Breakout fantasy RPG hit "Crimson Desert" instantly hits close to 250,000 players — but conflicted PC gamers aren't quite satisfied

Crimson Desert launched yesterday, on March 19. As one of the most hyped games releasing this year, a lot of players have been waiting ages to get their hands on it.

Pegged as the largest single-player action-adventure title, the game has received a plethora of reviews that range from top-tier to middling. Even so, it seems Crimson Desert is one of the more desirable releases.

In less than two hours, it reached a peak concurrent player count of 239,000 on release day, something the developer Pearl Abyss is certainly excited about. Keep in mind, this is still days away from the weekend, when most games see even higher player counts!

While Crimson Desert is reaching absolutely massive player counts on Steam, it's also receiving mixed reviews. First, Metacritic scores landed generally favorably for the title at 78, with our review giving it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

It really depends on who you chat with, but I said in my review, “Crimson Desert is the kind of game that usually only comes along once in a generation, so singular in its ambition that it will define the gaming conversation for weeks, if not months, to come. Despite granular misses, Pearl Abyss has showcased what gameplay freedom truly means.”

There are plenty of positive things to say about my experience, but Steam is seeing similar mix-ups, especially around player complaints about controls. One reviewer said, “Beautiful game ruined by HORRID controls,” with another player saying, “The basic controls are unnecessarily complicated.”

Having played 70 hours myself, the controls on Windows PC, if you’re playing with a mouse and keyboard, are what I’d call vast. You can remap them, don’t worry, but a lot of them come down to holding the F keys to open selection wheels, or having to press ALT or CTRL for some form of weapon combo.

The main problem is that there are roughly 25+ different forms of attacks that include melee, magic, and ranged. Some of these tools are necessary for all work, but aren’t intuitive at all, given the current layout.

For my own playtime, I largely used a controller because the experience was considerably better. Everything was at the touch of a button rather than having to reach my fingers uncomfortably to tap F3 or something else.

The one thing I’ve noticed consistently across many other reviews is the lack of playtime. Notably, people are quick to ask who the Greymanes are, why we care, and why the quests themselves are terrible. Then, you go to look at the playtime and realize they haven’t even gotten out of the tutorial sections, which brings up another point.

Something I didn’t talk about in my review, but thinking back at, I wish I had, is the onboarding time. Other reviews spoke of this, but the game itself doesn’t really click until about 8 hours in. For any game, that’s a massive negative. The reason I personally forgive Crimson Desert for this is that there’s so much they have to teach you about its systems for letting you lose to do everything else.

The 8-hour mark is around the time players can expect to have their camp set up, if they push the main story first. This is where campground functionality comes into play, including trade running, Greymane missions, world-building missions, and character swapping.

Before you, you’re soft-locked from systems, but you may have come across another dozen or so regardless. The game is stuffed with things to do, so as a result, it has one of the longest onboarding processes for any video game.

In an age where Steam only offers a refund window of 2 hours, that’s going to cause some people to drop it early. I can’t blame them either; most won’t find the 4 hours to cross the world prior, or see the 300+ hours of content to tackle.

Until you’re unshackled and directed to other places, the world feels gorgeous, but limited.

Still a lot of positives

Players shouldn’t let that perturb them from trying it out, though. The best recommendation I can give folks is to look into someone’s playthrough at the 10-12 hour mark, and see if that is something they’d like. Each of the reviews below reached, or was near, that 8-hour mark.

As another review on Steam said, “If you're a fan of Red Dead Redemption 2 or Zelda, this game is the perfect mix between the 2 with Skyrim elements and vast open world variety.”

eloh1m said, “Playing Crimson Desert feels special to me for a lot of reasons. This is actually the first game I’ve ever pre-ordered, and the first one I waited for all the way until launch day just so I could jump in the moment it released. I started playing at 6 AM, and now it’s already 3 PM. I’m still here, still playing, and honestly, I don’t feel like stopping anytime soon.”

Maljas on Steam also said (a review with 220 hours!), “This is not a game for the faint of heart. You need to actually put effort into it, or you won't like it. It will always be divisive because the game is not easy on many different fronts. There is a major learning curve here. However, if you take the time to dig into it, whether that takes way more than your standard few-hour try, you'll find gold here. If you don't do that, though, you probably won't like this game. Don't be in such a hurry to "get" everything. This is a slow-burn. Take it easy.”

Will you play Crimson Desert?

I am having more fun with Crimson Desert than I ever thought I would, but it's something that not everyone agrees with. In what I might call the most divisive game of 2026, players are both loving and disliking their experience.

Given that the majority of players who like the game also say it takes a few hours to get into, is that a turn-off for you? Is it something you're still willing to give a shot? Let me know in the comments, and make sure to vote in our poll as well.

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