DuatDweller on 18/3/2026 at 23:52
Crimson Desert reviews average at 78 on Metacritic, as clunky controls threaten GOTY contention
With an estimated 400K Steam pre-orders before its release date, Crimson Desert hype has peaked. Some buyers may not be so enthusiastic about the game’s Metacritic score. Crimson Desert reviews highlight an immersive open world held back by awkward controls and quality-of-life issues.
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https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crimson-Desert-reviews-average-at-78-on-Metacritic-as-clunky-controls-threaten-GOTY-contention.1253578.0.html)
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While it doesn’t always determine sales, critics can still influence buying decisions. The Crimson Desert review embargo finally expired, unleashing dozens of evaluations on Metacritic. After 82 submissions, the open-world game has a Metascore of 78. Most sites praise its ambitious graphics and physics, but note annoyances that could frustrate many players.
A sometimes rocky Crimson Desert
The first Crimson Desert reviews focus on the PC version and don’t describe many performance shortcomings. Yet, even with stable framerates, some aspects of the Pearl Abyss project are proving divisive. If gamers had read leaked impressions, they might not be surprised by some consistent complaints.
Even posting a 7/10 score on Metacritic, Insider Gaming represents the consensus best by calling the title a “game of extremes.” The writer praises Pywel as an incredibly detailed, massive world worthy of exploration. Yet, the game suffers from an “overabundance of unfocused systems, a weak narrative, and combat that struggles to maintain consistency.”
Judging by other impressions, players could have mixed reactions to Crimson Desert combat. Varied Enemies require skill and patience to defeat. At the same time, some bosses early on may prove too difficult for an unprepared Kliff. Meanwhile, as he progresses, other opponents don’t present quite the same challenge.
A problem that hampers the game, both in and out of battles, is clunky controls. Even after remapping, the complex layout can take many hours to become comfortable with.
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Fears about a weak story may be justified
Before the Crimson Desert release date, another concern was with the quality of the narrative. There is a story to tell, but scattered over such large maps, it can be difficult to piece together. Several Crimson Desert reviews also describe bland characters that don’t add much to the script.
Sadly, managing inventory can lead to rage-quitting. Without storage boxes, there will soon be more space for the endless items collected in Pywel. It’s possible that Pearl Abyss can iron out some quality-of-life issues with patches.
Even if it doesn't contend with GTA 6 for GOTY, many Metacritic entries hail Crimson Desert as a technical achievement. Open world games may have a new standard to meet for level of detail. Some players who aren’t dissuaded by its shortcomings will become hopelessly immersed. As GamingTrend describes, it’s a “once-in-a-generation action RPG that redefines the genre.”
DuatDweller on 19/3/2026 at 23:01
Testing CPU scaling in Crimson Desert — X3D wins, but not by much, and Raptor Lake shines
Crimson Desert is an enigma, and it shows an almost perfect representation of how CPUs should scale.
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https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/testing-cpu-scaling-in-crimson-desert-x3d-wins-but-not-by-much-and-raptor-lake-shines)
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Crimson Desert is the type of game that shouldn’t ever see the light of day. Built originally as a prequel for popular MMO Black Desert Online before being scrapped and redirected to a single-player release, and sitting in development for close to a decade, Crimson Desert could have easily died in development. Add on top of that a proprietary game engine called BlackSpace, a modest headcount, and no external publisher — Crimson Desert defies the narrative about how AAA games are built and released today. But we’re here. Crimson Desert is real, it’s massive, and I’ve been poking around Pywel with the best CPUs for gaming to see how they react.
The results are positive. I mainly tested on the last few generations of AMD and Intel chips, though I threw in a Ryzen 7 2700X (just above the game’s minimum-spec CPU) and a Core i3-13100F (a weak quad-core chip) into the mix to see how they'd hold up. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get to as many older AM4 chips, due to time and some bent pins. It’s been a while.
Otherwise, Crimson Desert sets up a platonic ideal of how CPUs should scale in a modern game. Everything falls in line the way you’d expect, which is surprisingly rare to find in recent games, especially close to launch. You won’t find a performance wall like what we saw in Resident Evil Requiem, nor get the ever-present oddity of AMD’s eight-core offering outperforming its 12-core one.
That doesn’t mean everyone is going to have a great experience. Although Crimson Desert ran well enough with a quad-core chip, it can certainly leverage a higher core count. And older architectures like Zen+ struggle, though that shouldn’t come as a surprise.
I ran through 20 CPUs, but I also played the game myself to uncover any strangeness in this unique engine — and there is some. Overall, however, Crimson Desert is an enigma. It shouldn’t work as well as it does given its dense systems and overwhelming landscape, but developer Pearl Abyss was able to stick the landing.
DuatDweller on 19/3/2026 at 23:13
Crimson Desert is breath of fresh air for budget gamers as it reportedly runs at 60 FPS on even old entry-level GPUs
Hardware Unboxed has tested Crimson Desert with different GPUs to see how the game scales across different GPU tiers. Despite being a visually excellent title, Crimson Desert is surprisingly well-optimized. So, at 1080p with "High" settings, even the old RTX 4060 can run the game at 60 FPS.
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https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crimson-Desert-is-breath-of-fresh-air-for-budget-gamers-as-it-reportedly-runs-at-60-FPS-on-even-old-entry-level-GPUs.1254661.0.html)
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Crimson Desert is, perhaps, the most talked-about game of recent memory, and for good reason. The game is massive. It features an immense and rich open world to explore with a plethora of side quests and boss fights. What has come as a positive surprise is that, despite an excellent graphical presentation, Crimson Desert is well-optimized out of the box and doesn’t need much GPU horsepower to run at a steady 60 FPS.
Hardware Unboxed has measured Crimson Desert’s performance with 40 GPUs and a Ryzen 7 9800X3D. The results speak for themselves, as Crimson Desert is shown to run at a stable 60 FPS even with modest GPUs like the RX 7600.
Crimson Desert at 1080p
At 1080p with the highest-quality “Cinematic” preset, Crimson Desert only needs an RTX 3060 Ti with 8 GB of VRAM to hit a 60 FPS average. However, you’ll need an RTX 4060 Ti to play the game smoothly, with 1% lows in the mid 50s. Modern affordable GPUs like the RTX 5060 and the RX 9060, therefore, are more than capable of running Crimson Desert at a stable 60+ FPS.
Dropping the graphical preset down to “High” lets even the RX 7600 play the game at 60 FPS. Modern GPUs like the RX 9060 XT and the RTX 5060 can run the game above 80 FPS without any issues.
You can even run Crimson Desert at around 100 FPS with just the last-gen RTX 4070 and the RX 7900 GRE.
Finally, if you can only manage a card like the RTX 5050, you will need to drop the settings down from high or use FSR/DLSS to hit 60 FPS.
Tomi on 21/3/2026 at 19:09
Crimson Desert looks like a game that I want to try at some point, but I'll wait until it hits the bargain bin (or gets added on Game Pass). Judging by what I've read about it so far, it seems that the developers have followed their own vision instead of just making yet another open-world fantasy game with all the standard features, which is something that I appreciate. On top of that, Crimson Desert looks really good and the massive game world is supposed to be really detailed and full of places to explore. The best thing in these kind of games is to avoid the main quest and just explore everything. :D The combat at least looks pretty fun too, and I'm happy to see that the action is not totally over the top as you might expect in a game like this.
It's a shame that the story and the characters are apparently a bit dull, and I'm not the biggest fan of third person action games, otherwise I might be playing this already.
Starker on 21/3/2026 at 20:49
I've played BDO quite a bit in the past, so definitely interested in it, but another huge open world game with tons of sidequests is perhaps more than I can handle these days. Yahtzee seems to have liked it, though:
[video=youtube;XIFoWNJ6Qbo]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIFoWNJ6Qbo[/video]
DuatDweller on 25/8/2026 at 20:20
Crimson Desert 2.0 is here with story improvements, as first sale goes live across platforms
Pearl Abyss has announced Crimson Desert Enhanced alongside the first ever sale. The updated game comes with patch 2.00.00 and includes all the changes from previous patches.
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https://www.notebookcheck.net/Crimson-Desert-2-0-is-here-with-story-improvements-as-first-sale-goes-live-across-platforms.1378387.0.html)
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Alongside working on the Nintendo Switch 2 port, Pearl Abyss has been constantly adding content and fixing aspects of Crimson Desert. The latest patch has been announced at Gamescom 2026 and it hopes to address some of the issues that have been lingering since the game fist launched.
The studio is calling it Crimson Desert Enhanced and it comes with patch 2.00.00. The patch is live now on all platforms, except for the macOS version. The major update coming with this patch is story improvements. The studio says “new cutscenes and story moments” have been added throughout the main questline.
The weakest point of the otherwise excellent Crimson Desert has been its story. With the latest update, those who have completed the campaign can give it another go, while those who stayed away from the game because of this criticism may feel more intrigued. Alongside the story improvements, Crimson Desert Enhanced also brings expanded voice over and language support.
Furthermore, for the first time since launch, Crimson Desert Enhanced has been discounted by 20% across all platforms. For a limited time, the game will be available for $56 on Steam, rather than its MSRP of $70. This updated version of the game includes content and improvements from all the previous updates.
