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Crimson Desert | Review Thread

What scores do you think Crimson Desert is getting?


  • Total voters
    400
  • Poll closed .
Obviously, people will gravitate towards the review that most supports how they feel, but this kind of does encapsulate all that I worried would be in the final product. So the review speaks to me (also i've never heard of the guy, decent enough review but the title is super clickbait, he sounds more like he feels it's a 6-7 than a 0 or 1)

sounds like if you are an Assassin's Creed hoe, in the sense of you just wanna collect the 100 feathers. Then this game is for you , I personally gave up on those games around the launch of Origins because i just couldn't anymore with the maps getting so much bigger.

To be fair, Korean gameplay is still miles higher than those of ubislop games. Period.
 

This is insinuating all other anspects are equal. BotW feels completely natural and fluid to play the moment you pick it up. Crimson Desert still has me fighting with controls and wobbly movement physics even after an hour.

Some may say that an hour isn't enough to make it feel natural, but your missing the point that games should feel natural from the get go.

But let's continue with the brain dead reductive takes from social media.
 
He says he enjoyed the game in the title - that by itself implies that it is 6-7, if the game was straight up bad, he would not enjoy it.
The review title is actually pretty good/accurate to the content of the review. It is a game with lot of flaws, some very big ones (reliance on fetchquest filler, mediocre writing) but one he still managed to enjoy.

I have the same opinion of, say, Assassin's Creed Origins - I also find it very flawed, overstuffed with boring content, but despite all the issues I did enjoy it enough to finish it. But I have zero desire to play it again and would never award it anything.

I spent 118 hours in AC Shadows and loved every minute. At the same time, I sometimes can't stand the so called internet favorites. In the end, our own experiences should always guide our choices - obviously.

I loved my first experience with Crimson Desert last night, but let's see how it plays out...

lol…he has me on ignore

And that's the reason I've created my own bespoke Tampermonkey script running on top of neogaf where if I have "muted" a user, their threads and first posts still show up. Pretty neat.

(I even have a "boosted users" function which highlights the names of authors I enjoy in threads and posts.

lol, coding with Gemini is fun)
 
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lol…he has me on ignore

No one likes you Topher
tenor.gif
 
Tried it at my friend's home today (PC poor lad pre-ordered it lol) and I have decided to wait many more years because good god this is such an unfortunate product. I will accept any blame as this is just a ~3 hour review playing somewhere in the middle or early game.

The bad:

- Abysmal controls, I mean double press/tap to run, multiple keys to even talk to NPCs, jumping is weird and all around it doesn't feel good to play, how tf did this pass QA? This is a controller game but KB/M feels better - should tell you how bad the controls are, imagine playing Elden Ring or Zelda on KBM. Again, every single thing requires two buttons to do like WTF? Just look at Light mode (sword glows) - You need precise and simultaneously hold/press a mix of LMB and Control, almost impossible to do quickly.
- Janky combat with some heavy lag (not a hardware issue as he has a RTX 4090/9800X 3D/64GB RAM), the flow is NOT fun, it's just multiple stuff put together and held by a duck-tape
- Frame-pacing is bad, even on a 9800X3d there is a momentary drop in densely populated areas, the game doesn't feel smooth at all.
- UI management is a joke, actually insanely stupid and probably the worst in an AAA release. This feels like it was made as a MMO where you can buy "inventory boosters" to increase the UI/space. Game tells you to cook but you have no space for the ingredients lol, etc so many mechanics but nothing designed for them. UI scaling is default at 100%, you want it bigger LOL because it can only be scaled down lmao!
- Too many themes, there's a train, apparently a dragon, sci-fi stuff, horse riding, fantasy stuff etc, like they took RDR2, Elden Ring, Zelda and similar and stitched all of those but kept all the worst parts of those games.
- Puzzles are an after thought, they are not designed to be fun, it's just there. Almost everything is just there to pad the world or hey this game has this so we have it.
- Pickaxe, mining: if your ore rolls down the vein/hill, it's gone lol, you can't even carry enough resources like wtf you need make multiple trips - again pure MMO design, reminded me of Runescape.
- Cutscenes can't be skipped/onny sped up ( new patch ) because it'll break game logic/quests.
- Quests are well, MMO like.

I have many more small issues but I'm gonna stop.

The good:

- Incredible lush world, runs smooth and with denoising and RT looks fantastic.
- Combat when it works looks great ( but it's not flowy like Mordor or Batman), looks great though.
- Huge, huge world, the ROI $/hr is insane if you want to push forward.
- The visuals and graphics are good to mask the mediocrity.

This is such a dissapointment and also a shame because it'll never be a good game as even if you fix 80% of the issues, some major ones can't be fixed. It tries to be everything and fails to be anything. There's no identity nor any charm. I dislike Death Stranding because I find the gameplay not fun but it's incredibly unique and feels fresh and new, it's frustrating but it is art. This though is the Korean step-brother of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that was written by multiple ghost writers but sold with the CEOs name on it for they thought they would bask in glory only to be bukakked by the public.
 
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What's the difference with Zelda BOTW world then ?
I am not even sure, those two games are even comparable. With Zelda, I had the feeling. I'm in a fantasy world that lives by its own rules. With Crimson Desert, I kept thinking the whole time, "This asset looks really familiar from other games." But I'm not that far in yet, and aside from that, it looks great.
 
Thank God for GAF impressions.

Well, I'll have to skip this one...

- Clunky, overcomplicated controls
- Basically an MMO dressed up as a single-player game (remember the Gaffer who kept mentioning that? Kudos to him)
- Disjointed mechanics
- Disjointed story
- "It gets good"… after ~20 hours (maybe)
- Bugs everywhere

Look, maybe there's a solid foundation there but I'm not willing to slog through hours of unpolished, poorly executed content just on the off chance it might improve later.
And sure, they seem quick with patches but some of these issues aren't quick fixes. Things like the story and certain side quests would need a full overhaul. That means adding proper voice acting, cutscenes, and restructuring content so it doesn't feel so disconnected. That takes time...

If the game were great with just a few rough edges, I could overlook it and go in blind. But right now, it feels like the problems outweigh the strengths.

A lot of impressions/reviews are starting to point out the same flaws and they can't ALL be wrong.
I have to mention that I don't care about the actual scores ®, just the very apparent flaws that most - if not all - impressions mention.

It's fine though, I've still got Doom: The Dark Ages to finish plus, I've got Kingdom Come lined up with the next-gen patch - and Capcom's Πράγματα® isn't far off either, I'm covered...

Hype is a dangerous thing, in the end, it's always best to keep it in check.
 
I am not even sure, those two games are even comparable. With Zelda, I had the feeling. I'm in a fantasy world that lives by its own rules. With Crimson Desert, I kept thinking the whole time, "This asset looks really familiar from other games." But I'm not that far in yet, and aside from that, it looks great.
that's because characters, locations and plot elements (even if they seem basic or simple) feel authentic in botw and totk. at least to me, and probably to you. and probably to a lot of gamers and reviewers who gave these games 90+ scores

i've yet to play crimson desert and i have no plans to do so but after watching a comprehensive review, I'm seeing what I've seen over and over in assassin's creed games (and yet I do play them because it has become a personal tradition at this point). even the main character looks like a throwaway generic character.
 
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I loved my first experience with Crimson Desert last night, but let's see how it plays out...

Same

I spent like 4 hours in the first village and I was holy fuck, what have they done with the size of this map, eventually I climbed to a tower far up in the mountains and looked at the horizon and it blew my fucking brain. I don't know if the magic will disappear in 20 hours or 100 hours but it's incomprehensible what the team has done with the fantasy fidelity at such a huge scale. Liking it very much for now.

Also the whole "MMO" argument is cute. I love that kind of shit in massive single player games. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & X are... pretty much that. I didn't see them being dogpiled hard for being that in the reviews back then.
 
This game is a revolution in many aspects for adventures and 3rd person games, media doesn't like that even other studios because it disrupts the status quo of the industry that wants to offer always the same shit.
 
Im enjoying it. Played 3 or 4 hours last night, and this is fresh off beating RE9 a couple hours prior. Honestly felt good to play something different. RE9 was ok, but I felt like I had already played it.
 
I guess I'm going to wait six months until the game is hopefully fully patched and optimised. The pop-in issues alone are off-putting for me, hopefully they can fix that. This might end up be
 
There is some truth to this, but it's also false that making purely japan give it great scores...

I'd say it's more that Nintendo bump...

Although what is unfair is that at the time, BotW was the first of its type, Nu-Zelda doesn't gel with me at all, but we can't deny that it didn't spawn its own style of game, a pioneer in that sense, so I get the raving reviews for BotW...

Now TotK on the other hand..
Colin Farrell Reaction GIF
soon u claim that botw invented gliding and other stuffs :P
 
Same

I spent like 4 hours in the first village and I was holy fuck, what have they done with the size of this map, eventually I climbed to a tower far up in the mountains and looked at the horizon and it blew my fucking brain. I don't know if the magic will disappear in 20 hours or 100 hours but it's incomprehensible what the team has done with the fantasy fidelity at such a huge scale. Liking it very much for now.

Also the whole "MMO" argument is cute. I love that kind of shit in massive single player games. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 & X are... pretty much that. I didn't see them being dogpiled hard for being that in the reviews back then.
Ubisoft towers is so 2015 though.
 
The controls are absolute garbage, everyone in this thread knows it, but they have to justify the purchase somehow.

I don't care about the rest of the game if the most important part—the input—is unresponsive or makes it difficult to use.

I even tried the game with the PlayStation 5 Edge controller, which supports analog sticks, and it's still unbearable.

The claim that the learning curve is "STEPPING" is ABSURD.

Elden Ring is incredibly difficult, but the controls are not only great, they're also responsive. This is a shoddy job. It might be better suited for mouse and keyboard, which is the core gameplay of an MMO, but as a gamepad, it's rubbish.
 
soon u claim that botw invented gliding and other stuffs :P
No...

Gaffers alway go from 0 -> 100

Its not crazy to say that breath of the wild popularized and started the style of open ended, unguided open world gameplay.

Unless we are gonna be silly and point to something like outcast or pathologic, games which barely sold 100 000 copies in their prime.

I even say I dont like that style of zelda game in the comment you quote 🤷‍♂️ so im not sure what the gotcha is even about
 
I saw a video review of this game, and it doesnt have a meaningful mainquest. It is just a bunch of collecthatons and after 40 hours nothing meaningful has happened.
 
IGN posted an article from someone with another take that really likes the game . . .


Yo this is a great article

The type of audience that Crimson Desert is going to attract will be split on whether it's a flawed gem a la Dragon's Dogma or a janky disaster-slog a la Two Worlds (or a secret third thing: both of those kicked into each other), and a lot of it will come down to the combat system, because it pulls from something that doesn't cross over all that much with the RPG world: fighters. Brawlers. Games about walking from left to right and battering people while listening to rad techno. From when this was a real country.

:messenger_tears_of_joy: fuck yeah man
 
Six hours in now (chapter 2) and the game definitely has its hooks in me now after a rather slow and confusing start.

I really love how the game plays with mouse and keyboard. You can definitely feel the MMORPG roots. Strong Dragon's Dogma vibes so far, too, including the feeling of not knowing how anything works at first and a very light unexplained story.

Visually, the game is fantastic, but the near object pop-in for minor objects is annoying. Hopefully this gets patched or mods get made to address it. I'm running it maxed out with Ray Reconstruction (so max lighting setting) with DLSS balanced + frame generation. The noise and artifacting seems pretty minimal even sitting close to my monitor. I may bump DLSS to Performance just so the base framerate is closer to 60.

Right now I'm just doing tons of bounties around town and harvesting materials. Again, you can definitely tell these guys come from MMORPGs.

Overall, I'm absolutely loving it.
 
If the game didn't stand out for its spectacular graphics—and I think that's a unanimous opinion—the control system it has would lead to massive returns. But the packaging is attractive, and that makes some customers overlook the most important part of an action/adventure game: the input controls needed to enjoy the game.
 
Curious what people think about this review's perspective on the game ("The Worst Game I've Ever Enjoyed").

I watched the first half -- and I came away confirmed that this is not a game for me. The random way the story progresses (or doesn't), the side quests, the lack of interactive NPCs, the need to grind for hours ... it sounded tedious to me. Since I stopped watching halfway through, I didn't get to the part he enjoyed. I assume that's the exploration and aspects of combat, which do sound good.

edit: watched the second half. I thought it would be better, but it was worse. He made it sound like the game was 90% trivial and repetitive content, with the occasional interesting boss fight or sidequest thrown in. A game for "content consumers" and people looking for a huge time sink. Not me!
 
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If the game didn't stand out for its spectacular graphics—and I think that's a unanimous opinion—the control system it has would lead to massive returns. But the packaging is attractive, and that makes some customers overlook the most important part of an action/adventure game: the input controls needed to enjoy the game.

Are you playing the game?
 
Base consoles questions......

Is raytracing in the quality or balanced mode and if former, is it worth it going with 30fps instead of 40?

Also, did anyone try out the camera zoom yet? Can you get the camera really close to your character?
 
Is there a reason why everything looks brand new in Crimson Desert? The buildings. The streets. The clothes, the armor, the shields, the weapons. Everything. Even the trees and bushes look like they are made from plastic and just placed there. And not just new, but generic.
 
I'll definitely try it tonight. I love doing chores and wandering around. But reviews ain't good, especially about the storyline.
I just hope it doesn't feel like Where Winds Meet with a 70€ price tag.
 
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I gotta say, that tutorial puzzle was retarded. If it's the one where you get the palm strike he's referring to. It tells you "hang from the middle of the powered machine and palm strike." Meanwhile you are standing in the middle of a big machine, and the piece they're referring to you have to climb out of the machine and climb a wall to get to.
 
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