Crimson Desert

 Organizing thoughts on a video game somehow feels more healthy than dwelling on other matters of late, so...

I've been playing Crimson Desert for a bit. It's good, but certainly not the next revolutionary game some people were making it out to be.

Many people have said it's a "jack of all trades" game, which is fairly accurate. There are a ton of systems - crafting, refining, socketing, fishing, gathering, cooking, reputation, theft, recruiting, dispatch missions... and many more. The combat is competent and may have potential to be a little better than that, but it hasn't clicked with me to that point and it definitely doesn't feel as solid and deliberate as something like Elden Ring. The map is expansive, with a pretty good variety of enemies and biomes. I have found some enjoyment in just exploring. So there is a lot in the game and some of it has notable depth.

It does lack in some areas, though.

I feel bad for Kliff's voice actor, who went on record saying he was struggling to add personality to a character where the script really wasn't written with it. Kliff comes across in scene with the Greymanes as a friend everyone knows and looks up to, but little more than that. And with others, he's just someone who agrees to help because... I guess he's a good guy. There really seems no depth or motivation, it's just sort of assumed if someone asks him to do something, he will.

Honestly, the entire lore/story comes across similarly - as if it's just happening to happen. I'm something like eight chapters and dozens of hours in with very little sense of the world. There are several races around and other than character model, there seems no difference. I guess the society is very cosmopolitan? There's a village of children (or a child-like race?) in a forest that seem to be able to teleport. Okay. And there and cat people there as well. Magic seems rare, but no one remarks when someone vanishes or starts throwing around fire and lightning. So maybe it's actually common? There's this overriding sense of such elements being inserted without being given any consideration of context.

I find the idea of "the Abyss" intriguing in that it's made up of some tech-ish floating islands in the sky. But it's unclear how aware most people are of it or if it's considered some sort of underworld/afterlife. Somehow Kliff ends up there after being left for dead and he can go there and return while a later quest shows that normal people cannot generally do so. What makes him different? I don't know yet and don't have much expectation it'll be explained.

And that comes into mechanics too, sometimes. There are quests along the way that teach some mechanics, but there are some thing you can do that never seem to be touched on. And puzzles? I've walked up to several puzzles only to have to look up someone else's solution. My reaction has never been "duh, why didn't I try that?" It's always "how the heck was I supposed to know I could even do X to interact with the puzzle in that way?" It's like when a DM puts a puzzle in a dungeon that is simple only if the players happen to be thinking in the exact same way as the DM without the same context.

Items also lack much depth. There are several types of weapons, but each type has only slight variations. Any given one handed sword can be refined to the maximum will have something like 34 attack or 30 attack and a couple points in either crit rate or attack speed. That's it - three slight variations of stats. Otherwise, the differences are cosmetic. That's a mixed blessing as you don't have to hunt down the special "best" items, but it also means there are really no special "best" items to strive for.

The narrative can provide some motivation to move forward, and I have seen some story threads progressing. But it lacks impact with the missing character depth and setting context.

There are a lot of friction points, and I can see how some people can dive in to all the myriad systems while others bounce off the game entirely. For me, it's a fine way to burn time in return for some entertainment, but it's a long way from any sort of univeral recommendation or "best game of the year."