If you can grapple with Crimson Desert's needlessly complex controls, there's a unique action game here with stunning visuals and deep combat

Crimson Desert dazzles with some of the most technically impressive visuals in modern gaming, offering native 4K, smooth performance, and a sprawling battlefield teeming with detail and destruction. While its complex control scheme and lack of onboarding dampened the demo experience, developer Pearl Abyss’s ambitious action-RPG still shows massive potential ahead of its release later this year.

Since its trailer reveal around half a decade ago, Crimson Desert has generated a wave of anticipation similar to the early excitement surrounding Black Myth: Wukong. Developed by Korean studio Pearl Abyss, the open-world medieval fantasy title captured attention thanks to its jaw-dropping visual showcase.

The trailer stunned viewers with an overwhelming number of highly detailed character models rendered simultaneously, massive draw distances that brought vast landscapes to life, outstanding lighting effects, and an impressive display of particle effects and environmental destruction. The sheer scale and technical polish on display made Crimson Desert feel like a next-gen spectacle in motion.

Visually stunning, but the controls are trying

Following years of trailers and in-depth videos looking into the game’s Blackspace engine, we got a solid 30-minute look into the upcoming action-adventure. Though Crimson Desert is going to need some more time in the oven when it comes to overall gameplay, the visuals are a clear benchmark-setting highlight, and the game looks utterly remarkable.

The Summer Game Fest demo starts a considerable way into the game’s single-player campaign, where the main protagonist Kliff, is tasked with various missions within a large-scale battle somewhere in the game’s world of Pywel. When we’re introduced to Kliff, we are on the outskirts of a battlefield during the middle of the day. After a cutscene, we are given control of our hero, where first-time players will notice that the controls are incredibly complicated.

Analog sticks control the character alongside camera movements while the d-pad handles commands like calling horses, selecting health/buff items, and elemental selection for the palm attacks (which we will get to later).

The face button (on a DualSense controller) assignments are a bit weird as players jump with the square button, and run with the X button, which also has a The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild-like stamina meter. The circle button is for dodges, while the triangle handles actions like mounting a horse and kicks during combat. Shoulder buttons handle attacking and blocking, while triggers are used for Kliff’s context-sensitive palm attack and aiming for a bow that is shot in conjunction with another button.

Keeping the somewhat unnecessary complexity of the controls, talking to NPCs involves holding the shoulder button used for blocks with triangle to engage in conversations or start missions. There’s even a portion of the game where players have to mount a flag, and it’s a wild amount of button prompts, including going into focus mode by clicking in both analog sticks, pressing a button to lift it, pressing another button to move it around, and yet another to place it. That also comes in handy during a boss fight that saw me wrestling with the complex controls.

A wild mix of combat styles

It doesn’t help that the demo for Crimson Desert didn’t ease me into all the mechanics through a tutorial; just one of the representatives for Pearl Abyss on the Summer Game Fest HQ floor.

There are so many influences in Crimson Desert that they seem to collide as chaotically as what is happening on the battlefield. There are traces of Dynasty Warriors Origins, Dragon’s Dogma, Just Cause, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2, and even Call of Duty to an extent. This includes using guiding arrows to send cannons to an enemy post or rescuing a prisoner of war.

Sword combat is incredibly deep, but I did find it slightly confusing during my hands-on time. Grunts can be handled pretty easily between swipes and blocks (that’ll turn into parries if the timing is right). Like Dynasty Warriors, grunts fly pretty far from attacks. Kliff can even use wrestling moves like hip throws and grapples that look like DDTs.

However, things get difficult as Kliff can fight dozens of them at once alongside bigger enemies and mounted ones as well, who can provide a game over easily if not careful. Then there are the elemental palm attacks that can be weaved into combo,s too.

Again, because of the lack of a tutorial, it was difficult to completely understand the combat enough to understand the nuances of it, but there’s certainly a lot you can do. The easiest part of the demo was a portion where players control a cannon to destroy enemy towers. Simple and a welcome break from the madness.

A new visual benchmark?

Despite control issues with the general gameplay, Crimson Desert is wonderful to look at and proves that the trailers weren’t all fluff. What players will get is some of the best character modeling, texture work, explosions, lighting, and more in a game that’s native 4K at what looked like 60fps.

Even with all the destruction and chaos going on, we didn’t see any noticeable dips. Interestingly enough, the amount of characters on screen during a later segment that took place in the dark did make Kliff difficult to see at times.

If Crimson Desert can tighten up its overly complex control scheme and deliver a more guided introduction to its mechanics, Pearl Abyss may have something special on its hands.

Even in its current state, the game’s technical prowess is undeniable, setting a new bar for open-world fantasy visuals that rivals anything shown this console generation. We’ll see how polished the game can become when it’s released later this year for PS5, Xbox Series X|S, macOS, and PC.

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