It’s one thing for a game demo to leave an impression, but it’s another thing to actually see the effort and appreciation from a staff with a game they’re promoting or representing. Crimson Desert is a game with dense gameplay mechanics, but it’s a prime example of a game that looks like it’ll give back as much time as you put into it. All that said, after finishing my appointment with Pearl Abyss, I think I left having just played the best game at PAX West.
Yep, that looks like a crimson desert all right.
I didn’t get to play it at Summer Game Fest, but I know a lot of people that did who said that they can’t wait to see how it shapes up when they play it next. The game had a big showing during PAX West this year, and it was there where I met with Pearl Abyss’ Director of PR, Will Powers, someone I’ve known for quite a while (I’ve received countless emails from him over the years) but haven’t actually met yet, and I was immediately impressed by his deep understanding of video games. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anybody in the industry that guided me through a demo with the detail and understanding that he did, and I really appreciated that.
Pretty standard open world combat stuff
Anyway, he told me that this was pretty much the same thing as what was shown during SGF–at least the combat intro anyway, and then went on to tell me that we’d get to really explore the open world and get involved in a quest line. All of this happened in just under an hour, and it simply blazed by.
We started by doing the SGF stuff, which was primarily a combat tutorial. I learned the basics of attacking, defending, switching weapons, picking banners up and posting them, along with some running moves and whatnot. By learning, I really meant to say I just ran through them. As I mentioned, the gameplay in Crimson Desert is pretty dense, and while I did a lot in an hour, memorizing everything there was to do when in a fight was not one of them–that definitely could’ve helped, though.
Crimson Desert is an open world action game but is not an RPG, so you don’t have to worry so much about grinding.
Eventually, I was guided out of the tutorial area and brought to a ledge before a vast scenery. Here, I was told all the cliché open world things. “See that mountain? You can climb it. See that castle town? We can go there.” This kind of stuff doesn’t really impress me anymore, but we were about to get to the impressive stuff as soon as we jumped off the ledge and tried our best Breath of the Wild / Battle Royale impression.
You can play your own way
We landed at a fort getting ready to take siege of a castle to the east in the hopes of reuniting with a combrade, but Will thought it necessary to walk us through a bunch of stuff to further immerse me into this world. One thing he did was give me a choice between a dog and a pig. I chose the pig because I thought it was funny, so he had me lift it up and run down the hill with it. He didn’t think I’d take it that far, but I was just following directions. He told me he brought this up because I also could’ve pet the dog. I guess I’m a monster for doing that. Either way, he mentioned that people around you will judge what you do and it’s something to keep note of. Does that mean I’m the pig whisperer? We’ll just have to see when the game comes.
Anyway, we then traversed to the end of the stronghold and came across some cannons, and this is where I got to do some nifty stuff. I used the cannons to shoot out three watchtowers, being sure that I angled the camera to show off the detail of the smoke, because Will definitely seemed proud of the game’s visual prowess. He even made sure to tell me to zoom in on every character to appreciate more details–if it wasn’t obvious, the game looks nice. After taking the towers down, I grabbed the Calphadean Banner and struck it to the ground to establish dominance–we did some form of this three times in the demo, so it’ll definitely carry some weight. Eventually the real fight began.
FIght How You Want To Fight
I made my way to the village overlooked by the watchtowers I just brought down and just went to town on everybody in my way. I got some good kills with my sword, switched to the spear, and badly pretended that I knew when to dodge and counter strikes–a maneuver done when you parry at the perfect time. My button mashing skills were pretty basic, but I really liked how the combat felt. The main thing worth noting here is that this is a full-on action-adventure. It’s not an RPG, so while you do have to worry about equipment, you don’t have to worry about being under-leveled or anything like that. You can get by on skill.
We’ll be posting a lot of banners in this game. Even during boss fights.
Will made a mistake by showing me that I can do pull off some wrestling moves. By standing in front of an enemy with my back turned, you can press a few buttons to hit enemies with a cutter. The best part is you can actually do this running to turn it into an RKO. That’s the beauty of this game. You can play it however way you want, so I chose to play as Randy Orton. I really felt like the Viper.
We eventually got to this point where I was playing around with my arrows and learned that they also doubled as commands for my army to just fire directly at what I shot at. It felt amazing having a team that listens to you without saying a word to them.
That dream ended pretty quickly though, because eventually it was boss time.
Even if it takes too long
I’m not talking about Sasha Banks either. I’m talking about an actual boss fight, and because the guy was bigger than me, RKOs weren’t possible, so the fun was over. To get to the boss, I was about to go through the front door, but Will told me to go off to the side of the keep and put a hole in the wall instead. The boss got pissed, and it was time to fight.
I was probably too careful in my fight against Cassius, but he was a big boy I couldn’t RKO.
All of a sudden it felt pretty souls-y, but it wasn’t full souls, because I actually won this fight without dying. I did it a little slow with my lack of skill though as I was really just relying on a combination of weak and heavy strikes to get my hits in. The intended strategy, though, was to stun him with enough hits, and once he’s there, grab a stake from the ground (shaped like those banners we hoisted and posted earlier) and use them to beat the crap out of the boss. After doing this like twice, the fight ended when we killed the boss with his own shield, which we later took as our own.
Crimson Desert is a game to look out for
That was pretty much it as far what I did. After that, I handed the controller right back to Will who took the opportunity glide from the top of the keep to another area on the map entirely, climbing up a mountain and then meditating to pass the time. He mentioned that the passage of time could be essential for various gameplay elements including the play the game you want to play. I’d imagine whether you want to be someone who always recklessly ends up in danger or maybe you’d prefer something more lowkey like a thief — it’s all there. You can be whoever you want to be. Including Randy Orton, sometimes.
Gotta love how it’s always necessary to shoot a beacon with a fire arrow instead of just lighting it.
Crimson Desert was recently confirmed to be delayed to Q1 2026 a few weeks ago, but in all honesty, that’s a good thing. I think a game like Crimson Desert really needs room to breathe, and whenever it comes out, I’ll definitely be looking forward to being in that world again, delivering stunners and RKOs one random knight at a time. The game was undoubtedly the best experience I had at PAX West, and I’m looking forward to getting back into that world.
It’s one thing for a game demo to leave an impression, but it’s another thing to actually see the effort and appreciation from a staff with a game they’re promoting or representing. Crimson Desert is a game with dense gameplay…
It’s one thing for a game demo to leave an impression, but it’s another thing to actually see the effort and appreciation from a staff with a game they’re promoting or representing. Crimson Desert is a game with dense gameplay mechanics, but it’s a prime example of a game that looks like it’ll give back as much time as you put into it. All that said, after finishing my appointment with Pearl Abyss, I think I left having just played the best game at PAX West.
Yep, that looks like a crimson desert all right.
I didn’t get to play it at Summer Game Fest, but I know a lot of people that did who said that they can’t wait to see how it shapes up when they play it next. The game had a big showing during PAX West this year, and it was there where I met with Pearl Abyss’ Director of PR, Will Powers, someone I’ve known for quite a while (I’ve received countless emails from him over the years) but haven’t actually met yet, and I was immediately impressed by his deep understanding of video games. I don’t think I’ve ever come across anybody in the industry that guided me through a demo with the detail and understanding that he did, and I really appreciated that.
Pretty standard open world combat stuff
Anyway, he told me that this was pretty much the same thing as what was shown during SGF–at least the combat intro anyway, and then went on to tell me that we’d get to really explore the open world and get involved in a quest line. All of this happened in just under an hour, and it simply blazed by.
We started by doing the SGF stuff, which was primarily a combat tutorial. I learned the basics of attacking, defending, switching weapons, picking banners up and posting them, along with some running moves and whatnot. By learning, I really meant to say I just ran through them. As I mentioned, the gameplay in Crimson Desert is pretty dense, and while I did a lot in an hour, memorizing everything there was to do when in a fight was not one of them–that definitely could’ve helped, though.
Crimson Desert is an open world action game but is not an RPG, so you don’t have to worry so much about grinding.
Eventually, I was guided out of the tutorial area and brought to a ledge before a vast scenery. Here, I was told all the cliché open world things. “See that mountain? You can climb it. See that castle town? We can go there.” This kind of stuff doesn’t really impress me anymore, but we were about to get to the impressive stuff as soon as we jumped off the ledge and tried our best Breath of the Wild / Battle Royale impression.
You can play your own way
We landed at a fort getting ready to take siege of a castle to the east in the hopes of reuniting with a combrade, but Will thought it necessary to walk us through a bunch of stuff to further immerse me into this world. One thing he did was give me a choice between a dog and a pig. I chose the pig because I thought it was funny, so he had me lift it up and run down the hill with it. He didn’t think I’d take it that far, but I was just following directions. He told me he brought this up because I also could’ve pet the dog. I guess I’m a monster for doing that. Either way, he mentioned that people around you will judge what you do and it’s something to keep note of. Does that mean I’m the pig whisperer? We’ll just have to see when the game comes.
Anyway, we then traversed to the end of the stronghold and came across some cannons, and this is where I got to do some nifty stuff. I used the cannons to shoot out three watchtowers, being sure that I angled the camera to show off the detail of the smoke, because Will definitely seemed proud of the game’s visual prowess. He even made sure to tell me to zoom in on every character to appreciate more details–if it wasn’t obvious, the game looks nice. After taking the towers down, I grabbed the Calphadean Banner and struck it to the ground to establish dominance–we did some form of this three times in the demo, so it’ll definitely carry some weight. Eventually the real fight began.
FIght How You Want To Fight
I made my way to the village overlooked by the watchtowers I just brought down and just went to town on everybody in my way. I got some good kills with my sword, switched to the spear, and badly pretended that I knew when to dodge and counter strikes–a maneuver done when you parry at the perfect time. My button mashing skills were pretty basic, but I really liked how the combat felt. The main thing worth noting here is that this is a full-on action-adventure. It’s not an RPG, so while you do have to worry about equipment, you don’t have to worry about being under-leveled or anything like that. You can get by on skill.
We’ll be posting a lot of banners in this game. Even during boss fights.
Will made a mistake by showing me that I can do pull off some wrestling moves. By standing in front of an enemy with my back turned, you can press a few buttons to hit enemies with a cutter. The best part is you can actually do this running to turn it into an RKO. That’s the beauty of this game. You can play it however way you want, so I chose to play as Randy Orton. I really felt like the Viper.
We eventually got to this point where I was playing around with my arrows and learned that they also doubled as commands for my army to just fire directly at what I shot at. It felt amazing having a team that listens to you without saying a word to them.
That dream ended pretty quickly though, because eventually it was boss time.
Even if it takes too long
I’m not talking about Sasha Banks either. I’m talking about an actual boss fight, and because the guy was bigger than me, RKOs weren’t possible, so the fun was over. To get to the boss, I was about to go through the front door, but Will told me to go off to the side of the keep and put a hole in the wall instead. The boss got pissed, and it was time to fight.
I was probably too careful in my fight against Cassius, but he was a big boy I couldn’t RKO.
All of a sudden it felt pretty souls-y, but it wasn’t full souls, because I actually won this fight without dying. I did it a little slow with my lack of skill though as I was really just relying on a combination of weak and heavy strikes to get my hits in. The intended strategy, though, was to stun him with enough hits, and once he’s there, grab a stake from the ground (shaped like those banners we hoisted and posted earlier) and use them to beat the crap out of the boss. After doing this like twice, the fight ended when we killed the boss with his own shield, which we later took as our own.
Crimson Desert is a game to look out for
That was pretty much it as far what I did. After that, I handed the controller right back to Will who took the opportunity glide from the top of the keep to another area on the map entirely, climbing up a mountain and then meditating to pass the time. He mentioned that the passage of time could be essential for various gameplay elements including the play the game you want to play. I’d imagine whether you want to be someone who always recklessly ends up in danger or maybe you’d prefer something more lowkey like a thief — it’s all there. You can be whoever you want to be. Including Randy Orton, sometimes.
Gotta love how it’s always necessary to shoot a beacon with a fire arrow instead of just lighting it.
Crimson Desert was recently confirmed to be delayed to Q1 2026 a few weeks ago, but in all honesty, that’s a good thing. I think a game like Crimson Desert really needs room to breathe, and whenever it comes out, I’ll definitely be looking forward to being in that world again, delivering stunners and RKOs one random knight at a time. The game was undoubtedly the best experience I had at PAX West, and I’m looking forward to getting back into that world.
by Danreb Victorio
