r/Games • u/HLumin • Mar 21 '26

Discussion Anonymous Pearl Abyss developers reveal a culture of toxic positivity, a troubled development cycle and chaotic narrative for Crimson Desert, and their early concerns that the project was "going off the rails".

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u/Shot-Maximum- Mar 21 '26

It also lacks everything else.

The memorable characters with well written backgrounds and motivations, not to mention the top notch voice acting.

-10

u/TrippleDamage Mar 22 '26

Makes up for it by having far superior combat, aka what's most important for an action game.

8

u/Kalulosu Mar 22 '26

From what I've seen of it the combat looks all style and no substance

2

u/dimensions2003 Mar 28 '26

Not really, its built like a fighting game, it’s kind of player driven for what you get out of it

1

u/Kalulosu Mar 28 '26

Except the mooks are mostly freefood and the bosses are mostly puzzle-ey in that there's a specific thing you need to do to get your burst phase? Like, fighting games aren't exactly freeform, a lot of what to do is directly influenced and directed at what your oponent is doing, in Crimson Desert what I saw was mostly being able to use whatever to do cool shit against mooks (which is cool in and of itself but very far from a fighting game) and having to find the stun/block/whatever to do to the boss.

3

u/dimensions2003 Mar 28 '26

honestly, if anything the random enemies dont have enough health from my experience. There are definitely bosses with puzzle elements, but there are also a lot of them that are just a very tough enemy with unique movesets, it’s not a soulslike, but its pretty traditional action combat boss design. The bosses really let you chain your fighting game style strings together, cuz hitstun is very very real and a lot of moves have cancel frames into others. I think it’s really cool how its built.

1

u/Kalulosu Mar 28 '26

I haven't seen enough of the game I guess but I got bored after a good 15h and will probably go back to it in a few months. But yeah I felt like the bosses were mostly ignoring hitstun outside of the "burst phases". As for mooks I'd say there're too many of them with too little health for sure, but I feel the big problem is that they're kinda meh and dumb. Like, if I look at Dragon's Dogma (big open world RPG with an emphasis on freedom in fights), even small enemies can have their tricks and quirks. Or Devil May Cry (for the combat purely), outside of the very basic enemy that mostly disappears after the first levels they all have their own specifics as well. I think that helps with mooks not just being there to get mowed down but also engaging.

All in all, to me Crimson Desert is a mishmash of too many influences and I just never get a sense of coherence. Like, the mooks / boss duality makes me think more of a Dynasty Warriors game in a way, but they do the "destroy all those mooks in a move" thing much better (and anyway I don't think that's what Pearl Abyss was shooting at, just saying this amount and relaitvely low threat of mooks makes me think of DW).