Crimson Desert is stitched together with a thousand RPGs, and its seams are easily traced. The Witcher 3's medieval-fantasy grit here, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's insular puzzles and open-world sandbox there. A splash of Fable and Dragon's Dogma's reactive worlds, for good measure. In less sincere hands, the result would be derivative. But after playing Crimson Desert for six hours, the upcoming RPG feels more like an overstuffed toybox, offering pure entertainment if not always cohesion.
Across those six hours, I torched bandit camps from atop a dragon and later returned to mop up survivors from the cockpit of a mech. I worked as a bounty hunter, admired furniture options for a home I didn't own, and let my eyes glaze over as a banker explained how I could invest in the world's economy. I can't tell you much about Crimson Desert's story, but the thrill of clotheslining a soldier and kicking his friend off a cliff still crackles beneath my skin – and if you find that trade-off acceptable, Crimson Desert is shaping up to be worth diving into for the dragon alone.
Paint the world red
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Crimson Desert begins with a series of Bad Times for its surly mercenary protagonist, Kliff. His allies are ambushed by bearskin-clad warriors and scattered, while Kliff is stabbed and cast into a river. Having played this segment last year, I know it's a scripted defeat but can't resist making the Black Bear tribe work for its victory; using the firelit battle to get to grips with parries and the (many) ways to swing a sword.
Combat in Crimson Desert is closer to fighting games than its action-RPG peers. Holding R1 on a PS5 controller sends Kliff into a flurry of light attacks, for example, while simultaneously hitting triangle thrusts his sword forward and makes anything it hits bleed over time. Knocking someone over – say, with a sudden clothesline or by flipping them over your shield – lets you skewer them before they can stand, with visceral force behind Kliff's every move. That physicality is a double-edged sword though – your attacks can be interrupted, and button-mashing without consideration is an easy way to get overwhelmed.
At least, those are the excuses I make while Kliff's body floats downriver. I'm fished out of the water by a kindly cartographer and set loose in the Duchy of Hernand, Crimson Desert's first area. A gleaming castle overlooks Hernand, its white brick matching the chalky cliffs that dot the countryside, while smaller hamlets flourish against sloping meadows. It's a gorgeous pastoral scene seemingly inspired by the countryside of southern France, and it takes all of my willpower to explore rather than stand ogling at it.
Detouring from the main quest and heading into the city of Hernand unearths a frankly staggering amount to do from the get-go. Opportunities to learn how to fish and cook are plastered on a notice board, along with a wanted poster for a local pickpocket, and I take the latter to try out bounty hunting. It's straightforward – I bump into the target several streets away, identified by a comically fat purse, and knock him out after a chase – but finding a guard to turn him in proves trickier.
Still carrying the unconscious thief over my shoulder, I brush against a number of other side activities. Kliff can invest his gold and silver (returns not guaranteed) at a bank, lose it all gambling in a seedy room above a tavern, and make friends with locals by giving them gifts or merely greeting them. Your reputation is influential and territory is owned by different factions – Kliff can't get into Hernand's castle because his clothes aren't nice enough, nor do the guards know him – but I don't have enough time to see how deep the system goes. That's true of Crimson Desert's broader glut of features: there's an undeniably vast spread of things to do, but their depth remains to be seen.
When the pickpocket is finally in a cell, I return back to the main quest. Here is where Crimson Desert wobbles, as in lieu of storytelling it often feels like you're merely being led from one objective to the next. Kliff goes to a nearby tavern to see if there's news of any other Greymanes surviving the Black Bear ambush. That makes sense! So does getting into an arm-wrestling contest with an off-duty guard, if you assume Kliff is embedding himself with the locals. But the next quest log merely says to give the winnings to a beggar outside, for no discernable reason other than 'the quest log says so', nor is there a reason given for why I need to help sweep the tailor's chimney (in fairness – he rewards me with a castle-worthy clothing) or why Kliff must then go to the sewers.
For all the work that's gone into Crimson Desert's busywork, it's frustrating to be shuffled between objectives without so much as a narrative handwave. It feels like a quest log is guiding you by the nose, rather than letting you experience Kliff's story naturally, and I worry it will make for a significantly shallower RPG if continued into the full game. Similarly, I have some issues with NPCs being unresponsive or inconsistent – some characters I met didn't react when I saved them from bandits, only remained huddling against their wagon, the bandits themselves would often mill about in combat, and ambient dialogue is completely different to its subtitles – but given this is a pre-release build, it's possible particular bugbears are glitches.
Taking flight
I spend most of Crimson Desert's first hours battering bandits, who have taken advantage of Pywel's chaos to run amok. Combat cannot be faulted: the more I get to grips with Kliff the more fluid he becomes, with opportunities to extend combos and weave them into his movement presenting themselves as I grow more confident. Still, it's only a glimmer of Kliff's full potential. A sprawling skill tree largely abandons flat stat bonuses (thank you) in favor of more substantial upgrades, ranging from flying kicks to Spider-Man style swings with a grappling hook. Here is Crimson Desert's bread and butter: a combat system that's almost like a sandbox unto itself, closest in nature to Dragon's Dogma 2 albeit significantly deeper.
For my last two hours, I check out a selection of later-game saves. Again, it's like sampling a buffet of every RPG – but with mounts and new playable characters unlocked, it makes the previous four hours look like the starter course in comparison. In one save I fly above Pywel on a dragon, which makes the Duchy of Hernand seem like a very small part of the world. I'm still bitter about Skyrim's limited dragon-riding, so it's a relief to be able to take flight so freely here: you can take off and land wherever there's space, swoop down to smother the land in fire, and spit fireballs for more precise attacks.
It's incredibly fun – as is stomping around in a mech mount, complete with missiles and a suppressive fire mode – and suggests Crimson Desert's open world will be at its best being a sandbox that's less interested in sticking to one cohesive vision, and keener to deliver on the here and now – which, if I wasn't clear, is torching entire camps of bandits with a dragon.
Six hours may sound like a huge chunk of Crimson Desert, but it barely scratches the surface. Besides perfecting chokeslams I ventured above the clouds to solve a Tears of the Kingdom-style puzzle on a floating island (one of many), sweated over a boss fight with a knight who could disappear in water, and rode a huge bear into battle. Crimson Desert is certainly vast, but I'm keen to see whether there's enough substance to bracket the full game once the novelty of being a dragon-riding investment banker wears off.
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