BrooksyMyBoi Crimson Desert Review

I want to be transparent that 7 hours into this game I would have likely given this 3.5 stars and I very much could have seen this game getting to a 4 or 4.5 stars. The gameplay is definitely the bread and butter of what Crimson Desert is. It felt very fluid and fun for me personally, and I loved the challenge that came from the endless puzzles in the mere 5% of the map I was able to cover. The world is stunning, and for context I did play this on Steam and have a 5070, and I consistently held around 80-90fps. Game was shockingly well optimized, only using like 6.5 gigs of vram. The story at least for the first 8 hours of the game is exactly what you have probably read a million times over, bland especially if you try to compare it to something like The Witcher 3. If you go in with the mindset of it being more like Dragons Dogma youll be right at home. The reason why I bring the score down so much is because of the use of generative AI art when there was never a disclaimer of using it until they were caught red handed within a day of the games release. I understand trying to put in a placeholder, but something like a big yellow box to signify "hey, we still need to replace this" is much better than using slop that can be "forgotten". I put forgotten in quotes because when you never disclose you used it in the first place and have to say "sorry, our bad, will look at the assets" it makes me believe that you were hoping it would slide. And for a lot of people AI slop is what is the norm and is acceptable, but its not. Its a slippery slope. If we allow this, then sorrys become deal with it, and then begins the avalanche of losing all forms of artistic integrity, and crumbles what we have all loved as a community. Even with 8 hours of gameplay, I did reach out to customer support at Steam because there was no disclaimer on their page until Pearl Abyss made an actual statement on it, which goes against their guidelines. I personally want to thank Steam for making an exception for making an exception because of a breach in transparency. Had I known there was generative AI from the jump, I would have never purchased it. Had Steam made the disclaimer known, I would have never purchased it. In the event Pearl Abyss makes good on their statement, and does remove all generated AI from the game, theres a chance I may come back, but when trust is broken its hard to ever come back.