Crimson Desert is a massive game. Its scope is about as broad as I’ve seen in recent years. It has smatterings of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Dragon’s Dogma all wrapped up in it. Through my first 24 hours with the game, I’ve been blown away by the small things and little details.
Doing battle, your way
Crimson Desert is an action game, not an RPG, as Pearl Abyss has outlined a few times. That means you follow a set story about Kliff, Oongka, Damiane, and the Greymanes. But diving into the game, there are loads of ways to customise Kliff and the way you fight.
My version of Kliff, for most of my playthrough so far, has been fighting with a sword and shield. Having very strong blocking capability is very useful against groups.
My second weapon has often been a greatsword, perfect for those beautiful, wide sweeping attacks — or a spear for a bit of added range. However, I’ve tested numerous axes, maces, hammers, swords, shields, daggers and when all else fails — good ol’ fists. Each of these combat styles are filled to the brim with satisfaction, each arriving with unique attack and kill animations — very flashy!
Oh, and you can dual-wield one-handed weapons by quickswapping one into your shield slot. This way, you sacrifice blocking for faster attacks. Turning Kliff into a whirling dervish of spinning blades, or a bare-knuckled brawler, will certainly be compelling options for some folks.
Every location has a miniature!
I’m a sucker for a good map, with a big love for strategy and overlooking little worlds. So when I uncovered that every map location has a marvellous little miniature version to inspect, I was floored. This is just so cool.
When you’re out on your journeys, you can head to any camp, town, barracks or homestead on your map and press Inspect. This zooms you into a living diorama of that area. These aren’t just static little images, though. They are moving, living snippets of the world.
You can zoom in and see fishermen working the rivers, tradesmen unloading carts, and guards going about their duties. When you’re planning to attack an enemy outpost, this is invaluable for your assault. And when you unlock the Greymane encampment on Howling Hill, you can send your comrades from this screen as well to drive off enemy forces.
Everything is destructible… Almost
When you first get into a sword fight in long grass, you’ll probably have a fun little moment as I did. I was chopping down some bandits and realised each sword swing cuts through the grass, plants and foliage. Then, you’ll throw a bandit at a pile of boxes and watch him crash into it, causing an avalanche of splinters to roll downhill.
Then, you’ll be soaring through the sky only to crash-land into some carts or ride your horse through someone’s stables. Most things in Crimson Desert are destructible, which makes fights very dynamic.
You’re then taught to light arrows on fire to burn away overgrown weeds on a tower. What they don’t tell you is that trees, bushes, thatch roofs and all manner of structures are flammable as well. This lets your pyromaniac dreams run wild.
There’s one very cool boss fight, a handful of hours in, that takes place in a sprawling field of reeds. The boss teleports and creates clones of himself, popping out of the reeds with each ambush. The cool thing here is that as you fight, you can chop through all the reeds and essentially clear the lines of sight.
Cooking up a storm
I love cooking, in real life and in games. I’m that guy in Breath of the Wild who was constantly testing out new recipes and throwing every bug, meat and honey into a stew pot. The Crimson Desert cooking system follows a similar vein, but with a little bit more nuance.
As you explore, you’ll collect recipes (always check the kitchen in any building you enter for any recipes lying around).
A recipe might be Boiled Oats or Grilled meat. But the cool bit is that these are flexible, so when you go to cook your Grilled Meat, you can swap the individual ingredients with whatever fits the bill in your pack. Using higher-quality meat will give a higher rate of healing.
Like Breath of the Wild, food items are your primary healing method. As you’re exploring, you might find an apple dangling from a tree, or a wild field of mushrooms. You can head back to camp and cook up some healing items with what you’ve foraged.
If you go fishing or hunting, you can sell the raw ingredients to the Butcher in town, or cook up the recipes to eat or sell. It’s a very flexible system, which makes foraging and hunting core to survival in the world.
It’s all about reputation
Many open-world games these days include some kind of reputation system. Whether that is a binary system like Mass Effect‘s Paragon system, or more personal good-versus-evil as Infamous did. But jumping into Crimson Desert, I noticed something funny — you have a reputation with every individual.
I first spotted this while walking through Hernand and saw the prompt to ‘greet’ a shopkeeper. Doing so gave me a small bump in his reputation. Of course, doing negative things — like attacking the person or vandalising their shop — will give a negative reputation.
Above all, this is the reputation you hold with the region. This is impacted by completing quests, but is negatively impacted if you commit crimes. If you have a negative reputation, guards will try to stop you in the street, and you’ll have a hard time getting through the region.
There is also a Contributions Shop in each major town. This special shop is where you spend your reputation to get access to special gear and equipment. In Hernand, this means you can get the armour and weapons of the town guards, as well as other weapons and armour.
It’s a great way to feed the reputation system back into something tangible that you will use.
Should I jump into Crimson Desert?
From the big and bombastic moments of combat, to the small moments chilling by a river fishing for supper, Crimson Desert is a huge game. It’s a game that revels in the small details as much as the grand picture. It’s a world that I look forward to spending more time in.
Crimson Desert is out now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam. It retails for about AUD $110.
Early access to Crimson Desert was provided by the publisher.
