While there was plenty of hype leading up to the release of Crimson Desert, reviews have come out and, at the time of publishing the title currently sits at an aggregated Metacritic rating of 78. This seems to have had the knock-on effect of lowering the share value for developer Pearl Abyss by almost 29 percent. The dip in share price likely comes down to shareholders having anticipated drastically higher review scores.
As caught by Insider Gaming, Pearl Abyss was trading at ₩46,600 (approximately $30.66) in the South Korean stock markets. This is noted as being dip of around 28.9 percent from the previous day, where it was trading at ₩65,500 (around $43.66).
As a whole, the critical reception for Crimson Desert has been quite mixed. While some publications, like MMORPG.com and Vice, have given it high scores of 100 and 90 respectively according to Metacritic, others like Shacknews, Eurogamer and TheGamer have scored it much lower. Our own review gave it a score of 8 out of 10 thanks to its visuals, plethora of in-game activities, and emphasis on organic exploration.
Leading up to its release, Sony and Pearl Abyss had been showcasing Crimson Desert gameplay running on a base PS5 through a two-part series of the former’s Japanese show Play! Play! Play!. Among other aspects, the videos showcased dragon riding, side quests, boss fights, combat, and open-world exploration.
Details about the PS5 Pro version also got revealed thanks to a report by Digital Foundry’s John Linneman, who praised the game’s Performance mode for “putting up a good fight” in its attempts to maintain smooth frame rates of 60 FPS. While he noted that there were frame rate drops in busier parts of the game, like major battles with plenty of enemies, he was “surprised by how good it was overall.”
The PS5 Pro version also features Balanced and Quality modes. The latter focuses on displaying 4K visuals without any image upscaling, while keeping the frame rate locked at 30 FPS and setting ray tracing to ultra quality. Balanced, on the other hand, upscales 1440p visuals up to 4K and targets a frame rate of 40 FPS – 48 FPS if you have a VRR-compatible display – while keeping the ray tracing quality on high.
“My main concern was not so much about graphics but on demands on the CPU,” explained Linneman. “Yes, it can be demanding, but overall performance across the three modes is impressive. But more impressive is really what this game is about — the scale and the scope and the systems-driven open world. The high-end PC experience scales well to PS5 Pro and we’re looking forward to seeing the other console versions.”
Unfortunately for Xbox Series X/S players, however, Pearl Abyss seemingly had no plans to show off how Crimson Desert would run on Microsoft’s console hardware. With reviews coming out and the game being just hours from release, however, we will likely start seeing Xbox Series X/S footage soon.
Crimson Desert is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
