Is it Worth Buying Crimson Desert?
I was never interested in Crimson Desert. Neither were any of my BDO friends when we talked about it. No pre-order, no launch day interest, not even tempted by the Black Desert Online crossover rewards they dangled in front of us. At AUD$109.95 it was a hard pass from me.
Then out of nowhere, one of my family members got hyped, bought it, and a few weeks later I finally caved and installed it, just to try it…
What Is It Trying to Be
Crimson Desert is a story-driven single-player action RPG from Pearl Abyss, and the ambition here is genuinely impressive on paper. It is reaching for a lot at once: the open-ended adventuring feel of The Witcher 3, the slow horseback conversations and cinematic weight of Red Dead Redemption 2, the puzzle-forward exploration of Tears of the Kingdom, and the do-whatever-you-want open world energy of Skyrim or GTA 5.
That is a serious ambition list. And for a studio that already has Black Desert Online under their belt, which has some of the best combat and most alive open worlds in the MMO space, you would think the foundation would be there.
Here is my problem. Crimson Desert inherits BDO’s DNA in presentation and aesthetic, but somehow falls short on the two things BDO actually nails: combat feel and storytelling momentum. BDO’s story is debatable, sure, but the combat has always been the reason people stay. In Crimson Desert those two pillars, the things that should be the easiest wins for Pearl Abyss to carry over, are where I felt the most disappointment.
What Worked for Me
The visuals are a genuine step up. Texture clarity, lighting, the overall sense of sharpness in scenes, it looks better than BDO in meaningful ways. The cutscenes especially, they are done with a level of cinematic care that BDO’s never matched. If you boot this game up and watch the opening sequences, you are going to be impressed. Pearl Abyss clearly invested in presentation.
The skill tree also caught my attention in a way I didn’t expect. It actually looks like a proper skill tree, not the BDO system. Theory crafting builds and finding the setup that matches how I want to play is something I genuinely enjoy, and seeing that laid out properly gave me a real moment of “okay, this could be something.”
Reading guides on what the mid and late game opens up honestly got me excited too. The feature set on paper is wide.
My Lows
Then I actually played it.
The early game feels messy in a way that actively works against you. I kept losing the thread of what I was supposed to do next, which broke momentum repeatedly in those first few hours. Controls felt awkward throughout, not unplayable, but not natural either. Basic traversal and combat moments became more tiring than fun because the inputs never quite settled into muscle memory the way BDO’s do.
And this is where the ambition becomes a problem. Crimson Desert wants to be Witcher 3 and Red Dead and Tears of the Kingdom all at once. That is a mountain of expectation to manage in your early hours. Those games earn their slower stretches because the feel of playing them is already working in their favour. When your onboarding is rough and your controls feel off, you have not bought yourself the goodwill to ask players to push through.
I kept seeing the same thing in reviews and community posts: push past the early stretch and the game opens up significantly. I believe that is probably true. But early game is the hook. It is the part that decides whether someone stays long enough to see your better content. For a single-player game without the live service reset cycles of an MMO, there is less excuse for weak onboarding, not more.
BDO has its own history with this problem. The difference is years of patches, events, and catch-up systems have genuinely smoothed that entry. Crimson Desert does not have that safety net yet.
Worth Playing?
Most of my friends who stuck with it enjoyed it more than I did, which tells me this is at least partly a personal mismatch. The ambition is real. The visual craft is real. The skill system looked like something I could sink into.
But in those first hours I spent more time wrestling the game than enjoying it, and when I can just go back to Black Desert Online instead, that friction adds up fast. At AUD$109.95 that is a harder ask than a free to play or budget title where you shrug and move on.
If the games it is reaching for, Witcher 3, Red Dead, Tears of the Kingdom, are your comfort zone, you will probably have more patience for the rough early stretch than I did. If your benchmark is BDO’s combat feel, go in knowing that particular bar is not cleared here, at least not in the opening hours.
Worth a look eventually, probably at a sale price rather than full. Do not let my experience stop you from trying it, but maybe wait for a discount and some more patches first.
