Brave New World: Crimson Desert — Game of the Year or Disaster
A month has passed since the release of the RPG Crimson Desert, critics and ordinary players have thoroughly explored the world of the game, and finally, we can give an objective verdict to this ambitious project. The main pros and cons of the game are in the Izvestia material.
A game of scales
From the very first announcements, Crimson Desert looked like a game of cyclopean proportions. Pearl Abyss, the creators of the MMORPG Black Desert Online, aimed to accumulate a huge number of gameplay mechanics and activities in one project — from story adventures to fishing, trading, taming animals and storming fortresses. It is obvious that Crimson Desert has MMO roots: it has many complex interconnected systems, users are given a wide range for experimentation and the focus is on making the most of it. The game is not so much built around a central idea, as it is assembled from many large ones. This is her strength and the source of almost all her problems.
Many RPGs failed because there was nothing to do in them. In Crimson Desert, on the contrary, there is an overabundance of cases. The game is constantly striving to offer another mechanic, activity format, or offshoot gameplay. At some moments, this is a delight: the world seems bottomless, and the possibilities are almost limitless. At others, it gives the impression of a chaotic vinaigrette.
Crimson Desert is balancing on the edge of genres: it wants to be both an action adventure, a role-playing game, an exploratory sandbox, a life simulator and a harsh action movie with hardcore duels. However, this hinders the integrity: not all genre elements are equally well combined with each other.
Plot
The main character Cliff survives an attack by an enemy faction, but loses his comrades. He has to reassemble the squad, gradually becoming involved in larger events. The basis for the epic adventure is quite understandable, but the authors had difficulties with the presentation. The main storyline looks weak, ragged and uneven. The characters are not always memorable, the dialogues sometimes sound unconvincing, and the pace of the narrative sometimes slips, then jumps sharply to new events.
Stylistically, the game mixes fantasy, high technology, mysticism and almost sci-fi motifs, which does not always look consistent. At the same time, the side scenes and quests associated with Cliff's companions are often much warmer and more lively than the main storyline. They show characters, everyday details — the characters exist not only as functions to advance the plot. That's the paradox: a big story doesn't catch on, but local branches are remembered and touched.
A vast and alluring world
The main undoubted advantage of Crimson Desert is the feeling of boundless adventure. The world of Pyvel (the main setting) is not just a backdrop for quests, but the main source of player interest. Crimson Desert constantly pushes you to explore: deviate from the route, check out what is hidden behind the mountain, look into the ruins, climb to the top, go down into a cave or find a detour through the celestial regions. The game does not follow a strict route and spurs curiosity. At any time, you can take your mind off the main plot and do something else: camp development, trading, gathering, hunting, mini-games, or just haphazard wandering.
Another obvious advantage is the visual part. The world of the game is really beautiful: dense forests, wide plains, deserts, mountain ranges, ancient ruins and aerial regions. At the same time, good PC performance remains: for a project of this scale, technical stability is a rarity.
Some aspects of the combat system can also be praised. Battles look spectacular, they allow you to combine different techniques, types of weapons or strikes without it, and special abilities. It creates a feeling of realistic combat physics and action.
When ambition ruins everything
The main disadvantages of the game are visible precisely in those places where it tries to pile up mechanics, genre elements and content. The big problem with fighting is its length. They often last longer than they objectively should. The player is overwhelmed by waves of identical opponents, and individual battles stretch out. This is especially true for some action scenes.
The second major problem is bosses. They often break out of the general structure: instead of continuing the usual action, the player suddenly finds himself in difficult, sometimes clumsy and poorly balanced battles, in which it is not skill that is more important, but a supply of healing drugs and patience. Because of this, the rhythm of the passage breaks down, and instead of exciting, Crimson Desert begins to annoy.
The third weakness is the unintuitiveness of some mechanics. The puzzles are too confusing, sometimes you just have to sort through the options blindly. Management also let me down. Due to the non-standard layout, overloaded combinations and poor responsiveness, it takes longer and more painful to get used to the game than we would like.
There are also trivial problems in it: limited inventory, lack of convenient storage of items at the start, a controversial quick movement system, technical bugs and individual quest failures. These moments do not put an end to the game, but they noticeably prevent you from enjoying its positive aspects.
A separate reason for discussion is the "liveliness" of the Crimson Desert world. On the one hand, the scale is impressive: a lot of NPCs, busy with their own business, create a sense of realism for the player. But behind the external activity lies an imitation of life. The characters are just scenery, cities and merchants don't have a full—fledged schedule, and much of the world functions strictly according to the script.
An addictive experiment
Crimson Desert is not an absolute masterpiece, but it's not a failure either. Rather, it is a huge, heterogeneous and ambitious experiment in which the scope of the idea constantly argues with technical limitations. Pearl Abyss has created a project that delights in freedom, beauty and the number of possibilities, but annoys with the inconvenience, congestion and inconsistency of individual parts.
Screenshot from the game Crimson Desert
Despite the drawbacks, Crimson Desert is addictive. It can still give the player something that is often lacking in other RPGs — a sense of great and unpredictable adventure. This game is not an ideal example of the genre, but a daring attempt to build a huge world in which you want to linger.
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