After weeks of hype, Crimson Desert debuts to high player counts but “Mixed” Steam reviews, citing “disjointed graphics”, lovable cats, “awful” UI and more

Pearl Abyss’ big, single player RPG spin-off Crimson Desert released last night, and has had a somewhat wobbly debut after weeks of anticipation.

Crimson Desert is currently sitting with a “Mixed” review average over on Steam, with many lamenting “disjointed graphics”, “repeated assets” and more.

“The open world is what got me to buy, unfortunately the graphics are weird especially in low light conditions, light completely glitches out with raytracing off, it only looks good with ray reconstruction on but then you have 30fps instead of 100,” reads one Crimson Desert review. “The graphics overall look awful in no upscale mode, FSR or DLAA fixes most of the shimmering and graininess of the foliage, but introduces ghosting instead and shimmering is still present in other areas.”

Then we have actual playing of the game. “On paper, everything looks impressive – visuals, scale, ambition. But once you actually play it, the experience falls apart quickly. The pacing is slow, the systems feel bloated, and the gameplay loop never truly hooks you. All of the cool stuff they showed in the trailer is clearly way later in the game. The early hours should pull you in, but instead you’re doing things like random arm-wrestling and other filler that add nothing to the experience,” another review wrote.

Other reviews, meanwhile, also highlight the poor controls and UI scaling, with one saying while they found the game itself “fun”, these elements “are awful”. Some Crimson Desert players have even gone as far to request a launch day refund off the back of those controls in particular.

There are some positive reviews in there too, though, especially when it comes to the Crimson Desert cats. “I got to the first town, and was walking around greeting everyone, noticed the village cat, upon trying to pet him, I picked him up and was able to walk around the village with in in my arms, while petting him and completing my tasks,” one said. “This game is great, highly recommend.”

Another added: “I found a crying cat in the bushes and the game let me pick her up and pet her. 10/10”

This all comes off the back of significant hype for Crimson Desert. It made its way onto Steam’s list of top 100 global sellers ahead of its release, after previews from content creators showered the game in praise. “Yes, the game is real. Yes, it’s f***ing awesome,” one such preview declared. Then, this week it became the number one seller on Steam before it launched.

That hype even spread as far as prediction market gambling sites such as Kalshi, where prior to its release trades from the public on that platform gave Crimson Desert a 30 percent chance of winning the coveted Game of the Year award at this year’s TGAs. This was second only to GTA 6, which the site gave a 45 percent of winning Game of the Year. However, as noted by Bloomberg’s Jason Schrier, since Crimson Desert’s broadly lukewarm reviews went live, those chances have tumbled and now only has a predicted five percent of winning.

But despite the game perhaps not receiving the types of reviews the developers would have hoped for, Crimson Desert has still managed to reach a strong concurrent player peak of 239,045 over on Valve’s platform, placing it behind only Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2 at the time.

At the time of writing, there are still 115,545 of us exploring the world of Pywel with Kliff, making it currently the 6th most popular game on Steam (in terms of concurrent player numbers). The top five games being played right now are those perennial favourites Counter Strike 2 and Dota 2, plus PUBG: Battlegrounds, followed by Slay the Spire 2 and Bongo Cat (see image below).

Crimson Desert’s current player count is a far cry from the 3m Steam Wishlists it scored ahead of release, although that’s natural. The number also may well pick up over the weekend, as will typically be the case at a game’s launch.

“Think of The Witcher games,” Lewis Gordon wrote in Eurogamer’s three star Crimson Desert review. “You can practically taste the fetid water, churned-up mud, and hunks of charred meat dined on by noblemen. Those are works of grit, texture, and a genuinely idiosyncratic sense of place. How does Crimson Desert taste? Well, it is not nearly so flavoursome – imagine, instead, a banquet where almost every dish has the faint taste of cardboard, and you have to eat it for what feels like forever.” Though he did also cite a “major soft spot” for the game’s many giant trolls.

If you are currently playing Crimson Desert yourself, be sure to check out our various guides. Here’s how to tame horses, how to steal and how to fish to get you started.