This time on Drarry reviews a game, Crimson Desert is featured. Join me for an honest take on this gaming juggernaut, or at least my honest take on this ambitious and ginormous open-world action-adventure by Pearl Abyss.

GameTitle: Crimson Desert

Developerand Developer: Pearl Abyss

Releasedate: March 19, 2026

OS: Windows 10 and 11

Platform: Steam*

Price: $69.99 – Basic Edition; $79.99 – Deluxe Edition

Please note that this review will have very minor spoilers.

What Is It 

Crimson Desert is a lofty and extensive open-world action-adventure game that, not unexpectedly, became a huge hit almost immediately. The narrative follows Kliff, a Greymane who sets out to rebuild his faction and save the world (isn't that always the case). The world is massive and there is an incredible amount of content. Players can spend upwards of 100 hours for completion.

This review is based on playing as Kliff, as he is the main protagonist, but there are two other playable characters who can be accessed as the game progresses. However, most quests can only be completed by Kliff. 

The Mostly Good

Visuals

Crimson Desert is stunningly beautiful. It features lush farmland, dense woodlands, jagged cliffs (spelled with a C), rolling hills, and a myriad of other locations. The world is so detailed and enormous that I found myself lost quite often as I had wandered off to explore something I had seen in the distance. It was not just on the ground either, there are amazing sights up in the clouds, as well, though my fear of heights kept me from enjoying being that high up. Just to tell you how well done the visuals are, I was scared to death when I had to ascend hundreds of feet into the air.

It's Alive

Many of the NPCs are just window dressing and are pretty stationary. You have the quest givers or the people you can greet, but otherwise they just stand around. However, there is an entire living and breathing world where many of them are wandering about, doing their own thing. In fact, there was a pretty hilarious instance of this, which was so unexpected that I laughed until I cried.

Kliff was minding his own business, strolling along, when he came upon a clearing with some people milling about. There was one gentleman, whom he assumed had imbibed too much mead or was either named Roach, as he was standing on the roof of a structure. Kliff, being the curious type, got closer to see if the man was doling out words of wisdom or singing a bawdy song, as those who have imbibed too much sometimes do. Instead, the entire roof collapsed and sent Mr. Roach (for reasons) crashing to the ground, smashing the entire structure underneath him. Poor guy was laying there and Kliff was not sure he was even alive at this point, but no matter. Some fruit had scattered about during the chaos, which a lovely lady seemed to notice, because instead of making sure the possibly dead man laying there was not dead, she decided to steal the fruit and pocket it, with nary a glance at the possibly dead dude. Dude was not dead, likely because the drink had made him impervious to falling through a roof, yet this is just one hilarious example of NPCs having free will. Crimson Desert is not the first game to implement this, but how things just randomly transpire as Kliff is minding his own business is hysterical.

Nobody will notice me stealing these apples while a guy is laying there dead. 

Exploration

Crimson Desert is enormous. The world is somewhat overwhelming at first and initially I felt pushed to complete certain quests, which kind of put a damper on things, but once I got the first chapter out of the way, the world was mine to traverse. So I whistled for my trusty steed, Herspia, and off we went. And went. And went. Sometimes we would stop and chat with people or find ourselves targeted by hoodlums. Otherwise, I was happiest discovering new locations and finding hidden chests and secrets.

Cats

So there I was walking around, when I saw a dog. I was able to pet the dog, because only weirdos do not stop to pet a dog.The dog was pretty cute. Then there was another and another and before I knew it I had pet dozens of dogs. I realized at this point, I had not seen a cat. Eventually, I did find a cat and more cats, but not nearly enough for my liking. However, it turns out not only can you pet the cat, you can pick it up and carry it around while petting it. If you garner enough trust with the cat, you can adopt it!!! My goal is now to adopt every single cat I find. All of them. Kliff will be known as the crazy cat dude. He's fine with that because he has all the cats and you don't.

Not All Is Well

Graphics

As I said, the visuals are amazing. The game world is absolutely beautiful, but for me it did not start out that way. There seems to be less optimization for Radeon cards than for Nvidia, but I am used to that at this point. At first, everything appeared fuzzy and wrong. Kliff was stunted and fuzzy. The NPCs were also stunted and fuzzy. The world was not clear and sharp. My settings were automatically set to Ultra, per my specs, but the world did not look ultra, it looked wrong. I spent about an hour tweaking and retweaking settings before the game looked like all the images and videos I had seen for it. Not a deal breaker, but somewhat frustrating. The game should have looked good out of the box with my setup and instead it looked as if I was running it on a potato until I figured out what should be adjusted. There are some guides available online, which are very helpful in determining what settings to change, but for the most part it was trial and error until the game looked like it should. 

After all was said and done, I could not get Kliff's hair to stop being blindingly shiny. Someone suggested I put a helmet on him. Thank you Nommie, otherwise, I would have been still complaining about this minor annoyance. What kind of products does this world have that Kliff's hair is super silky and shiny? When does he have time to make sure his hair looks good?

Dammit Kliff. Just once could you not blink when I'm taking a picture?

Cut Scenes/Loading

Cut scenes can be long and tedious. Pressing the space bar is supposed to breeze past them, but often, that does not work and the player is stuck watching the entire spiel, even if they've heard it before. There were many times I wanted to just skip ahead, but could not and found myself incredibly irritated.

Then there was the initial loading screen when entering the game. Kliff is sitting there for a bit, waiting around while the background is doing whatever it is it's doing, until he finally stands up and the game eventually loads. For some reason, this loading screen irrationally triggers me. I would rather just have a screen with backgrounds from the game and some tips cycling than watching this repeatedly.

Follow You Will You Follow Me

There are many quests to be found. Many many fetch quests. Many of the quests are pretty generic and do not add to the narrative one way or the other. However, there is a different type of quest. The kind of quest where the player is made to follow someone, whether on foot or horseback. The following often is slow going, with many twists and turns, until finally, we make it to the destination. These occur so often, that I would audibly sigh when one popped up, yet again, thrust on me unwillingly. Listen, it is great that someone wants to hang out with Kliff and show him the way, but considering he has made it as far as he has in life, I think he could just offer to meet the NPCs at the location marked on his map instead of the long and drawn out leisurely stroll across a courtyard. He literally could have said “I'll meet you there,” and walked directly in a straight line for a minute and have arrived two hours before the NPC arrived. OK, maybe not literally, but that is how it felt. This is a trope that many games employ, but not to this extent. It is overused and unnecessary. Please make it stop...I don't want to follow you just to hear all about your kidnapped sheep.

Mean Girls

So there I, Kliff, was exploring this enormous world without a care when suddenly I collapsed and woke up in a little campsite. Great. But what just happened? So I get up and try to explore again and I see a little girl, so I thought I would ask if she saw anything. Next thing I know I am waking up by the campfire again. This went on repeatedly. Kliff had no idea what was happening, but I did and yet didn't. Why are these little girls drugging me? Why do they keep drugging me? Who are they? Pretty sure they're witches and that Paul Rudd is their witch leader (this is a joke about Paul Rudd not aging, but I am pretty sure he really is a witch). At this point, I just wanted to get out of there and as far away as I could, but inevitably, I would head in the wrong direction and it would happen again. Kliff was living Groundhogs Day over and over and over. It just wouldn't stop. Eventually, Kliff was able to avoid one little witch girl that he saw waiting for him until he finally made it to freedom, only to be killed by a band of ruffians. Kliff was not having a good day. Or days. Not really sure how many days those evil little monsters kept him drugged.

Gimme some helmet.

Controls

Crimson Desert is an ambitious game. The scope of the world is large and the mechanics are complicated and oftentimes confusing. Kliff has a ton of abilities he picks up as he goes along and the need to remember what key does what becomes a chore. There are so many control combinations that it was overwhelming and became tiresome. Remapping keys is not really implemented and I am not sure how I would go about it to make the combinations easier to use and remember. Actions often require several different buttons to complete, and I cannot tell you how many times I accidentally hit someone with my sword when trying to do something completely different (they really do not appreciate you hacking them up). The controls are unintuitive and not simple to use or understand.

On top of the wonky controls, quick save is not a thing in the game. A game that is so big and complicated, which requires much exploration and questing is devoid of a quick save button. Autosave seems to only happen after huge events or when the player finds a fast travel area. As one who becomes engrossed in this type of game, I am used to being able to hit F5 and not worry about the constant need to open the settings, go into the save area, save the game, make sure you do not hit F to delete a save instead of space to overwrite a save. It completely ruins the immersion of the game when you are the type of person who needs to constantly save. I am that type of person and while there are manual saves available (thank goodness as I am not a fan of only being offered autosaves), quick save is an essential mechanic that should be implemented. I'm flabbergasted at this point, with all the updates, that the developers have not included this feature yet. It seems a no brainer and yet, here we are over a month after release and this function is still not available.

Back In Black 

From the start, I was plagued with a serious technical issue where the screen would turn black, which there was no recovering from. Even if I could still hear the game, it was not displaying. I could see my two other screens, but not the game screen. Sometimes I would have to reboot the PC, but other times, I was able to press the Windows Key +Ctrl + Shift + B to reset the driver. This would immediately close the game and any progress I had made since the last save was lost. If I had quick save, I would have only lost a couple of minutes (yes I am that fussy about saving the game frequently). This was something that took until the very last patch (1.04.02) before it stopped being an issue. One day I would start the game and all would be fine for 30 minutes or so until this happened. Other times it was 30 seconds. Settings and everything else I could think of were adjusted repeatedly to no avail. I am still not convinced the patch has rectified the issue, but so far this glitch has not returned.

There were like this when I got here. 

Conclusion

Crimson Desert is massive. It is breathtaking, once the video settings are adjusted properly, at least when using an RX 9070 XT GPU. There is much to explore and discover. The voice acting is decent. The quests are hit or miss and while I did not touch on this before, quests are broken up into different factions, which can sometimes be confusing. There is so much to this game that I feel I have only scratched the surface with this review. It took weeks before I could get any real gameplay in and the game still has so much content, that I do not know when, if ever, I will ever complete everything.

Yay Or Nay

Yay. While I had difficulty playing it and the game is marred with inconsistencies and technical issues, the developers are constantly updating and listening to their player base. This bodes well for the longevity of Crimson Desert because satisfying player need is utmost in ensuring a successful game. Yep, there are still things that need to be addressed, but there is so much to discover in this world that players should have plenty of time to eventually reap the benefits of such a huge and ambitious game. It is well worth the play, even if it took a lot of effort on my part to be able to enjoy myself. I cannot say that I am close to completion, but I have explored enough of the game to understand why it is so hugely popular and enticing.

B

At this point, for me, the game is a solid B. Perhaps once all the wrinkles have been ironed out, my score may change, but B is pretty good for a game that still needs a bit of polish. Gameplay is a B, but I am giving Pearl Abyss an A+ for how they have not only continued providing updates for the game, but gave every employee a $3400 bonus because of the success of Crimson Desert. This is how you do things the right way. 

PC Specs used for this review:

Ryzen 7 9800x3D

Asus AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

32 GB DDR5 6000

Windows 11 Home 64-Bit

KBM

*Platform/OS listed is what was used for this review, but the game is available elsewhere, including PS5 and Xbox.