Crimson Desert Preview: Challenging combat with an unparalleled technical quality

It may not be the most buzzed-about project so far of all those coming in the 2025 timeframe, but I'm sure many of you will remember with a good memory that extensive, almost hour-long gameplay that Pearl Abyss showed us about Crimson Desert, their open-world action title set in the same universe as the MMO Black Desert, a couple of months ago. In that demo we were able to see how the title already shows impressive technical power, with crisp, incredibly detailed environments so well made that it's hard to think of an open-world game already released that can serve as a real comparison. It also showed us its movement, exploration and RPG systems, which gives us some idea of what to expect when it (presumably) arrives in 2025.

But there was one element that wasn't so clear in this stream that may be definitive in forming the final idea before release, and that's its combat system. Is it Soulslike? Is it a hack 'n slash? Or perhaps more of an action title, like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt? Well, the easy answer is that it's a bit of all of them, and the long answer is that in the end, it doesn't quite fit any of those labels, and we can consider it almost unique. And having played an hour-long demo focused exclusively on its fighting, I have high hopes that this could be one of the sleeper surprises for next year. In fact, you can follow the first part of my play session yourself below, where save for a few moments of briefly marvelling at the most detailed cliff face scenery I've ever seen in a video game, everything else was sword and shield wielding.

After a fairly extensive presentation on the controls and each of the four bosses we encountered in the demo, I decided to start with the one that was the easiest of them, according to the developers accompanying us in the play session. This way I could familiarise myself with the controls, and this is also where you notice differences with the genres or titles I mentioned before. For while the tutorial area was dark, chaotic and scripted, the fight against the Staglord was quite an eye-opening trial by fire. He's not a difficult or demanding opponent, when you're a few hours into the game and already have some muscle memory about certain actions or skills. But in my case, the learning curve was all about blood and gore. I was so focused on hitting and dodging (that's from the 101 Souls class) that I didn't pay attention to the special abilities Kliff, our protagonist, offers. He didn't even manage to block the well-anticipated and charging attacks of the enemy.

It was all because I was forgetting the timing. In Crimson Desert, every action in combat, from drawing a weapon to consuming a heal, takes time. Precious time for which the AI won't give you an extra moment. You'll see in my game that I endlessly consume items that heal health, and others that heal that green leaf-shaped gauge on the lower left corner, which marks the energy, stamina, or charge, if you want to call it that, of skills. It wasn't until I accidentally pressed R3 on my DualSense in front of the Staglord that I managed to stun him enough to string together a few heavy hits. But I did, and his life bar started to drop. And I started to really feel like I was in the game.

It's hard to get a sense of what it will feel like in the final game, as the developers in the room acknowledged that difficulty balance was one of the most sensitive areas they were working on. In this particular demo they had lowered the bar slightly from what folks were able to try at Gamescom 2024 and, for me at least, I think it's a close approximation of what the final version should be. I'm not the most skilled player, but I'm a persevering one, and once I got over my mental barrier with the first boss, the other three, in order of difficulty, fell much more quickly.

The Reed Devil was a kind of ninja, fast and lethal, who took advantage of the tall grass in the confined combat area to camouflage himself. This use of environmental elements, either by enemies or by the player himself, is also very well integrated. If you have a cliff nearby, you can give an enemy a "Spartan" kick and send them flying. Likewise, if a blow sends you over a flaming log or bonfire, you're likely to be burnt to a crisp in less time than it takes to find a cure in the quick action menu. Again, it's not about inventing the wheel, but it is about adding more layers to a system to make it grow so that as a player you can exploit it to your heart's content. What fun would a victory be if you don't feel truly immersed in the fight?

The case of Hexe Marie, a witch who raises an army of minions made of materials from the battle arena, was a little different. The sorceress took advantage of the distraction with the large groups of enemies to charge up her devastating spells, and it was where I felt that the group combat still needed a bit more work. The AI would attack relentlessly, cutting off the animation of getting up from the ground, and making it difficult to reposition to face them. Also, the 'hit box' doesn't seem to be clear if enemies are close together, sometimes hitting two at a time, sometimes just one. But the moment you reduce their numbers sufficiently, mastering the tempo of the parry, and get close to her, the tactic of the stun and chaining heavy attacks quickly accounted for her.

The Queen Stoneback Crab is the trickiest boss in the demo, but not necessarily because of the complexity of defeating her. She's a huge, slow enemy, and it's easy to perch on her back and damage her vitals like Shadow of the Colossus. No, the tricky bit was taking it down with the final combo, where Kliff swings like Spider-Man with a web to reach the creature's highest vent and defeat it in one blow. The control system required pressing and releasing buttons in a sequence that was not very "organic" and different from what the other bosses had shown me in the demo, so the timer ran out before I could land that final blow and make my victory total.

I still have some doubts, especially about the abuse of consumables and how the process of buying or crafting them in the normal game loop will work, as they were infinite here. There's still time to revise the control mapping for certain skills, and I'm sure that, thanks to the feedback that the media session gave to Pearl Abyss, there will be some more difficulty balancing before 1.0. But what I can say so far is that I see Pearl Abyss as having a winning action formula here to succeed with a very broad spectrum of players. The demo achieves that learning/victory/reward feeling that action games should strive for really well, and I hope that there will soon be further opportunities to explore this title with all its systems hooked up, and a firm release date.