Crimson Desert Hands-on Preview: I Hope You've Got The Time
To kick things off today, I’ve got a little bit of insider info for you. Generally speaking, when writers such as myself get to attend preview sessions, we get an hour or two with the game. This gives the publisher the chance to curate the preview experience with save games and highlight the specific parts of the title that they want the writers to focus on. This is often why you can have a super positive preview and the final game turns out to be less than satisfactory. But with Crimson Desert, that wasn’t the case. I didn’t have 2 hours with the game, I had 6. That was wild. I’ve never in 18 years of doing this had a preview session go for so long, but after sitting down for those 6 hours, I quickly realised why this was the case.
You see, Crimson Desert is big. Not just big in a “hey look at this big open world” way (but it certainly has that), but big in almost everything it does. The custom-made engine the game is built on gives off a sense of grandeur, the combat is quick and bold, and there are so many mechanics to get your head around that even though I had six hours, I felt like I had barely scratched the surface of the game. For an appropriate comparison, I haven’t felt this way since the opening hours of my first Witcher 3 playthrough, though not even Geralt and co can match the scope that seems to be presented in Crimson Desert.
During my first four hours, I was basically given the game and told to have at it. So have at it, I did. Going through the game’s early parts, learning the systems and discovering what is happening in the world that is presented. After the short introduction mission, I was placed in the world proper and given a questline to follow. It is here that I discovered my first and only real issue, and that is the writing. The grand story behind the game seems to be interesting and intriguing, but it is the moment-to-moment writing and the early questlines that appear problematic. It may be an English translation thing, but the NPCs in particular came across as poorly written facsimiles of actual characters. The initial questlines seem to lack context, too. I was basically given a checklist of tasks to do, with no real rhyme or reason as to why. Why do I need to give this beggar a coin? Why do I need to find a Cat? There is no explanation as to why these tasks are required; they are simply the instructions on the screen. It is odd and a little worrying if the rest of the game is going to follow this road.
Thankfully, almost everything else impressed as I explored the world and dived into the proverbial rabbit hole. The combat feels approachable, yet there is clearly room to add complexity and mastery as the game progresses and skills get unlocked. There is a satisfying heft to the blows, and while it is nowhere near as flashy, it certainly feels much closer to something like later Assassin’s Creed titles as opposed to a Souls experience, which is A-OK with me. Perhaps the coolest feature of the combat system is the ability to learn new moves during combat. If a strong or boss enemy has a particular move it likes to use, you can learn it simply by observing them during the battle. It is a unique kind of thing for this sort of game, and I love the idea of it. I am not sure how often it will come into play over the whole game, but if used well, this is the sort of feature that will help Crimson Desert stand apart.
If combat is one cornerstone of gameplay, puzzles seem to be the other. During my time there were a host of puzzles that needed solving, and it could be argued that this is where people will encounter the most resistance, especially if they are someone who has only played modern games. There is no handholding in the puzzles. Players will need to observe the environment closely, know what abilities they have at their disposal, recognise key parts of the architecture and put that all together to solve the conundrum. There is no sidekick yelling suggestions or flashing highlights on the environment. This makes the solving more difficult, but much more satisfying, but at the same time, it is a friction that modern players may not be used to. I personally liked it and enjoyed the challenge, but it will be a personal taste thing.
As I mentioned previously, Crimson Desert is running on a custom-built engine. That brings a unique look to the game. What could have been a pretty standard-looking fantasy world has a host of artistic flourishes that help it to stand apart from the pack. The game almost feels like it has an oil-painting filter placed over it, evoking the feeling of an old piece of art you might find hanging on a manor wall. Not only does this look help the game stand out, but I also suspect it helps the game run well, as the style means that there isn’t the detail present you would expect from, say, an Unreal 5 game. It was undoubtedly a massive undertaking, building a custom engine, but from what I have seen, the results seem to be worth it.
Speaking of massive, in my last two hours of gametime, I got to experience a couple of different moments from later in the game. There were three epic boss battles, each of which took some pattern learning along with some quick reflexes to tackle. Each of these encounters were satisfying slices of combat, and while it was a bit of a struggle at times (simply because I hadn’t spent who knows how many hours reaching that point and familiarising myself with the game’s many, many controls and abilities), I was absolutely having a blast even when I died. The other section of the game I got to dabble in was some late-game, open-world exploration where I got to ride three different mounts (a horse, a dragon and a mech. Yes, seriously, a mech) and go hands-on with two more playable characters. Did I mention the game was big? Perhaps you are starting to now grasp my meaning when I say it. The map immediately gave me the impression of a gameworld at least as big as The Witcher 3, so I have to say, getting around on a dragon was one of the more efficient ways to see the sights.
After my time was up, there was one thing that was abundantly clear. I had only just scratched the surface of what the game was offering. There is a lot to learn, a lot to master and a lot to remember. This won’t be the sort of game that you can pick up and put down at will over a long period of time. This is a game that asks quite a lot of both your ability and your memory, and in doing so, will require you to commit to playing the game through in big chunks. I can see coming back to this game after a long break being a serious challenge because re-learning the systems will be a real issue that players will have to face. I say this in neither a negative nor a positive light. It is just how the game is, and it is certainly something people should be aware of before diving in.
Luckily, once you have dived it, I can see a lot of players getting lost in the experience for a very long time. There is a lot here to grab players, and what I experienced led me to believe that the longer players spend in Crimson Desert, the less they will want to leave. There is a flow, a motion to the game that I can see becoming addictive fast and despite its apparent problems with writing and characters, its other systems are all engaging and satisfying. I can’t say for sure whether these systems won’t grow old after spending dozens of hours in the game (though I have no confirmation; I suspect this is a 100+ hour game), but at least from my time, things look incredibly promising. Crimson Desert may, in fact, be the breakout hit of the year, but at the same time, I think it is certainly not a game for everyone. Just know before you pre-order or purchase that this is going to take a lot of your time to complete, and if you aren’t the type of person who has that time, well, I suggest you might want to pass it by, at least until you have some serious hours set aside to dive in.
Crimson Desert is launching on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series on the 19th of March.
