Developer Pearl Abyss’s work on Crimson Abyss is ongoing, with a rapid-fire of updates hitting the game every week since it launched. Now, as of April 4th, a brand new patch tackles a string of bugs, with PS5 Pro in particular receiving an especially big win. The upgraded PSSR’s sharpen feature is added, but more crucially, a native AA mode is added to the 30fps quality mode, essentially running the game at native 4K, using PSSR for anti-aliasing alone – and the boost to the overall look of the image is significant.
For those familiar with our Crimson Desert PS5 review, you’ll be aware that the Pro’s balanced and quality modes had an unusually soft image. Despite rendering at 1440p on balanced, and a native 4K on quality (with no PSSR applied in that case), it still appeared softer somehow compared to the performance option. Switching to the new patch, all of that is solved, and engaging the native AA feature of PSSR on Pro’s quality mode makes a huge difference.
The bottom line is that Pro now pushes a pin-sharp image, compared to the launch build. Arguably it’s over-sharpened with that stated ‘sharpen feature’, with a crisp, high contrast look to all that fine grass detail ahead. A toggle to adjust this would surely be appreciated, since it does appear to have a ‘deep-fried’ look.
Still, it’s a move in the right direction overall for sheer clarity across the frame while running at 30fps – and we’ll certainly take it. As ever, it’s rare that an upgrade comes for free in GPU performance however. The reality is that enabling PSSR for quality mode comes with a frame-rate penalty – around two frames per second, around 3ms in render time per frame. The good news is that for much of the run of play, the 30fps cap disguises a certain amount of overhead left on the GPU – resources that can be used for the new PSSR pass. The bad news is that other testing sees the standard mode dip beneath 30fps, with the native AA mode now hitting frame-rates harder.
There’s also good news for Pro users running the balanced mode today, which also benefits from a pin-sharp image. Of course this mode already had a PSSR upscale in place from a 1440p base resolution – resolving to 4K. However the new April patch has an equally sizeable impact, with close zooms holding up to scrutiny on a 4K display, with none of the softness to all that fine detail. Likely this is down to adjustments to the PSSR’s sharpness feature since we already had PSSR in place, but the results make this mode much easier to recommend.
All of this testing was carried out as we aim to polish off our review coverage by looking at the Xbox Series versions of the game, and we’ll report back with more on that soon.