OK, now from someone who doesn't buy every fucking game that comes down the pipe, doesn't do pre-orders, and doesn't give a fuck if there's a 480p asset next to a 4K monster can or what the fuck ever all of these faggots are sniveling about. Any review or estimations by me are suspect since I started out with games like Blue Meanies, B1 Nuclear Bomber, and Defender. I played and enjoyed O.G.R.E., Autoduel, and the original Bard's Tale games (you know, the ones where it took 20 minutes for combat to resolve as you were attacked by literally thousands of enemies). So I have a high tolerance for some shit and a low tolerance for other shit. I didn't like Dark Souls or the new Dooms because I'm old and don't have good twitch nerves any more.
The word slop has lost all meaning when someone said that people only like something because it's good, making it basic bitch qualityslop.
And it isn't surprising that people got what they want and they snivel. "I want games to stop holding my hand!" <OK, here> "OH EM GEE, WHY DIDN'T THEY TELL ME!"
Fuck off.
So, here you go:
First thing: The only reused asset I spotted, because I've never played any of their other games, is the fucking leather frame is from Skyrim, of course, it's also historically accurate asset, so eat shit Bethesda.
Second thing: I don't give a fuck about stupid ass paintings on the walls being AI. In a way, it's funnier, considering how much of the art back then was: "Oh, yeah, I totally know what a lion looks like. Kinda like goat, right?"
OK, specs.
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16-Core Processor AM4; 128 GB DDR 4 (128 GB usable); AMD Radeon 9060XT; Win-11 basically out of the box, Ultrawide 2K monitor, 19" LCD 2K side monitor
Legitimate version of Crimson Desert, Deluxe Edition
All 6 Twitch Drops
18 hours in, restarted at the halfway point, so basically nine hours in. Mid-Chapter III.
Performance: I didn't once stutter playing Murder Simulator in the Quarry when I fought my way through it.
Previous games like this that I've played: Red Dead Redemption 2, Grand Theft Auto 2, Skyrim, Fallout 3+ series.
First impressions:
Edit: The patch changed the controls. Note it added (J)ournal, (I)nventory and other hotkeys.
There are guides that you should look at. I mean, seriously. Go to "Others" and "Guides" and check it out. Having trouble getting an ability to work, missed something, or forgot something, it's got you covered.
Being able to change the font size of the subtitles was a lifesaver for me.
Again, all stuff that is time consuming to find and figure out. Some stuff takes practice.
Like I missed that you could be sprinting, hit "C" and slide. Apparently you can do it on your horse, which is funnier than shit as lay the horse down on its side and slide around the corner. "MULTI-HOOF DRIFTING!"
You're gonna need to learn how to read. I suspect if you don't mind having a paper keybind map around your keyboard, you'll do great. The keybinds are weird, but every fucking game wants to reinvent the fucking wheel so it's just learning ANOTHER.
ONE THING I HAVENT'T SEEN MENTIONED!!!!! When you are at a seller and you see something has a question mark and a black box on it, say Water from a cook, move the selection box to cover it. You will learn about it in a few seconds. This can be vital. And you have to read recipes. If it isn't sparkling blue either move it around with the mouse or you already know it if the text pops up. Grabbing things with ??? lets you understand them and the stats go into the guides.
The initial fight was fun. I didn't mind the walk-through. I thought it was a big deal that the Black Bear leader fucks your ass so quick and hucks you into the water. Personally, I think the game would have been well served by a James Bond water opening right there, but it's a gook game, so...
The fact you just hold LShft and your character follows someone who you're supposed to follow is fucking great.
When I got to the first section a guy says "The town is bigger than you might think" and he's right. It's a sprawling village.
On that: Color. Color everywhere.
Where you go at first.
The trail down by the mill. These guys are just chilling.
The farms outside the main town.
Town square.
The map is huge. That's all I've explored and there's more map if you move around. Now you know how much I've seen of the game.
OK, with that out of the way.
Visually it's way up there, but then I'm not trying to run the game with max specs on a computer I budget built in 2015. I could upgrade, but mostly CPU and RAM. I fought at max settings in a place called The Quarry, which has hundreds of slave workers, moving parts, explosive barrels (those were a nasty surprise), and bad guys, and didn't chug.
When people say there's not hand holding, that's not really true. The game walks you through pertinent skills and abilities. It uses different colored stone for mineral and gem veins. You have a lantern on your belt that starts glimmering if you're near something interesting.
Arrows don't do shit though. I've put 3-6 arrows into a bad guy and had them keep right on coming. BUT, I've never upgraded my bow skills or my bow, so that may very well be on me. It might be like bitching that the bow you start Skyrim with doesn't seem to work worth a dam.
There's no real crouch to turn invisible, sadly. I kind of wanted to do a stealth build, instead I'm a "Run around like a spastic faggot and beat people to death with my cool WWE moves!" build.
The story: It' bare-ass simple. Get revenge on fat Black Bear dude and restore the Greymanes. That's it so far.
And you know what? I'm fucking fine with it. Every time video game developers try to do more than copy Dick & Jane we get masturbatory bullshit like Bioshock Infinite or "The Old West According to Modern Day SanFran Values" or "WHO THE FUCK IS SHAUN?"
As for his voice? I'm fine there too. It's a fucking Korean game, I'm just glad he doesn't sound like a 1950's Calgone commercial. "Me so solly! Achoo achoo!" or what the fuck ever. Does he sound bored like he doesn't give a shit? Yes. Are these people asking him to do inane shit he doesn't give a shit about? Also yes. He does show some emotion with his friends, and I'm fine with that. It comes across as reserved and stoic instead of emotionally incontinent.
Although props to the animators of that little boy and his sheep. I've never wanted to smack a video game child so badly in my life.
The animations are smooth and fun. That little shit and his rock paper scissors game has me coming back constantly, the little asshole. I rarely see people walking into walls, gates, fences, large rocks, or pixels. There hasn't been any real animations that have taken me out of the game.
Like I said, I didn't play Black Desert, so I have no idea who Red Robe Dude and White Crow are, BUT, I liked White Crow's outfit and her voice actress. I like her delivering messages with a white crow rather than appearing to fuck up my game.
The combat is bare ass simple. Hold down the attack buttons so you aren't running Cookie Clicker. Cntrl to block, later Alt to dash dodge, middle button to dash nature punch. Caps Lock to lock onto targets. Once you get into the pattern and get used to caps locking your next target you can get combat to flow nice and smooth like one of the early Batman games before that Arkham City trash. I haven't gotten any of the cooler stuff like a GET OVER HERE! attack, I'm saving up my upgrades.
Now, I maxed out my sword main skill then my hand to hand skills because it's funny to run up on someone and clothesline them and just plain fuck them straight into the dirt.
The sound is good and meaty. Impacts sound like impacts. The ambient sounds are amazing. Standing in the Reed Field waiting for the Reed Killer the ambient sound and the waving reeds really sold it. The eastern imagery really flowed through on that fight and I enjoyed it. There's been more than a few times I've had a fight against 6-8 dudes in a field of flowers.
Now, you can befriend cats and dogs. I'm still working on it, but I only have the Greymane's camp, not Joe Desert's house, so I can't do what I've seen online. I did the "open in another tab" for my twitch drops, but I did catch someone that had something I'll have to do. They had their dog and their cat dressed up in medieval armor. I mean, come on, who doesn't want to adventure with a dalmatian dressed in colorful clothing with a helmet? And apparently the dog runs around and gathers up stuff you might miss from combat.
The main quest isn't intrusive, because, honestly, I don't care. Like Fallout, Skyrim, RDR2, and GTAV, you don't have to get suck on the main quest. I've been running around exploring. The white cliffs everywhere are nice. The exploration is easy on the eyes.
You get a horse right out of the gate. I got armor with the deluxe pack, and then with the Twitch drops, so my horse looks betters than yours, poorfag. You can also catch horses. I've caught two. You run up on them button mashing E. You jump on the horse, then you have to rotate the mouse so your POV is toward the tail and use the correct ASWD key to move toward the tail. Once you max out the meter and it gets tired, you can register and keep it right there, register it and send it to your stable, or release it. I caught a black one that was more difficult than the other one by far, and I kept it because it looks nice. (I've seen people say the horse's in this don't look as good as the ones in RDR2 or Skyrim (with mods), but they look like fucking horses, their manes and tails have physics, and they don't turn into Cthulhu beasts)
The NPC's are colorful, dressed nicely, and believable for medieval peasantry in a somewhat rich area. Everyone's clean and their clothing is well maintained. No brown shit filter over it, which is a relief. They often interact with one another, but only in pre-scripted, no generative, but maybe we aren't really there yet too far. No "drop a diamond and watch the whole village kill each other" of Skyrim, and a lot of 'stand in one place no matter what time of day' in some areas. (Town starting area after your first horsey ride suffers from this)
Now, leveling up your abilities, is when you're going to have to pick carefully at first. I went sword and fist fighting. It's fun just power bombing some fucker off the ledge. There's a lot of abilities and it's in the typical 3 line off the center skill web. Pretty basic. You can tweak to your play style like I did.
Plus, people have said there's no penalty for losing. I don't know what they want. Maybe for a dev to kick in the door and punch them in the balls? If you have the little rolly-polly bugs, you can get back up with 30% of your health (Spam F3 to eat something while the animation is playing so you have 100% by the time you stand up), you can retry the fight if it's a boss fight, or you can go back to a save or just quit that fight (again, boss fight only). No penalty? I guess loading from your last autosave isn't a penalty, in which case, shut the fuck up, that's been standard for like 30 fucking years.
I took an NPC with me to the Quarry and she got downed in like 10 seconds so I fought the whole fight without her. NPC's are usually universally useless, so no surprise there. Like you can give Piper fucking combat armor and a fucking mini nuke and she'll get downed by a blind raider with a pipe gun and whine for help. I'm never impressed by NPCs so I usually leave them home unless people really lean into them. I didn't really like help even in games like Saints Row, meaning I had to play again and see the interactions. The best NPC I've ever seen was Elizabeth from Bioshock Infinite, the only good thing about that moralizing shit-heap of a game. And no, I didn't play The Last of Us because I don't own a Playstation.
That didn't stop me from laughing my ass off at this though.
"I don't have telekinesis, JOEL!" (the voice actress sold with with the snideness in the JOEL!"
As I mentioned earlier, NPC's don't just stand there during conversation, they move around, which is nice. Too many games just have them stand there because it's easier than scripting movement.
OK, so we're basically at my rating:
Graphics: Solid 9/10
so far. (Caught a few shitty assets)
Ambient Sound: 9/10. (Good, solid, immersive, no ear-raping volume changes. Dogs can be annoying barking in packs)
Voice Acting: 5/10 who gives shit. (Yeah, big time room for improvement. I know it's a gook game, but that doesn't change it except for maybe your consideration)
Animations: 8/10. A few clitches or clumsy looking things here and there. Too many animations don't seem to affect other NPC's.
Weapon variance: 3/10. Not much, but historically there really wasn't. Plus, it looks like you could fight with these weapons. Of course, I'm not far in.
Boss variance: N/A. I have only fought 2 bosses, no real opinion beyond "Strip away visuals its the same attack" I noted.
Power Variation: N/A. I'm not that far into the game.
Replayability: 9/10. I actually caught more the second time and restarting before doing The Quarry made the whole beginning even more fun. A weird thing for a game
Time Gobbler: 10/10. This game is one that wants your time. I easily lost time as I didn't know there was fast travel before the streamer I was watching mentioned it. Here's a hint: Don't use it. Wander around.
Map Design: N/A. I haven't seen enough, but what's I've seen is fucking amazing.
NPCs: 3/10. Not really many to actually interact with, but they aren't insufferable TikTok CA Valley Values faggots, so that helps
Fun Short Term: 2/10. If you're looking to jump in and be superman and have everything, you aren't going to like this. This is a novel, not a comic book, and it has a novel's problems with pacing and tightness. But it's not a modern Marvel Chick Tract.
Long Term: 6/10. We'll see how it grows on me. I'm the guy with like 2500 hours in Fallout 4.
Modding Support: 0/10. Nothing but graphics reshades yet
Decision: If you can spare the scratch and are willing to learn the controls and the world, buy it. If you aren't, wait for a sale or get it for free.
Hope that helps.
(Edit: Added a few screenshots I meant to for clarity)