Nothing about Crimson Desert does what you expect it to. Save and reload your game, and you'll beam down in a totally different spot. Shining your lantern directly in people's eyes is an acceptable way to start a conversation, but gently bumping someone on the street will have you branded the town villain. Save one slave in the first three hours, and you'll be prompted to single-handedly clear a 300-person bandit encampment immediately after.
None of this makes sense to me, yet here in Kliff MacDuff's wild world, it's the norm. I'll be honest: after 20 hours in the game I still have no idea what is going on or why I should care about it, but I've been having a blast simply wandering into trouble and strong-arming my way through the consequences.
I didn't start to enjoy the disjointed, nonsensical chaos of Crimson Desert until I fought my way through hordes of bandits with little more than a toothpick in hand, a pot on my head, and stubbornness in my heart – and now, despite every issue outlined in our Crimson Desert review, I've grudgingly fallen in love with it.
Medieval Knieval
This month we're exploring all Pywel has to offer with our huge deep dive, going On the Radar with Crimson Desert!
Death is not a consequence in Crimson Desert. To me, it's a prime cheesing strat that saw me through a frankly massive bandit encampment in the game's early hours.
I found the Bleed Bandits and their slave camp after freeing a bound prisoner on a distant road. They'd pleaded with me to go and free their people, and being a dumbass with a sword desperate to do anything but the RPG's main missions, I happily accepted.
It was night by the time I reached the camp on Rocca's Hill. If the angry red dots on my minimap weren't enough of an indication, the spiky sharpened logs placed around its perimeter alerted me to the dangers within. But as I crouched down to draw my bow and arrow, aiming at a bandit though the spikes, more dots appeared. And more. And more. This was no simple bandit camp, but a whole swathe of the map seized by bandits in their hundreds. And Kliff? He had a sword that did 12 damage and some barely-refined clothing. And, again, a shiny pot on his head.
I tried to be clever at first. Arrows were a bust – I simply ran out before getting chased off into the darkness by alerted bandits. Stealth was also off the table – it's hard to be sneaky when you carry a blindingly bright lantern and need to point it at anything you want to interact with, including prisoners whose bonds I am trying to sneakily loosen. Finally, I went for an all-out swashbuckling brawl, only to get cut down like brittle wheat soon after.
I hate how dying works in Crimson Desert; if there's no nearby fast travel point, you simply resurrect mid-meditation in a supposed "checkpoint" you may or may not have actually encountered. The animation is still tedious, but nowhere near as agonizing as the super lengthy loading screens I've seethed through while fast traveling or reloading a save.
Death, at least, is consistent. This is something I clock when I die again shortly after being resurrected at the same spot. I've swapped tactics by this point, attacking from higher up the cliff instead of skulking about the side door like a highly-conspicuous burglar in a reflective metal hat.
The hat is less of a concern now that it's daytime, and I've learned some other valuable information. Each time I attack, pick some bandits off, free prisoners, and succumb to my wounds, the damage I do to the camp's overall "health" is preserved when I respawn. I can tell as much by the on-screen health bar. When I first approached the camp in the cover of night, it was at 100%. After a few experimental kamikaze runs, it now sat at a pretty respectable 91%.
Paint the town crimson
The reward for completing this mammoth task is dwarfed by the silly amount of fun I had in getting there...
Why waste food and other health top-ups on battles I know I'll lose? Why work harder when the game is trying to be smarter and ultimately failing? That's what I tell myself each time I respawn and run headlong to my doom.
Enemies also respawn in the same place a lot of the time, but the replenished numbers don't reflect in the health meter. This allows me to do a little zoned bandit farming in smaller, more manageable pockets instead of aggroing the entire camp at once. Slowly but surely, I'm thinning the crowd. I leap down into said pocket and fight for a couple of minutes. Die. Resurrect within five seconds. Fight again. Repeat. It's a glacial process, but one that definitely works.
It's a shame that once I've whittled them 60%, I decide I am bored of bandit busting and wander off in search of something else to farm, kill, or capture (maybe a nice little bug or fifteen) before having a wee nap.
100 hours of Crimson Desert made me realize how perfect Breath of the Wild is
Bandits forgotten, I busied myself with doing what everyone ought to in Crimson Desert: ignoring the loosely hewn, barely present story in favor of just goofing off. I somehow blacked out and beefed up a little bit in the process.
I can't really tell you how I did it it, when, or where, but I must have mined enough iron ore to upgrade my sword the "correct" number of times, killed enough sweet little animals to refine my armor properly, and/or mysteriously acquired enough Abyss Relics (again, no clue what those are) to level up my skills as a warrior. I can only deduce that this happened somewhere in the last 20 hours, because the next time I visit the slave camp, I'm able to hack my way through the bandits' remaining 60% foothold with relative ease.
I'm being a little bit facetious. I know exactly what to chalk that victory up to, and its name is Focus. Hitting the two joysticks makes time move slower for Kliff before he unleashes a blast of Spirit power and sends everything in proximity soaring off the map. I also have only memorized two other combos atop the basic and heavy attacks, which I spam dutifully between accidentally launching the ridiculous Axiom claw-hand thing when trying to run.
The reward for completing this mammoth task is dwarfed by the silly amount of fun I had in getting there, both in my cheesy piecemeal approach and in the all-out chaos of coming to a fight I'm actually prepared for. It took 20 hours, but a curious sensation was finally tingling at the corners of my mouth and no, it wasn't a cold sore. Crimson Desert had finally made me smile, and for once, not out of disbelief.
I've never played a game that feels charming despite itself. Yet here I am, eagerly anticipating my next outing with my big silly oaf of a protagonist and his big silly powers that make not a lick of sense to me. I don't care about that now, though. Come, big fella, let's feed you some more bugs and commit another murder. Pywel is our crimson desert now.
Crimson Desert not sound like your bag? No worries; there's sure to be something on our list of upcoming PS5 games that'll speak to you!
