Crimson Desert got a lot of attention before launch for its seeming ambitious open world design and seemingly combining elements from other sandbox/open world games into one massive experience. Indeed, playing it for just a couple hours gives the feel of it being a weird kitbash of Skyrim, Breath of the Wild and Dragon's Dogma, with a sprinkling of Metroid Prime for having to "scan" things in order to learn new abilities and fill in lore. The writing in the game is very lackluster though, with a stock (and often nonsequitur) sequence of events making up the main questline and some pretty awful dialog. More naked exposition than a Wikipedia entry and characters showing they're evil by dropping curse words every 3 seconds cuz the Witcher did it and we're Adults Really Honest. The gameplay isn't much to write home about either - while it does have elements like BotW's gliding and powers for puzzle solving, no shortage of combat and trap dodging and mountains of quests, crafting systems and skill trees to build up, it all just feels very blasé. Enemies are spongey, the controls just feel loose and janky, and the weird combinations of buttons to perform the dozens of actions you're given just get confusing rather than ever feeling intuitive. It really does just feel like one of those games that's trying to cast out a big net and make something popular, rather than polishing up any of its dozens of different elements and making them genuinely enjoyable. After just a few hours of this one I just decided to shelve it and go back to playing Tears of the Kingdom instead.
Developer: Pearl Abyss
Publisher: Pearl Abyss
Released: 2026
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, XBox Series, MacOS