Warum ich Crimson Desert abgebrochen habe..

Crimson Desert is a very weird game. It looks huge and one-dimensional. You can do anything, but you don't want to. Quests, story, artworks, AI, nature are all done by hand. I played it for 12 hours. That's not much. I know that. Some videos have already been uploaded to release.

Crimson Desert after 100 hours and so on. This is not a test, this is not even a deep criticism. I just told myself at the beginning of the year, if I played a game extensively, then I'll make a video about it. That's just my impression after 12 hours.

and why I decided not to play it anymore. I'm looking forward to your comments. You can write to me: "You misunderstood that" or "It will get better later". I also really want to play it again at some point. I think in a couple of years, when it's really patched, then a few DLCs are still included and so on, then I think that will be a bit more interesting.

I found this moment very memorable. I'm standing here in the camp and I'm supposed to cook soup for my friends and someone is already calling from behind that they are hungry and that they would like to eat something. So I go over to this cooking place and want to take the recipe for the soup in my hand. But that doesn't work. So I just grab through this note.

When I looked over to the pot, I found it very funny, I saw that there was already soup in it. So we could have eaten the soup that was in there. I think this scene describes with its mixture of dense atmosphere, somehow high degree of detail, but at the same time also a bit of bugs and logic gaps, Crimson Desert.

For me, it's perfect. Because for every moment when you think "Wow, what a great world this is" there's another one where you don't really understand what you're supposed to do. Or why do I even have to cook soup? Why do I have to take a recipe and scan it so I can cook soup? It all just goes through the game a little bit. Crimson Desert is a huge RPG, you shouldn't say that, because it doesn't have a few of the mechanics. And I think that's a bit of a problem with the game. But we'll get to that in a moment. It's an open world adventure.

from Pearl Abyss, a South Korean developer studio that actually did Black Desert Online. And that's exactly the problem here. You just notice this MMO past of these studios. You just notice that a lot of things that are in here are in there so that they are in there so that you can do something,

You're supposed to live in a world like an MMO. You're supposed to go fishing, you're supposed to open trade routes, you're supposed to cut down trees, you're supposed to build a house or a warehouse. That's all in there and that's all fine. We saw it all in the trailers and asked ourselves, "Can that be that bad? Can that be all in this game?" Yes, it's all in there.

The question is: Why? I have the feeling that there is a certain kind of player who just wants to be in a world like that and then it's not as important as the individual parts are now. Whether the fights are really fun, whether the boss fights are fair,

whether the systems really get into each other, but it's just great that you can do a lot of it and it looks really great and impressive and then you're in there and with others it's like they don't get warm at all and I'm definitely in between. So I'm not like the people on backlogged who somehow say that's all complete AI slop what we see here.

I even find a few of the points of criticism in the game somehow very sweet. So that the story is so banal that we play this heart-warming Cliff who simply defends the simple people from gangs. I think you can summarize this story like that. And he's looking for his comrades after he was killed and then brought back into the world of the living.

I found it very... ...scientific and creative, I have to say. The best comparison is to watch a knight series on cable 1. You can fall for it. I also found it super funny, and these are all the features that Crimson Dead has.

that you can play cutscenes at twice the speed like a YouTube video that is too boring for you. But you can't skip them, which might be the better feature in some places. So these are so insanely overacted chat GPT dialogues, you have the feeling. Yes, somehow the cows have been stolen and you can only get your sheep back and this and that and back there are the bandits and there is somehow nothing to do when these people talk. So they talk and talk

And it's also very impressive, I think, sometimes how these cutscenes are acted out, because we really see the people pacing back and forth. I can still remember, I had to laugh about it back then, when Ghost of Tsushima came out and then also had this Kurosawa mode.

Ghost of Tsushima was really just a shot against a shot of intersequences, especially when you talked to simple people. That wasn't cinematic at all, I'll say. And that's quite different here. You can really notice that a lot of effort has been put into it. But it never comes together to something exciting. That's in many, many aspects.

And if you want to play an agglutinating game, where something new is added, feature creep is also called, if you always add something new to an existing product, just so that it has even more. And there is Crimson Desert really the perfect example. It's a bit like when you're at the All You Can Eat buffet, you don't just

I'm not really focused on 3-4 things, but on everything. And then you get stomachache in the end. That's what I liked about it. But that's also the fascination with Crimson Desert. Especially that, that you feel like this world is so infinite and huge. It's really gigantic.

I was just riding into the Crimson Desert and after an hour I noticed that I hadn't even unlocked the fast travel and luckily I could actually load an earlier savegame and was back in the starting area and could continue the story a little bit further. But I just think that's kind of cute about the game. You can tell they really put a lot of effort into it and somehow you want to

There was a lot of talk about how the game was behind the scenes. That they had a "Yes, and" culture in the studio. But also that it was oppressive. You always hit yourself on the shoulder when you put a new feature into the game. At the same time, you were not allowed to make a wish to the bosses. At least, there are two people who consider themselves to be ex-Crimson Desert.

developers, I don't want to say spend, they just say they worked there at the studio, but you couldn't verify that yet. They definitely say that it was like that and that makes total sense. So they say, for example, when this studio saw Tears of the Kingdom, for example, then they knew, okay, we have to necessarily put these Sky Islands into this game.

And that's where you get to the beginning. You get a tutorial. It's probably the worst tutorial and the worst start in an open world game I've ever seen. We all remember the starting area of Witcher 3, where you learn how the game works in a smaller open world. Or in Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Or Breath of the Wild, where you're on a plateau and you have to...

that you can explore it freely and find out how the game works. In Elden Ring you come to Limgrave and you realize how everything works here. That's not the case with Crimson Desert at all. You're in a fight, then you have to do arm presses, then you're in the air, you learn this completely crazy control that you really ... So it will get better at some point, but it's crazy what you have to do there, this chimney sweep and reflect light and stuff. The control is so overloaded that you often

That's what makes the game so charming. For example, if you press L1 and R1, Cliff lights up with his sword. Which is cool, because you can discover a few things in the open world with this feature. But I only saw this feature in test videos and didn't know it was possible. But L1 is actually blocking and R1 is actually hitting.

These two buttons are needed in combat because they block and aim the same button. It seems to be a very strange fight. Sometimes you feel that if you want to aim someone, you have to block them, but maybe I don't want that right now.

Because of the buttons you press R1 and L1 simultaneously. You need them to aim and shoot. And then it starts to shine. It was built in such a way that you blind the enemies. But it's still a funny moment. And so the game is just full of it.

But a little bit. For example, I didn't do the riddle, the riddle of the abyss, that you should do there in the 12 hours 1 or so. So I haven't unlocked all these Sky Islands yet. I don't even know how to get there and when. That will probably happen later in the game. The fights themselves are

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I like the way he's riding the world, like a herald of the rings, like a Gandalf riding Minas Tirith. I often think of this shot. But in the fights he often fights Aragorn, like he fights the orcs. That must have been a role model here. I also like this a bit ... Actually, this is a kind of holy world fantasy that is shown to us in Crimson Desert, where the characters are all a bit impudent and nothing really bad happens.

and the reed devils, how they are like, I don't know, they're flapping their teeth and hovering around you. I think that's kind of cool. The problem with the fights is that they are either mega trivial and unclear. I think that's also crazy, because at the beginning you are told that you can attack with R1 and R2. At some point you realize, but you can also hold these buttons pressed, then it also attacks automatically. If you hold R1 pressed and then press the face buttons, i.e. square, triangle and so on, then it also makes other attacks and

and then press L1 to switch to the other vision and then press R1 to switch to the combat mode and then press the facebuttons. It's just crazy. It's a bit like playing a dance game with a dance mat sometimes. Like when people play Elden Ring with a trumpet or something like that. And at the same time these normal fights are totally trivial. So you fight 20 opponents at the same time, but most of them hold back a bit.

and then you just put them all down and then the fight is over. So that's actually easy, unless you're in an area where they're already heavier, then you need better equipment. Then there are super blatant boss fights that are really well staged, I think. So I really had the fun of my life there. But did you really notice that the PS5 also gets really blatant problems in 60 frames mode to represent them? So there is, for example, at the beginning this fight here against this goblin-like orc.

And I thought it was great, the way he gets off his throne and the crowd is around him and everyone is lighting the fire and sometimes you just pop into the audience. That's really well done, but that's how the game dips quite often. I had this here quite often, that I press R1 and Cliff doesn't react at all and I didn't understand what's going on there. That's a big problem for me in this game, that I think, yes, the fights, if they get better,

So if the fights against the individual mobs would be more interesting, if you would ride the world map and always find cool enemies, which is definitely not the case in the initial area, then the game would be much more interesting.

The battles themselves don't bring anything to you in the progression. Of course, the enemies drop loot and you can free different areas, but you don't necessarily get stronger if you lead these battles. And that shows again, Crimson Desert is not such a classic role-playing game, there are no experience points.

but you should upgrade your equipment and your armor and get better. And that's somehow meaningful for the game, I think. That makes sense, that makes sense on paper. So I've done it up to this fight here against this Reed Devil boss and then realized: Okay, I'm apparently too weak there. I bought a better armor, then I was still too weak. Then I thought: Okay, then I have to upgrade the sword.

I'm a blacksmith, so I have to cut down trees. By the way, you don't cut down trees by just hitting them like in Zelda. No, you have to aim them, just like you have to aim every character you talk to. I think that's crazy anyway, to look at memories. A feature that I hate, by the way, is that these shameful memories pop up somewhere and you have to look at who was here before and so on.

Another feature they took from Witcher 3 is that you have to look for clues. I hate that in open world games. Crimson Desert has things like the fetch quest, "get my three things from the mountain" that I just don't like. I just have to say, I think that's stupid.

when I have to look at a shabby cat. But anyway, here too, when the trees fall, it takes a while and then you have the wood and then the smith can build a hammer himself to improve the sword. But then I didn't have any ore and then I realized, well, I have to take off some ore for that. And then the game lost me. Another thing is that

The tip is that many give you in the fights to exist you have to make a lot of healing items. Cooking, well, cooking doesn't work as always, this soup cooking doesn't work, that was just a bug in the game.

That's also a system I can't really suffer from. I'd like it if the fights were really smooth and I'd have to remember the movesets. And if the game wasn't so focused on spending a lot of time in the camp cooking stuff and getting through it. Other people say that if you play it very slowly and explore a lot, it's okay. That may be. But the exploration in the game is my biggest point of criticism so far.

Maybe it will change later on. But I think the exploration is always a bit overwhelming and boring when it comes to what you find there. Or maybe different.

how the mood is, what you think, I think is cool, what you can do, I find somehow always lame. So far, in the first 12 hours. I have a few examples that I want to go through a bit, where I always got a bit to my limits here at Crimson Desert.

So for example, I thought at some point this main story annoys me a bit, I want to do a bounty mission. So I took one and see, okay, there is a honey thief somewhere in this place. There was then the "you have to find it yourself" with the information. So I thought, I have to go there now and ask people. And then someone told me something, so it was announced, but it wasn't like that. So it was just shown on the map.

I drove there, he ran away from me, then I tackled him, which is also a mechanic that I didn't know. I thought I had to fight him, I thought he was a criminal. And I thought you were supposed to kill the criminal here. No, you have to tackle him and tie him up. And then he starts complaining, he actually wanted to eat a honey and so on and so forth.

I thought that was kind of cute. Then you put it on the horse and realize: Oh, I should even bring it somewhere. So it's not done that I tied it, I have to bring it somewhere. Which is another thing that is cool, that ensures such an immersion. Then I cut it on the horse, rode around, but unfortunately fell down a cliff. It also fell off the horse. Then it lies there now, or it kneels there and I can't do anything.

I can't take it back and put it on the horse. And I had such moments for a long time with Crimson Desert, in which I thought: "Yes, it's actually pretty cool right now. Okay, what's going on again now? Okay, that doesn't work right now. Or am I doing something wrong? Or should I have done it differently?" And then I tried to get him with this Force Push that you have.

What a way to go, my friend.

Then I thought again, and that's also typical for me, Crimson Desert, oh, it's kind of nice here. So they apparently live here on this cliff and here is such a small house and look inside what is there and then you see aha, clothes are apparently sewn here and then I thought again, oh yes, I can't steal anything here. You can only steal things in Crimson Desert by putting on a thief's mask. And that's something again, so you notice sometimes

Is it really like being in reality in the game? I think the open world is designed like that. You really feel like you're in nature. And then you want to do something where you think, that should actually work. I'm going to steal something. No, I need a quest for that. And that's how it is all the time. You want to do something and the game says, that doesn't work exactly as you think it does.

that it should actually work. A quick positive thing about the open world again: I think it's so great here because it's so four-layered and diverse. Yes, sometimes it's a bit funny when really every second five deer and 20 waspberries and three dodos run across a field like that. So you can already tell

that everything should be full, full, full. That's a kind of hyper-realism that's here. It looks more realistic and windy and more particle-like than our world. I think that's a problem. I noticed that on the PS4, but I also think on other...

...platform in better footage, it looks a bit like this. The world is so detailed and particular that the effects are a bit overblown and you lose the overview a bit. Sometimes everything is so detailed that you hardly really know where you have to go or where objects you have to pick up. There are other games that are much more expressionist.

But in Crimson Desert, the mix of the sounds and the music, which is always so light and then swells up again,

We hear the wind, we hear the trees rustle, we see how the animals move through this world and above all, we have a lot of visual logic in this game. It's very often that you understand that there is a river here and that's why the maids are washing the clothes here and behind them.

we see these mountains with the wet clothes that were just washed and behind that we see the lines on which the clothes were hung and so you have a lot of that, I think, that you notice a real logic that then, and I mean with what you can do there, is not really further developed. So at least at the beginning of the game, I have to say that again and again, so for example I thought at some point, oh look, I'm already here pretty far south of the map, then I'll ride to the edge of the map and see how it is there. And then

I get into this forest and I see a woman who has a mask on and she says she was attacked by bandits and when

She didn't think I would help her because you don't really help people from Sun Valley and I don't know what Sun Valley is. And then I go with her into this forest and then bandits attack me there, who kill me immediately with a arrow. So where I already notice a little bit, here I am now apparently underleveled again, I would have needed another equipment again. So of course this immersion kills a bit too, you have to say. But then I go into this place.

and then you see that this is a sick colony and you don't even know what exactly. I was very much reminded of the leprosy patients from Princess Mononoke from the film, there is that too. And I found that

I also like the way the river flows through the place. The stream and the way it looks. I thought it was a great design. And then I can even talk to the boss there. He says: "We are a hospital colony and we moved back here and not many people come here." All super good world building. I think: "Okay, what's going on?" And then he says: "We need a plant like that. Maybe you can get it for us."

And then I go into the forest for a minute, there's a plant, I pick it up, then I bring it back and then he says: "Ah, great, now we can do medicine again, it's going to be a scary night now." And then it's done and you think:

You could get it yourself, right? It was back there on the hill, this plant. So there is something and it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't enough to really connect you to this world, I think. Another example is this one. I come to a fishing village and

And I think it looks great, like how I fight against these bandits in this clip and then you see in the background this village and then I want to know what's in there. And you can see from afar when you ride in, ah, here is probably fishing because you can see the fish and so on. And then I look at the map and it says that this is a fishing village and it is often raided by pirates.

then you go and there's nothing there. So there are these question marks on the map and if you go there, there's a dealer and he gives you something. You can buy something there. Some people can also talk. They say three sentences. That's world building stuff. They sometimes say,

I heard about a great treasure or something like that, fair. But here I couldn't talk to the mayor now. Or, well, you just notice that Crimson Desert doesn't want to be a role-playing game at this level. If we also understand role-playing as something

where I embody someone who has certain ideals that I can choose and then act according to them and thus I can make decisions in the story or even influence the world. And I see, for example, back there on the horizon is even a ship, so probably from pirates, but somehow you would think, now they would have to attack when I'm here in the village. It can of course be that it happens at another place, that it was now coincidentally the wrong time, it can be that at some point in a quest later again happens, but

It could have been the following: There could have been a fisherman, for example, who takes me to the sea because he needs someone to help him with fishing. Maybe you could have made a backstory behind it, that the brother died in a pirate attack, for example, and then I help him. Then the pirates attack while I'm at the lake with this fisherman and then

I jump into the water and climb aboard the ship and then I fight against these pirates, for example. You could do that, for example. Or it could be that a pirate talks to me before I go into the village and say: "Here, try to poison the villagers with some sleeping pills, then we can raid everything here." So, you check what I mean, right? Of course, I know, the world is gigantic and there can't be the most blatant quests everywhere. But

First of all, the world shouldn't be that big with Crimson Desert. And on the other hand, you notice that you're never really connected to these places. I had this feeling back then, a bit like Cyberpunk. It's like that, you can drive through the city and then there are events. But you could go to the different bands in the story sometimes, but you could never say... There were these Moxies, I think they were the sex workers there. And...

You couldn't go to them and do a quest for them. You couldn't just follow the Voodoo Boys for a while in another band. You got a lot of orders in Cyberpunk about these brokers who call you and tell you to do this and that. And it was rarely the case that you could really go anywhere and then a quest line started and then you were pulled in there.

And that distinguishes games like Crimson Desert from games like Breath of the Wild or Elden Ring or Elder Scrolls. As much as you hack around Skyrim,

There was a backlash. It's one of the best-selling games ever. But Skyrim was kind of stupid and did the same thing. But it was different there. You went somewhere and a quest line started. You asked yourself: "What's going on?" Obsidian still do that. Avowed was a bit like that. I didn't find it like that in Crimson Desert. Maybe there will be more in the open world later. But in the beginning, wherever I went,

But it wasn't. For example, there's another thing here. I saw an animal park on the map. And then I think, okay, I'll go there. And then you see a guy in front of you and he's called Animal Park Guide. And you can't do anything. You can give him a gift, I think, this figure. But he doesn't say, oh, yeah, welcome, the show will start soon or something. I didn't sign it up, but when you go in, there are a lot of people in animal masks.

You can't talk to anyone or take on a quest or something like that. Or even learn more about the place. But if you go to this bulletin board where all the notes are, then I had eight different notes that all looked different, but all the same. That's Invitation to the Circus. So there's another quest, then the circus. But that's what I mean a little bit. That's just my problem so far with the exploration of Crimson Desert. You can tell me if that will change at some point. That I somehow have the feeling like this:

I want to go somewhere, I want to look at something, but there is nothing there. It's built and made really well and looks great, but somehow nothing really comes out of it. And that's my big problem with the game, that I think the fights are not demanding enough. I don't think leveling it up was made that interesting with this equipment.

And I think the world and the characters and even myself as a character Cliff, who I play, who can also make decisions,

Could at least. It's not so pronounced that there is an interesting game for me comes together and there I notice my biggest criticism is that it is not a role-playing game. Then yes, in this way. It's a role-playing game that gives it just gear and a story and so, but not that it pulls you into such a world in the sense that you can also develop a bit there. Maybe it will open up even more at some point, that can be.

Because I had so many bugs, because I found the fights a bit tricky and also not so well balanced, because I often had the feeling that something should actually be here, but somehow it is not yet.

I'm waiting a little bit longer to continue playing. If I wouldn't make videos and radio contributions to play, then I would continue to play. Then I would say, then it would be my game that I play and then I would be there for a few months and I would really be happy to explore it. I also looked at Let's Plays, I also looked a little bit what's happening there. Now everything didn't look so exciting, but I would still give it a chance.

I just notice that after 12 hours I don't really value my time. I'd rather focus on other things. What I also found interesting is how much has already been patched in a few days. In the first tests, for example, it was always said that it is annoying that you cannot store your items in a chest.

And that's already patched out. In the first test it was said that these fast travel points are annoying or are turned off too late. They already exist earlier. It was said that the control is annoying, especially on the PC. It has already been changed. And of course there is this controversy with the AI coolers.

works of art in the game and since you know that they used it, you notice that, of course, I think that many others are also somehow generated is probably so the story is probably very, very late allegedly come together and a lot of what is being said seems to be really a bit like slurred and yes really standard high fantasy mambo jumbo what is spoken there and somehow has no real own identity so that is of course what is missing a bit this feeling so that is his own

own thing. I'm not bothered that the story is not so great, because I'm never such a mega fan of story in games. Only the game must then somehow be more interesting and should not feel so crass together. But at the same time, I have to say, that's kind of the charm of this game, that it tries so many things and fails a bit. And yes, if I didn't have other things to play, I would have been

And I'm very excited to read your opinion on this. It will change later in the game. You see it differently than me. Exactly, I'm interested. Please be nice. And exactly, we'll hear each other next time.