---
title: 'I Strongly Recommend: Crimson Desert (Review)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=SHyO4W76b6E'
video_id: 'SHyO4W76b6E'
date: 2026-08-12
duration_sec: 2421
---

# I Strongly Recommend: Crimson Desert (Review)

> Source: [I Strongly Recommend: Crimson Desert (Review)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=SHyO4W76b6E)

## Summary

This review of Crimson Desert argues that despite its flawed story and frustrating boss fights, the game delivers a rare sense of wonder and freedom reminiscent of Skyrim. The reviewer highlights the game's unique open-world design, deep systems, and rewarding progression, concluding that it's a must-play for those seeking an immersive adventure.

### Key Points

- **Crimson Desert is the closest to Skyrim since Skyrim** [00:28] — The game captures the feeling of Skyrim—a massive world full of mystery and adventure, where every direction offers a unique story. Despite its flaws, this sense of wonder is what matters most.
- **Not just a Dragon's Dogma clone** [01:48] — While some compare it to Dragon's Dogma, Crimson Desert's gameplay systems are far more numerous and robust, offering a much richer experience than the barebones travel-and-fight loop of Dragon's Dogma.
- **Gameplay systems are thoughtful, not copy-pasted** [02:28] — Despite criticisms, most systems are designed with care and ambition. They are imperfect but rewarding, showing a level of thought that elevates the game beyond a simple mashup of other titles.
- **Unique open-world design** [03:18] — Crimson Desert's open world feels different from Bethesda, Ubisoft, or Nintendo games. It blends MMO-like breadth with single-player focus, creating a formula that feels fresh and unique.
- **Story is a mess** [04:58] — The story is widely criticized and even the CEO acknowledged its weakness. It's a disjointed anthology of 12 chapters with little connection, but the individual arcs and voice acting are enjoyable.
- **Anthology structure is liberating** [08:44] — The story's episodic nature feels like a procedural TV show, with Cliff as a wandering hero. This structure allows for diverse settings and keeps the campaign fresh, even if the overarching plot is weak.
- **Visuals and immersion** [12:02] — The game is stunning, with realistic darkness, dynamic lighting, and massive scale. These elements create immersive moments, like a siege that transitions from day to night, changing the atmosphere completely.
- **Topography and scale** [14:08] — The Black Space Engine allows for incredible verticality and massive landscapes, making the player feel small. Every visible location is explorable, adding to the sense of wonder.
- **The world's density and secrets** [16:13] — The open world is dense with secrets and surprises, from living clay warriors to hidden villages. This unpredictability keeps exploration rewarding and prevents the game from feeling stale.
- **First 10 hours are the worst** [18:08] — The game's complexity and clunky controls make the opening hours a slog. However, once you learn the systems, the game becomes incredibly rewarding, with a steep but satisfying learning curve.
- **Controls are complex but rewarding** [19:13] — The control scheme is vast and initially awkward, but it enables a deep combat system and creative puzzle-solving. The game respects the player's intelligence, offering a level of depth rare in modern AAA games.
- **Puzzles respect your intelligence** [22:32] — Puzzles are challenging and require experimentation with the game's mechanics. They are not obtuse but demand a real understanding of the tools available, providing a satisfying sense of accomplishment.
- **Economy and progression are meaningful** [23:13] — The game's economy is tight, and progression requires effort. Side quests offer unique rewards, and the Greymane camp system adds depth, making every upgrade feel earned.
- **World is full of surprises** [27:08] — The world of Pywell is deliberately off-kilter, with unexpected events like living clay warriors and deadly shrubs. This unpredictability keeps the game fresh even after 85 hours.
- **Combat is a mix of Musou and character action** [29:56] — Combat features hordes of enemies with real health pools and move sets, blending Musou-style chaos with character action depth. The skill tree and boss weapons add further variety.
- **Boss fights are the weak point** [32:37] — Many bosses are frustrating due to teleporting, one-shot mechanics, and clunky interactions. While some are easy, the overall design is inconsistent and often feels unfair.
- **Not a cynical cash grab** [35:33] — The game's ambition is genuine, not a risk-averse attempt to appeal to everyone. It's a single-priced game with no microtransactions, showing confidence in its unique vision.
- **Player sentiment is improving** [37:06] — Steam ratings have risen from 50% to 82% positive, and 88% among players with over an hour of playtime. This shift is due to the game's immersive quality, not just patches.

### Conclusion

Crimson Desert is a flawed masterpiece that delivers a rare sense of wonder and freedom. Despite its rough edges, it's a must-play for those seeking an immersive open-world adventure.

## Transcript

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a 10% discount when you use offer code skillup at eureka ergonomic.com/skillup. around to the end of the video to learn more. Even now, more than a week after reviews are out and after the player count on Steam continues to grow and
after the user rating on Steam enters the very positive territory after debuting at Mixed, I know there's still so much angst and confusion about what Crimson Desert actually is and whether or not it's actually good. There are so
and lows of this game. And to be honest with you, most of them are accurate. So, just going to sell to you this way. Crimson Desert is the closest thing we've had to Skyrim since Skyrim. And I
its mechanics, because there's actually been quite a few games that tick those boxes. I'm talking about the feeling that Skyrim gave you when you played it And you know what that feeling was without me even having to explain it.
And ask yourself this, what was the story line of Skyrim? Who were the major characters? How welldesigned were the boss encounters? Its gameplay systems have praised any of them as revolutionary? Would you have described
the technical state of the game as polished? Would you even describe it that way 14 years later? Looking back on Skyrim, none of that [ __ ] mattered at all. What mattered is that Todd and his buddies loosed you on a massive world
full of mystery and wonder. But every time you set foot out your door, and no matter which direction you struck out in, adventure awaited. And every chapter yours alone. and no two people would ever write quite the same story. I've
seen it said that Crimson Desert is the Dragon's Dogma sequel we never got. But got a sequel, even though I know that's debatable, but we don't have time for that now. Number two, Dragon's Dogma is an extremely barebones experience that's
almost entirely predicated on traveling from point A to point B on foot and fighting enemies along the way. And that's basically it. In contrast, Crimson Desert's gameplay systems are so numerous and so robust that it would be
detail all of them without this video running for like 2 hours. The worst Desert. And the one I will simply not tolerate is a suggestion that this game each of its gameplay systems are half-hazardly copy and pasted from other
games with no thought or effort put into making them truly rewarding in their own right. If you take nothing else away from this review, then take only this. That is a lie. While some of them are totally busted and all of them are
imperfect and messed up in their own annoying sort of way, almost all of the gameplay systems offered here denote care and thought and ambition. And when more often than not going to be surprised and impressed by how much each
of these systems have to offer and how rewarding they are. But separate from that laundry list of stuff is that very rare, very precious thing where a world beckons you and when you heed its call, it almost never disappoints. A world
welltrodden eventually blossoms into unique. All the more so for how strangely it's all been put together. Crimson Desert feel truly stand out amidst an endless sea of openw world
action adventure RPGs that all seem to follow the template set down by Bethesda and Ubisoft. Crimson Desert is designed with a different openw world design syntax. It has map markers, but it doesn't feel like a Ubisoft game. It has
doesn't feel like Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom. It has punishing boss encounters, but it doesn't feel like Elder Ring. The game started out as an MMO, but pivoted to become a single player game. And rather than be
hamstrung by that awkward transition, Crimson Desert benefits greatly from it breadth of its game systems allows us to experience many of the highs offered by MMOs without any of the annoying, grindy, time-wasting [ __ ] that often
makes the genre inaccessible to many. The result is an openw world formula that feels truly unique. No small feat given how many of these sorts of games exist and how sy they can start to feel. All of the criticisms you have heard
about Crimson Desert are spoton. But just like Skyrim, history will soon history does remember them at all, they'll likely be celebrated as the trimmed from something as ambitious as this. The clay that was removed and all
that. Yes, the game will be patched in its rough edges smooth back. But those sentiment on Crimson Desert shifts so swiftly. It will instead be because in awkwardness and weirdness, the sense of possibility, wonder, and adventure that
sits at the heart of this is lightning. It's only been successfully bottled a few times before, and Pearl Abyss have done it here with Crimson Desert. done it here with Crimson Desert. >> Well, that's sorted.
>> All right, let's start by ripping the band-aid off. Crimson Desert story. By now, you will have probably heard that Crimson Desert story isn't very good. I what you might have heard, the story is actually worse. It's so bad that even
the CEO of Pearl Abyss was like, "Yeah, nah, that's not very good." Even Cliff's voice actor, who we had on the podcast, while reading his lines handed to him by Pearl Abyss staff, he was like, "Yes, but what is actually happening?" No one
knows, Alec. No one knows, but let's try to make some sense of it. You play as versions of the script, this character was actually called McDuff. And they changed it because we could have been calling him Duff Man this entire
time. Cliff is a leader in the Greymane war band who appear to be nondescript good guys despite being foulmouthed brawlers. Some of them foulmouthed and >> Suppose we can safely [ __ ] off now. >> After being attacked by the rival Black
Bears faction, Cliff is definitely killed and then thrown into the river to drift into the afterlife. Only that's not what happens. Cliff is somehow reconstituted, given a magic bracelet that can lift things, introduced to some
Dn D style wizards who give him a creepy looking wings suit, and task him with the important job of saving the world without ever being too specific about what the threat is, who was responsible for it, and what Cliff needs to actually
do. What follows is exactly 12 chapters and roughly 85 hours of the most bizarrely stapled together storytelling you've experienced in a AAA story-led game was just a sandbox similar to the way that Dragon's Dogma was. But this is
a game that has a lot of cutscenes and a lot of dialogue. And honestly, the best that there's a fast forward button that lets you play it at 2x speed, like takes too long to get to the point. And yes, I know most of you are watching
this at 2x speed. That joke was meant to be self-deprecating. I'm exaggerating a things to be enjoyed about these cut scenes. Voice acting is a good example. This a seriously fantastic voice acting cast. No one turns in a bad performance.
perfectly. Hell, half the time I can feel the actors chewing the scenery even myself thinking, "Damn, what a shame to waste such talent on such wafer thin waste such talent on such wafer thin storytelling."
>> I don't seem to disappoint. >> Quite the quick tongue. blame here because one of the things that works well here is the momentto- overarching plot is essentially non-existent. But at some point, these
individual scenes were handed over to localizers who low-key crushed it, infusing each character with personality and making their dialogue believable. But these characters and their interactions can and will, and I found
myself coming to really like a number of the characters I'd met, despite the fact that anytime they spoke about the actual plot, their words seem to evaporate the the game's characters may pretend to care about what's going on, it's very
clear that Pearl Abyss's writers didn't. Clearly, the story here is a victim of game went through. It started out its life as an MMO RPG, and you can see that in the different biomes, the different races, the approach to things like
factions and territory and economy, etc. MMOs by their very nature often have very disjointed biomedriven approaches to storytelling where you arrive at a that each have their own characters and their own unique mechanics, etc. This is
exactly what Crimson Desert's approach to storytelling is. It's 12 chapters and section of the map. And each one introduces you to new supporting NPCs, and each one has new enemies to fight and new mechanics to contend with. And
stories with only the loosest connection to the overarching plot. Do not think of Crimson Desert as one story. Think of it are good, by the way. I want to be clear about that. But that's honestly the best
way to go into this so that you don't end up being disappointed. Three things storytelling though. Number one, when you surrender to the sort of anthology structure of this saga, it can feel quite novel and liberating given how
much diversity it serves up. It starts to feel almost like a procedural TV show where Cliff is this wandering free sword who rolls into villages to fix the into the sunset when his work is done. In my head cannon, Cliff is actually in
Westworld. You know that HBO TV show that had the incredible season 1 and jumping into these story lines and settings because they're all theme parks fantasy. And while this main campaign will still run you in excess of 80
hours, these discrete story arcs are a nice way to compartmentalize the better had it all been seamlessly connected. Absolutely. But there was in when the screen wipe happened denoting the start of a new act. And
your first thought would be, I wonder what's next because it could be literally anything. and it will be literally anything other than what you things I loved about this campaign experience was how much the theme of
each act shone through, even if its storytelling didn't. Each of the acts have their own distinct characters and plot, and that's all butressed by the act is set in a medieval countryside where you're helping collect sheep and
cows and track down lost wagons. And another act is set in a palace court where you're unearthing intrigue through subtifusion gossip. Another act is a hard code switch to an eastern inspired setting starring witches wearing
doing training montages and fighting martial arts masters. And the one right after that sees you fighting an army of mechanized insects while trying to take down a floating fortress. The connective tissue between these story lines is
within these story lines isn't much to write home about. But the adventure itself, the things Cliff is doing and the places he's visiting and the foes accomplishes all of his objectives, it's all such silly fun. These chapters are
Cliff gets trapped in and he needs to fight his way out in different ways every time. It's utter nonsense, but it's also just fun and I enjoyed them, begin to move beyond the more traditional feeling starter zone.
Finally, and somewhat connected to this, fairly early on, you do reach a point Desert doesn't have much in the way of storytelling chops. But that's at around the same time that the game begins to open up and the sandbox begins to get
that Pearl Abyss hasn't written much of a story for you. You grab the pen and start writing by way of your own adventures. Less motivated by the race towards the next big cutscene, you allow yourself more time to explore and get
lost in the world. It is a backhanded compliment, but the story being as bad as it is does give you more ownership over your own story, and it does give the sandbox more room to breathe. It would have been nice to have both a
explore, but we take what we can get, and luckily, the world of Crimson Desert has more than enough to make up for the game story related shortcomings. A world so full of secrets and surprises that it allows us to write our own truly
allows us to write our own truly memorable, truly unique saga.
video game? Perhaps an easy place to start are the visuals. Now look, you can beautiful video game because you can see all the detail and the draw distances and the color and it's just immediately striking. What may not come through in
any snapshot view of this video game though are the more subtle ways that this game is incredibly beautiful and the way that that beauty translates through to a sense of immersion that very few games can lay claim to.
example. Here in Crimson Desert, nighttime actually means darkness to the anything without the aid of torch light. This naturally creates a more immersive night or delving into caves. Most notably, it can really transform the
appearance of combat scenarios. Siege battles in this game can be extremely lengthy, and they can begin during the day and be full of vibrant color to the When the sun sets, though, and with only the fires of nearby burning buildings to
takes on a more violent and horrific quality, everything seems slicker and quality, everything seems slicker and muddier and more desperate.
moments in the entire game. After a really lengthy siege scenario, I was targets with special arrows so that nearby artillery could bring them down. As I ran and rode across the fields, I was peering into the darkness trying to
because it was so dark. But then something would take shape in the through foes to get a clean shot. And as my arrow hit its mark, a rain of napal-like fire would engulf the target, lighting up the entire area for a brief
moment before everything would return to pitch black darkness. It was a moment black space engine, which could not only handle dozens of foes on screen at once, distances while also delivering this lighting that allows for one of the most
experiences I can remember having in a video game. Desert apart is its approach to topography. And I know that sounds like
a weird talking point, but bear with me. Most games do not have the luxury of topography because either the engine cannot render things at massive scale or because they don't have the ability to scale vertical objects. Crimson Desert
doesn't suffer from either of those constraints. The black space engine is scale, it seems to delight in it. And with the power of this engine, Pearl megalamania run wild. There are mountains and mazes and spires and
expansive caverns. And it creates this landscape where you feel incredibly small because the natural world around you is just so massive. I don't think I've ever felt quite so small in an openw world video game. And while most
feeling through an expansive horizontal map, Crimson Desert is the first to deliver this feeling both horizontally and vertically. And of course, none of it is for show because everything that you see, you can actually go there.
While these draw distances and lighting and scale do regularly create a sense of profound impact is kind of the opposite of that stuff. I think your most memorable moments in Crimson Desert won't be the big loud set pieces. I
you scale a cliff and look down just to take in the view. No sounds of battle, no NPCs chatting, no yan yelling in your ear, just you and this world. I remember night, not really going anywhere, just kind of taking a look around, basking in
the glow of a nearby township, eyeing the lamp castle in the distance. In that moment, I was thinking to myself, "God damn, man, this is an incredible looking video game." And that was the exact moment when fireworks shot up in the
distance, lighting up the night sky and reminding me of a nearby traveling circus. And yeah, man, like we all catch certain feels when we're playing a seems to happen as though it was meant for you and you alone. That was
and it certainly wasn't the only one and it certainly wasn't the only one during my playthrough.
that people love Crimson Desert as much as they do isn't because it looks really nice, though that helps. And it certainly isn't the story, which we've covered. Instead, it's the very nature of this open world, its density, its
structure, its secrets, its depth, and its utterly unique composition. Yes, it borrows from many other games, but also adds its own secret herbs and spices to the source. And while you can point to this or that mechanic being borrowed,
the other side of this thinking that Crimson Desert is only the sum of its inspirations. It's a lot more than that. I really think a good starting point is of Arcane Studios. He was the game director for Death Loop and is currently
a long thread, but it's worth it. Here's what he had to say. Quote, "Interesting how Crimson Desert functions opposite to most games of this type. Generally, the you start to see the strings. Ah, this is close to that game. Oh, this is going
to be repeated, etc." But in Crimson Desert, you start with the gaminess front-loaded. The inspirations, the controls, the systems, it's almost all you see. But after a while, all of this takes a backseat. Magic kicks in and
doesn't disappear because you've already accepted the rules/ constituent elements. It's almost like the specific type of immersion of a board game where at first all you see are the boards/ruules, but then you enter the
begins. And where it excels is at this point the game hasn't thrown everything it has in store at you. It keeps on introducing new things, giving more interact with each other. It doesn't hurt that most of them are meaty and
realized diagetically, and that there's also some tonal liberties with some smiley engineered stupid fun. This coaleses in a singular player journey from game to magic to discovery. That might be why so many find investing time
in it rewarding and personal. In a time of fast consumption, a game that is sticky because it has friction and not because it's smiley feels amazing. End either slippery or slimy at the end there, but you do get his point. I start
with that quote because I think it's a 100% accurate summary of the journey they first step into Crimson Desert. You've probably heard that the first 10 hours suck, and I'm going to tell you, they suck big time. I said as much in my
game proper, I can tell you that the first 10 hours are by far and away the worst part of this game. And I think Dingga accurately diagnoses why. Crimson Desert is a remarkably complex systemsheavy game. Similar to sitting
really feel in its opening hours are the systems and the rules that the game is until you begin to develop some muscle memory with the controls and until these game systems start moving in concert with one another that you start to
way that it does. And again, Dingham makes the point that just because you that the learning stops. Because not only are you introduced to new things as understanding of the things that you thought you understood earlier. It
really does come back to that age-old maxim is learning applied. And there's a huge amount to learn in Crimson Desert. And when you invest the time to actually learn it, it's incredibly rewarding. Within that context, let's talk about
you've heard? Well, it's kind of complicated. Is there a lot of stuff you it a little awkward and counterintuitive? Absolutely. Would I prefer the controls were simpler? Honestly, not really. It's a huge
control scheme, but when you do, you really do have a vast move set at your combat and puzzles and exploration in different ways. The ability to climb on things and lift things and burn things, a lot of the game's depth is predicated
his disposal. So, while you could have done without some of them, I think the There is a definite issue with the overall feel of Cliff, though. You don't really control him as much as you kind of steer him. You have to kind of mush
him along as you would dogs pulling a sleigh and small precise movements are not really Cliff's forte, he has the turning arc of a semi-trail. While the move set to muscle memory eventually fades, the pain of having to physically
pilot this lug of a man endures, a patch last week did improve things a little, still be made here. What's particularly interesting about these controls is the unique way that they're brought to bear in puzzle solving scenarios. One really
good example is waterfalls. In every single video game ever, the cave behind walking through the water. But here in Crimson Desert, trying to do that will Crimson Desert, trying to do that will send you flying for some unknown reason.
Instead, you need to use this very specific combat maneuver to pierce the specific combat maneuver to pierce the water, dashing you through to safety. like that? I don't know. But it's cool. And it's not the only example. Later
pylons, and the way you do that is by using that same stabbing maneuver to it can then become the lever that you're one I was really confused by in the preview, a sword flash. You press the
sword, and then you press another button to focus the light beam. This is used on occasion during combat to stun enemies, but it's also used to set things alike during puzzle solving. Often you need to burn away brush using this ability so
the single best use of this ability is here when during a siege mission, you're tasked with bringing down these massive archery towers. And the way you do that is by setting them on fire with this ability.
way, just one of the many examples of how easy it is for this engine to handle both physics and multiple units on screen at once, but we'll talk more about that in the combat blog. Point is, this complex control scheme does not
exist as a result of development bloat, where ideas were tossed in at some point and then never pruned back. Instead, they exist in service to a complex game physics such that a control scheme like this fully realizes the potential of
perfect because, yeah, I'm sure it could have been trimmed down at least a little bit. and the overall clunkiness could be tidied up, but Crimson Desert's much criticized control scheme is not something that ends up in the cons
starts there as you're getting to grips with it, but it soon slides over into the pros column as one of the games biggest strengths because it facilitates and rewarding than most AAA games are willing to offer. And that brings us to
so great. It actually respects your intelligence in a way that precious few modern openw world games do. puzzles. For example, most of the puzzles in most of the AAA games you play these days don't ask very much of you. But many of
you. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I had to look up solutions to at least a few of them. That wasn't because they were obtly designed, mind you. Rather, of the elements of the puzzle solving sandbox. At first, it felt like I was
running into all of these brick walls. But by the end, the puzzle design syntax spending more time experimenting with all the tools at my disposal, such that more complex puzzles without the help of a guide, it felt incredibly satisfying.
Crimson Desert treats you like an adult. It also assumes that you have patience, all of the economy and progression elements that are so masterfully meed out here. Crimson Desert is not the sort of game where you'll find a sword that
previous sword. It's not a game where you just mindlessly wander around and upgrade materials fall into your lap. It's not a game where the skill tree is increases your damage output. It's not a game where the best looking weapons and
items are all found along the golden path. And it's not a game where you can supporting systems and expect to have a good time. It is a game that demands you interface with most of it in order to just get by. But if you choose to invest
proper time in any of these elements, the game will truly reward you for that, overall game balance and difficulty tuning. Obviously, side quests are a and dozens of them. Too many to count really. And they all offer you valuable
upgrade materials like leather or ore or abyss cores which are used in both offer you unique weapons and armor that you can't get anywhere else. They'll are not bosses that are copy and pasted from the main campaign. They're entirely
unique and they'll drop you unique weapons and armor that have unique anywhere else. That already makes side content incredibly compelling. Coin is another great example. You know how in most open world games you start out dirt
have more money than you know what to do with? Well, in Crimson Desert, you start poor and you stay poor the whole way through because money is tight, man. materials and random [ __ ] you find from shady roadside dealers. You are never
flush with cash. And so hunting down outlaws and collecting their bounties is Probably the most effective in fact since I never found a kind of free money economy is very tightly managed all the way through. The grey maid camp is
probably the best example of you get out what you put in. This is a huge part of the game that does require a significant amount of time to build up, but the You'll run around the countryside collecting lost grey mains like Pokémon.
they'll begin offering services like weapon smithing or cooking or dying your gear. Hell, the barber system in this game is locked behind a grey man that you probably won't find until hour 50. Which other game locks character
customization behind a 50hour play wall? Warframe fans, you know the answer. The camp offers the ability to grow and farm specific fruits and vegetables. The ability to capture and breed livestock so that you can then slaughter them for
meat, skin, and bones. The ability to cook and brew potions and craft weapons and armor. There's even a trade route system where you can load up specific across the map for profit. But a lot of the time is going to be spent managing
your Greymane flock, dispatching them to missions. Need more food for boss encounters? Send your fisher grey mains to go fishing for a while. Need to unlock a new mining tool? Send your engineer Greymanes to research it. Need
to do the fighting yourself? Send your Greymane warriors to do it for you. These missions become more expensive, but also more rewarding as you do them it's also just a brilliant pacing tool because the busy work at your Greymane
camp is the perfect chaser after an intense siege mission or boss battle. In Crimson Desert, the path to player power is a long and winding road, demanding that you tread each step slowly and deliberately. Boss battles will act as a
gear check, and there is no shortcut to quick upgrades. You got to get out there have to farm the materials you need to make yourself stronger. You have to some coin. You have to complete some abyss challenges to unlock some skill
points. I guarantee you that there'll be at least one boss encounter you'll come you so hard that you'll spend at least an hour or two out in the world just preparing to try that boss again. And when you step back into that arena and
you do emerge victorious, that victory feels all the sweeter.
stuff would feel like frustrating busy work if the world that housed it didn't deliver. But this world of Paloon really is Crimson Desert's best feature. There predictable. Similar to what Dingga said in his tweet thread, it's a world that
is always threatening to become sy or familiar that seems like it might at that you can internalize and begin to predict. But always Pearl Abyss ducks right combo that just leaves you thinking where the [ __ ] did that come
one of the other playable characters this game by the way. And I found myself in a section of the map I'd never been to before and I was like oh okay a new village to explore. Fair enough. All of
a sudden these nearby clay pots came to life and coalesed into actual clay warriors and they were elite enemies and they were absolutely trucking me.
ore and the ore itself came to life and killed me. I don't have any footage of happened. Another time I'd scaled a cliff and I was taking a bit of a breather when suddenly a shrub came to
life out of nowhere and just killed me. An actual shrub. least I thought it was. Turns out it was
that produced like bottled wine or something and I needed to figure out how instructions left on little post-it notes on each of the machines.
stories and they're just the little ones where the surprises the campaign has in store are just as impactful for their spectacle and the simple joy of an unexpected vista or secluded location can hit just as hard if it catches you
that this is the closest we've come to Skyrim since Skyrim. And it's because of this stuff, an expansive world offering near limitless freedom. Every inch of it laced with unexpected surprises and weirdness. There is no rhyme or reason
or rhythm to the world of Poon. It's deliberately offkilter in a way that comfort or familiarity. It never stops showing you new things or teaching you new things to the point where after 85 hours I think I've really only
this world has to offer. And where in many other games the remaining runtime already done before here in Crimson Desert I know that what's still awaiting me is mostly going to be stuff that I haven't yet experienced. There are very
very few games that can boast something like that when the player has already like that when the player has already invested 85 hours.
the previews or watched trailers. I actually played the preview and even I combat as I played through the full game. We had earlier guessed that this was a sort of character action game since Cliff's move set is so expansive
something like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry was the natural comparison point. closer to a Muso game, kind of like Dynasty Warriors, since most of the surrounding you at all times. And when I say scores, I mean like a lot of [ __ ]
enemies, man. Like so many enemies at a time that I'm like, "Yo, Pearl Abyss, just chill, please." But also, how are you doing this? The Black Space Engine distances, its fidelity, its lighting, and its performance. But Black Space was
decides to add to that list a truly absurd max unit count that results in these incredibly chaotic feeling battles. Unlike Muso games though, each mean by that is that none of them are just fodder meant to provide visual
attack. Here, every enemy has a proper health pool and a proper move set. And it feels like a real battle based on real combat rather than a video game battle by placing a bunch of chaff enemies about. It's in these scenarios
absolute best. While there are some elite enemies that definitely demand your respect, most of the enemies you'll fight are just a chance to use Cliff's moves. And this man has a lot of moves. Four different weapon styles, each of
them with their own unique combat style and movement. An entire unarmed combat style, a bunch of moves based upon wrestling, archery, not to mention the use of magic abilities like force palm, focus, and your telekinetic jelly arm
components of this combat is just the beginning because pretty soon you'll abilities and weapon swapping all together. And at that point, it does start to feel like a character action game crossed with a Muso game. But it
you do need to unlock quite a few nodes in the skill tree for all this to really start working. Or you can just learn new abilities by watching bosses do them, literally fighting a boss and on occasion the action will slow down
allowing Cliff to observe a new technique which you can then internalize love that. Oh, and also you get even more abilities by claiming the weapons and armor of bosses you've defeated. A lot of my playthrough I was meaninging a
one-handed sword I got from the crowaller boss and it sent out target seeking ravens whenever I did a heavy attack. Another weapon I found would set would panic enemies every time I managed to successfully parry. between the skill
tree and these items at your own personal mastery. Combat consistently evolves and gets better and better the more you play. Again, 85 hours in, I am seeing clips on Twitter and I'm like, I have no idea what that move is. What the
component of the combat experience, this Muso style fighting. But, there's another component and it's the bosses. Now, look, I'm going to tell you that half of my playthrough was on the review build of this game. So, pre the first
big patch where they changed a bunch of stuff including boss health, some of the early bosses I fought, particularly the beast in the audience chamber thing and Ludvig the awakened, these bosses were just absolutely [ __ ] man. Like, even
after I had significantly upgraded myself and even after I brought like a 100 meat skewers in to devour during combat to heal myself, it was still a totally miserable experience. Since then, Pearl Abyss have nerfed the number
how much easier the game was after that patch went live. But even with these boss encounters being easier, most of them are still awful for a bunch of reasons. Number one, most of the bosses just teleport everywhere all the time.
controls are kind of clunky in the first instance, and Cliff's animation windups like these bosses were made for a different game. Number two, I wouldn't even say that the bosses were hard if they weren't really leveraged into
specific abilities that stun lock you or empty twothirds of your health bar in one combo or just straight up one-shot you. Boss combat is basically all about chipping away at these boss' massive health pools while they teleport around
like lunatics while also trying to just avoid their overpowered damage dealer mechanic that just KOs you if you get hit by it. most annoying thing, a number of the bosses have individual mechanics that
require you to do a very specific thing at a specific moment. And a lot of the it's too buggy. Like this Thunder Tank boss here, for example, you're meant to climb up and stab this thing in its glass dome to like one hit KO it. But
Cliff latching onto that is so unreliable that it's basically impossible to pull it off. And this tank will also one-shot you if you miss that attack. So, it's safer to just grind the boss down slowly rather than do what
boss down slowly rather than do what Pearl Abyss intends for you to do here. really landed on a solid boss design model because when bosses don't teleport and they don't have [ __ ] mechanics that stun lock you or one hit KO you,
the bosses are actually really easy. You can just parry them and wear them down can just parry them and wear them down and it's totally fine.
extra [ __ ] to make these encounters hard, but the way they're hard is bad. to get more patches, I really hope Pearl Abyss redesign a lot of these boss messy and frustrating and not good to the point where I think it'll stop more
game. And that's a real shame given how much the rest of the package has to much the rest of the package has to offer.
surprising discourse that suggested that there's something cynical about Crimson game has so much stuff in it is because attempt to mitigate risk and pull in as many players as possible, the developer
hoping that at least some of it would stick. Now, everyone's going to have not that's true. I can only tell you what I think. I do not think there is anything remotely cynical about Crimson Desert. If being riskaverse was your
goal in this modern era of ballooning game development budgets and every major studio from Halo Studios to City Project Red switching to Unreal Engine, you got to build your own engine. And I really don't think the technical teams were
halfassing it when they made a game that looks this good and runs this well. If have stuffed this thing full to bursting with paid cosmetics and XP boosters and gacha mechanics. But Crimson Desert is just a single box price for a game with
like 200 hours of gameplay and that's it. If you were trying to design a game for everyone, you would not have made it like this. You would have made it like all of the other AAA games that are so stuffed with quality of life features
been sanded away. You would have trimmed the runtime. You would have made the progression faster. would have nerfed the economy to the point of it being completely optional. At no point does Crimson Desert ever try to be a game for
everyone. Instead, it seems possessed of a quiet confidence that no matter how weird or how broken it is, and no matter how much you think it might not be for you, you're going to end up playing it. And when you do, you'll realize that you
should have been playing it all along. I think that Polar Abyss have been the more people play this game, the more they love it. When it launched, it opened at a mixed rating on Steam with like 50% of the reviews being positive.
It's now up to 82%. And if you filter for people with more than 1 hour of play time, it's 88%. There is a narrative already emerging that this increase in that have rolled through fixing the game's most glaring issues. But I'm
[ __ ] I played through half of this game pre- patch when the bosses were and fewer fast travel points and the list goes on and I still absolutely fell patches are welcome and they do make the game better. But the shift in sentiment
you're seeing is not because we have more stamina while gliding. It's because the game's opening hours and they found on the other side a rare immersive likes of which doesn't come along very often. to the people sitting on the
sidelines waiting for all the patches to roll through, fair enough. You will when you eventually come to it. But if you are hungry for this sort of experience and you are willing to put up with a little or a lot of jank, then
Desert's many shortcomings quickly fade from view as you get lost over and over from view as you get lost over and over again in the land of Pywell.
huge fan of their stuff because it's always has some nice flourishes to make it really stand out. There's no better example of that than Eureka's latest offering, the Matias office chair. If
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options. But Eureka Ergonomic didn't stop there either. They added an XL size for people 6 feet and above with weight capacity up to 400 lb. Though, do note that the XL size is only available in the classic black nappa leather. If
said, now is the perfect time because Eureka Ergonomic is offering a 10% discount when you use offer code skillup over at eurekaomic.com/skillup. so do get in quick. That offer code skill up at checkout for 10% off the
their new fabric or color options as well as the new XL sizing. A big thanks to them for sponsoring the video and thank you for watching it.