CRIMSON DESERT

Open-world action that continues to look strong but unwieldy

- Morgan Park

I sat down to play Crimson Desert at my hands-on session armed with false confidence. I'd already played a combat demo at an event in 2024, so I charged protagonist Kliff into a battle with dozens of enemy soldiers with the foolhardy impression that remembering the button to swing my sword was good enough. I was instantly kerb-stomped.

Pearl Abyss has provided the press with lots of opportunities to play Crimson Desert ahead of its still-unspecified 2025 release, and in that time I've seen it described a number of ways: a game for fighting game sickos, a darker Breath of the Wild, The Witcher 3 with a grab button.

All fair comparisons, but one thing my demo copilot insisted I shouldn't call it is an RPG. An "open-world action game" is the official messaging, which I took to mean Crimson Desert is as much an RPG as, say, modern Zelda games or Far Cry. There are quests, loot is present, but you're not designing a character from scratch, and the world is largely an action playground.

STRAIGHT COMBAT

My demo here was our first look at something other than straight combat in Crimson Desert. Our hero Kliff, a notorious mercenary, joins a brewing battle in the northwest region of the map. He does some walking, some talking, loads some cannons, and blows up some nearby watchtowers as target practice. It was here that Pearl Abyss took the chance to point out Crimson Desert's real-time destruction—the towers did crumble nicely, and apparently all destruction in the game is physics-based (not pre-baked animations) thanks to its custom engine.