A landscape with many trees and mountains

Crimson Desert is Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Written by: Beth, Contributing Writer for Coolection

|

Published on

|

Time to read 4 min

Crimson Desert is described as an action-adventure title, but those who have played it know that it’s so much more. There’s a touch of RPG in there, some cozy game elements sprinkled in, and some MMO jank - which is no surprise, considering this is the team behind Black Desert Online, a popular MMORPG that has been running since 2015. Crimson Desert is a mishmash of many things, but that isn’t necessarily bad. At least, not all bad.

The Good and the Bad

It's fair to say that Crimson Desert has its share of ups and downs, and it will likely stay that way for awhile considering the frequency of the updates coming from Pearl Abyss. Their commitment to improving the game should be commended, but with every patch, there is always the risk of introducing new bugs. The game has had numerous updates, and although the majority of the changes have been for the better, there are lingering issues.

Where it Fails

Although Crimson Desert is a fun and funky gaming experience, it’s important to acknowledge where the “jam pack everything into one game” strategy falls on its face, and I think it’s an easy one to agree on: the controls. It feels like the dev team played a few rounds of “stick the mechanic on the controller” with a blindfold. This is improving over time, however, this is the first game I’ve played where I thought to myself, “How many moves can exist on the X button at the same time?”

Where it Succeeds

There are many people who enjoy and stick to one genre, but there are also many that have eclectic tastes and bounce around from CRPGs to cozy farming sims to action-adventure to 4X strategy and so on. Crimson Desert has positioned itself to be very appealing to those who enjoy a variety of genres. There is beauty in the flexibility of slaughtering bandits one moment and managing your base the next. Crimson Desert is not the first game to do this, but it does seem to be striving for more. After all, how many games allow you to have dogs, cats, and birds as pets as well as ride a bear into battle?

That MMO Jank

Crimson Desert was quite the undertaking for a dev team that had been dedicated to an MMO for so long, so the accomplishment should not be understated. But I would be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge the presence of MMO influence. I feel this the most in conversations with NPCs. There are these long, odd, artificial pauses between lines of dialogue, making you feel like you’ve missed a button press, or the game is lagging. Anyone who’s played an MMO will know that this is pretty common, especially if there is no voice acting. Without voices, the pauses feel natural - it’s giving you time to read. Sometimes you have to press a button to proceed to the next line of dialogue. But with voice acting, it just makes every conversational interaction feel clunky and stilted. I would love to see improvements to this in one of the upcoming patches.

A man in armor is sitting on a black and white horse
Picture taken from personal gameplay

Where Does Crimson Desert Go Next?

Crimson Desert has only been out since March 19th, but in that short time, the dev team has shown that they still have ideas, and they are listening to player feedback on what needs improvement. Only time will tell the future of the game for certain, but I can take a few semi-educated guesses. 


Firstly, I think it's clear that the Crimson Desert player base is really enjoying the ability to take in a variety of pets. I know I am. Since they already added a new pet type - birds - to the mix, I am predicting we will see at least one more pet type added, perhaps a farm animal like a goat or a pig. I also would expect to see some additional dog and cat breeds added. If they do end up continuing to expand on this area of the game, I hope they'll also boost the pet limit so we don't have to make some tough choices! 


Secondly, but definitely related to the pets, is the mounts. Not only are animal lovers enjoying this feature, but so are those who love taking ferocious beasts into battle with them. There are already some really cool options, but I anticipate seeing further expansion here as well. My guess is that the horse breeds will be expanded upon, which will make all of us RDR2 fans very happy, and that some more intimidating mounts will be added. Perhaps a griffin. 


And lastly, I think there is a chance for the story to be improved. I will admit that this one is wishful thinking, since story revamping would be a much greater undertaking then any kind of improvement to controls, adding pets, adding mounts, tweaking skills, adding skills, adding base quests, etc. That being said, I know a lot of player feedback has been critical of the story. It feels very cobbled together, especially in the earliest hours, the pacing is sometimes way too fast and at other times way too slow, the world seems to contradict itself sometimes, and many of the characters are too bland, making them not interesting enough to invest in emotionally. I don't think it is realistic to expect a full blown overhaul of the story, but I do think some refinements, even just to lines of dialogue, could make a positive difference.


Crimson Desert is a zany, wonderful experiment in smashing genres together and seeing what happens, and I'm really looking forward to following its journey as it evolves and improves over time. 

This article was created exclusively for Coolection in collaboration with GeekE Media. All content is original and developed specifically for the Coolection community.

← Go back