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This turned out to be no mirage. After a seven-year drought of a dev cycle, I can punfully confirm that Crimson Desert is one of the red hottest games of 2026. Its top-tier world-building and gargantuanly gorgeous sandbox provide true grit and biome diversity. Moreover, its crib-all-the-mechanics approach to combat, puzzling, and traversal kept me constantly thirsty for just one more hour of its surprising brand of swashbuckling.
Is this a perfect game? Few are. Developer Pearl Abyss certainly hasn’t been clam-fisted in its inaugural attempt to pen a narrative-heavy romp, but those efforts are well shy of OG-era BioWare or CDPR. To be perfectly fair, however, it’s often easy to forget that what’s here is an action-adventure that’s sans conversation trees with heavy RPG elements applied. Reset your expectations accordingly, and the yarn spun is mighty dense and decent for the genre.
A down-to-earth revenge tale with some pie-in-the-sky wizardly drama layered over is the best way to describe what’s coming. Though some character swapping becomes available, you’ll mainly be filling the +1 Gruffness greaves of Kliff, a physically unalterable and morally preset Greymayne merc. Old mate’s a bit vanilla because of, but his hyper-sweary compatriots pick up the personality deficit nicely.
Seconds from the start screen, you’ll be thrown into a clan-scattering ambush perpetrated by Myurdin, your Yogi Bear cosplaying nemesis who also introduces you to the concept of The Abyss. The latter is basically a magic-meets-high-tech platform world floating above the ludicrously large placespace of Pywel. And, before you can Leo DiCaprio point and cry “Tears of the Kingdom”, Kliff totally learns object-bothering telekinesis here, and then you’re skydiving back down to some wilds that you will…er, take a breath of.
Speaking of tidy impressions, Crimson Desert does a spot-on one of The Witcher 3 from here on out. All the expected accoutrements arrive: riding a magic Uber horse through a gob-smacking fantasy land with perve-worthy vistas. Shoulder-barge shopping trips through richly detailed and reactive castle towns. And then, of course, making the uppance come to nearby bandits and loonies waiting out in the boonies.
Swording out these idiots is the main event here, and, mercifully for those of us who review every game, it’s done in a refreshingly non-Soulsborne manner. All the expected boxes are kinda/sorta ticked for basic combat – light/heavy comboing, stamina/distance management, soft or hard lock targeting, and projectile and magic peppering from afar. Plus, there’s a surprising array of fist-or-foot-to-face solutions to any arguments.
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Factor in reasonably intelligent foes, a parry/dodge system that doesn’t over-telegraph incoming steel, plus a decent array of weapon types, and Crimson Desert’s killin’ feels fast, visceral, and bloody good fun. Hiccups do exist – I had to abandon hardlock targeting due to its iffy focus switching, and holding your heavy attack key to 8-combo away is way too effective a means to utterly hew through a minor outpost of a hundred ne’er-do-wells.
And we’re just talking about low-level violence here, using an early-game Kliff who’s barely a hill of perks. Elevate up via community service into a more mountainous Kliff, and death-dealing becomes a magic-splodin’, ragdolls-a-go-go spectacle. Bar brawl bunches of punches ramp into WWE-style finishers or the kind of wire fu you’d expect in Mortal Kombat. Simple force pushes and pulls upscale to screen-consuming elemental nukes or Spider-Man webslings that obliterate enemy structures like Kliff’s become an FGM Javelin.
Obviously, the same arms race occurs with traversal options and mounts. Kliff laughs in the face of cliffs when he learns to shapeshift and crow glide. That teleporting horse you kamikaze off mountains will supersize into more winged and/or weaponised steeds. Basically, there’s always something cooler waiting for you beyond the next chapter, which makes Crimson Desert incredibly difficult to put down.
Better yet, you never really know what’s coming next, given Pearl Abyss’s peculiar mishmash of fantasy and tech. This is a world where swordin’ n’ boardin’ orcs exist alongside makeshift tanks / cannons / muskets. It’s a realm where spellweaving and beastwalking go hand in hand with the odd primitive mech, locomotive or zeppelin. It’s kitchen sink stuff that somehow works, contextually, and is hugely entertaining as it gets drip-fed out to you.
Before I leave this topic of smashing heads, I should point out that there are challenge spikes for my fellow masochists, largely due to the one-difficulty-fits-all approach. Satisfyingly epic and creative boss fights are where Pearl Abyss pumps the brakes on this power fantasy. They will either ask you to Give Up and go grind (typically for better stamina), or maybe perceive and spam an environmental gimmick needed to win the fight in a few hits, or, failing those two approaches, cheese the hell out of the AI.
Far too often I relied upon the latter approach because toe-to-toeing or gimmick options were minefields of getting two-shot killed and suffering no checkpointing between multi-phase/unskippable monologue fights. Worse, iffy targeting or clunky interactivity could make Using The Solution Thing too hit-and-miss in a critical moment.
Incidentally, the rigidity you see in some boss encounters rears its ugly head in the puzzle moments, too. Unlike Nintendo with its latest Zeldas, Pearl Abyss are not firm proponents of clever player creativity. Far too often you need to stand exactly in a pinpoint location or use a specific power in an absolutely exact way to achieve a goal you’ve already figured out (but sometimes cannot achieve).
Unexpected creativity totally exists via boss cheesing, of course. Many times I’d just lure a Big Bad beyond the invisible edge of their stomping ground, then I’d chip away while guzzling a regional Cole’s worth of reviving chow. That was satisfying in its own way, I guess. But I’ll definitely like those fights way more when Pearl Abyss patches out some of the clunk.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t also report that I had to repeat at least five boss battles. Hard crashes to desktop were the main culprit. I also suffered through one boss encounter in the midst of a murder of several hundred crows that clearly wasn’t optimised right. The subpar frame rate (which I’d only witnessed, intermittently, in the main drag of castle Hernand) made dodge timings incredibly difficult.
Mind you, I believe that’s patchable stuff. I also had my mind blown when the Black Space engine handled a phenomenally complex, city-wide battle where I galloped through and played sword-centric polo against roughly a hundred on-screen foes besieging another hundred allies (in a rainstorm, no less). When it’s firing on all cylinders, this is a Rockstar-level visual feast – and I do not hand that one out often or lightly.
This comparison to the GOATs holds true in terms of convincing world feel, emergent gameplay opportunities, and degree of incidental stuff to do when you’re not chasing end credits. I’m talking fishing, brawling, cannon challenges, several Law and Order seasons of local crimes to solve, and more. Better yet, there’s a camp improvement layer that rewards bonding with your lovable, often bitching, always f-bombing and sometimes c-nuking Greymayne brethren. That’s where the real heart of Kliff’s tale resides, in my opinion.
Beyond that, there’s not much more to say before we hit the city limits of spoiler town. Crimson Desert represents a surprising and overwhelmingly successful new pivot for Pearl Abyss after its Black Desert Online MMO-ing. This upstart developer has set its sights incredibly high on almost every major gameplay mechanic and whizbang graphics technique that’s become vogue in the last seven years and, impressively, hits almost every target cleanly.
