• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Crimson Desert | Review Thread

What scores do you think Crimson Desert is getting?

  • Total voters
    400
  • Poll closed .
hussar16 said:
that's what im afraid of but most reviews usually overstep storry and review based on gameplay only. gameplay wise might be good but to me thats not main reason i buy games,its narrative characters, story,lore ,emotion,excitment, that doesnt have to be all done threw gameplay.
Click to expand...
Hopefully you are not into Nintendo games.
 
Bought from GMG so there's no turning back. I dind't preload though as steam takes forever to unpack as it's faster to just download it for me.
 
RafterXL said:
If that's true, which is hard to believe considering RDR2s world, that is a massive achievement. Nothing would make me happier than being proven wrong, though, because that alone would make it worth playing.
Click to expand...
Agreed! I find it extremely hard to believe because nobody does it like Rockstar. Plus, I could swear several previewers stated the opposite, saying the NPCs felt static and what not. It's especially hard to believe since it's a studio known for MMO and i think mobile before that?
 
Chuck Berry said:
Whoever posts that nightmare sack of shit face of Dreamcast Guy is getting banned I assure you.
Click to expand...
challenge GIF
 
for some reason I thought the reviews dropped at 1600 eastern time.l and took a break from dealing with Grannies blocked foley. Back to sticking fingers in holes for another hour.


Sad Vince Mcmahon GIF
 
M.W. said:
www.thegamer.com

Spoiler-Free 150 Hour Crimson Desert Review - A Deeply Flawed Diamond

The greatest videogame world I've ever seen is let down by tedium and minor frustrations that build up over the course of dozens of hours.
www.thegamer.com www.thegamer.com
Screenshot-2026-03-18-160721.png
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Kliff often isn't the badass he claims to be. He moves like an eighteen-wheeler, runs out of stamina frequently, needs to eat forty-eight cows every time he fights a boss, and has no concept of storage. The world of Pywel is not a masterpiece of open world game design like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3 (despite looking better than both of these), it's a single-player MMO, meaning the grind is relentless and the difficulty spikes are random.
Click to expand...

Welp

Reading the rest now

Unfortunately, it often feels like Crimson Desert does not respect your time. Take the Bounty missions, for example. These are dotted across the map, and you can get a good deal of silver for them, but you need to go to the location, pick up the target, and then carry them all the way back to the single jail in the region, which is sometimes a couple of thousand metres away. The entire time you're doing this, the person on the back of the horse repeats the same three voice lines over and over again. I did three of these missions and gave up.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
If that Italian review is legit, I'm saying low 80s, high 70s

The review said:

Technically incredible
Too many systems, poorly explained
Meh story
Amazing exploration
Great, but overly complicated combat system
Extremely ambitious
Lack of focus
Fantastic World scale and immersion

My take:
Some will call it a masterpiece, others will call it smoke and mirrors.

Might be the most divisive game in years

As long as the exploration, visuals, immersion and combat hit hard… the rest is gravy. If it lands these, I'm good.
 
Crimson Desert is also riddled with bugs in its current state. A late mission involved a key item that goes missing forever when destroyed, and as far as I'm aware, it's meant to respawn. But it didn't. What should have been an epic moment in the story is reduced to tedious grinding and repetition.
Click to expand...

I had several more quests that didn't really seem to work, or became broken if they weren't completed in the perfect way. It felt like I was testing the game for Pearl Abyss, and countless more bugs are bound to surface when the public gets their hands on things.
Click to expand...

I blasted through 150 hours of Crimson Desert in a little under two weeks. So, it's possible I simply burned out on the experience before reaching its end and now find myself jaded beyond repair. Putting this aside though, there is so much that Crimson Desert does well.

Combat, exploration, and the sense of progression are all top-notch and have the potential to be crafted into something masterful with future updates. And yet, many of its more frustrating elements are impossible to ignore and are in dire need of refinement.

It's highly ambitious and one of the most intriguing triple-A games I've played in years, but I just wish so many parts of the whole weren't inherently flawed.
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Last edited:
Stuart360 said:
Got a feeling there will be some meltdowns in an hours time.
I hope i'm dead wrong as i'm super excited for this, but i'm just getting that feeling.
Click to expand...

Im interested but also ugh fucking denuvo trash

I have some games on Steam that use it.. SMT V : V for instance.. Sega almost never remove that bullshit

If its good enough I might bite. Maybe. But I dont want to reward the denuvo ugh poop
 
The world of Pywel is not a masterpiece of open world game design like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3 (despite looking better than both of these)

Not sure I can trust someone that says the Witcher 3 is a masterpiece of open world design. /hater
 
bender said:
The world of Pywel is not a masterpiece of open world game design like Red Dead Redemption 2 or The Witcher 3 (despite looking better than both of these)

Not sure I can trust someone that says the Witcher 3 is a masterpiece of open world design. /hater
Click to expand...
Yeah, reading idiotic take like this about glitcher's world design telling you everything you need to know about reviewer
 
Combat:

Combat in Crimson Desert is outstanding. I would not have waded through so many of the campaign's more frustrating sticking points if it wasn't for the fact that going into battle is pure fun. I played the entire game with a sword and a shield, which are Kliff's bread and butter. He has a range of moves, from the natural magic of Force Palm to the more grounded ability to dropkick his enemies off cliffs. Once the combos start to become natural, the combat is fluid and satisfying. It's the best I've ever experienced in an open-world game, and I'm not even sure the competition is close.

Bosses:

I struggled a lot with the boss fights in Crimson Desert. Not because they were difficult in the traditional sense, but due to the fact they often feel unfair. I've powered through Elden Ring multiple times, and even though it might sometimes take hours to defeat a boss or master its many machinations, its hardest encounters have nothing on how frustrating Crimson Desert's boss fights can feel. This is particularly an issue during the first few major bosses you encounter on the main quest and those towards the very end.

Since the early preview stages, I've shared this concern about the game's boss fights in general. One particular fight against the Staglord, which has been showcased several times now, has Kliff being thrown around with little means of fighting back. Sometimes it feels impossible to block, parry, or dodge in time. This results in a frustrating spiral where you are thrown around like a ragdoll, despite moments before slicing through thirty bandits with ease.

It's jarring and often immersion-breaking, and while you can eventually emerge victorious - I've worked my way through 30 of the game's 76 bosses in my 150 hours - it doesn't feel particularly rewarding. Not all bosses are built the same, however, and there are some truly fantastic boss fights here. Though some, particularly in the last chapter (oh my god), did almost do my head in.

Rather than mastering patterns and overcoming your opponent with skill, your best bet is to hunt deers for one hour, turn them all into Hearty Grilled Meat, and hope that you can heal your way through the damage by sheer attrition. When the advice is 'just heal', you know something isn't quite right.

Quests:

Many quests are very rudimentary, MMO-esque affairs. Go here, pick up an item, take it to another NPC. The style of quests are repeated in each of Pywel's five regions, and while they do have their own flavour and good mocap/voice acting for the NPCs, what you're doing never truly changes. The issue is that completing these quests is a requirement to enjoy the game, as inventory slots are earned by accomplishing such repetitive tasks. You can purchase small bags from various merchants, but these only reward a single inventory slot. Completing tasks for random villagers gives you three.

Unfortunately, it often feels like Crimson Desert does not respect your time. Take the Bounty missions, for example. These are dotted across the map, and you can get a good deal of silver for them, but you need to go to the location, pick up the target, and then carry them all the way back to the single jail in the region, which is sometimes a couple of thousand metres away. The entire time you're doing this, the person on the back of the horse repeats the same three voice lines over and over again. I did three of these missions and gave up.

End game:

Despite everything else I've mentioned in this review, by far my biggest issue with Crimson Desert is that even after dozens of hours of grinding, the game never delivers on its promise of the ultimate power fantasy. The final chapter is an utter slog, with bosses that are unintuitive and enemies that will beat the living hell out of you, even though Kliff at this point is an utter machine with highly-leveled gear and stats. Despite the beauty of Pywel, I unfortunately found the payoff for all that grinding through tedious puzzles and repetitive quests to be unrewarding.
 
Honestly feel like it'll be swimming in 6's or 7's when all is said and done. Maybe after a year's worth of patches, QOL updates it'll be closer to an 8. I hope I'm wrong but let's see here in a half hour.
 
M.W. said:
Combat:

Combat in Crimson Desert is outstanding. I would not have waded through so many of the campaign's more frustrating sticking points if it wasn't for the fact that going into battle is pure fun. I played the entire game with a sword and a shield, which are Kliff's bread and butter. He has a range of moves, from the natural magic of Force Palm to the more grounded ability to dropkick his enemies off cliffs. Once the combos start to become natural, the combat is fluid and satisfying. It's the best I've ever experienced in an open-world game, and I'm not even sure the competition is close.

Bosses:

I struggled a lot with the boss fights in Crimson Desert. Not because they were difficult in the traditional sense, but due to the fact they often feel unfair. I've powered through Elden Ring multiple times, and even though it might sometimes take hours to defeat a boss or master its many machinations, its hardest encounters have nothing on how frustrating Crimson Desert's boss fights can feel. This is particularly an issue during the first few major bosses you encounter on the main quest and those towards the very end.

Since the early preview stages, I've shared this concern about the game's boss fights in general. One particular fight against the Staglord, which has been showcased several times now, has Kliff being thrown around with little means of fighting back. Sometimes it feels impossible to block, parry, or dodge in time. This results in a frustrating spiral where you are thrown around like a ragdoll, despite moments before slicing through thirty bandits with ease.

It's jarring and often immersion-breaking, and while you can eventually emerge victorious - I've worked my way through 30 of the game's 76 bosses in my 150 hours - it doesn't feel particularly rewarding. Not all bosses are built the same, however, and there are some truly fantastic boss fights here. Though some, particularly in the last chapter (oh my god), did almost do my head in.

Rather than mastering patterns and overcoming your opponent with skill, your best bet is to hunt deers for one hour, turn them all into Hearty Grilled Meat, and hope that you can heal your way through the damage by sheer attrition. When the advice is 'just heal', you know something isn't quite right.

Quests:

Many quests are very rudimentary, MMO-esque affairs. Go here, pick up an item, take it to another NPC. The style of quests are repeated in each of Pywel's five regions, and while they do have their own flavour and good mocap/voice acting for the NPCs, what you're doing never truly changes. The issue is that completing these quests is a requirement to enjoy the game, as inventory slots are earned by accomplishing such repetitive tasks. You can purchase small bags from various merchants, but these only reward a single inventory slot. Completing tasks for random villagers gives you three.

Unfortunately, it often feels like Crimson Desert does not respect your time. Take the Bounty missions, for example. These are dotted across the map, and you can get a good deal of silver for them, but you need to go to the location, pick up the target, and then carry them all the way back to the single jail in the region, which is sometimes a couple of thousand metres away. The entire time you're doing this, the person on the back of the horse repeats the same three voice lines over and over again. I did three of these missions and gave up.

End game:

Despite everything else I've mentioned in this review, by far my biggest issue with Crimson Desert is that even after dozens of hours of grinding, the game never delivers on its promise of the ultimate power fantasy. The final chapter is an utter slog, with bosses that are unintuitive and enemies that will beat the living hell out of you, even though Kliff at this point is an utter machine with highly-leveled gear and stats. Despite the beauty of Pywel, I unfortunately found the payoff for all that grinding through tedious puzzles and repetitive quests to be unrewarding.
Click to expand...
Skill issue ?
 
M.W. said:
Honestly feel like it'll be swimming in 6's or 7's when all is said and done. Maybe after a year's worth of patches, QOL updates it'll be closer to an 8. I hope I'm wrong but let's see here in a half hour.
Click to expand...
Why are you here ? I thought you didnt care about reviews and just bought games.
 
Last edited:
Game is sounding like the mediocre experience it looked to be from the previews.

Here's a ton of things, sorry we didn't design or polish any of them to a high degree, we had a lot of work to do filling the game with stuff.
 
M.W. said:
Combat:

Combat in Crimson Desert is outstanding. I would not have waded through so many of the campaign's more frustrating sticking points if it wasn't for the fact that going into battle is pure fun. I played the entire game with a sword and a shield, which are Kliff's bread and butter. He has a range of moves, from the natural magic of Force Palm to the more grounded ability to dropkick his enemies off cliffs. Once the combos start to become natural, the combat is fluid and satisfying. It's the best I've ever experienced in an open-world game, and I'm not even sure the competition is close.

Bosses:

I struggled a lot with the boss fights in Crimson Desert. Not because they were difficult in the traditional sense, but due to the fact they often feel unfair. I've powered through Elden Ring multiple times, and even though it might sometimes take hours to defeat a boss or master its many machinations, its hardest encounters have nothing on how frustrating Crimson Desert's boss fights can feel. This is particularly an issue during the first few major bosses you encounter on the main quest and those towards the very end.

Since the early preview stages, I've shared this concern about the game's boss fights in general. One particular fight against the Staglord, which has been showcased several times now, has Kliff being thrown around with little means of fighting back. Sometimes it feels impossible to block, parry, or dodge in time. This results in a frustrating spiral where you are thrown around like a ragdoll, despite moments before slicing through thirty bandits with ease.

It's jarring and often immersion-breaking, and while you can eventually emerge victorious - I've worked my way through 30 of the game's 76 bosses in my 150 hours - it doesn't feel particularly rewarding. Not all bosses are built the same, however, and there are some truly fantastic boss fights here. Though some, particularly in the last chapter (oh my god), did almost do my head in.

Rather than mastering patterns and overcoming your opponent with skill, your best bet is to hunt deers for one hour, turn them all into Hearty Grilled Meat, and hope that you can heal your way through the damage by sheer attrition. When the advice is 'just heal', you know something isn't quite right.

Quests:

Many quests are very rudimentary, MMO-esque affairs. Go here, pick up an item, take it to another NPC. The style of quests are repeated in each of Pywel's five regions, and while they do have their own flavour and good mocap/voice acting for the NPCs, what you're doing never truly changes. The issue is that completing these quests is a requirement to enjoy the game, as inventory slots are earned by accomplishing such repetitive tasks. You can purchase small bags from various merchants, but these only reward a single inventory slot. Completing tasks for random villagers gives you three.

Unfortunately, it often feels like Crimson Desert does not respect your time. Take the Bounty missions, for example. These are dotted across the map, and you can get a good deal of silver for them, but you need to go to the location, pick up the target, and then carry them all the way back to the single jail in the region, which is sometimes a couple of thousand metres away. The entire time you're doing this, the person on the back of the horse repeats the same three voice lines over and over again. I did three of these missions and gave up.

End game:

Despite everything else I've mentioned in this review, by far my biggest issue with Crimson Desert is that even after dozens of hours of grinding, the game never delivers on its promise of the ultimate power fantasy. The final chapter is an utter slog, with bosses that are unintuitive and enemies that will beat the living hell out of you, even though Kliff at this point is an utter machine with highly-leveled gear and stats. Despite the beauty of Pywel, I unfortunately found the payoff for all that grinding through tedious puzzles and repetitive quests to be unrewarding.
Click to expand...
Ouch. This sounds horrible. I hope the rest of the game makes up for it.
 
pudel said:
150hrs in two weeks!!! Respect! :messenger_tears_of_joy:
Click to expand...
that's 10 hours a day every day. This is one of the reasons I don't trust reviews of long games, they basically have to slog through it in a very short time to finish it before release, and I can't imagine it being that enjoyable toward the end no matter how good a game it was. I don't know if there is any game and I'd still enjoy playing if I had to play it 10+ hours a day for 2 week straight.
 
M.W. said:
Combat:

Combat in Crimson Desert is outstanding. I would not have waded through so many of the campaign's more frustrating sticking points if it wasn't for the fact that going into battle is pure fun.
Click to expand...

Sounds like the combat is the sole thing they polished up, because if a game is boring or frustrating in other areas otherwise then that doesn't sound great. Sounds like a mid-high 70s game (some might overlook and score to low 80s).

QoL and polish issues will probably drag this score down.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Crimson Desert Steam CCU Prediction Thread
Poll  2
57
134
pepeno replied
No review codes sent out for Crimson Desert console versions
48
56
Lucifers Beard replied
  • Poll
Will crimson desert deliver?
2 3 4 5
209
2K
Roman Empire replied
Crimson Desert Combat Overview
2 3
113
1K
Svalr93 replied
Crimson Desert base PS5 footage released
2
68
188
Dr. Suchong replied
Top Bottom