A question of balance
Conflicts and fights rage across the entire continent of Pywel. When Kliff begins his adventure, many of the roads are unsafe. Thieves or the troops of enemy factions lurk everywhere. The fighter’s task is to gradually clear occupied territories of enemies and bring peace back.
Indeed, the blows against the enemy noticeably affect the regions of Crimson Desert over time. Once hostile fortresses, which made the surrounding area unsafe with their patrols, transform into safe havens that are in the hands of allies. In the secured areas, questing, exploring, and farming is much more pleasant.
However, sometimes the developers go overboard with the troop strength of the fortresses. To satisfy a mining and excavation area, I had to beat the local enemy hordes for nearly 30 minutes. They stand no chance against Kliff’s power, but their enormous numbers often forced me to heal.
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When I finally brought the progress counter down from 100 to 0 percent after half an hour, I unexpectedly found myself in a boss fight against a villain who, like almost all the bosses I’ve played so far, can inflict high damage quickly upon impact. Healing items were scarce due to the previous lengthy brawl.
After a few unsuccessful attempts, I gave up to prepare properly for the boss. So I farmed meat for healing food, upgraded one or the other piece of equipment, and tried my luck again. At least: The game remembered my progress, so I didn’t have to fight through all the enemies again. That way, the boss was quickly defeated.
My problem is: Crimson Desert places several bosses under the protection of countless enemies. You not only have to work your way through these hordes, but the notable adversaries also always possess special skills and mechanics that you need to prepare for and have sufficient healing items for.
Even the single bosses are challenging, often having multiple phases (and thus health bars) and playing very differently.
Sometimes you have to reveal weak points and attack them at the right moment. At other times, you accurately parry attacks to unleash your own attack combos. Or you use your hover skills to even reach a flying boss with a specific skill.
The good news: Despite multiple phases and health bars, the bosses do not feel like health sponges that you have to hit endlessly. Kliff is powerful and inflicts high damage with his maneuvers. The challenge lies in landing your own attacks.
All bosses also hit like a truck and leave hardly any breather. Often, you are busy dodging, finding sensible parry windows, or healing. It doesn’t help that the button mapping is very complex and that especially climbing and flying maneuvers are controlled inconsistently in battle.
Inexperienced players will likely hit their limits here quickly, as there is only one difficulty level. But veterans can also look forward to one or two challenging encounters. As various bosses are directly tied to progress in the main story, often the only help here is an escape into side activities and further exploration of the game world.
Here’s one of the bosses from the main story of Crimson Desert:
Motivating character progression even without XP and levels
Kliff cannot earn experience points or level up by completing quests or defeating enemies. Such a leveling system does not exist in Crimson Desert. Instead, you earn Abyss artifacts to unlock new improvements in Kliff’s 3 talent trees or to increase stats like stamina and health.
Additionally, it is important to earn better equipment, upgrade it at the blacksmith, or socket Abyss equipment into the empty slots of items. These are spherical objects that enhance values like attack speed or add an actively usable effect to the weapon – the Queen’s venom tooth, for instance, spits poison at enemies.
By choosing weapons, learned talents, and socketed Abyss equipment, you can create specialized, very powerful builds. Even more diversity comes into play because you unlock two additional playable characters, Damiane and Oongka, during the story, each with their own weapon preferences, talents, and combat styles.
Alternatively, the two fighters act as companions fighting alongside Kliff – at least outside the main story and all related challenges. In the campaign, the stoic gray mane remains the main focus of events until the end. However, there are contents in the game world specifically aimed at Damiane and Oongka.
For me, character development with Kliff felt motivating. Through learned talents, better equipment, and Abyss equipment, he feels significantly stronger over time – which you notice at the latest when you encounter an enemy who had torn your hairy heroic backside apart hours ago.
I also love the design of the armors, shields, and weapons. This was already a great strength in Black Desert, but in the MMORPG, you often have to spend money in the in-game shop to look good or spruce up your horse. In Crimson Desert, you earn everything, and when a defeated boss leaves behind a cool shield, I personally get even more excited about the loot.
With the two alternative characters, I have not been able to warm up yet. They do play quite differently from Kliff but, of course, also require equipment and talents. However, since Kliff is far from done with his learning experience and is mandatory in story content, switching characters would require me to constantly reskill.
Only some of the talent points invested in Kliff are transferred to the trees of the other fighters (at least for the talents related to health, stamina, and spirit, which get increasingly expensive over time).
The artifacts that reset all talent points are also highly limited. So I’ll hold off for now until the story is complete. After that, I can definitely see myself tackling many of the remaining side quests in the world with Damiane or Oongka.
