I have been searching for a new game to consume my life, a medieval fantasy game with magic, dragons, and plenty of combat. I was scrolling through TikTok one day when a video came across my feed that piqued my interest. It showed me a new game that seemed to have everything I was looking for, named Crimson Desert.

The game erupted onto the scene offering a new world of Pywel to explore. It was one of the most anticipated games of the year, with the development team making lofty promises about what the game had to offer. When I finally got my hands on a copy, I dove in with both feet.

Crimson Desert dropped me right into the action from the very beginning. There’s a brief period of exposition before I found myself in the midst of an ambush by one of the game’s many antagonists. A desperate struggle against multiple enemies is briefly broken up by tooltips and tutorial screens describing many combat mechanics back-to-back. The fast-paced nature of combat encouraged me to quickly read the text on screen before dismissing the tooltip to hop back into the action, which may have been my first mistake.

To keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, I’m going to jump ahead just a smidge. After the initial encounter, I was introduced to the Abyss in a dream sequence with an exposition dump. The Abyss is a sort of overworld to the world of Pywel. After the scene, I found myself in the region of Hernand. I battled a handful of bandits before I found myself in a speed-locked follow quest with an NPC that introduced me to the immediate area and sent me off to the town of Hernand. I rode my horse into the quiet town, following the quest marker on my map to the tavern. Once there, I was told to donate to a beggar outside. They gave me a strange key and told me I was destined for greatness (in a rather cryptic way) before disappearing in a cloud of magic sparks.

I was led to a sewer grate and climbed inside, when I was hit with my first real point of frustration with the game: the mechanics. One of the developers’ promises is the mechanical complexity of the game, allowing you to do just about anything you want. Which sounds amazing, but therein lies the issue: There are only so many buttons on your controller. Many mechanics require you to press the same button, in different ways and combinations, to use them.

I was playing on an Xbox Series S, and the controller is well-designed, but as an example, the X button is used to jump, climb, interact, glide and precision interact, depending on what you’re doing, where you are in the world and if you’re holding another button. The left bumper is used to use your lantern, select something to interact with, select a location to jump to for a precision jump, as well as blocking and using abilities in combat. That is the case for every other input available to me. This complexity and multiple uses per button is a major point of frustration for a lot of players, including myself.

I am no slouch when it comes to video games. I have been playing games since I was old enough to hold a controller. From the original SNES to the most modern systems, I have played countless games. Skyrim, Elden Ring, World of Warcraft, real-time strategy games like StarCraft, complex games like Eve Online and simple games like Minecraft all have thousands of hours each in my play history. And yet this game confounds me.

The sewers introduced me to precision jumps, using the left bumper and X to select a place to jump to, but a simple misinput sent me barreling into the bowels of the sewer and starting again. Just when I was getting the hang of parkour, I rescued the woman at the far end of the challenge, and I was transported into the Abyss for the first of many puzzles to conquer. Here I was again presented with a new set of mechanics, the Axiom power system.

I was granted a magic claw that can be used in ways reminiscent of the Omni Hand and Sheikah abilities in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom games. There are a lot of very interesting things you can use these abilities for, most of which are not explained by the tooltip.

I personally like games that don’t hold your hand when it comes to discovering new ways to use your abilities, but with so many other things going on and mechanics at my disposal, I felt like I needed a notepad and pen at the ready. One thing that gives me hope, however, is that the developers are actively taking feedback from the community and have already released multiple updates addressing player concerns about mechanics in the game.

That being said, once you get the hang of the mechanics and inputs, the system is extremely engaging and rewarding. When I figured out I could slingshot myself using the Axiom Force on the top of a tree, I felt like a genius. That is until I plummeted back to the ground and died because I hadn’t yet unlocked the glide ability to negate fall damage.

After completing the puzzles and a bit of exposition, I found myself diving back down to the overworld in much the same way as jumping off a sky island in Tears of the Kingdom, and it gave me the very same feeling. Gaining the glide ability right before taking the leap opened the entire world for me to explore from a bird’s-eye view. The view was stunning — just keep an eye on your stamina meter.

Crimson Desert is a beautiful game with a gorgeous world crafted for you to explore. Different areas with different biomes stand at your fingertips, begging to be explored. Here is where we come to the true meaning of this game, and what’s drawn millions into the world of Pywel. The world is vast, varied and breathtaking. Around each corner is something new to explore; behind each door is a new experience for you to dive into.

Many open-world games boast a massive map to traverse, but few games actually fill them up with things to do outside of a few main areas. What is the point of having a massive area if there’s nothing to do while you’re crossing it? It is here where Crimson Desert stands among giants. The story, while compelling, is not the main focus of the game; it’s the game itself. All of the things to do, NPCs to meet, places to explore, factions to support and enemies to fight along the way make this game worth the initial headache of mastering complex commands and mechanics.

The learning curve is so steep you feel like you need a sherpa to guide you, but cresting that peak of complexity is well worth the effort it takes to get there. I would recommend Crimson Desert to anyone looking for the next Skyrim or Elden Ring to sink countless hours into. You’ll get lost in a world worth the effort of its controls and find yourself begging for just five more minutes when sleep calls. Crimson Desert is, in my humble opinion, the top contender for Game of the Year.