Crimson Desert Hands-on on a Handheld
A gleeful ramble through a world packed with almost too much to see and do
Crimson Desert is the sort of glee-generating, open-world graphical powerhouse that clearly isn’t designed to be played on a handheld PC.
But after spending more than 125 hours with it on my handheld of choice, I’ve only really run into two issues: the text can be so small for my aging eyes that I occasionally have to use a magnifying glass to read it (please try not to imagine what that looks like, it’s sad) and the chance that I’ll throw the game across the room in a boss-fight-induced rage is much higher than if it were running on my chunky desktop.
Boss fights aside, Crimson Desert is the sort of game I’ve been waiting for without really realizing it was the exact sort of thing I need in my life right now.
I happen to be traveling for the month, and my only gaming form of entertainment is my iPhone and the beefy ROG Xbox Ally X. It also happens to be (currently) the worst month of the year in terms of Trump-driven rage, dystopia, and depression.
In short, I needed a comforting distraction but didn’t have my desktop handy to help wth that.
Along came an early copy of Crimson Desert, and I hopped right in. But, to my surprise, I wasn’t initially drawn to the game. The quests felt very hand-holdy, and the combat was simply me mashing the same buttons over and over. Is this it? I thought.
Fortunately, it wasn’t. By the time I hit 20 hours, I was fully invested.
I think the sheer complexity of controls, the depth of experience, and the (let’s call it straightforward) main quests had somehow initially coalesced into delivering an experience that seemed routine at best.
But once you get past those lengthy opening moments, by the time (at least for me) that I unlocked the second playable member of the Greymanes I was hooked.
It helped that Damaine is a badass rapier-wielding warrior who I triained up to essentially shiv people to death … which, of course, never gets old. Kliff, the main, starting hero, is also fun, but he’s more of my tank.
As you play the game, some wild stuff happens and new things unlock that make you realize just how deep this game goes. I don’t want to spoil any of the surprises, but just trust me when I tell you it’s worth the time to get past the first seven hours or so. I know that’s a crazy thing to say outloud, but I’m 125 hours in and have only finished a couple of the main quests.
Heck, I’ve barely touched the side quests. How am I supposed to concentrate with everything going on in the world.
As I pointed out, this game feels like the perfect experience for me right here, right now.
Some of the ways that holds true includes the fact that you can explore the world as, essentially, a naturalist, geologist, and biologist. You can be like the Darwin of Crimson Desert. It seems that nearly everything living in the world can be identified and is cataloged in the game’s Knowledge database.
If you open the Knowledge database when you start the game, you’ll discover ten categories, including things like People, Creatures, Mountain, and Gatherables. In each of those categories are a number of subcategories, and in each subcategory are a bunch of undiscovered things noted by question marks. Once you discover them, the question marks turn into the thing you found. But here’s the thing, you play the game KNOWING there’s so much yet to discover. It’s very hard to ignore once you know it’s there. (You’re welcome.)
So far in the subcategory of Creatures of Mysteries, for instance, I have discovered two of the world’s five Chimeras. Once discovered, it tells you about them, and when you see them in the world, they’ll no longer show up as unidentified.
For most of these, you need to either interact with them or … catch them to see what they are. The latter can be a bit unnerving when you, say, grab something moving in the grass and it turns out to be a yellow garden spider.
On the bright side, the game has 15 different types of cats and dogs—all of which you can carry and pet.
So you can see my problem.
How am I supposed to go find the dude in the castle who wants the thing done when there are so many cats to cuddle and dogs to pet? Why defeat the big bad in the second chapter when you can go mountain climbing, or be startled by a family of partridge scurrying from the underbrush during a forest amble?
I actually find myself completing more quests by accident than on purpose. I’ll be strolling through a field when I come upon something that gets me mired in some local issue, and then decide to sort things out.
I suppose in that way, Crimson Desert is almost more like the ‘70s TV show Kung-Fu than it is single-player World of Warcraft.
I should also mention that the complex and gratifying skill system allows you to focus on unarmed combat and grappling, if you’d like. So I can as easily take a guard out with a clothesline or body slam as I can a slash of my sword. I find it most enjoyable, though, combining the two. Using Damaine’s rapier to shank shank shank someone, and then follow that up with a spinning scissors throw, Captain America shield toss, and then maybe a shot from her gun. Did I mention she has a gun? She has a black powder gun. Poor Kliff has a bow, but he can get poisoned arrows.
There’s also a form of magic, which, frankly, I’m just starting to get a handle on. It’s use is required for some of the puzzles, and I believe for the BIG overarching story, but as I’ve noted, I’ve been too distracted.
A typical gameplay session for me usually starts with me thinking, ‘I’m going to turn off the music, crank up the sound effects, and quietly ride my horse through the woods to see what I find.’
Flash cut ten minutes later to me chasing a robber on foot, only to turn around and see two of his buddies attacking my horse “Wait, what? Why are they attacking my horse? I’m right here! Those fuckers! “
Then I spend 15 minutes chasing the other two down on foot because my poor horse needs a good rest. Usually, this involves a lot of cussing and some dirty looks from my wife, who only hears my reactions to what’s happening on the machine between my hands.
Once that’s done, I decide to proceed on foot, maybe identifying the occasional raccoon, or petting a dog, or seeing if I can climb onto a wild horse when it walks by.
There’s a whole bounty system built into the game that activates when you kill and steal. It’s by region, but is incredibly hard to remove aside from essentially turning yourself in and paying the bounty they put on your head.
You can find this and other details out about the game in its built-in guides, which also has a lot of mysteries to be discovered. For instance, I’ve only tried one (arm wrestling) of the 15 or so minigames and only discovered two of the 100 types of special equipment. One of those is a knuckledrill which is designed for mining but can make a mess of an enemy. The other is a mask, which you need if you want to do some robbin and stealin, stealin and robbin.
There’s a lot I haven’t really done much with, like camp management, which lets you build out your own base and even decorate it, recruiting more members of the Greymanes to play as, heck, I’ve only scratched the surface of the lifeskills like cooking, logging, and mining.
One thing I have done though, is travel as far as possible to the east and west of the game’s massive map. I sent Kliff east and Damaine west.
Damaine’s journey was relatively routine, though the further west she went the higher she climbed and the colder it got, to the point that her endurance lessened, her recovery slowed and frost began to tinge the edges of the screen.
Eventually she found herself in a high forest framed by mountains that warned her not to proceed. It was unclear if this was the permanent western edge of the map or something that was locked because of her low level and the incomplete quests.
Kliff discovered just how bizarre the game gets and how unusual the enemies become. He managed to skirt much of the massive, deadly enemies by riding horseback through forests, around castles, and—once—along what appeared to be a wooden train trestle that cut high above warring factions.
When he finally got to the edge of the map, I found a tiny island a swim’s distance from the shore. It was populated only by sea birds, so I scrambled Kliff to the edge and then looked out at what appeared to be an endless ocean.
There is still so much undiscovered, unexplored between those two edges of the maps, like circuses, ruins, magic, and lost friends.
I’m sure I’ll eventually play through the quests, but right now I’m too curious about all the details, little and big, stuffed into this grand experience.
And who knows, maybe when I’m done traveling in the real world, I’ll try my hand at a bit of virtual exploration on my desktop. Right now, though, it doesn’t feel like a requirement to me.
Elsewhere
Voice actors discuss what it takes to bring a grand adventure like Crimson Desert to life
Crimson Desert guide: How to manage your Greymane camp and recruits
Crimson Desert guide: Everything you need to know about crafting and cooking