One Evening with: Crimson Desert
I went with a lot of excitement into Crimson Desert. I expected a beautiful open world game that I could get lost in and in some ways that is exactly what Crimson Desert is, but it still doesn't connect with me.
Crimson Desert a game without character
After starting Crimson Desert we get straight away thrown into a story. A war between two factions. Who are those factions? What are they about? I honestly have no clue. The game doesn't explain anything to you. This honestly wouldn't be an issue for me, if the characters would be great.
But sadly so far after playing three hours every dialogue I encountered was badly voiced and without any kind of charm. The worst of all is our Main Character Kliff. I still don't know anything about him or his personality other than that he likes to help people. Within the first two hours Kliff gets killed, resurrected, talks to people who magically disappear, gets teleported above the clouds, learns magical abilities and his reaction to all of this is… “Oh well another normal Friday I guess”.
He simply has absolutely no character. The world itself feels so far very similar to this. It's just a messy mix of many different concepts. Same goes for the Quest System. So far i never know why i do a quest. I simply get a main quest that says “Go to point A”. Nobody gave me this quest and there is no reason or explanation behind it. It simply appears in my Quest log and that's it. So far everything I do simply feels soulless.
Now I knew going into Crimson Desert that its main story wouldn't be anything exciting. I normally don't have an issue with that. Dragon's Dogma 2 was one of my favorite games the past years and its character and main story are also bland. But the World in Dragons Dogma feels real and consistent. The lack of a character creator also hurts Crimson Desert as this would at least give me some way to connect to my character a bit more.
Breath of the Wild on drugs
After this disappointing beginning I thought lets go out and explore the world. Exploration is supposed to be the strong point of Crimson Desert and I'm someone who loves exploration in games. The game design of Crimson Desert is heavily inspired by Zelda Breath of the Wild.
The game gives you a big and beautiful open world to explore. Along the way you can find secret shrines that offer Zelda inspired puzzles, but also more traditional quests like you would know from MMORPGs. Similar to Zelda you can also climb everywhere and the game offers a very physics based game design.
However Crimson Desert lacks the polish and elegant game design Breath of the Wild has. The first big hurtle are the controls. Its simply insane how complex and weird the controls are. Multiple actions that in other games would simply be “Press A” require multiple button inputs in Crimson Desert.
So far also the puzzles I encountered lacked the brilliant and clever design of its inspiration. So far Puzzles felt like clunky busy work and not exciting fun. Honestly I had more fun doing those shrines in Infinity Nikki then I had in Crimson Desert.
The world itself looks beautiful but also bland in a way. I honestly never feel like in Elden Ring where I can't wait to see what's around the next corner and because the game failed to engage me in its lore everything almost feels like I would imagine a world an AI would create.
Is Crimson Desert Bad?
After all I just said you can tell how extremely disappointed I am in Crimson Desert. I wasn't expecting a masterpiece by any means. But at least I was hoping I would have fun exploring this world like I had last year with Assassins Creed Shadows.
Now it's still not all bad. Crimson Desert offers a sandbox with so many systems you rarely see. In some ways this game combines Red Dead Redemption, Zelda, Skyrim and Dragons Dogma into a unique mix. For some people this mix could work and from all the Reviews I saw I'm pretty sure this would have a lot to offer.
However for me personally I simply must admit that in the four hours I played so far I simply had no fun. I wanted to love this game but I don't. Maybe I will revisit Crimson Desert again in a few months or a year. Maybe it will connect more with me then. But as it stands for now its my biggest disappointment of 2026 so far.