Like many video game writers, I spent a couple of weeks beating my head against Crimson Desert in the two weeks leading up to release. I really enjoyed myself. As a game, Crimson Desert was fascinating and enjoyable. As a game to criticize, it was maddening.
The prerelease version of Crimson Desert was a very different game than the epic adventure players are now enjoying. Fast travel was a indecipherable nightmare. The inventory system was ridiculously tight. Boss fights were at least twice as hard. For example, I fought the Reed Devil at least 15 times before beating him in the prerelease version. After the game was patched, I beat him on the first try, with crappier gear than I had my first time around. The game is just more friendly now than it was. Indeed, that patch has smoothed the game out in so many ways that, to someone that played the pre-release version, it feels borderline soft.
Yet even with all of that difficulty and clunkiness, I found the pre-release version Crimson Desert to be fascinating and fun. Why? Because I wasn't trying to review it.
Gaming Nexus is reviewing Crimson Desert on PlayStation, and the pre-release version was only available on PC. So I was playing the game to write "supplemental content", like guides and opinion pieces and stuff. The critical difference there is that i was able to enjoy my time with the game because I wasn't trying to beat it in two weeks.
When playing a game for review on a deadline, there are two approaches. Beeline through the story to roll credits and call the game "done", or play as much as you can through all of the extra content, and review the game in progress, admitting that you haven't beaten the thing. Critics are loathe to take the second route, as rolling credits is seen as a sign that they have "completed" enough of the game to form a valid opinion. In the case of Crimson Desert, that must have been a nightmare.
Crimson Desert is a sprawling game, but more than that, it's a game that gets a lot easier if you take your time and explore the world and experience all of the extra stuff there is to see and do. You can make your character stronger in any number of ways just by spending time derping around in the game's world, finding cool new gear and leveling up your character through combat and learned skills. Do you think for one second that critics that were trying to "beat" Crimson Desert in two weeks had time to do any of that? I sure don't.
The critics that were so hard on Crimson Desert for it's story and the failure to make the main character interesting were the ones that were bashing their way through the game as quickly as possible. They hated the story because it's the only thing they saw in the game. They hated the boss battles because they were unable to take the time to be fully prepared for them. They hated the clunky controls because...well.. the controls were pretty clunky, but they are getting better. In other words, reviewing Crimson Desert was difficult and frustrating, and trying to beat the game under a deadline forced those critics to only see the most difficult and frustrating parts of the game under the most difficult and frustrating circumstances.
Now that the game has been out in the wild for a couple of weeks, it is obvious that Crimson Desert is a game that needs time and space to breath. The best parts of the game come through emergent gameplay, through exploring the beautiful world and uncovering it's many secrets. It's much more fun to find a mechanic you enjoy and spend an afternoon dorking around with it than trying to force your way through chapter after chapter in an attempt to see the end of the game (though Chapter Six is a stone cold banger).
That's why Gaming Nexus hasn't posted an official review for Crimson Desert yet. Our reviewer is playing the patched version of the game, and we're going to put up that review when we are darn good and ready. And if he wants to spend the weekend farming goats or catching butterflies or whatever, we're just going to let him do that.
See you in a few weeks with an official review that reflects what Crimson Desert actually is, not what it was before release. But make a little space in your heart for the folks that played through the game before it was patched. They had a rough road to travel, and I can't blame them for being mad about it.
