While gameplay videos have shown Crimson Desert being quite impressive in its sense of scale and gameplay, one notable feature has turned out to be incredibly weak: the mount system. While the player always has access to their horse, other mounts aren’t permanent. Even the dragon you can unlock as a mount, while a permanent addition to your arsenal, comes with severe restrictions. You can only use dragon riding for 15 minutes at a time. On reaching the end of this limit, you then have to wait for 50 real-world minutes before you can do so again.
This decision, as you might expect, has drawn extensive criticism from players. The state of dragon riding might seem especially egregious considering just how prominently the feature was showcased in various trailers and gameplay videos. Players have also noted that unlocking dragon riding isn’t exactly easy, since it requires you to reach the main story’s end. The limitations ultimately lead to making what would otherwise be a great endgame reward quite underwhelming.
“The dragon was shown in almost every trailer, for it to then end up being such a limited-use thing is really disappointing,” one player said. “That’s really surprising to read, showing off the dragon like that certainly did imply that it’s a fixed mount for late game and not just a temporary summon.”
“Not only is it unlocked super late into the game, but it also comes with a time limit and a 50-minute real-time cooldown to summon,” wrote another. “I never understood ‘balancing’ in a single-player game, and I never will. If I wanna be the most OP ever, why try to hinder me? Is that not what I paid for? I’m not harming any other players by flying the dragon. I hope people complain enough for them to change that. Especially since they were doing all that talk about ‘we wanna let players be overpowered’, well, now that was a f****** lie.”
Players have also suggested that developer Pearl Abyss should make the non-horse mounts permanent, giving players options for more interesting mounts like the Dire Wolf or the Raptor. “We need creature mounts to be permanent, stable-able and summonable. Please help get this message across to the developers,” wrote one player.
Thankfully, Pearl Abyss seems to be quite receptive to constructive criticism. Since the release of Crimson Desert saw many players complaining about the in-game inventory limits, the studio has since released an update that provides access to a storage box, and largely expands the protagonist’s carrying capacity. The update also brought other improvements, like more Abyss Nexuses and better visibility for ore veins.
Crimson Desert is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review of the PS5 and PS5 Pro versions, where we gave it a score of 8 out of 10. Also check out our thoughts on why Crimson Desert has attracted such a large player base despite seeing a mixed response.
