Ever since Crimson Desert dropped that bold trailer at Gamescom 2023, I've been longing to soak up the medieval vibe of Just Cause 2. It's hard not to be impressed by the over-the-top kineticism of it all – magic-powered sword fights, leaping off cliffs and transforming into a flying shadow monster, Dragged horses. Yes. Yes!
As such, it's with some trepidation that I report that my excitement has been significantly dampened by actually playing the game. I've since used every straw I can muster to write “This is just a demo” on the ground, but the fear that Crimson Desert's fantastical open-world exploration will be regularly interrupted by shrill, clunky, unsatisfying combat remains.
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To be fair, the demo in question was designed specifically to showcase Crimson Desert's sword-and-board (and bow) fighting style; the lack of pilotable hot air balloons or riding a stallion sideways doesn't mean those will be afterthoughts in the finished game. The same goes for its myriad other mechanics, like parkour, cooking, mining, and fishing. Still, this boss-fight highlight reel approach also served to highlight that the swordplay isn't as fun as it seems.
The opening tutorial starts well, with the dour hero Kliff facing off against waves of ambushing barbarians. Kliff is agile enough to fend off three or four bad guys at once, able to lunge forward with heavy attacks, parrying the ones he can manage, and dodging the ones he can't. Developers Pearl Abyss are clearly trying to score style points even in a relatively simple mook fight like this: campfire debris is almost constantly shattered by swords and/or people hitting it, and even simple hits can be accompanied by a bit of camera zoom for added impact.
Then the leader appears, and the fun brakes come down hard. Crimson Desert's bosses have two main problems: first, Kliff can only deal pitiful chip damage with each attack, abruptly and awkwardly turning a free-flowing, almost Arkham-esque combat system into a sword-spamming grind. Fights with smaller, weaker enemies allow you to mix things up with parries and even the occasional wrestling move, but there's little room for such subtlety against the big boys.
Secondly, every time you take a hit (or block one), you're sent skidding backwards as if you've been kicked onto a freshly slicked ice rink. This may seem like a trivial thought, but it's something I immediately hated – it slows down duels and makes it nearly impossible to recover for a quick counterattack, not to mention the unfairness of constantly creating space when the enemy has better gap-closing moves than you. It's a touch lousy.
It just so happens that I was supposed to lose this fight for narrative reasons, but it doesn't bode well that the other bosses I tried — a giant yeti and a teleporting mage-samurai dude named Reed Devil — only compounded my frustrations. Both had huge health bars that would be whittled away, a slew of knockback attacks that would send me hurtling around the arena, and none of the scale and “sure, why not” attitude that helped Crimson Desert make such a strong impression last year.
In their favour, these moments aren't without their own spectacle. The Reed Devil fight in particular is a symphony of stylish, sparking particle effects, taking place in a dense (and beautifully lit) field of leafy reeds. The slashes and dashes progress, decapitating leaves and sending up clouds of grass for an even more dramatic one-on-one showdown. It's not just beautiful to play, it's beautiful to sing. There's little sense of being partners in a deadly dance, just a razor-bladed hockey puck gliding along in the hope of tripping your opponent up with a lucky bounce.
To preempt a specific comment thread, yes, I realize that these issues could become less prevalent if something were done well enough. I would also argue that dodging every hit doesn’t make a boss any less of a damage sponge, and that it’s exponentially harder to learn the intricacies of a fight when you can easily be hit from fifteen feet away. So I’m passing on all current extensions for some sort of recalibration by the 2025 release; I don’t know what I’ll do if Crimson Desert’s combat overshadows its delightfully frenetic free-roaming. Other than maybe reinstalling Just Cause 2.