Crimson Desert’s dragon was a significant part of the marketing leading up to the launch of Pearl Abyss’ new open-world adventure that has already proven divisive with critics and players. Alongside a jetpack, a train, mechanized robots, and the ability to pet every cat on the continent, the fact that there was a dragon in this game had everyone asking the question: is there anything this game can’t do?
Some small spoilers for the endgame of Crimson Desert.
Unfortunately, there is. That thing is ‘let players see the dragon’. It’s gated behind almost the entire main story of the game. After 150 hours, I finally completed the campaign and unlocked the ability to actually ride the dragon into combat. Most ‘casual’ players, those who can only jump in for a couple of hours a day, will likely never even reach this point. There are difficult bosses, complex puzzles, and some tricky controls to get to grips with before you even get a glimpse of the dragon for the first time, let alone earn the ability to ride it.
That’s before you account for how distracting Crimson Desert is, meaning many players will take far longer than 150 hours to reach this point.
Where Is My Power Fantasy?
Instead, the first few hours of the game are probably going to be quite off-putting for those who went into Crimson Desert expecting some of the impressive stuff they saw in the trailers. Kliff, the main protagonist who barely mumbles a few words and doesn’t seem to question the world around him at all, is tasked with mundane tasks like finding lost sheep. The most action you see is clearing myriad bandit camps for well over a dozen hours before things start to get juicy.
I wrote in my review that I didn’t mind the slow start, because Crimson Desert is enormous, and it needs a slow-burn start to introduce you to the world and its many complex mechanics. But that is also coming from someone who had to play the game, who had to spend several hours mashing my head into difficult bosses and trying to solve puzzles without a dozen YouTube guides. Crimson Desert is rewarding if you put in the time at the start, but I can easily see a lot of players switching off entirely when they realise that one of the key parts of the trailers is over 100 hours deep.
There were some moments during my 150-hour marathon with the game where I felt like giving up, becoming stuck on a puzzle that no-one had figured out yet, or suffering from a bug that made some quests uncompletable (Pearl Abyss was quick to fix these issues, even manually adjusting my save files on the fly). Through all that, it was the promise of the dragon that kept me pushing through.
The game even teases you with a very short dragon-riding sequence before finally delivering on the promise another ten hours later. Finally, after a long slog, I’d acquired the dragon mount. After spending dozens of hours riding across the enormous world of Pywel, I was so excited to take to the skies and explore with ease. However, even after all that grind, the dragon feels pretty bad to ride in general.
This is a wider issue with Crimson Desert. Though I enjoyed the game – even loved parts of it for the massive exploration and flashy combat – it fails to deliver on the power fantasy I expected. Not only is the dragon not available until you work your way through the story, even once you acquire the ability to ride it, it’s underwhelming. The dragon has a long cooldown, almost an hour of real-time, and you are instantly chucked into story missions where the dragon is effectively useless, getting shredded by enormous turrets with homing missiles that are impossible to dodge.
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with the way that the game introduces and then handles the dragon. Of course, having a dragon that you can summon at any time and eviscerate bandit camps is probably ‘overpowered’, but isn’t that sort of the idea of a game like this? It’s not like the bandits pose any real threat to an endgame Kliff either, who, by this point, has infused his sword with the power of volcanoes. Crimson Desert holds its ace back for far too long, and even when it could have made good on its promises, it falters. That is going to be a huge disappointment for players who make it to the endgame.
Crimson Desert Is Going To Be Either A Colossal Disappointment Or The Biggest Game In Years
As one of the biggest open world games of the year, Crimson Desert brings with it a lot of questions.
