Crimson Desert is proof that excess and maximalism can be awe-inspiring and wondrous… Or it can just as easily be overstimulating and leave you feeling detached from what's before you. Crimson Desert is forever trying to straddle that line, with results sometimes stunning and sometimes numbing, as it presents an open world fantasy action RPG of humungous scale and depth, one clearly inspired by a multitude of RPGs from the past decade.
The result is as spectacular as it is exhausting, and dozens of hours in, I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Perhaps that's why the end result is a game with a litany of problems, but one I keep coming back to nonetheless – in a buffet this big, there's bound to be something to everybody's taste.
