Crimson Desert Is Sekiro & Shadow Of The Colossus Rolled Into One ARPG

Summary

• Crimson Desert showcases eclectic and varied boss designs that are fun in their unpredictability.
• The game features a number of inspirations, each of which is noteable for its solid implementation.
• The upcoming action RPG from Pearl Abyss has the potential to be a massive hit, but further exploration of its non-boss aspects is necessary.

My Crimson Desert experience starts at Gamescom 2023, not this year’s iteration. There, I was one of the few who got to attend a closed-door presentation of the upcoming action RPG’s then-current build, watching a developer navigate a bustling city. The hero, Kliff, a warrior from a combat-hardened outfit, explored the city and unraveled a complex quest chain simply by donating a coin to a beggar and listening to his story. There wasn’t a major prompt – it just happened naturally after the player decided to engage.

I was keen on the game then, eager to see what it played like after seeing its RPG trappings and a quick look at the Reed Devil boss fight. Now, at Gamescom 2024, I was finally able to play an hour of Crimson Desert in a Gamescom-specific boss rush build that showcased four different battles. I was optimistic about Pearl Abyss’ game before – now I’m a full-on believer, and I think it might be the game to watch in the buildup to its release.

Crimson Desert’s Boss Design Is All Over The Place In The Best Way

Eclectic, Varied, And Incredibly Fun

During my hands-on, I got to tackle four bosses in an hour-long span. In order of appearance in the above gallery, attendees were able to fight the Queen Stoneback Crab, White Horn, Staglord, and Reed Devil bosses. Prior to that, I was given a quick ten-minute tutorial video on the general basics of Crimson Desert combat, including the magical powers Kliff has access to that offer a variety of uses from stuns to temporary flight to, essentially, web-slinging like Spider-Man. This is a game that doesn’t shy away from anything it thinks might be cool.

Even the tutorial combat, which I played prior to getting thrown into the deep end of a slew of monsters trying to murder me, was reminiscent of another game – this time something like Dark Souls, but midway through an early level where there’s still plenty of opportunity to die. There were a band of berserkers happy to try to claim Kliff’s head and it took everything I knew from the earlier demo video to just stay alive in an exhilarating but hopeless instance of combat. The stage was set for what could’ve been a great Soulslike, and the Staglord delivers on that potential.

My fight with the Staglord was in an arena of fallen warriors slain by the boss’s hand, and I died within a minute. He hit like a truck and launched me into a wall with bone-crunching force before I even had my bearings, and even once I learned the ebb and flow of his attack patterns and downed him, he shook it off, grew another health bar and started swinging at me a little differently. It was fun and never unfair, and one of the most memorable moments was realizing I could pick up any of the weapons strewn about the bloodied battlefield and use it to try to beat the Staglord.

My next fight was where it really clicked that
Crimson Desert
is truly something special – the Reed Devil.

My next fight was where it really clicked that Crimson Desert is truly something special – the Reed Devil. Not only did this boss have by far the most interesting story presence, taking on the role of an unwanted bastard child who became disgustingly amoral as a result, but the vibes were way more Sekiro than Souls. Not that there’s a chasm between those games, of course – but this fight felt much more like parrying and dodging in tandem were necessary, and the speed of combat increased significantly. It was here I also needed to start using ranged combat with explosive arrows to destroy immortality totems and I’m sure it all sounds like a lot, but it coalesces perfectly in practice.

The Reed Devil didn’t go down easy, but neither did his successor in my playthrough, White Horn. Here I got a little more story intro, fighting off some bandits in a wintry mountain setting while they pleaded with me not to disrupt their visceral ritual that seemed to include sacrificing children. The last bandit standing sprinted away in a cinematic that revealed the monstrous White Horn standing behind me, angry at my interference and ready to claim Kliff’s head.

And claim Kliff’s head he did. Many times. It was a fight that felt a little more Monster Hunter in its inspiration or the action combat of Final Fantasy XVI in its pacing, slowly chipping away at its weakpoints, which were easy enough to intuit when paying attention – fire (duh) and punishing its lunging grasps with dodges that placed Kliff behind it. Slowly, steadily, White Horn was whittled down, even through phases where it could summon a swirling blizzard to hide within or trap Kliff in ice and then pounce upon him while he was stunned – not to mention its shriek, which would mess with Kliff’s balance enough to stagger him and punish players unprepared to block it out.

Finally, feeling good about myself and ready to knock out all four bosses in the hour – something Pearl Abyss warned us at the beginning might not be possible – I swaggered into the Queen Stoneback Crab boss fight and got humbled. It wasn’t even that intense of a combat portion, though it wasn’t without its danger. It was, however, a beautiful homage to Shadow of the Colossus inspired boss design, and it was captivating even in its methodical pacing.

Crimson Desert features a hotswapping system mid-combat that lets Kliff switch which abilities are tied to his commands and which weapons or arrows he’s using, allowing for different combos for phases of boss fights.

What really made this fight difficult was how much it tested your skill with Crimson Desert‘s myriad combat systems, which, given the brief appointment, wasn’t exactly something I had. To defeat the crab, Kliff needed to jump, then launch himself with his magic even further, then used a spider web ability to swing around the magic vase on top of its head and land on it. It was a combination of triggers and timings that, even with ten minutes left on the clock, I simply couldn’t get down in time to finish the fight. Better luck next year, I suppose, though I hope it isn’t that long before I get to try some Crimson Desert again.

Crimson Desert Could Be The Next Massive Action-RPG

We Still Need To See What’s Outside Of Bosses, Though

To say that I’m excited about Crimson Desert is an understatement. I think what Pearl Abyss has put together so far is something magnificent, a chameleon of a game that doesn’t sacrifice quality for the quantity of its options. That being said, however, I have only gone hands-on with boss fights thus far, and haven’t gotten a chance to do the exploration side of the game that looked so appealing during last year’s presentation. Without that, my opinion of the game is understandably incomplete, and I can’t commit to the idea that it’s as big a game as I think it may be.

Still, though, what’s been shown and played is incredible. Maintaining even most of that quality in its other systems and designs would be more than enough to solidify Crimson Desert as a game that needs to be checked out on release, and if the level of polish it is demonstrating now is present in the rest of its features? Pearl Abyss might genuinely shake up the genre in tremendous fashion.