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Crimson Desert is one of those games I was genuinely afraid to review. Not because I thought it was going to be some terrible creation, but because I could tell that even after spending almost 100 hours, I’d still be left having not touched half the game.
Crimson Desert Factsheet
Title: Crimson Desert
Genres: Open-world action-adventure
Released: March 19, 2026
Developer: Pearl Abyss
Available on: PC (Steam), Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5
Price: $69.99
Time played: 75 hours
Xbox Play Anywhere: ✅
Xbox Game Pass: ❌
What Pearl Abyss has created is wonderful and should be celebrated in every way. Here’s my tale as to why.
Crimson Desert Review: The most ambitious single-player open world
One of the main concerns with Crimson Desert hasn’t been its size, but the potential lack of meaningful content to fill the space created. From the perspective of someone who’s poured over 70 hours into the game and feels like they’ve barely scratched the surface, there’s something for everyone.
In my time, which has been relegated to what I’ll refer to as the bottom left of the map, I’ve come across the following activities: Competitive Archery, thievery, outlaw tracking, investment banking, goods hauling, brawling, arm wrestling, hidden caves, ancient ruins with puzzles, multiple Abyss Sanctums, nearly 100 different creatures, 34 crafting manuals, 28 different factions, four mounts, and so much more.
I could turn this review into a boring list of all that I’ve found so far, but part of the majesty and mystique is not knowing; it’s the discovery of the event itself.
There will be so many opportunities for you to look up all the various activities that I implore you not to. If what you assume is already known, that crucial step of mystery is washed away.
I think the only way to really put this all into perspective is with a screenshot of the “knowledge base”.
As you can see from the above photo, of the 34 crafting manuals I found, there are over 300 more to find, 28 of 110 factions. Some of these I’ve kept a surprise for players on release day, but I’m sure there’s already a screenshot out there, either in someone else’s review or previously. But I also want to keep it a secret how much of the game you’ll unravel in your first fifty hours, or at least, somewhat of a secret.
You can go on for hours getting lost in areas, if not for finding random things to do here and there, but just to bask in the majesty of the world Pearl Abyss has created. The landscapes presented are both a beacon of guidance and a reason to lose oneself in timeless game sessions.
I am able to confirm the fact that it takes roughly four hours to travel the entire map on foot. If one were so bold as to try. However, that’s where the mount system comes in, which includes not only horses, but a total of 28 different mounts!
So don’t worry, securing travel across the continent will be a game in its own right.
The greatest travesty I have yet to face with Crimson Desert’s open world is the fact that I’ve had to play it under the pressure of time. For the first time in years, I feel the desire to go off in random directions, excited about what the next corner might bring. Something only games like Skyrim, Breath of the Wild, and others have given me.
Crimson Desert Review: Activities galore
As I mentioned previously, there’s a lot to come across in Crimson Desert. So much so that I’m absolutely positive I haven’t found or even tried everything there is to do.
Take investment banking, for example. Early on, I discovered a bank that allowed me to open an account for 100 silver, which, for starters, will seem a little hefty. It wasn’t until after opening the account that I realized I needed either a gold bar or another 500 silver to purchase one.
Thankfully, some hours later, I just so happened to find a gold bar on someone else. Once invested, I had the option for low, medium, and high-stakes investments.
Then I randomly came across the ability to sell stolen livestock. Yes, there is a fence that you can sell stolen or non-legitimate livestock to! Just when you thought investment banking was enough to get you by.
Then there are goods trading systems, which you can use to find and package goods at your camp to deliver somewhere else for profit. You can even buy trade goods at one market and deliver them somewhere else where they’re selling for more.
Seriously, this game has tons of things to do! However, that cataclysmic number of activities can sometimes backfire.
For instance, things like arm wrestling, archery competitions, and brawling. These activities are fun, little nothing-to-do moments of gameplay, but that’s the thing, they’re really nothing.
Brawling, for example, was a random little area I found outside of Hernand, the game’s first main city. Here, I jumped into a pit and smashed the melee button over and over. The only other action I had was to dodge.
If I did anything else, including holding the melee button, which causes your character to kick, I was immediately disqualified. There was no rhythm to this, just smash melee, dodge (maybe), and win. Rather than a mini-game, it felt like a quick “here’s what we could do if we made this brawling into a mini-game” demo.
That “every so often” of coming across needless or pointless activities didn’t really bolster my love of Crimson Desert’s open world. Instead, it was a negative on the experience, making the sum of the total parts feel disconnected from the game.
Then again, it’s like this always, or even the majority of the time, but enough to the point where I wish something had been just a little more fleshed out.+
Crimson Desert Review: Gameplay and performance
The best way I can describe the combat of Crimson Desert is by letting you know there are roughly 30 different attack buttons/combinations. From melee to ranged options like guns, bows, and spells.
Just with melee alone, there is a decent variety of starting weapons that feel varied enough to keep combat fresh, just from light and heavy attacks. Basic swords, axes, scythes, spears, and more will take up your inventory rather quickly.
The amount I came across felt just enough so that I never felt overwhelmed or underwhelmed by any of the options I came across. This all comes before you come across unique weapons as well, like some that carry charged spirit attacks or secondary methods of damage.
Even the armor types are varied, in the form Zelda fans might find familiar. You’ll find cloth, plate, leather, and more, but each of these sets comes with different resistance types or other wonderful benefits like movement speed and attack bonuses. All weapons and armor can be upgraded through a process called refinement to improve damage and resistance.
Combat is just pure, unadulterated fun that never really grows tiresome. Whether it’s against the easier NPCs that you’ve out-leveled, or the terrifyingly strong armies of Demenis, your rather violent neighbor, Crimson Deserts combat is so fluid, the end result is always satisfying.
Then there’s a small subsection of spells powered by Spirit that mix and match so incredibly well. Literally fanning someone to death is about as awesome as stabbing them through the chest!
Storage
The collection of these items leads to one of the most glaring weaknesses the game currently has, and that’s inventory management. I’ve been told a patch will deliver some form of storage within homes, but there’s currently no way to keep items tucked away outside of keeping them in your own inventory.
You start with a decent 50 slots, but if you want to collect and hoard upgrade materials for your favorite weapons and armors, you’ll have to dedicate slots specifically to those resources. There’s no storing them away in some locked chest at your base, or even in your home located near your base.
Over time, you can increase inventory slots by completing quests, where you can end up with something like 200 slots. Still, carrying everything on your person at once felt odd and cumbersome to deal with at times, and felt like a major miss for a game with so many things to pick up.
Seriously, beginning with just creatures, you can collect their bones, hide, meat, horns, and even full-fledged butterflies, lizards, etc. There are like 30-something butterfly types alone, and every one you pick up takes a separate slot. Come on, Pearl Abyss, you had to know this would be a major issue, right?
Puzzles
Like all games with puzzles, Crimson Desert can be a hit or miss when it comes to the general pride you get from completing one. What I’m pleased to announce is that the majority of them slap.
Seriously, most of these puzzles remind me of a more “realistic” version of Breath of the Wild. That’s not to take shots at Zelda, only to properly showcase how Crimson Desert takes their physics-based movement puzzles with a bit less flair than something like Tears of the Kingdom.
There are so many moments I thought to myself, “Hey, I think this will work,” and it just ended up doing so. Seeing something, coming up with a clever idea that you haven’t even tried before, and then doing it is awesome when it works so often.
Early on, everything is satisfying because every mechanic is brand-new and shiny. As time goes on, simple tasks are interspersed with physics-based puzzles that feel like filler or are poorly presented.
Take, for example, somewhere along the line, you’ll help a group do a little research. If you account for all the dialogue and actual combat that takes place, as well as unique puzzle mechanics, the quest is pretty decently paced.
However, on top of that, Pearl Abyss added a weird slide puzzle to turn a generator on and insert 4 batteries (all in the same way) just as the quest starts. After some action and a weird amount of time running to the next heart-racing moment, you’re faced with another puzzle that I think is pretty much impossible without either your stamina buffed or the use of cold-resistant food/clothing.
The initial quips felt functional, but felt a little too much like filler for my taste. It was the insertion of unforeseen obstacles in the other puzzle that really threw me for a loop. What might suck is that I did the puzzle entirely wrong; I have no way of knowing. What I do know is that it wasn’t the only time I had this feeling.
Performance and character swapping
Performance for Windows PC has been nothing but terrific. I played on both a 4060 at 1080p and a 5080 at 4K, and have nothing but good things to say about how they play.
Starting with the 4060, I was able to push my settings all the way to cinematic with balanced DLSS to maintain 80 fps. Dropping those down gave much better native performance, too.
As for the 5080, I saw a general ~75 FPS performance at 4K cinematic with Quality DLSS. Since the FPS was above 60, I was able to turn on frame gen without sacrificing latency and saw spikes into the 200s.
Reconstruction ray tracing is where players might have a hard time. At 4K, cinematic, with ray-tracing enabled, I was bottoming out at less than 20 FPS, which is to be expected.
Some of these settings are obvious overkill, so I shouldn’t expect max of the max to work on anything but a 5090. The general settings are gorgeous, and from what I’ve played, incredibly well-optimized.
Bugs are another thing that I didn’t personally experience, but heard plenty of during my review time. I’m not sure what to expect when the game hits release, but I’ve watched Pearl Abyss work tirelessly to fix any and all bugs reviewers encountered during their sessions.
So, like, I know this is supposed to be a thing, but in my 70 hours so far, I’ve felt as though this feature was some afterthought. It’s cool to swap between different adventurers ala GTA V character hot-swap, but none of the side characters really feel fully fleshed out.
I still swapped over to try different missions with them, but the entirety of this mechanic dropped off hard. Maybe later in the game, it will pick up, but I can’t help feeling like this had originally been part of the multiplayer experience.
Crimson Desert Review: The story of friendship and epic set pieces
The story starts off as a basic rebuild vengeance tale that delivers somewhat beyond serviceable results. I’m nowhere near done with the entirety of it, but it’s grown increasingly more interesting as time has passed.
Like many of the game’s systems, some of the initial story felt skipped, as though there may have been a prelude comic out there (or perhaps Black Desert, I’ve never played). You’re in a camp, where some of your comrades you never met have perished.
Within another few minutes, those responsible are back at it. The enemy gives reason to be lightly introduced to some of your comrades, as well as one of the big bads, but eventually become separated from one another before attempting to form together again during the opening quests. You’ll find more of your mates, otherwise known as the Greymanes, during your adventures.
Things take a literal other-worldly return before any of the reuniting begins, as you’re introduced to the concept of the Abyss. A parallel world of sorts that is separate from your realm. The game takes on a striking similarity to “Save the cheerleader. Save the world.”
Much of the moment-to-moment dialogue is decent, but the story shines during set-piece beats. Without spoiling anything, I’ve had multiple heart-pumping combat flashes that have left me wishing I’d saved just before to play it again.
The game is a stellar display of what time and effort can do in building up to pivotal story moments. As though perfected in a way that feels like a long, well-paced novel.
Crimson Desert Review: Should you buy it?
If you’re here and reading this, the answer is simple: yes. Crimson Desert is the kind of game that usually only comes along once in a generation, so singular in its ambition that it will define the gaming conversation for weeks, if not months, to come.
I’d say years, but the only game that will overtake it in scope is the billion-dollar GTA VI.
Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, since you can never predict how the public or other reviewers will respond. But I lost count of the moments that stirred the same sense of awe I felt playing Elden Ring for the first time.
That feeling is rare, especially after 30 years with this hobby. Crimson Desert is the kind of game where the moment someone asks whether they should play it, the answer is already out of my mouth.
The only exception is someone who has no patience for true open-world exploration, someone who prefers a tight, linear narrative above all else.
Crimson Desert isn’t that, nor should it ever try to be. What it is, is something genuinely rare. A game I didn’t know I wanted, and couldn’t have imagined believing in, until I played it myself.
Crimson Desert is the kind of game that usually only comes along once in a generation, so singular in its ambition that it will define the gaming conversation for weeks, if not months, to come. Despite granular misses, Pearl Abyss has showcased what gameplay freedom truly means.