Crimson Desert Review: 7/10 - Spectacular World, Frustrating Systems

Crimson Desert Review

By TecBlitz | Game Reviews | 5 Min Read

TecBlitz Score — 7 / 10

Pearl Abyss spent seven years building Crimson Desert. The result is one of the most ambitious open world games ever assembled and one of the most frustrating to recommend without significant qualification.

This is not a bad game. It is not close to a bad game. But the distance between what Crimson Desert wanted to be and what it actually is sits at the center of every conversation about it. That distance costs it dearly.

THE WORLD PEARL ABYSS BUILT

Start with what works because it works spectacularly.

The continent of Pywel is a genuinely extraordinary piece of game world construction. Rival clans. Mythical creatures. A landscape that shifts from dense forest to coastal cliff to open plain without ever feeling like a loading screen is hiding the seams. The sheer scale of what Pearl Abyss built here is difficult to overstate. The map is larger than Red Dead Redemption 2. It feels earned rather than empty.

The traversal system that moves you through this world is equally impressive. Grappling hook. Wingsuit. Horse mechanics refined to a point where drifting around corners on horseback feels genuinely satisfying rather than accidental. Every system designed to move you through Pywel does its job with a fluency that AAA open world games rarely achieve.

The boss encounters deserve their own paragraph. Shadow of the Colossus comparisons that circulated during the preview period were not hyperbole. These fights are staged with cinematic ambition and mechanical creativity. They represent Crimson Desert at its absolute ceiling. When the game wants to show you what it can do these are the moments it chooses.

THE COMBAT

The third person combat is the second pillar holding Crimson Desert upright and it is a strong one.

Kliff — the gruff mercenary protagonist — moves through combat with a weight and fluency that rewards investment. The skill tree ignores flat stat improvements entirely in favour of adding new moves to an already expansive repertoire. Heaving enemies off cliffs. Pulling them toward you with the grappling hook. Bashing them with your shield mid-combo before transitioning into a finisher. The combat has enough vocabulary to keep encounters interesting well past the point where most action RPGs start repeating themselves.

The feeling of being a medieval force of nature that the combat creates is Crimson Desert's greatest achievement. When exploration and combat intersect this game feels like nothing else available right now.

WHERE IT FALLS APART

Then the inventory opens.

You have access to a limited number of backpack slots. Everything takes up space. Absolutely everything. Crafting materials. Food. Quest items. Weapons you picked up thirty seconds ago. The inventory management system punishes curiosity in a game built entirely around rewarding it. Expanding your carrying capacity requires completing specific side quests and purchasing additional pockets — a friction that sits in direct opposition to the freeform exploration the world invites.

The healing system operates on similar logic. Obtuse in ways that feel deliberate rather than designed. A barrier between you and enjoyment that exists not because the game is demanding but because the interface is unclear about what it is asking of you.

The control scheme compounds both issues. Overcomplicated does not cover it. After dozens of hours the button mapping still produces moments of genuine confusion. Not difficulty. Confusion. The distinction matters because one is intentional and the other is a design failure.

THE STORY THAT LOSES ITS WAY

Crimson Desert opens with Game of Thrones energy. British Isles accents. Political intrigue. A tone that establishes familiar high fantasy with enough grit to feel grounded.

Then Kliff gets resurrected by a mysterious technologically advanced force. Then he is transported to a floating sky fortress by an unassuming beggar. Then he is given a wingsuit and a futuristic grappling hook and told that reality hangs in the balance.

Kliff takes all of this in his stride. He does not question any of it. The game does not ask him to. The narrative shifts from grounded political fantasy to something that resists easy categorisation and loses momentum in the transition. The story is not bad in a way that becomes actively unpleasant. It is bad in the way that makes you stop caring about cutscenes while still wanting to explore the world they are set in.

The quest design reflects the same problem. It frequently pulls you away from combat and exploration — the two things the game does best — to engage with systems that do not justify the interruption.

THE NUMBERS

Metacritic sits at 78 on PC from 85 critic reviews. OpenCritic gives it 80. IGN's review in progress after 110 hours of play sits at 6 out of 10. GameSpot gave it 7. PC Gamer gave it 80 out of 100.

The critical split reflects the game accurately. Reviewers who weighted the world building and combat heavily scored it higher. Reviewers who weighted the story and system design heavily scored it lower. Both camps are correct about what they found.

Pearl Abyss stock dropped 30 percent on launch day. 400,000 pre-orders built on the strength of visual promises and viral combat clips met a game that delivered on the visuals and the combat while falling short on nearly everything surrounding them.

WHO THIS GAME IS FOR

There is a version of this review that simply says Crimson Desert is not for everyone and leaves it there. That version would be accurate but incomplete.

The people who will love Crimson Desert unreservedly are specific. Players who treat open world games as sandboxes rather than story deliverers. Players who find satisfaction in exploration for its own sake. Players who can absorb a difficult control scheme and an obstinate inventory system because the combat and the world on the other side of those barriers are worth the friction.

For those players Crimson Desert will be one of the most impressive games they play this year. The highs are genuinely high. The world is genuinely extraordinary. The boss fights are genuinely among the best in the genre.

For players who need story to anchor the experience. For players who want systems that communicate clearly. For players who pre-ordered on the strength of the trailers expecting a Game of the Year contender. The gap between expectation and delivery will be difficult to bridge.

THE VERDICT

Crimson Desert is spectacular in the places it chooses to be spectacular. Visually it has no peers among 2026 releases. The combat at its peak is as satisfying as anything in the genre. The world Pearl Abyss constructed over seven years of development is a genuine achievement that deserves the attention it receives.

The inventory system is a barrier. The control scheme is a barrier. The story is a barrier of a different kind — not one that stops progress but one that stops investment.

A great open world game surrounds its world with systems worthy of it. Crimson Desert surrounds an extraordinary world with systems that frequently are not.

Worth playing. Not the masterpiece the hype demanded.

TecBlitz — 7 / 10

SCORE BREAKDOWN

Open World and Exploration — 9.5 / 10 Combat — 9.0 / 10 Boss Encounters — 9.0 / 10 Story and Narrative — 5.5 / 10 Inventory and Systems — 4.5 / 10 Control Scheme — 5.0 / 10 Technical Performance — 8.5 / 10

QUICK FACTS

Developer — Pearl Abyss Publisher — Pearl Abyss Platform — PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC Release Date — March 19 2026 Price — $69.99 Reviewed On — PC

PROS

• Extraordinary open world scale and visual fidelity
• Combat is fluid, deep, and consistently satisfying
• Boss encounters are among the best in the genre
• Traversal systems are exceptionally well designed
• Technical performance on PC is stable and impressive

CONS

• Inventory management punishes the exploration it invites
• Control scheme remains confusing after dozens of hours
• Story loses momentum and coherence well before the credits
• Quest design repeatedly pulls focus from the game's strengths
• Healing system is unclear in ways that frustrate rather than challenge

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