Crimson Desert is stitched together with a thousand RPGs, and its seams are easily traced. The Witcher 3's medieval-fantasy grit here, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's insular puzzles and open-world sandbox there. A splash of Fable and Dragon's Dogma's reactive worlds, for good measure. In less sincere hands, the result would be derivative. But after playing Crimson Desert for six hours, the upcoming RPG feels more like an overstuffed toybox, offering pure entertainment if not always cohesion.
Across those six hours, I torched bandit camps from atop a dragon and later returned to mop up survivors from the cockpit of a mech. I worked as a bounty hunter, admired furniture options for a home I didn't own, and let my eyes glaze over as a banker explained how I could invest in the world's economy. I can't tell you much about Crimson Desert's story, but the thrill of clotheslining a soldier and kicking his friend off a cliff still crackles beneath my skin – and if you find that trade-off acceptable, Crimson Desert is shaping up to be worth diving into for the dragon alone.
