Let’s begin with a reminder that this isn’t the first time we’ve gone back to a title for a fresh review. That distinction belongs to Cyberpunk 2077, a title we returned to nearly three years after its release thanks to all the changes that came over the years and its Phantom Liberty expansion. But it is the first time in many collective years of gaming that we’ve had to come back to a game a mere month after its release for a re-review.
We enjoyed looking back at a month with Crimson Desert. While that was partly due to the exciting weekly cycle of patches that we got to dive into alongside a very enthusiastic community of Greymanes, it’s also thanks to how quickly those patches came through, and the way the game felt like a different adventure within such a short timeframe that the entire turnaround felt remarkable.
Mind you, we still stand by our original review, given that we saw potential in a title whose rough edges were keeping its players away from the best parts about it. There was a strong foundation for a fantasy action-adventure sandbox that we were very appreciative of, but our original score of 8/10 reflected a few issues that came with the release build of Crimson Desert. The patches made those complaints obsolete, prompting the re-review.
But why have we not given Crimson Desert a perfect score despite them? Well, we felt our original review felt incomplete, but not entirely wrong. But there are still areas that even the speediest, effective patches might not be able to address. What are they? Why even bother, then? We’re diving into all that and more. Let’s go!
The Rarity of Re-Reviews
We want to kick things off by saying that the choice to re-review a game isn’t one we take lightly. We deliberated on whether we needed to do a second review of Crimson Desert, pondering on whether the idea was stemming from all the discourse around it, and the hype that it was gathering. But, ultimately, we felt that enough had changed about our experience, some of it from the patches and some of it from spending enough time with the game to discover the depth of what Pywel was hiding from us so well.
We’re the first to say that a review should reflect what a game was at launch, and our original review of the Crimson Desert still stands aside the new one. That’s exactly how we went about Cyberpunk’s re-review, which we also decided to do after a lot of deliberation. Yes, fixes, updates, and patches kept hitting that one quite quickly, but not every tweak made the game magically discover a second verdict. With Cyberpunk, it was its transformation into an experience completely removed from the original that had us taking another gander at it.
It was a rare exception, and the same can be said for Crimson Desert despite the drastically shorter time frame. It was evident that the game we were playing last week was not the one that we played a month before that. But let’s take a look at what we liked the first time around before we get into what changed.
A Good First Impression
We’re not saying that Crimson Desert’s release build was as bad as what Cyberpunk was when it was pulled from digital storefronts due to the backlash its quality received. An 8/10 is by no means a bad score, and we liked so many things about the game including, but not limited to, its open-world, the depth its combat gave you the more you began to engage with its systems, the sheer scale and ambition of it all, and the sense of discovery it gave you at nearly every turn.
But we did have to dock points for issues such as the clunky controls, poorly optimized inventory UI, poor balancing, and some performance problems that were too prevalent to ignore. So while we tipped our hats to how brilliantly Pywel was able to draw us into what felt like the daily life of the Greymanes, living that life alongside Kliff felt needlessly built around frustration. That was no way for a warrior of his caliber to feel, and we were quick to notice.
But it’s been a little over a month since then, and things have changed enough for our re-review to exist. It’s time to look at what’s different, and why Crimson Desert has a second review up in what is now a record over at GamingBolt.
Is A Month Really Enough?
If you’ve dived into Crimson Desert much later than its release, or have perhaps held off on playing it until the developer’s full roadmap of changes has been achieved by June this year, you might think that a month is too short a timeframe to justify a re-review of any title. Under different circumstances, we’d be inclined to agree but in the case of Crimson Desert, there’s one very important detail to consider: the impact of every patch and hotfix.
Going back to Cyberpunk for a quick point of reference, that one’s second review came out years later simply because its plethora of hotfixes, patches, new content, and optimization happened over those years. Its changes were incremental, each of them taking time, and creating small changes that addressed issues in a slow, steady manner. There’s definitely merit to that approach, and it was what the developers needed to do to earn back the goodwill of frustrated players without stretching things too thin and creating further problems. In short, they needed to be cautious, and things ultimately worked out on that front.
But that’s precisely where Crimson Desert set itself apart. The changes that were made to the game were not just almost unbelievably rapid, but were also so effective at addressing problems that critics and players alike had highlighted. It became a question of how much the game had changed over how much time was necessary to justify a re-review of it. Each patch addressed frustrations that held players back from getting to the good stuff that Pywel has to offer.
A great example would be the controls, which we felt were all right, but we do know that many others found them rather annoying. That’s fixed now, with the clever detail of retaining the original scheme for those who didn’t want to switch things up. The game’s visuals have improved by leaps and bounds, especially on a base PS5. Balances to stamina consumption while in the air were also very welcome, as they improved how exploring the world felt while also opening up each playable character’s potential for some devastation in combat. This is a long list that we’ve spoken about in detail over the month if you’ve been keeping up with our coverage of the game.
But it isn’t how long the list is, but how each of those changes has been focused and meaningful, keeping in line with the developer’s message to its community of players when it announced the updates at the beginning of the roadmap. Crimson Desert cleaned up its act quite quickly, and became a more confident version of itself as a result. The speed with which updates came out was also important, as it built confidence in the game with each consecutive update, making the rather lackluster response to its release build join the criticisms against it as things of the past.
A Strong Start On A Long Road To Redemption
As far as redemption arcs go, Crimson Desert has had a very solid start. Our original 8/10 score doesn’t fully encompass what has been achieved in a month of updates and fixes anymore, but that doesn’t mean the 9/10 we gave it in our second pass implies that it suddenly became perfect. It still had issues like a disjointed main narrative and a lamentable lack of gear for Damiane and Oongka who have now overtaken Kliff in our time playing the game.
Its gear upgrading systems need some changes, and there’s still the matter of bringing life back to Pywel once you really liberate it in its entirety. While these are issues that can be fixed, and are already on the developer’s radar with boss rematches and enemy occupations coming up in the next month, the story remains a sore spot although a little bit of digging around in the Axiom Records might help mitigate that to an extent.
The point is, the flaws that we pointed out in the original review didn’t exist to drag it down anymore, and what remains is a mysterious and ambitious open world that does have its quirks, but does enough so well that any complaints are now outweighed by what’s great about it. Crimson Desert is still a game that demands a LOT of your time, patience, and effort. But it’s now easier to recommend as that investment is now rewarded much faster, and makes the entire experience more satisfying the more you engage with it.
We’re ultimately glad we decided to review it again, and happy that we didn’t wait too long to do so. We didn’t re-review it just because enough time had passed between its release and updates, but did so because the game’s goal posts had shifted enough to justify us giving it a second shot. We don’t see that happening anytime in the near future, but of course, the gaming world is always full of surprises.
But until the next time, Crimson Desert continues to be a game that keeps us coming back for more.
