I wasn't even gonna bother with this game from the start, but I'm glad it has an audience.
Crimson Desert is a real game
- Thread starter Old_Hunter_77
- Start date
Recommended Videos
Funny thing is, the people who like the game also seem to kind of hate it. It's very strange. It's the game with the most flaws that people are just fighting through that I've ever seen.
As we've seen with Nick right now.
Max and crew played the game last night, but they went out of their way just to do anything goofy, or just do side quests, instead of speed running through it like a regular game, a good amount of people are doing right now. They were surprisingly happy fun with it, but in a Oblivion way. They literally called it the best worst game ever.
The best decision factor would be this; If you hate Bethesda/Ubisoft style of open world design where there are restriction to everything and they all have scripted structure the player must follow, or if you loved BOTW/TOTK level of sandbox experience, then this game is for you.
If someone hated BOTW/TOTK experience, on top of Dragon's Dogma level of things not being explained, or don't like open-world games in general, then they would hate this experience.
It honestly takes super long to get into, and even by then there will be things that will tick you off; I mean I am 14 hours in and I'm starting to like it, but I heard some players took 30+ hours before they came to love the game.
I think the game is worth a try when it goes on sale. Honestly I would've done that had I known what I was getting into
And that's the kind of shit where the game is fun for a couple days maybe, but when you aren't able to actually get invested in what you're doing in the game, and it's effectively a "fuck around" game, people never finish it.
It's the kind of fuck around that kind of requires multiplayer which I guess is why MMO make sense but I wonder why they would pivot to single player and still not have a foundation to hook the player that isn't reliant on other people to carry the experience.
Also, weak story. And that kinda hurrts as well because I know there are open-world games out there with amazing story; Witcher 3, CP2077, RDR2, etc.
Let me put it this way: It feels like a mid 00's eurojank RPG on PC, if it were given a Triple A budget. I grew up with mid 00's eurojank RPG's so I can approach something like this with the patience and good will it requires and recognize it as the diamond in the rough it is. It's something that feels like it was made by people who love video games and have played a lot of video games and clearly have an idea of what makes a good video game, and even how to make one, but not quite the experience to make it a reality. It feels akin to something like a Gothic or Two Worlds or Witcher 1 or even a Fable. Matter of fact, it kind of is the game Peter Molyneux was trying to convince people every single Fable would be before releasing something that fell way short of that.
It's a game that feels like a bunch of very passionate people just wanted to add every single idea and mechanic they liked to and that had a budget big enough that no one ever shot any of them down. So, what they ended up with is a messy patchwork of concepts that only comes together as a whole picture if you look at it from a very specific angle and has a story that presumably coheres a lot better in the mind of the person who wrote it than it does on screen but behind all the confusion there's an obvious passion and a compelling vision and a lot of ideas I've never seen implemented in a game with this level of production value. Also, I'll say it: This game's story isn't any worse than that of your average Bethesda game by any stretch. The only thing separating it from an Elder Scrolls main quest is the lack of a Michael Kirkbride who'd lock himself in a room with a supply of mind altering substances for a couple of days until he comes out with a cosmology that's schizophrenic enough to feel like an actual fully realized pagan mythology. Apart from that, it's perfectly on par with something like Skyrim's main quest and probably better than Starfields or Fallout 3's.
But, let me put it this way: very close to your base camp there is a somewhat hidden little ruin in a canyon with a puzzle that, to solve, you need to look at the murals on the walls which are maps of areas with marked waypoints where you find the solution to the puzzle. It doesn't give you a quest marker, it doesn't mark them on the map, and that left me kinda impressed because... well, modern games just don't do that sort of thing. The game has the confidence in itself to assume that it can make up for design that prioritizes immersion over convenience with strong enough gameplay and presentation and the confidence in the player to assume they'll understand and appreciate what it's trying to do, even when some of it falls flat.
I don't think it's a great game or that it overall manages to match, much less surpass, some of its obvious inspirations, but it's an impressive, ambitious project that gets a lot of things very right and what it gets wrong, it gets wrong in interesting ways.
Very excited to see what Pearl Abyss is cooking up with DokeV and whether they'll manage to tighten up their design philosophy, while maintaining their sprawling, maximalist approach and willingness to experiment.
Last edited:
Max and crew mentioned all this too. They played for about five and a half hours.
Apparently someone chose to diss Crimson Desert with the claim "Red Dead Redemption 2 is more realistic", which is some of the most blatant "stop liking what you like and like what I like instead" bullshit I've seen.
And I used to love games like this, as my many hours in the STALKER franchise would attest... but I really haven't got the time for that anymore.
Honestly this is why I much prefer the Assassin's Creed Valhalla open world. I'd rather have the shit marked for me so i can just have fun doing the things rather than finding the things. I get that people like the aimless open world and I think it would be fine on a much small scale, but for me once you get to this stupid size I need that shit marked up because fuck...
Yeah its not for everyone, but as someone who never use fast travel in open world action RPG, this is very much my jam. Its about the excitement of exploration and just traversing the landscape with your ever increasing arsenal of tool.
So about the cows and other livestock (pigs goats sheep chickens and ducks I think is about it), you can at some point in the development of your new greymane homeland create animal pens like those you find in villages and if you max out your affinity with various vendors they will help supply your campsite, and one of them somewhere will provide livestock which is where you gain those codex entries without becoming a filthy thief. You can also get seeds and plant trees. I have apple orchards so far cause the food vendor in the first town sells those. How bout them apples.
Oh and you can actually ride your cows like horses too once you have your own. Yeehaw.
Last edited:
Yeah for me the combat system is right up there with exploration as why I enjoy this game so much. And Damiane having things like Izuna Drop makes it even more fun. I do think the enemies can be slightly too easy, but there's usually enough of them to make it feel intense anyways and most bosses are a decent challenge. Though I've yet to die outside of drowning once and being sucked by some evil flowers another time (didn't even realize what was happening until it was too late, if you see some moving shiny tulip looking things stay the fuck away).
So I found my big first riddle, had to turn some rings to make the pictures upright. The reward surprisingly was knowledge of the location of a bunch of caves all over the place so I ended up spelunking. Found some silver and diamond mines. Apparently the stab move can get you behind some waterfalls and there’s caves with treasure in there. I’ve found most pieces of a set that make me look like I’m about to menace Terra and Locke, very ostentatious. Also found the reed devil’s sword.
Still on chapter 3, having a blast with exploration. Also the two party members having a shared inventory is great cause instead of going back you can just change playable character and sell your loot and go right back where you were. Very convenient.
Still on chapter 3, having a blast with exploration. Also the two party members having a shared inventory is great cause instead of going back you can just change playable character and sell your loot and go right back where you were. Very convenient.
So one problem I'm finding with the game as I slowly progress, all gear seems to be of the same level/tier? Like you can develop stuff, but comparing every gear I've found, they all seem to be about as strong as each other's at the same level, so I'm finding that a lot of secret are not very rewarding. You get some fancy sword that's... functionally identical to your starting sword, so it just goes in the chest (or before last patch, sold) and I don't really care. Looking online, I can see that some gear will eventually be slightly stronger, but it seems the difference is very minimal.
I feared that was going to be a problem when many people online were screaming about how Crimson Desert is NOT and RPG! I understand the concept, big open worldy game with lots of secrets and no character levels or skills to earn in the traditional level up way, but then the problem becomes....how do you make all the open world shit worth doing if the rewards are not that player relevant. Cool vistas only go so far, but if exploring doesn't reward the player with gradually becoming more and more badass then it's really all for nothing then isn't it?
If you struggle on a boss, going to find other things to make your character stronger stops being an option and that only leads to frustrations with the combat and cheap boss nonsense.
It's also weird that out of all the countless systems the developers put into the game, they forgot to put in a progression system. How does that even happen?