Open-world hit with compromises: Crimson Desert in review

After our hands-on session, we can say that Crimson Desert, from the relatively unknown studio Pearl Abyss, has several clear strengths, but also its share of weaknesses. On the plus side, the standout features are the gigantic game world—assuming you enjoy open worlds—and, above all, the successful combat system. The latter proves to be highly dynamic, fast-paced, and stylishly presented. The title also scores points outside of combat with its attractive animations.

We were less impressed by the mouse-and-keyboard controls, which require some time to get used to. While the controls are not a complete failure, in many areas they do not feel fully thought through, as they sometimes seem overloaded and not especially intuitive, with some odd key bindings as well. In our view, the developers went a bit too far with the number of features and gameplay mechanics, resulting in an unnecessarily high level of complexity.

Technically, the game makes a fairly good impression so soon after release, provided you can overlook minor issues such as somewhat long load times and pop-in affecting objects and characters. At medium settings or higher, the engine renders very attractive landscapes as well as settlements and towns. Thanks in no small part to the dense vegetation—which at times moves a bit too quickly—and the many effects, the game world comes across as extremely detailed and lively. Overall, the title reminded us of a mix of Kingdom Come Deliverance and Dragon's Dogma, with various other influences and borrowed elements mixed in as well, although the end result still feels very distinct.

The game also deserves credit for its extensive graphics menu, which is split across two tabs. The Video options allow you to change not only the resolution, but also upscaling, among other settings. While Crimson Desert does not support XeSS, it does include FSR 3.1 as well as DLSS 4.0 and DLSS 4.5. As expected from a current game, the title also supports Frame Generation. Ray Reconstruction can also be enabled if desired, resulting in even more attractive and believable lighting (see the screenshots below).

Ray tracing, which is found in the Graphics options, is enabled starting with the Medium preset. Speaking of presets, the developers have included six of them, ranging from Minimum to Cinematic. Anyone who prefers to fine-tune the quality settings manually can also do so in the Graphics menu. One practical feature is the built-in VRAM indicator, which helps estimate video memory requirements. Changes to the settings do not require a restart.

Our benchmark sequence begins after the tutorial fight in the dark forest, once you reach the open world (save point: New Journey; area: Hernandian Territory or Hernand Town). As shown in the video, we follow a set route with the main character for just under 40 seconds. Performance is recorded using the CapFrameX tool.

Given the level of visual quality on offer, the system requirements are justified and more than reasonable. With a current mid-range GPU on the level of the GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop, even maximum settings are playable smoothly at 1,920 x 1,080 pixels.

At 2,560 x 1,440 with the Cinematic preset, a mobile RTX 5060 still clears the 40 fps mark.

As with the recently tested Death Stranding 2, a high-end chip is only necessary for 4K if upscaling is not used. At 3,840 x 2,160 with maximum details, the game is already quite playable on a GeForce RTX 5080 Laptop. The results with DLSS enabled - in our case, using the Balanced preset - can be found in the table.

Frame Generation was, of course, tested as well. Using Nvidia’s current top notebook GPU, the RTX 5090 Laptop, as an example, even MFGx2 already delivers a noticeable performance boost. With MFGx4, the frame rate is nearly three times higher than with DLSS alone.

Even if Crimson Desert is certainly not a perfect game—its controls are a case in point—the ambitious title runs surprisingly well so soon after release. It also often looks stunning thanks to its enormous draw distance and high level of detail, especially since the game world feels very lively.

Because gaming benchmarks are very time-consuming and are sometimes delayed by activation restrictions, we can only present a limited number of results at the time of publication. Additional GPU results will follow.