If Crimson Desert's name sounds familiar to the MMO-savvy among you, it's because it is. It's a single-player action adventure made by Pearl Abyss, the same folks who built Black Desert Online, which is how Crimson Desert had coasted under my radar until I tried it today.
Black Desert has, admittedly, lingered in the back of my mind as an MMO I just don't have the time for. Mostly because anything with a cash-for-convenience microtransaction shop—no matter how well implemented—leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
It's with that twinge of cynicism (held in the back of a mostly open mind) that I went to play Crimson Desert at Gamescom today, which is the first proper look we've had at the game since its rambunctious debut trailer. I was both surprised and delighted to play something that, Odin willing, is shaping up to be an absolute riot.
Crimson Desert has ambitions to be an open-world game where you play as Kliff, a viking protagonist caught in a bloody battle between ultra-violent clans who do stuff like swing axes around, say words like "c*ckswabbler", and (checking my notes here) start dashing around on all fours like Vordt of the Boreal Valley after chugging three cans of homebrew energy drinks.
Its combat feels like a moonshine mix between Breath of the Wild and Dragon's Dogma 2, dosed with gasoline, then set on fire. The work-in-progress tutorial I played was hilariously aggressive, setting me up against batches of around five burly men in furs apiece who weren't afraid to mob me like they needed my lunch money.
In fact, if the short hour I spent with it is anything to go by, Crimson Desert's main selling point is that it's not afraid to throw you around a lot. In just 50 minutes I was:
- Hurled off a cliff
- Beaten to death with clubs and swords
- Chokeslammed into the ground by not one, but two separate viking warriors
- Launched 50 feet into the air by a rock crab I was Shadow-of-the-Colossus crawling on (there's a glide mechanic I couldn't quite figure out, but honestly, eating dirt was funnier)
- Punted 15 feet into some boxes
I'm not sure if it's entirely on purpose, but I think it should be. Crimson Desert's propensity to batter you around is one of its best qualities and it helps that the combat system seems really quite good, if complex.
In the demo, I had access to a shield which I could use to counter attacks with either my sword or, deliciously, using my foes' own momentum against them by giving them a lift to the other side of my body via buckler. I could punt my enemies into fires, roll to reposition myself, and escape vicious grapples by dodging at the right time. I could also dodge while drawing my bow to do a Max Payne slowmo trickshot.
The only strangeness present was the feeling I was playing a high-concept martial arts game wearing a Valhalla skinsuit—but in all honesty, that's kind of the special sauce that makes Crimson Desert interesting. I can't speak for the other elements—such as the open world and what appears to be dregs of a crafting and cooking system, as the demo only included the tutorial and some bouts with four different boss enemies.
But when it comes to brawling, Crimson Desert's trajectory into violent nonsense is, so far, a delight. It feels in a way like a studio unshackled from the doldrum of MMO monetisation rat racing. Regardless of my thoughts on Black Desert, Crimson Desert is shaping up into something worth an earnest try.
