an itch to be scratched at the moment.

Crimson Desert is by Korean company Pearl Abyss and was originally intended to be a prequel to MMO Black Desert Online. They changed their mind somewhere along the way though and this is set in an entirely separate universe, albeit another generic high fantasy one. It takes particular influence from Game Of Thrones… and then throws in anything else it fancies, up to and including robot mechs.

The game has garnered a considerable amount of hype over the last few months, but it is a little hard to understand why, unless you happen to be a fan of Black Desert. The graphics are certainly impressive, there’s no denying that, and the combat can be enjoyable, but as a cohesive whole Crimson Desert’s attempt to make the leap from MMO to single-player game falls flat on its face.

The first problem is that it’s physically impossible to care about the story or anyone in it. That’s a shame, because if there was a proper excuse for all the sci-fi stuff it might have been interesting, but as it is you start off as a generic mercenary called Kliff, who finds out they’re a generic chosen one, destined to save the world.

There’re actually multiple playable characters, which works very similarly to GTA 5, but all of them are so lacking in personality it makes little practical difference and the game does a very poor job of explaining what’s going on or who anyone is. There’s a codex filled with background lore but almost nothing of substance is conveyed through dialogue, although perhaps that’s Pearl Abyss acknowledging how unremarkable it all is and just assuming you know the drill already.

Plenty of great games have terrible stories, or no story at all, so that’s not necessarily a problem but unfortunately the lack of narrative drive bleeds into the mission structure. You’re often given weirdly specific objectives, like going to an obscure location that you, as a player, have no way of knowing about or interacting with a character that’s never been mentioned before – and who is never introduced properly when you do catch up with them.

It’s as if someone deleted 90% of the game’s dialogue to try and speed things up, without realising that turned the game into an incoherent series of unrelated quests. The difference between this and The Witcher 3, which the game is clearly trying to ape, is vast and it’s a real shame because the graphics are stunning. But any sense of immersion gained from them is immediately lost by not only the absence of any meaningful narrative but the random nature of the game world and its systems.

Flying dragons and jetpacks sounds fun, as a checklist of cool things to put in a video game, but there’s almost no attempt to make any of it seem like it’s part of the same world. There’re enough side activities to put Rockstar Games to shame – from horse racing and fishing to mining and arm wrestling – but that only adds to the impression that this is a random collection of pre-existing ideas, rather than an actual game.

Crimson Desert isn’t subtle about the sources it’s copying from but inevitability it’s never as good as the real thing. The stealth is awful and while climbing, gliding, and hookshot-ing around the landscape is fun the other attempts to mimic The Legend Of Zelda – especially the awkwardly designed puzzles – don’t work at all.

And yet there’s no denying that the game world is a lot of fun to explore. It’s too big and there’s not enough in it, and yet you can go from fighting in giant battles with hundreds of combatants to controlling a city builder minigame to visiting a steampunk land filled with robotic insects. The randomness of the design is a negative in most other respects but in terms of never knowing what will come next Crimson Desert can’t be beat.

Unfortunately, for every fun aside there is always an equal number of frustrations. The horrendous inventory system is one of them, as you can carry very little, even after upgrading your storage space. That makes things like crafting and cooking an absolute chore and means you constantly have to discard cool-looking loot, so you often get little to no reward for winning a fight.

The combat works better, as there’s a great sense of weight to your attacks but also a pace to the fighting that begins to encroach on Devil May Cry territory. It’s not quite that complex, and you don’t have to use most of the attacks you unlock (which includes a strange amount of wrestling moves) but at least it’s fun.

However, you’re often forced to fight a dozen or more foes at once, which is fine in theory, and impressive from a technical point of view, but it means battles can go on for seemingly forever. Which is extra frustrating as you haven’t got a chance of claiming even a tenth of the loot dropped.

The larger fights are trying to riff on Dynasty Warriors, in terms of scale, and while the combat is much more complex than those games it’s still fairly easy. Except when you get to a boss battle and suddenly it’s an ultra hard Soulslike with multi-stage bosses that seem very unfair and poorly balanced.

As always seemed inevitable, the game is filled with bugs and glitches, with characters and objects regularly disappearing or not triggering quest events when they should. We haven’t played the game on PlayStation 5, as console versions were not made available before launch, but that alone is never a good sign, especially for a game where the PC is the lead format.

Crimson Desert feels like the sort of game a teenager would create. There’s no proper design methodology and absolutely no sense of individual style, just an endless stream of steals from other games you’ve already played. It reminded us of Ready Player One in some ways, in that all it can do is borrow from other sources and remind you of other, better experiences.

Exploring the game world is enjoyable and the one aspect where the complete randomness of everything is a benefit. But overall the game is a mess. It’s as if the developer has thrown every game they’ve ever played into a blender and pressed blitz. If you’ve ever tried that with actual food, you’ll know the end result is just unpalatable goop and while Crimson Desert isn’t quite that bad it’s far, far less than the sum of its parts.

Formats: PC (reviewed), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S
Price: £54.99
Publisher: Pearl Abyss
Developer: Pearl Abyss
Release Date: 19th March 2026
Age Rating: 18

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