While I don’t regret the 100-plus hours I’ve sunk into Crimson Desert, I can’t deny an insidious thought has crept into my head a few times: “I wish I were playing Breath of the Wild“.
Pearl Abyss’ new open-world epic takes liberal inspiration from The Legend of Zelda and Dragon’s Dogma, and while the game generally does its exploration shtick quite well, it’s also made my respect for Nintendo’s take on the genre grow even more. Crimson Desert is obsessed with being the ultimate open-world game; it’s specifically tuned to the very idea of what it means to be an open-world game. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, uses the tenets of open-world design to explore its own ethos and further Zelda’s formula. That distinction is important because it colors each game respectively.
Go forth and conquer
It’s easy for someone to look at both of these games and think they’re essentially doing the same thing. Fast travel points need to be discovered, puzzles that unlock skill points can be found scattered across the world, and there’s a dynamic sense of how you can interact with the world, like using the glint from your sword to burn bushes.
But the key that differentiates these two is intent – the idea of there being a purpose to each aspect of the game, and how it all fits together like a puzzle. And one of Crimson Desert’s bigger problems, largely, is that its disparate pieces don’t click together nicely.
It often feels like stacking content is the point of Crimson Desert. But not all of that serves a purpose outside of simply being something to do – there’s no meaningful narrative context or world-building, or even interesting dynamics behind it. There are moments of wonder to be found in the beautiful landscapes of Pywel, to be sure, but not an overarching sense of purpose. The little stories you find are self-contained and don’t tie into the larger context of the main story and its politics. It feels like Crimson Desert wants to be this exploration-focused sandbox, but also has this dramatic high-fantasy story, and those two halves just don’t mesh.
The surprisingly linear main story often feels juxtaposed against that sense of exploration and wonder, railroading you into boss battles or specific areas of the map that don’t support that otherwise dynamic approach. I consistently found myself wanting to speed through story content so that I could simply get back to vibing with the world. And, more often than not, it’s by accident that you’re going to stumble upon puzzles or secrets in Crimson Desert’s world.
That couples with the game’s approach to puzzle design, often requiring hyper-specific abilities to solve a puzzle, or introducing a new mechanic you might not have seen before.
Breath deep and move
Crimson Desert is a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
It’s in that locus that Breath of the Wild has managed to supersede most other open world experiences, strictly because it has a core set of rules it introduces you to at the beginning – and builds the entire world out from that.
Breath of the Wild quickly introduces you to its systems of cooking, item durability, and the handful of runes like Magnesis and Stasis. These mechanics are built into the very world of Hyrule itself, playing into combat, exploration, finding treasure chests, and each and every puzzle and shrine. But crucially, you’re almost never locked into one specific solution.
A majority of the Shrines in Breath of the Wild can be solved in any number of ways – maybe you’re supposed to use Stasis to get that ball over a chasm, but some impromptu construction with Magnesis might also serve the trick. But equally, something like Magnesis isn’t just a one-off ability in puzzles; you can use it to snatch metal weapons out of enemies’ hands, grab out-of-reach treasure chests, or even as a platform for Link to float upon.
Breath of the Wild is multilayered in its approach. Everything serves a double purpose, whether that’s in combat, puzzle solving, or exploration. But it’s that focused set of core ideas that I think truly makes Breath of the Wild so compelling.
By comparison, Crimson Desert feels maximalist in its approach, wanting to have a wide variety of puzzles that all use different mechanics, and a massive skill tree that piles on different moves and mechanics – and that ends up diluting the experience. Crimson Desert is a jack of all trades, but a master of none.
And to be clear, there is a lot that Crimson Desert still gets right. Like Breath of the Wild, it makes fantastic use of empty space, giving the world of Pywel a really grand sense of scope and place. But it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by everything going on in Crimson Desert, which has given me a whole new appreciation for the target simplicity of Breath of the Wild – a game that still feels just as refreshingly different as it did all those years ago.
Wondering how long it takes to beat Crimson Desert? Unsurprisingly, it’s a lot longer than you think…