I normally do not buy a game so soon after it comes out. I like to wait for some bug fixes and to make sure its going to work well on Linux before I drop money on one. But I picked up Crimson Desert only about a week after it came out. I don’t regret it but the game has a few problems.
The Good
How Crimson Desert feels
I remember that feeling when I first played Oblivion or Skyrim. You have this massive open world in front of you full of mystery, adventure and unknown potential. Crimson Desert is the first time I have really felt that feeling since 2011. There are other super good games like Expedition 33 but nothing really fit that Elder Scrolls freedom until now.
The game also kind of reminds me of the Witcher games. The way bosses work and maybe even the way the world is designed.
So in short I would say this game feels like a mix between Skyrim and Witcher 3.
The biggest open world I seen
I’m told this game’s world is twice the size of Red Dead Redemption 2 and about 4 times the size of Skyrim’s map. I can’t think of any other RPG with a world on that scale. I have probably only seen 10% of it so far so I can’t speak for it all but what I have seen has been beautiful.
Crimson Desert water physics
— Pirat_Nation 🔴 (@Pirat_Nation) March 30, 2026
Gamers claim that they are the best implemented in any game ever. pic.twitter.com/oA5h3OoOnv
I’m over 10 hours into the game and I’m just now starting to explore outside the starting area.
Boss fights are fun
Boss fights are fun! They each seem epic and unique. This reminds me of the Witcher. I heard someone say each boss fight is a puzzle to solve.
But sadly standard enemies are not very challenging. I can beat them by just spamming the attack button. But I admit I only seen about 10% of the world so that might change. Maybe I have just out grown the enemies in the starting area.
If you learn the controls you can do some cool looking stuff.
If anyone tells you the combat in Crimson Desert sucks/is boring, show them this.
— SirD 🇺🇸 (@Sir_Dammed) March 26, 2026
If they still say this: they are boring or need to git gud. This is fucking sick.#CrimsonDesert pic.twitter.com/MWmco2AXvI
Lots to do
Kind of like Skyrim this game is packed full of lots to do. Its very easy to be heading somewhere and to get side tracked for an hour. You can even adopt cats and dogs.
The first 10 hours or so of the game is more like a big tutorial because there is so much to this world.
One suggestion I would give the developers would be I wish the NPCs reacted more to what you do. I can fall from the sky and using some crazy power and they just walk by like its nothing haha. But most games don’t do that so I wont hold it against them.
The Bad
Crimson Desert Controls
This is my biggest complaint. I’m not sure about the keyboard control because the game told me it played better with a controller so I plugged in my xbox controller.
I’m not sure how to explain it other then to say the controls are not intuitive. Any other games after 10+ hours the controls would be second nature to me. But in this game I’m always hitting right wrong key or I have to stop and think about what button to push.
Even the UI controls seem awkward. For example: in the game “X” is the confirm button. But in the UI “A” is the apply button. Then on the save menu “X” is the delete button and A is the load save button. Instead here you have to push “Y” to confirm/apply to save your game.
I have loaded games before when I was trying to save and that’s frustrating.
Maybe its better with a keyboard? I’m a PC gamer so I thought about switching to see but at this point I’ve already put so much time in to learning the controller!
Crimson Desert Linux Performance
This is not unplayable but it has issues on Linux. I probably spent over an hour tweaking settings trying to make it run better and look better. Ray tracing was crashing the game on Linux I heard and depending on what version of proton you used it would not even load. There was an update that fixed the ray tracing issue and I got decent performance from custom proton version GE-Proton10-24.
There is still a few issues. For example is I turn model quality up things look jagged on the edges. But on low it looks fine.
The last issue I have that I have not been able to fix it the NPC’s hair. Sometimes it looks transparent or its kind of flickering. Hopefully another update or two will fix that issue.
Denuvo
Them having Denuvo DRM automatically keep the game from having a perfect score for me on Linux. Most of the time when Is see that on a game I decided not to buy and move on. But I knew some people that were playing this on Linux so I decided to give it a shot.
The problem is every time a Linux player changes setting like Proton to try to make the game work better it can count as an activation and if you do that 5 times in 24 hours your locked out of the game you paid for.
After Witcher 3, Cyberpunk, Baldurs Gate 3, and Expedition 33 all had record sales without DRM there seems to be no excuse to use it. I hope they remove it later on.
Final Thoughts
I think the game is amazing despite some of its issues. I also really think this game could be the new Skyrim if the developers work to support mods. I look forward to seeing how this game matures over the next few months.
As of right now if your on Linux I would suggest holding off on buying for a little while unless you are ok with doing some tweaking to get it working.
