Crimson Desert Reviews
We can't fully recommend Crimson Desert in its current state on PS5. Far too many technical issues - of varying shapes and sizes - hold the experience back.But given time, and despite its obvious narrative shortcomings, Pearl Abyss' fantasy outing has the potential to be something truly special. As an open world adventure, it can be utterly engrossing; a smorgasbord of systems and mechanics that somehow - against all odds - form an intoxicating whole. For better or worse, there's simply nothing like Crimson Desert.
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
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 now a game that works with you instead of against you, and with more updates still on the way, there's plenty more to look forward to across Pywel's biomes, towns, cities, and ruins. If you're looking for something that can completely take over your life, this is absolutely worth your time, and the kind of game that can leave you with countless memories even if you never make it all the way to the credits.
A technical achievement that proves you can build everything - and still have nothing to say.
Though I’ll call it imperfect but patchable, Crimson Desert is still impressive enough to be within striking distance of the juggernauts of this genre. At the very least, this represents one of the first few must-plays of the year. Perhaps contradictorily, Crimson Desert is a lush and generously-sized oasis of awesome that needs to be seen to be believed on PC. Here's hoping the console versions are up to snuff as well.
Crimson Desert is an ambitious open-world game that buckles under its own weight, making it a fun but flawed experience that will leave the player base divided.