I’ve always found the use of the word “addictive” in gaming discussions to be pretty interesting, because for the most part, it’s a word very scarcely used in any sort of positive context in society. When people talk about addiction, it’s usually related to drugs of some sort, or perhaps gambling. You might even see it used to discuss a shopping or sex addiction. I occasionally hear people say that certain sweet treats are “addictive,” but the broader context of that statement is that treats are bad to eat and that this person wants to rein in their consumption of them.
I also think non-gamers can throw the word “addiction” around when it comes to the gaming space in a purely negative light. People who play a lot of video games are “addicted” in the eyes of many outsiders, and those people probably view gamers in the same way that South Park portrayed obsessive players of World of Warcraft all those years ago.
Yet, within the gaming space, it is almost an entirely positive word. If a game like Balatro is described as “addictive,” most gamers will understand that this means it will be a hard game to put down. It is also understood that if a game is hard to put down, it’s because it’s a really good game. We all game for a variety of reasons, but one of its biggest utilities is as a way to pass pretty large amounts of time. So, a game that we want to keep going back to is a pretty much completely positive thing.
While I use the word “addictive” on occasion, I tend to avoid it on the whole. I know that everyone understands what the word means within a gaming context, but I’ve known people who have been addicted to alcohol and gambling in the past, and I can’t help but hesitate a bit before I use it in any sort of positive context. It always feels so off to use that word in a positive way.
I’ve thought about the word “addictive” in the gaming space a lot recently, as I’ve been pretty damn locked into Crimson Desert for the past several weeks. This is a new open world game from Pearl Abyss, who made the Black Desert MMO game many years ago.
Whenever I’ve had a little bit of time to game in the past few weeks, I’ve almost exclusively played Crimson Desert. I’m always pretty eager to jump on, and I’ve felt next to no serious burnout from the game. Usually, after a few weeks in a massive open world, I’m ready to add some other games into my rotation, but that hadn’t happened often with this game until recently.
And yet, more often than not, my sessions with Crimson Desert aren’t all that great. In almost every session, I find myself frustrated with the mechanics, running into a poor design decision, battling various glitches, completely bored with the general quest design, or running through huge but mostly empty areas where nothing interesting happens.
Generally, if I am motivated to continue booting up a game for weeks, I know damn well that it is a great game. As someone who loves to game hop, I don’t have much patience for mediocre sessions with a game. If I’m not fully vibing with a game, I will switch to a different one. Yet, despite plenty of Crimson Desert sessions that I thought were misses, I keep signing up for another round time and time again. I’ve probably logged somewhere over 35 hours with it now.
This has made me wonder… is Crimson Desert great, or am I just somehow addicted to a mediocre game?
MMO Devs Are Literally Addicted To Making MMO Quests In Their Single Player Games (Hi, Final Fantasy 16)
My frustrations with Crimson Desert pretty much started from the moment I booted it up. The game starts with a relatively long cutscene that kicks off the story in a very clunky way. It didn’t do anything to make me care about any of the characters or really allow me to understand the broader context of this conflict that the game starts with. Absolutely nothing about the story has gotten any better since. While I wouldn’t say a good story was necessary to make Crimson Desert a great game, Pearl Abyss kind of forces me to consider it a flaw, as they hold your eyes open for their mediocre storytelling everywhere you go. Cutscenes aren’t skippable (though there is a fast-forward option), and the game constantly inserts little “walk and talk” type segments into its quests that force you to essentially experience more cutscenes while within the gameplay. It’s painful and constantly takes me out of the game. I almost inevitably start multitasking and check my phone during these segments because I’m just so out of it.
The bad story also kind of ties in with perhaps my biggest issue with Crimson Desert so far, which is the quest design. I’m spending most of my time in this game doing quests, and it’s incredibly rare for anything compelling to be going on during them. A large chunk of the quests are simple MMO-styled fetch quests, where you go from point A to point B. Obviously, this is common enough in the genre in spots, but it’s especially prevalent here, and it’s made worse by frequent “walk and talks” that kick off these sorts of quests. But honestly, even when the game tries to do more interesting things with its quests, it almost routinely fails.
I’ve encountered several quests that are essentially detective quests, where you need to figure out who the culprit is in some sort of incident. This sounds potentially exciting, but these quests mostly just involve long conversations with several people, and then recapping those conversations to someone else at the end, which solves the mystery. It’s way too long and uninteresting to be worth the time investment. I’ve also done several quests where you need to wear a disguise to get into somewhere to accomplish something. This gave me some Hitman vibes and had me excited, but once again, you really just need to acquire a costume, and then walk into the restricted area, and there really isn’t much else to do from there except go to your objective point. There are also bounty quests in the game, but the game forces you to actually drag the bounty all the way to the local prison each time you get one. This isn’t bad early on, but it’s a bit crazy when you have to do a 3500-meter horse ride through areas you’ve already explored before to drop someone off instead of just allowing an instant complete (or allowing fast travel).
I’ve had a few other issues with the quest design, most notably some oddly vague instructions for some of them. I recently had a quest where I had to befriend a dog after some preamble, but the game gave no indication of exactly how I was supposed to bring this dog along with me. I petted it multiple times, but it wasn’t enough to win it over. It turned out I also had to feed the dog quite a bit of meat by dropping it (which is a mechanic I hadn’t used in any way up to that point) to do so. This is just one small example. It’s almost inevitable that you will come across several quests that seem extraordinarily simple, and yet, you might need to Google to figure out exactly how they are supposed to go. And even when a quest is actually decent, I’m constantly battling bugs with them. Quest givers and sometimes quest targets have not been in the place where they were supposed to be several times for me.
The occasionally vague quests play right into another issue I have with the game, which is a consistent array of bad design decisions. The inventory situation is one of the chief culprits here. Luckily, the game has fixed several of its bad design decisions regarding limited inventory with patches, but sadly, many issues still remain. There is essentially no good way to find things in your inventory. The game also throws everything into your inventory to take up slots, including simple notes that you get as quest items. Equipping new items is easier from a clunky “dial” menu than from the actual inventory screen. There is a constant amount of work involved in selling things that you don’t need (like those aforementioned notes) in order to clear up space. I haven’t played a game that handles inventory the way that Crimson Desert does, and there’s a good reason for that: it’s an absolutely braindead way to go about things.
The controls are another example of the strange design decisions Pearl Abyss made here. Seemingly every action requires more work than should be necessary. Simply opening a basic treasure chest can be a process. Combat also has several button combos that are incredibly clunky, like an important move that requires you to press “RB+RT” on the Xbox controller. Luckily, over time, you start to get used to a lot of these controls. Patches have fixed a few things as well, like the game’s originally terrible sprinting controls, but several elements of the controls still feel off. The “axiom force” move that is required to move objects for a lot of puzzles is one of the worst offenders, as it is just never fun to try and align an object into the place you want it.
Those puzzles are another thing I rarely enjoy with Crimson Desert. They are often incredibly vague, much like some of the quests in the game. Oftentimes, the biggest element of the puzzles is figuring out how they work. I totally get that there are some people who will enjoy this sort of design. I imagine a Blue Prince fan might get a kick out of some of them, for example. But personally, I think they are an odd fit in such a massive open world game. This simply isn’t the kind of game where I want to spend 30 minutes on a puzzle, especially when the rewards are almost never much more than one of the “abyss cubes,” which I need at least 3 of to get a worthwhile stat increase from.
Even when I like a puzzle, the awkward mechanics I have mentioned can often hold them back. I really never enjoy using “axiom force,” which many puzzles require. One puzzle requires you to walk on a set of stones, and you can’t walk on the same stone twice as you go. The movement in the game is not nearly as precise as it would need to be for this to be any fun. I was literally walking like a snail because it’s so easy to mess up where you move. I’m close to the point of just checking a guide as soon as I reach any puzzle, as the whole process just completely kills the game’s flow for me.
Frankly, even some of the game’s strengths have their issues. I’ll talk more about the game’s open world in a second, but it really can be incredible in a variety of ways. But also, as beautiful and vast as it is, it can be insanely empty as well. There are many stretches of exploration where I will literally run into nothing interesting after ten minutes of wandering. This is pretty much inevitable with any open world this huge, but it can still be disappointing at times.
There’s Elements Of The Game I Like As Well (But, I Still Can’t Help But Shit On A Few More Things Here)
And yet, despite my occasional issues with the open world, I can’t help but fall in love a bit every time I step into it. I wouldn’t say that Crimson Desert has the “best” open world of all time, but I would say that it could be the most amazing one I’ve ever seen. The draw distances are insane, and the art direction is strong. Every single time I look out on the horizon, I see an amazing sight, and I also see opportunities. I see a castle in the distance, or a tower over there. It always feels like there are limitless possibilities. Now, that may not actually be true, but I have occasionally stumbled upon neat quests or cool moments while wandering around. There are moments while exploring where I suddenly feel like I’m playing Morrowind for the first time again, which is a game that recalibrated everything that I thought was possible from an open world video game.
There is also a very cool structure to some of the rewards that you can get from exploring. With such a massive world (I have to imagine it would take several hours to run from one side of the map to the other), fast travel is essential. In many games like this, you just automatically get fast travel points as you go. Crimson Desert actually makes you earn fast travel points, and it feels amazing every time you do so. Whenever you explore enough of the map, a big area with a question mark will pop up once you’ve uncovered the general area where a fast travel point is. From there, you have to explore that area to find it. Finding these points is one of my favorite aspects of the game, because they are important for quality of life, but they also feel very earned.
I’ve also grown to enjoy the combat in Crimson Desert the more that I play, with some exceptions. At least in the first area, Crimson Desert’s combat often feels like the developers wanted to hit a spot somewhere between Assassin’s Creed and a musou game. The general look and structure evoke Assassin’s Creed in a lot of ways, but the game throws way more enemies at you that are usually easier to take out. In Assassin’s Creed: Shadows, I might get a little nervous if I’m surrounded by 6 or 7 enemies. In Crimson Desert, I probably need to be surrounded by at least 20 enemies before I really have to “try”.
I think the basic fundamentals of Crimson Desert’s combat aren’t nearly as polished as Assassin’s Creed’s. The parry doesn’t feel quite as consistent, and the dodge roll is incredibly slow and has a slight input delay that drives me nuts. Perhaps I’m overly harsh, as I’m currently playing Nioh 3, which has very polished combat in every way, but the basic elements of Crimson Desert just don’t fully do it for me.
However, the game still gets by in the same way it does in a lot of other ways—by being bombastic and completely over the top. Unlocking the grappling moves quickly changed everything in the combat for me. These moves are straight up pro wrestling moves. There is something absolutely hilarious and satisfying about hitting random dudes in a sort of medieval setting with lariats and RKOs. It’s also really easy to string together long combos with all the moves the game has. I have hit one enemy with a suplex, then sprinted to an archer that was hitting me from afar and hit them with a lariat, before transitioning into the “stab” move to hit another nearby enemy, then a giant sword slash, and then perhaps an RKO on another enemy. The sequences are insane in the best way.
Unfortunately, I don’t think the combat works nearly as well in the boss fights, as these fights focus much more on a lot of the core mechanics of the game that I already said I view as somewhat weak. Parrying and grappling moves tend to be far less effective in these fights, so you spend a lot of time rolling around and just using more basic moves. The combat is no longer as over the top in the boss fights, which kills its biggest appeal for me.
As I’ve wandered deeper into the world, there seem to be some giant difficulty spikes, which also kind of hurts the combat for me. My first time making a foray into a new continent, I was assaulted by a few enemies with massive shields that took a lot more hits to take out. At first, this excited me, as the combat was starting to feel a bit too easy in stretches, but then a few enemies turned into 20, and suddenly, my grappling moves slowly started to feel more and more pointless, as they don’t seem to come close to taking out these enemies on their own. I also never have time to attack these enemies with a sword after RKOing them, as they get up so quickly, plus other enemies will jump in to attack. The “throw” move that I have loved doing early on is also suddenly useless, as the animation takes forever, and enemies can attack you during the process. I’m sure if I keep exploring, I’ll eventually find moves that make more sense, or perhaps once I finally upgrade my sword more I will be in a better position, but it’s unfortunate that I seem to have to completely shift the way I play the game for boss fights and tougher enemies.
I also likely need stronger gear for some of these enemies in the next continent, but unfortunately, I am slowly beginning to despise the process of leveling up in this game. This is because you don’t get significantly stronger just by questing and fighting in Crimson Desert. Doing these things will get you “abyss artifacts” which you can use in the game’s skill tree. These do genuinely help a lot early on. Getting a bit more health and stamina is key, and unlocking new moves gives you many more options in combat. For example, I unlocked all of those aforementioned grappling moves in the skill tree.
However, the skill tree doesn’t do much to make your moves stronger outside of a few limited instances (and frankly, I barely noticed it making anything stronger for the areas that claim to do so). My RKO is cool as hell, but there doesn’t seem to be any way on the skill tree to make it stronger. This means that it’s probably always going to take 4 of them to take out these big bad enemies on the next continent, which just isn’t sustainable. There are definitely more things on my skill tree that I need to unlock that will be helpful, but I’m reaching a point where the returns from it are not nearly what they were early on.
The main way to make yourself stronger in Crimson Desert once you get deeper in seems to mostly be from upgrading your equipment. Strangely, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in any armor you get for the most part. So your main way to get stronger is to upgrade your gear. You can accomplish this by gathering up specific resources. It’s actually more useful to mine ore and cut down trees than it is to fight enemies when it comes to early upgrades.
Sadly, as you continue to upgrade your gear, the resources to make them stronger get harder to find. My sword currently needs “bloodstone” in order to upgrade it, so I’m better off wandering around looking for that instead of actually doing quests and fighting foes. Honestly, this is the kind of system almost designed to make people use guides for where to find resources over actually playing the game and discovering things organically. This world is freaking huge, and I have no idea when I’m going to stumble upon more of these resources that I need.
However, I can understand that this might be a strength for plenty of people. It is genuinely crazy how many systems Crimson Desert has, and it does a great job of trying to get you to engage with all of them. As we discussed, mining and logging are both very useful for upgrading your gear. Fishing and hunting are also useful because you heal in the game exclusively with food (though, with money you earn, you can also just buy a bunch of food). Yet, some of these systems also fall a bit flat for me. Cooking your food is pretty obnoxious in particular. The game basically encourages you to have dozens and dozens of meals prepared so you can outlast almost any foe, but this entails skipping through the same cutscene over and over again for each meal you make. I give the cooking credit for how much it ties together different elements of the game, but I think it’s a slightly annoying process.
The biggest thing that ties together everything you do in the game is the camp. A major part of your quest is to try and rebuild your faction, “The Greymanes,” back up to their former glory. You start with a small camp, and as you do missions, gain resources, and send out new comrades you find on their own separate missions, you can eventually build up a camp that gets way bigger and has way more options. For example, early on in the game, whenever I wanted food for healing, I’d head into the nearest town and do some shopping. Now, I have recruited enough people where I can just shop in my camp if I’m looking to shore up my supplies a little bit. There’s also a whole system involving trading goods, and you get your own house that you can decorate.
It’s a slow process to build this camp back up, and it takes a bit too long to unlock it, but it is very satisfying to see the fruits of your labor as it grows. It’s obviously visually appealing to see a camp go from a few tents to many more, and it also continues to make your life a little bit easier. This is probably the biggest thing in Crimson Desert that I would say might qualify as addictive. It can be tough to stop playing when you know you are just a little bit away from seeing a bit more progress with your camp.
I’m Addicted To Hopium
It’s funny that even when I talk about the things that I like in Crimson Desert, it still comes with caveats, and it’s starting to feel like these issues are catching up to me. My last few sessions have been some of the first times in a few weeks that I ended up dipping out of the game and playing something else after a pretty short amount of time.
In the end, while things like the camp and the general “clearing icons off the screen” aspects might be addictive to some, I personally do not believe that I was ever “addicted” to this game. I honestly think a lot of my desire to pick up the game every day, despite plenty of sessions that I didn’t love, was more an act of extreme optimism.
As I touched on in-between all of the times I shit on the game, there are elements of Crimson Desert that are truly incredible. This is one of the most ambitious video games of all time. You are going to experience moments that you won’t believe. That’s not always a great thing, though. Sometimes you won’t believe that Pearl Abyss pulled something incredible off, and sometimes you won’t believe that they made such a dumb decision when designing the game.
Those moments that I couldn’t believe from a positive perspective have continued to push me forward up until now. I went from kind of hating Crimson Desert to enjoying it a fair bit in some sessions. I have continued to think that if I keep pushing ahead, perhaps more things will click into place, and those positive sessions will start vastly outnumbering the negative sessions that I have been having. Pearl Abyss has also been incredible at pushing out patches, so the game has legitimately gotten better in various ways as I’ve continued to play, even if some of these patches should have been a part of the game on day one.
But admittedly, my optimism has slowly faded in the past few days. I will give it a few more chances, but I’m starting to doubt that I will truly be converted by this game. My addiction to Crimson Desert “hopium” might finally be over very soon. If I had to score this game, I’d probably set it at a solid 7/10, but it’s probably the most complicated 7/10 to explain of all time.
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