Over the past few months, the hype surrounding Crimson Desert, the second game from South Korean developer Pearl Abyss after the MMORPG Black Desert Online, has grown significantly. Between the long wait (the game was initially announced at G-Star 2019), the impressive visuals powered by the proprietary BlackSpace engine, and attractive features like the ability to fly across a completely seamless map on the back of a dragon, there was a lot of talk of the game being the next big open world success. Early pre-order estimates confirmed that the hype was strong.
However, following the end of the review embargo and the publication of the first reviews from critics, Pearl Abyss' stock has crumbled by nearly 30% this morning. The reason, according to the Seoul Economic Daily, is that investors were expecting much higher reviews on the heels of the aforementioned hype. Instead, the current average score on Metacritic is 78, indicating a consensus that Crimson Desert is a good but not quite great game. In Wccftech's review in progress, Francesco De Meo was a bit more positive than the average reviewer, although he noted some outstanding weaknesses:
It is very fun and gripping, and a game that is very easy to get lost into with an incredible world density. Although filled to the brim with lots of fun activities, the lack of cohesion between all of the game's elements and the serviceable and far from stellar narrative and paper-thin characters have an impact on the experience, as does the lack of certain quality-of-life features, and will likely prevent it from being the game of the decade some were hyped for.
The Seoul Economic Daily also underlines that the development budget, marketing spend notwithstanding, was around $133 million. Even with these reviews, Crimson Desert could still perform well commercially and likely will become profitable in the near future, though Game of the Year nominations are probably out of the question.
Check out our Crimson Desert hub page to find everything there is to know ahead of the game's launch, scheduled later today on PC, Mac, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series S and X.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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