Crimson Desert seems huge — not just in how much there is to do, but simply how enormous its world is. As an open-world RPG, that’s to be expected, but it’s only when you’re standing on a strange island floating in the sky, seeing the whole world stretch out beneath you, that it’s clear just how expansive the world of Pywel really is.
I recently went hands-on with the beginning portion of Crimson Desert and played about four hours, and while I never made it out to the landmarks I could see in the distance, even the area in and around the city where the game begins felt enormous and full of life.
Helping out in Hernand
You play Kliff, a member of a faction called the Greymanes — warriors renowned for their swordsmanship and their reputation for helping others. The early part of the story takes place in a town called Hernand, where you get your first taste of just how big and bustling Crimson Desert is. Even with four hours of playtime, there was so much to do in and around Hernand that I never made it far from town.
Quests in and around Hernand have you helping out various townspeople with their problems. But there are also plenty of activities and encounters to discover on your own. Often, you’ll find spots and buildings that outlaw factions have taken over, and they’ll attack you if you enter their territory. Defeat enough of them, though, and you’ll liberate the place so the townspeople can reclaim it.
Clearing bandits out from different locations unlocks access to new quests and activities, too. When I drove the bandits out of a fish market, fishermen moved back in, and I was able to observe them and learn to fish myself.
One of the cooler aspects of Crimson Desert is how Kliff can learn new skills not just by unlocking them from his character skill tree, but by observing them from other people. That can even happen in combat.
Fast, fluid combat
Fighting in Crimson Desert is a fast-paced, intense affair, with smart enemies who constantly work to surround and overwhelm you. Luckily, you’re a well-trained swordsman with quite a few abilities. Kliff can chain together fast strikes with R1 and slower, more powerful slashes with R2, but he’s also strong enough to grab enemies and throw them when you press Circle and Triangle buttons together.
Crimson Desert doesn’t really contain character classes or builds — unlocking new skills just adds more and more moves to Kliff’s repertoire, which you can use by pressing different combinations of buttons. Your fighting style is more determined by the weapons you choose to use. Kliff starts with a sword and shield, but you can also find weapons like great swords, spears, axes, and more to change how you approach combat.
You can block with L1, and if you time a block correctly as an attack lands, you can parry an enemy’s blow, knocking them briefly off-balance. Holding L1 also lets you lock onto an enemy, but the fluidity of the combat system means you’ll often quickly drop a lock so you’ll be free to attack in all directions.
Fighting stronger opponents can increase your arsenal of abilities. Midway through one early boss battle, a knight attempted to kick Kliff in the chest — and after seeing the move, Kliff learned it, incorporating it into his fighting style. From then on, I could give enemies the boot to send them flying.
The final battle of my preview was by far the toughest I faced, against Kailock, the Hornsplitter, the leader of a local merchant guild who’d been scouring Hernand for Abyss Artifacts. These are magical items that have fallen from the Abyss, a realm of floating islands above Pywel, and they imbue their wielders with strange powers. Kailock’s artifact makes him very fast and agile, while also allowing him to generate waves of magic from his weapon.
Kailock makes it clear it’ll take understanding your opponents’ abilities and using skills like parrying and powerful attacks to defeat them. And thanks to Abyss Artifacts, it seems like you’ll face enemies throughout Crimson Desert with capabilities that rival your own.
A strange, mystical world
Following the early steps of the main quest quickly leads you to the Abyss, a place seemingly powered by some mix of magic and technology, and home to some mystical folks who’ve taken an interest in Kliff.
It’s here that you start to gain special magical abilities that allow you to complete puzzles, explore the world, and gain an edge in combat. These include turning some objects weightless so you can manipulate them, picking up heavy items that would otherwise block your path, and donning a glider that lets you survive falls and cover distances.
The Abyss gives the first taste of Crimson Desert’s puzzles, which often have you fixing and manipulating Abyss technology. It sounds like you’ll solve quite a few puzzles throughout the game — some in the course of the story, and others that you’ll uncover through exploration.
Abyss Artifacts falling to earth seem to be a major driver for the story, and you can find them throughout the game and use them to unlock character upgrades and new abilities. But you’re not the only person hunting them and their power.
Freedom to explore
Beyond a short trip to the Abyss and the wilderness around Hernand, I didn’t get too far into the world of Crimson Desert, but it does seem like there’s going to be plenty of interesting things to find within the world if you’re willing to look for them.
After leaping off an Abyss island to return to the surface, I floated down near Hernand’s castle and found a man hanging from a cliff. I ran over and pulled him up, and he explained that he was trying to climb down to a chest before slipping. It was a momentary encounter, but provided a clue about what I might find below.
With my glider, I was able to jump down to the chest no problem, uncovering some loot that was part of another trading activity. Kliff could also climb back up the cliff with little difficulty. Your ability to climb, glide, swim, and sprint is dictated by a stamina gauge, and you can scale most cliffs and walls with relative ease, so long as the gauge doesn’t run out.
You also have a horse to help you cross the vast distances of Crimson Desert. You can whistle for the horse by pressing down on the D-Pad, summoning it to wherever you are. Between your mount and your glider, you have some decent options for traversing a lot of distance quickly, but you’ll need to earn upgrades to increase their stamina, and thus, their usefulness.
PS5 and PS5 Pro enhancements
With an enormous, gorgeous open world, Crimson Desert can be pretty graphically demanding, and Pearl Abyss will leverage the PlayStation 5 and PS5 Pro to help deliver some impressive visuals, particularly at long distances. The PS5’s SSD is key for streaming the huge world, for a start, and developers will make heavy use of the PS5 Pro’s High CPU Frequency Mode to make viewing and moving through the world as seamless as possible.
Pearl Abyss also told me it optimized Crimson Desert for the PS5 through a number of features to help maintain all that detail at its large scale, making use of Geometry Shader Oversubscription and NGG Culling to render lots of elements without losing detail. On PS5 Pro, the recent upgrade to PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution (PSSR) makes it possible for Crimson Desert to hit 4K resolutions at higher frame rates, and its raytracing capabilities make lighting effects more realistic and natural.
The DualSense controller adds a lot to the experience, too, especially when it comes to combat. A big part of fighting in Crimson Desert is the feeling of weight, and you can feel haptics especially when weapons clash as you execute a parry or when you land a powerful hit on an enemy. The adaptive triggers also add intensity to actions like drawing back a bowstring. The DualSense additions work to bring you closer to Kliff and help deliver a lot of information, especially in tense combat situations where enemies can be all around you.
Even after playing for four hours, I only scratched the surface of what’s waiting in Pywel. From vast lands to explore and secrets to discover, to formidable foes to face down and powerful skills to master, Crimson Desert looks to offer a lot for RPG fans who want to lose themselves in a fantastical world.
You can see for yourself just what’s hidden in Crimson Desert when it releases on March 19 on PS5.
