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Crimson Desert is the biggest gaming release of the week, and Pokémon Pokopia aside, the biggest launch in March.
The game from the South Korean developer Pearl Abyss is a massive open-world RPG that's said to be incredibly complex and vast, with claims that the immersive world is twice the size of Rockstar's magnum opus, Red Dead Redemption 2.
I absolutely love vast open-world video games with endless places to explore, gear to find, and side quests to complete, but truthfully, there are so many of these games that I'm sure many of even the most involved gamers haven't played them all.
I love video games, and spend most of my free time testing the latest and greatest across all of the main console families. Whether it's playing Ghost of Yotei on my PS5 Pro, exploring Pokopia on Nintendo Switch 2, or exploring the vast world of Red Dead Redemption 2 on my gaming PC, there isn't a major release I haven't tried.
What is Crimson Desert?
Now and then, a game pops up that really grabs your attention. That was me with Crimson Desert when it was initially revealed at The Game Awards in 2020, and I haven’t really stopped thinking about it since.
Crimson Desert is the next game from Pearl Abyss, best known for Black Desert Online, but instead of another sprawling MMO, this is a single-player, open-world action RPG set in the war-torn continent of Pywel. You play as Kliff, a mercenary trying to hold things together in a world that very much isn’t.
What’s grabbed my attention most from the gameplay videos is just the way it looks to offer an immersive 100-hour-plus experience across multiple genres. There’s a grounded, slightly messy realism that reminds me more of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, combat looks scrappy and heavy, and the sky islands remind me of one of my favorite games of all time: Tears of the Kingdom.
It also just looks… ridiculous, in a good way. The in-house engine is doing some serious work, with dynamic weather, dense environments, and the kind of visual detail that is seriously going to pop on high-end hardware like a PS5 Pro or a 50-series Nvidia graphics card.
I’m trying not to get too carried away, especially considering early impressions have said it's an overwhelming experience from the get-go. But Crimson Desert has that rare thing where it doesn’t just look impressive, it looks interesting. And that’s what’s got me hooked.
That said, the list above highlights some of the best video games of all time, and while I'm hopeful that Crimson Desert is excellent, it will have to be better than anyone could ever expect for it to come close to some of the titans listed above.
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