Crimson Desert Review: Story Buried in the Sandbox

In our Crimson Desert review, we discuss the game's amazing world and varied combat, but also its incongruent story and baffling UI.

Crimson Desert is a champion bodybuilder of a video game. Its gigantic world bulges with incredible scale, with shining graphical fidelity and a muscular combat system which excels at pulling poses with an undeniably impressive wealth of options.

However, it lacks the connective sinew to be truly functional, with maddening systems and genuinely odd characterisation hinting at grinding joints and an enlarged heart under the hood, ready to pop.

What’s most frustrating, and fascinating, about Crimson Desert is that it could genuinely be one of the best games of the generation, if only it underwent a full revamp of 99% of its narrative content. But, as you can appreciate, that’s quite a big “if only”.

Image credit: Pearl Abyss

Crimson Desert follows Kliff and the Greymanes, a warrior sect displaced from their homeland of Pailune by the warmongering Black Bears. The Greymanes fight to maintain the influence of their slain king, pushing back the invaders seeking to sweep through the land and subjugate the Paulinese people.

Defeated and thrown into a river by the leader of the Black Bears, Kliff is resurrected by an unknown magic which whisks him into The Void and grants him otherworldly abilities. To take the battle back to the Bears and claim vengeance and a new home, Kliff must reunite the Greymanes within the wider political machinations of the continent, rubbing elbows with counts, coinmasters and courtesans as well as plenty of blackguards and brigands.

So far, so very Game of Thrones-y, complete with c-bombs and rEGioNaL bRiTiSh acCEnTs such as Sean Bean, Scottish and what your cousin sounds like after two semesters at Oxford Brookes (despite the Greymanes supposedly being from the same place).

But the decision to focus on Kliff as a specific main character is doubly strange. Not just because one of the main things Pearl Abyss is known for is Black Desert Online’s intensely detailed character creator, but because he doesn’t do anything in light of that context. As if Pearl Abyss is packing away one of the best toys in its box for basically no reason.

Image credit: Pearl Abyss

Some of the dialogue is hilariously sparse. In one side quest I played, the NPC just says, “Are you up to the task?”. Kliff replies: “Yes”. And that’s all. That’s all that happens in the exchange.

On top of that the tone of his character is massively incongruent and completely changes from scene to scene. In one he’ll be a stoic badass, catching punches and twisting arms like the Terminator. In the next he’ll be purring like a housecat serving soup to randos who’ve magically appeared to help build a tent.

Speaking of which, stuff that’s supposed to be difficult within Crimson Desert’s world just happens. A key plot thread of the first 20+ hours of the game is reuniting the Greymanes, then a load of them just sort of turn up once you’ve got a camp and say “how do” like it’s nothing. This ironically both flat and uneven storytelling then even strays into stereotypes as another early story beat sees the city of Hernand beset by a predatory band of money-lending goblin merchants called the “Goldleaf” guild. I had my head in my hands.

If that’s not enough, Crimson Desert is also stuffed with baffling UI decisions, including an inventory system which seems designed to simulate the experience of carrying your food home when you don’t want to pay for a carrier bag. Unlike every other game, enemies don’t have a viewable inventory so you need space for everything they’re carrying before you can loot them, but you also can’t see what you’re picking up before it’s added to your bag. Meaning you have to grab every piece of junk before immediately throwing it away.

I think the best example of this is when enemies drop pouches of change which need to be manually opened before they’re added to your cash total. It’s like how billionaires would need to drop the downpayment on a New York apartment for it to be worth their time to pick it up. The effort of opening these bags is simply not worth a palmful of copper.

So I’ve said the story doesn’t make any sense and it’s a chore to play, but also that Crimson Desert could be one of the best games of the generation? What’s up with that?

Well, that owes to the sandbox that Pearl Abyss has created. The scale of the world is unbelievable, genuinely amazing. The first moment that you’re given control, trudging along a twilight-dappled ridge at sunset, is one of the most visually breathtaking scenes in recent memory.

Image credit: Pearl Abyss

Gliding across ravines on magical wings or galloping on horseback as you explore the high cliffs and yawning valleys across the varied landscape has the epic quality of a grand adventure.

Then there’s the combat, where Kliff has access to an awesome array of styles from chunky sword-and-board action to a spectacular selection of unarmed grappling combos which are so over-the-top within the otherwise quite grounded fantasy setting that you can’t help but fall in love. It’s unassumingly deep once you’ve got the hang of everything you can do, and you come to crave the larger battles where you take on almost Musou-like hordes of enemies as well as the genuinely tough boss battles.

Crimson Desert is obviously inspired by the likes of The Witcher 3 and to an even greater extent Dragon’s Dogma. But I think, particularly in reference to the former, it’s overlooked how key a strong central character is to giving you a place and purpose within the game’s world. Or, like in Dragon’s Dogma, when that character is absent, how reactive systems and supporting characters need to step up to fill the void and create the surprising moments and memories which stick with you past the end of your sprawling journey.

As it stands on release, the best parts of Crimson Desert are buried deep under layers of absurdity.

Reviewed on PC with code provided by the publisher.