Crimson Desert Reviews
Crimson Desert is an odd game for me to place, I enjoyed it for the freedom I had to make my own story and for all the combat and systems but I wasn’t a huge fan of the narrative; even though it did get better.
Crimson Desert is among the best fantasy open-world games in years. While the narrative is thin and the controls complex, the incredible world density, sandbox mechanics, incredible combat and stunning visuals make Pywell a continent worth visiting for anyone looking for an experience to lose themselves in for hundreds of hours.
Crimson Desert is a victim of its own ambition.
Crimson Desert is an incredibly ambitious project. If you are willing to commit, you will find appreciation in this deeply immersive medieval RPG that is almost stuffed with too many features, but somehow makes it all hang together in a beautiful and ambitious package.
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Review in Italian | Read full review
If you hadn’t already guessed, Crimson Desert is a behemoth of an RPG that threatens to eat up all your time. If only it wasn’t primed to frustrate and test your patience as much while doing so.
By both accident and design, there are times when clarity and user-friendliness temporarily disappear, and the game’s rough edges and opaque mechanics overshadow the fun. A lot of games over-promise and under-deliver. Crimson Desert is not one of them.
Crimson Desert is unlikely to become a revolution that will redefine the genre. But it will certainly attract crowds of people and spark more than a few heated debates. It's funny that the very desert featured in the title is just one of many corners of the vast world created by Pearl Abyss - one that, presumably, far from everyone will reach.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Crimson Desert's sandbox playground and beautifully crafted world do a lot of the heavy lifting to just about overshadow its confusing elements, generic story, and boring characters. What's here is an overwhelming amount of content and the bones of an amazing game that has to be respected for its ambitions.
I can confidently say that Crimson Desert is a modern masterpiece, despite its shortcomings.
Crimson Desert tries to offer something for everyone. While it presents itself as an open-world game, the reality is that there's much more to it. Although the foundations are solid, Pearl Abyss didn't stop there, adding multiple superfluous systems and mechanics that only cause the game to constantly stumble. While there are some quality elements, everything surrounding the good ideas is marred by a terrible interface, unresponsive controls, and a structure that lacks a clear direction. Like a buffet, Crimson Desert throws too much at us, but each bite is, in most cases, a disappointment.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Even in its current state, Crimson Desert has the potential to become my game of the year. If the console performance is still good and the day-one patch perhaps even fixes a few annoying issues, the action-adventure could even climb a small step higher in my ranking.
Review in German | Read full review
Crimson Desert is huge, and it's beautiful, but it can't pull itself out of the bog standard narrative trenches. Combat feels clunky, especially when facing off against one of the many frustrating bosses, and there feels like there is little reward for exploration. I wanted to like this, but it left me feeling empty.
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Review in French | Read full review
Crimson Desert is an RPG that rewards the patient player. The more time you spend in its world, the more you understand its systems and the more you enjoy what it has to offer. And when that happens, it becomes very easy to get swept away by the adventure and immerse yourself in the work that Pearl Abyss has created for us over so many years.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Crimson Desert is a flawed but breathtaking, annoying yet fantastic, game of excess that has managed to infuriate and delight me in almost equal measure.
This is a once-in-a-generation action RPG that redefines the genre, providing hundreds of hours of incredibly varied gameplay that never stops giving you new things to do. There are a handful of bugs to hammer out, but don't let that dissuade you — you're looking at your likely RPG of the year.
For the first few hours of Crimson Desert, I spent much of my time as Kliff, a Greymane warrior rescued from an untimely death by supernatural forces...
Crimson Desert is a dense, daunting game that rewards players who invest with dedication. It is also a game that has immensely changed at launch and will continue to evolve through the efforts of Pearl Abyss and its community. While certainly flawed, it is a thing of awe.