After over 150 hours with Crimson Desert, it still makes no damn sense—compels me though

What is Crimson Desert? Genuinely, that's not rhetorical. After 150 hours galavanting across the continent of Pywel—though, in truth, mostly the first region of Hernand—I still find myself struggling to frame the game in my mind. Despite its colossal size and seemingly endless array of systems, Crimson Desert isn't an MMO. But neither is it an RPG, which its dev, Pearl Abyss, has been quite adamant about.

In some ways it falls into that slightly abrasive and non-descript action game category which Dragon's Dogma 2 inhabits—the kind of game that likes to mess with fast travel and introduce an oddball save system for shits and giggles. But here's the thing, since launch Pearl Abyss has been frantically sanding off many of the sharp corners Crimson Desert had.

Originally, there was no item storage—you had to complete quests to increase your inventory. There was no fast travel to cities (and fewer fast travel points overall), including a crazy elaborate puzzle you had to complete to unlock fast travel to your camp. The game featured the most diabolical system for opening locked doors I've ever seen. These are just a few examples of intentional design decisions that Pearl Abyss turned its back on post-launch.

Ultimately, though, the result is a much softer and smoother game that players are gravitating towards. Neither an MMO nor an RPG, but a bit of both—a singleplayer experience inhabiting the world of an MMO, flush with endless systems, locales, and secrets to experience and discover. As our reviewer, Mollie, aptly points out, Crimson Desert is best enjoyed as a slow burn.

If I can impress one thing upon you, let it be that Crimson Desert is potentially the biggest game ever made. Obviously, "big" can mean a lot of different things in this context, but purely in world terms, it's bonkers huge. At the time of writing, I'm among 7.5% of players (on Steam, at least) who've completed Chapter 7 of the story, the point at which you officially leave the game's first two regions and gravitate towards Demeniss, Deleysia, and the Crimson Desert itself.

That's right, after 150 hours, I've only primarily experienced two out of five of the game's regions—I feel like that's almost unheard of. Granted, I did basically everything in Hernand and was drawn down the adventuring rabbit hole many a time by strange puzzles or random bosses, but that's the best way to play Crimson Desert. The story is lackluster and mainly acts as a vehicle for introducing the game's many systems. With the exception of your fun Greymane comrades, the main character, Kliff, may as well be called John Crimson Desert.

But despite his limited vocabulary of "Yes", "No", and "Praise the ancestors", I find myself fond of Kliff in a similar way to Arthur Morgan. He's a straight-faced Scottish quest-bot who instinctively knows he has to walk into that tavern other there and win three rounds of arm wrestling to progress the universe's grand plan. The kind of character who picks up a goat and cradles it like a baby because he has to "learn" what it is. Who doesn't bat an eyelid when you teleport him to a puzzle realm in the sky and tell him to base jump back to the ground. Kliff is a weird protagonist, but frankly, it's a weird game.

There are two other characters you play as, too, even if Crimson Desert does make it clear that this is Kliff's story. Each has their own elaborate skill tree and unique little quirks, like how Oongka the Orc can use an arm cannon and has no glider, so you can research and unlock a jetpack for him instead. Crimson Desert is crammed full of MMO nonsense like that—how you can unlock a hot air balloon as a mount, or a wolf, or a bear, or even a mech suit.

You can dress up your pets in armor (because why not?), manage your camp, trade, gamble, invest, farm, steal livestock, or simply run around exploring until you find a pair of boots that let you waterski. It's no wonder players haven't been progressing far into the main story when there are whole regions' worth of sidequests, puzzles, and bosses to slowly digest. Crimson Desert is at its peak when you follow that flow.

Sure, it's got its problems, too—the control scheme on mouse and keyboard, though improved, is quite frustrating at times, and some aspects of it are straight-up bugged, like how the trade system doesn't function properly, or you're unable to call your hot air balloon mount after you construct one. I think many of those bugs are symptomatic of the system bloat that the game seemed intent on, though.

The Crimson Desert we got to play before launch is in many ways unrecognisable from the current game, and it just goes to show how speedy Pearl Abyss has been in implementing feedback and softening its most frustrating aspects or flawed design decisions. What you're left with is undergoing a bit of an identity crisis, sure, but it's also one of the biggest and most compelling open-world games I've played.