Crimson Desert players have taken to the internet to declare that Pearl Abyss’ first major dedicated single-player outing has one of the worst early player experiences in recent memory. A bespoke offshoot of the developer’s previous MMORPG title Black Desert, Crimson Desert has made a name for itself by being a competent sandbox action game with a previously unexplored Breath of the Wild-esque gameplay loop, although it’s far from perfect.
Crimson Desert has sold very well already, with Pearl Abyss promising to deliver plenty of improvements as time goes on. Even without further patching and content releases, it’s an extremely content-heavy game that offers dozens of hours of varied gameplay. The trouble is that the first five or six of those hours are a dreadful slog that fails to establish a meaningful connection with the protagonist, Kliff, and insists on corralling the player from one mini-game to another. While Crimson Desert has drawn plenty of comparisons to Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Witcher 3, most players still agree that its player onboarding experience is astonishingly bad.
Crimson Desert Exec Responds to Control Complaints
Crimson Desert players have been vocal about its unorthodox control system, but this Pearl Abyss exec says it’s worth the learning curve.
Players Agree That Crimson Desert Has an Awful Intro, Calling It a ‘Terrible Dud’
“The first two chapters [of Crimson Desert] were a terrible dud that almost made me drop the game completely,” said CYDLopez on Reddit, adding that they “struggle to think of a worse intro to a game.” This kind of criticism wouldn’t be massively surprising if it didn’t get almost unanimous agreement from other players on the game’s biggest subreddit, leading to hundreds of comments and thousands of upvotes’ worth of attention. Coincidentally, this particular criticism made for a large chunk of Crimson Desert‘s initially mixed Steam reviews, though that has since stabilized for a substantially more positive overall rating.
In the broadest strokes possible, Crimson Desert‘s intro consists of the protagonist Kliff and his warrior clan getting horrifically slaughtered, Kliff getting revived by strange archeo-tech with nary an explanation in sight, and then proceeding to arm wrestle and sweep chimneys for about six hours before moving on with the actual story. It’s not the most annoying problem the game has had, as that title has to go to Crimson Desert‘s impossible to rebind control scheme, but it’s not one that could be resolved so easily either. As players have mentioned in the Reddit thread, Pearl Abyss has created an MMO-coded intro for a dedicated solo experience, and it feels extremely jarring in practice.
Crimson Desert‘s biggest strength is the fact that it’s far more sandboxy and free-form than most other games, whether RPG or action-adventure. As an example, using trees as catapults in Crimson Desert is a perfectly valid combat and traversal strategy, putting it more in line with the recent open-world Zelda games than most anything else. Its slow-burn opening is obviously a huge pain point even for those that have stuck around with it, however, which means Pearl Abyss has simply missed the mark on this front. There’s a curious discrepancy between Crimson Desert‘s bespoke elements, like its focus on the often maligned story and pre-made non-customizable characters, and its actual sandbox nature, which some have already brought up.
It’s unclear whether Pearl Abyss may choose to do something about the game’s crummy starting hours, however. Once players push past the tutorial sections, Crimson Desert opens up to an impressive degree, so this is a somewhat forgivable offense. There are bigger fish to fry for Pearl Abyss for sure, like Crimson Desert‘s strange lack of permanent mounts. Given the nature of the game, the studio is likely to focus on systemic, gameplay-defining changes like these in patching efforts, and it’s entirely possible that the intro will stay as-is.
- Released
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March 19, 2026
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood, Drug Reference, Intense Violence, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
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Pearl Abyss
- Publisher(s)
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Pearl Abyss
