Is bigger better?
I have a weird relationship with video games. I certainly don’t consider myself a “gamer.” I will play for a while, and then sort of forget they exist for a while, before jumping back in. As a certified Old Guy (“unc,” as the youths say), this worked pretty well back in my day, when most everything was single player, or required you to be physically present with another person to play against/with each other. There was no such thing as DLC, season passes, or (so far as I knew) people who play obsessively and obliterate me every single time I log on to Battlefront. I just want to play as a stromtrooper, dear lord.
But I digress.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is, in my opinion, video game perfection. A massive open world that is incredibly detailed, has immense depth, and always feels like there is another thing to discover. It helps that it marries that with one of the best stories in video game history. Plus, if I don’t play it for a while, I can just jump back in without 12-year-olds shooting me immediately*. I could make this entire post about how great RDR2 is—but it’s been out for seven years, so it seems redundant.
I bring RDR2 up so I can talk about Crimson Desert. In the first place, because there are a fair amount of varied opinions about the game—r/CrimsonDesert is populated with people calling it the greatest game ever, and others complaining about anything and everything (r/RDR2, not so much. Maybe that says something). In the second place, because a review *I* do is going to be pretty subjective, and you are likely to strenuously disagree if you’re a speedrunner/hardcore gamer/one of the 12-year-olds who owns (PWNZ) me at Battlefront.
Like this review, it’s hard to know where to start with Crimson Desert. It’s so stinking massive. The most important thing to me is: is it fun? To this, I say a resounding yes. I enjoy it. You can explore for days, do a pretty wide variety of things, and get happily sidetracked for hours.
There are negatives, to be sure, and how much they affect your fun quotient depends a lot on you and what you’re looking for out of a game.
One of the big ones, from where I sit, actually has me conflicted. The game does a pretty good job of teaching you a lot, obviously, about the mechanics and gameplay. But it also just doesn’t. I highly recommend spending a fair amount of time on YouTube watching videos along the lines of “20 things I wish I knew when I started Crimson Desert,” because there are a lot, from combat to companions to the way the world works, to (literally) what icons on your map mean. On one hand, I appreciate the game not holding your hand. On the other… I don't want to google what the doohickey on my map is.
Gary Larson was unintentionally a prophet.
Another big complaint is that the game is pretty light on story. Full disclosure: I haven’t finished it yet, because while I’m breaking tradition by writing about something I’ve actually played, I can’t go all the way and have the whole picture. I have a reputation to uphold. You can have pets in this game, and I have ADHD, so you can guess what I spend a lot of time doing. Like above, the game kind of sort of forgets to tell you the story directly. But (and I absolutely love this kind of thing), it rewards you snooping around and finding out information that gives you context and depth for what does happen in the story. The story itself isn’t terribly original—you’re the chosen one, save the universe, blah blah blah, but the hidden details give it depth, explain why you’re the chosen one, and make it more compelling. It’s a massive open world—using it is rewarded. Plus the story is kind of secondary to the myriad of other things you can do in the world.
My biggest complaint is, for as massive as it is, it is kind of shallow, in spite of the above. NPC dialogue is very limited, and not really connected to the NPC who is speaking. Sure, it would be a massive undertaking, but RDR2 did such an amazing job of this—the NPCs felt like people. They didn’t all say the same things, in the same voice (“My baby’s gone and called me PA at last”—bro, I am about to hunt down your stupid baby if I hear that one more time), and just stand around in the same place for all eternity. They also cower and make the most obnoxious whimper if you push the wrong button and even pull a weapon out. It’s probably a nitpick, but it ruins the immersion in a game that is meant to be immersive.
I do enjoy how currency is managed—mostly. You end up with a ton of different types—you have your basic “coin,” which there are some clever mechanics (that you’re not told about!) to keep you from being a billionaire (looking at you, RDR2) if you use them. You have “contribution,” which is basically your reputation within a region that unlocks specific gear. The camp funds/missions mechanic is fun, and as your camp grows, you basically have an entire passive game generating income for you, all of which becomes important later in the game. It’s sort of a lot to manage, but, like I said, you get sidetracked by it, in a good way (usually) and it pays off.
The game itself is stunningly gorgeous, in the same way as RDR2. Climbing to the top of mountains or towers is rewarded with spectacular views (and you can glide down, which is just fun). However, it struck me as I fast travelled all over the place—I never do that in Red Dead. Riding around is rewarding. Riding slow is rewarded more. There are random encounters in Crimson Desert, but as noted above, the bland NPCs make it neither interesting nor rewarding. So I jump around using the Abyss Nexus littering the landscape and don’t think twice about it, which is a little bit of a letdown. Not that this stops me from wandering around and trying to find new things—which there aren’t too many to find, aside from Abyss Artifacts (more on them in a sec). So while it’s just as pretty, and bigger, than Red Dead, it just lacks depth—Red Dead gives you side quests that last the length of the game, details and oddities to find that are quests unto themselves, or just pieces of another story. If Crimson Desert has these, I haven’t found them, and the totality is that between that and the “people” populating it, it feels very, very shallow.
Crimson Desert does a nice job of being an RPG without going too in depth—it has three basic skill trees, and various skills can be enhanced, but it doesn’t require the level of micromanagement a lot of RPGs fall victim to. I might have preferred skill trees that allowed for slightly more customization—Borderlands isn’t far off from how this operates, but allows for more “specialty,” but I’m pretty fine with the way it is. The area that really could use customization is the character—Kliff is… fine, but he’s such a blank slate, I don’t know why they didn’t just allow you to make a character entirely. A lot of the dialog is fairly generic—and many conversations pass without Kliff actually participating in them—so it doesn’t seem that far off (it’s rumored to be part of an upcoming DLC, which, fine, but why not do it in the first place?). It’s another missed opportunity for an immersive experience.
None of these, for me, are dealbreakers. There is tons of good. As I mentioned, it looks amazing and it’s fun to wander around in, and find new areas and slaughter bandits with reckless abandon. The combat system is great, and ironically given the above, almost too detailed—I keep forgetting about abilities or attacks. The game spoils you for options—you can fight equally well unarmed, with a one-handed weapon and shield, or a two-handed weapon. The Abyss Artifacts you find can be used in a few ways—most straightforwardly, as skill points, but also can be used in upgrading higher quality gear. Like currency, it does a good job of making you choose on how it’s used instead of just grinding and levelling up to God tier early in the game. There are also Sealed Abyss Artifacts, which are unlocked after completing certain challenges, making getting them rewarding in-game and not just to check off a box.
It also runs into the classic open-world problem of being a one playing as a someone possessing immense power, clad in armor worth more than the entire kingdom and wielding enough weaponry to take down God while also having literal superpowers, but half the quests you go on are carrying some old lady’s groceries or whatever. It’s unavoidable, but it’s also comical. There is a decent variety of minigames and puzzles, of varying difficulty and quality, but that gives the game nice texture.
There is honestly so much more to talk about - the variety of mounts (you can literally tame a dragon!), the diligence with which the game is updated and patched (which is great, but can be jarring), the camp dynamics - basically, it's a really big game. The enjoyment is going to be pretty subjective.
I meant for this to be more of a compare/contrast between Crimson Desert, Red Dead and other open-world games (I had a whole Ghost of Tsushima thing, which I made the mistake of playing immediately on the heels of RDR2. Basically, I want open-world games to be Westworld, and that’s probably not a fair ask. It is fair, I think, to ask Crimson Desert to live up to its full potential while also enjoying the good qualities it has.
Highlights:
- Stunning, massive open world
- Fun, rich combat, both between swarms of baddies and repayable bosses
- Diverse gameplay befitting the size of the world
- Doesn’t hold your hand
- NPCs are bland and lifeless
- The world is shallow for as big as it is
- Doesn’t hold you hand enough
- Makes you do homework to figure out several key mechanics
- Isn’t quite RDR2 in a fantasy setting
Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention.
*We will not be discussing the miserable failure that is RDO.
—DESR
Dean Smith-Richard is the author of 3204AD, and will definitely publish something again one day, probably. He loves to cook, play baseball, and is way too much of a craft beer nerd. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, and likes the rain, thank you very much.
