Reception and Awards

1:13 Crimson Desert drew mixed to positive reviews: Metacritic lists it at 77 on PC and PS5 and 78 on Xbox Series X, and OpenCritic at a Top Critic Average of 78 with 74% of critics recommending it (both read Oct 20, 2026), praised for its open world and combat and faulted for its story, controls and menus. Players liked it more: Steam rates it Very Positive, 83.7% of 178,447 reviews per SteamDB on Oct 21, 2026. Digital Foundry's PS5 Pro deep dive, published a week before launch, put the split in a sentence: the game is "crazy and ambitious in a way that I quickly became enamored with", but "all this ambition does not come for free".

Quick facts

Review scores

Reviews went live on Mar 18, 2026, the day before launch, and were reportedly written on PC, as console code had not gone out. They ranged widely, from 4.5/10 to 9.5/10 on OpenCritic's list (read Oct 20, 2026). Each score and line below is the outlet's own:

IGN first posted a review in progress on Mar 18, saying "the highs have been very high, and the lows have been very low", then scored it on Mar 20 (Kotaku's roundup).

What critics praised

27:03 The open world won critics over. After about 4 hours of traversal from the opening village to a mountain over the desert, Digital Foundry's reviewer calls the variety "outstanding" and the game "without a doubt one of the most impressive open world experiences I've ever had", comparing the urge to explore with Red Dead Redemption 2 and Breath of the Wild. Kotaku's roundup found the same pattern across outlets: the world, its visuals and its combat praised (Mar 18, 2026).

4:09 The praise began before launch. Digital Foundry's first look at the BlackSpace Engine calls it an open-world RPG built on systemic design that gives "Breath of the Wild feels", in a world like Dragon's Dogma's but "even a little bit larger in scope". The engine behind it is on BlackSpace Engine.

What critics faulted

13:15 The story, the controls and the menus drew most of the criticism. Eurogamer called the characters and story "fatally undercooked", PCGamesN's 6/10 faulted its narrative, and reviewers across Kotaku's roundup complained about controls, menus and the inventory. Technical rough edges were noted even in praise: Digital Foundry found that "anything involving tons of NPCs or enemies can drop the frame rate" on PS5 Pro, and its April looks at the base PS5 and Xbox Series S versions were far less kind, as Push Square and Pure Xbox summarized them. Polygon's review in progress headline said that after 10 hours the open world "hasn't shown me a single interesting thing".

Steam reviews over time

Steam players started cool and warmed up. At the first player peak on launch night, SteamDB logged a 61.05% rating ("Mixed", Mar 20, 2026); by the all-time peak on Mar 29 it was 80.27%. On Oct 20, 2026 Steam showed "Very Positive" with 148,553 of 177,539 reviews positive, about 84%, and "Mostly Positive" for the last 30 days (77% of 2,041), and on Oct 21 SteamDB counted 83.7%: 149,327 positive and 29,120 negative. Metacritic's users give it 8.7. The player numbers are on Sales and Player Count.

How Pearl Abyss answered

Pearl Abyss apologized within days and kept patching. On Mar 21, 2026, "A Message to Our Players" apologized for not giving keyboard and mouse players "a satisfactory gameplay experience" (notice 71), and the patches that followed reworked controls, menus and difficulty (see Patch Notes). In October, Pearl Abyss's European CEO Lybee Park said critics "had to play the build that is not the exact same version as the launch game" and "also had limited time" (Wccftech, Oct 9, 2026, citing The Game Business).

0:20 The story got its own answer. The trailer for Crimson Desert Enhanced, the free update of Aug 25, 2026, announces "Updated with new story moments" on one of its first cards and ends on the list: new story moments, expanded voice-over in five more languages, Arabic subtitles and interface, and all post-launch content. Pearl Abyss had promised in June to refine "the coherence of key scenes" (notice 95).

The AI art apology

After launch, players found 2D props made with generative AI. On Mar 22, 2026 Pearl Abyss said the use was "not in line with our internal standards, and we take full responsibility for it", called the assets early placeholders left in by mistake and said "We sincerely apologize for these oversights" (Game Informer, Mar 23, 2026). Patches replaced them ("certain 2D visual assets have been replaced", 1.08.00 and 1.09.00), and the Steam page now carries a disclosure that generative AI had a supplementary role in some 2D props, which the art team later replaced.

Awards and nominations

• gamescom award 2025: nominated for Best Visuals, Most Epic, Best Microsoft Xbox Game and Best Sony PlayStation Game (notice 46).
• PlayStation Blog Players' Choice: readers' pick for the best new game of March 2026 (PlayStation Blog, Apr 1, 2026).
• World Soundtrack Awards 2026: longlisted for the Game Music Award (notice 104).
• gamescom award 2026: nominated for Best PC Game and Most Epic (notice 122); it won neither, which went to Total War: Warhammer 40,000 and Tides of Annihilation (Inven Global).
• Golden Joystick Awards 2026: nominated for PC Game of the Year and Best Soundtrack; public voting closes on Oct 23, 2026 at 16:00 PT (23:00 UTC) (notice 135).

The Game Awards 2026 had not announced its nominees as of Oct 21, 2026. The history behind the game is on Development History.

Frequently asked questions

Is Crimson Desert good? Crimson Desert drew mixed to positive reviews, a Metacritic score of 77 on PC and an OpenCritic average of 78 (Oct 20, 2026), with praise for its open world and combat and criticism of its story and controls; Steam players rate it Very Positive, 83.7% positive per SteamDB on Oct 21, 2026.

What is Crimson Desert's Metacritic score? Crimson Desert scores 77 on PC and PS5 and 78 on Xbox Series X on Metacritic, with a user score of 8.7 (read Oct 20, 2026); at the Mar 18, 2026 review embargo it stood at 78.

What did IGN give Crimson Desert? IGN gave Crimson Desert 6/10 in Travis Northup's review of Mar 20, 2026, calling it "an extremely ambitious open-world adventure" that is both "incredibly cool and gobsmackingly infuriating".

What are Crimson Desert's Steam reviews? Crimson Desert's Steam reviews are Very Positive: 83.7% of about 178,000 reviews were positive on Oct 21, 2026, per SteamDB, up from a Mixed 61.05% on launch night.

Has Crimson Desert won any awards? Crimson Desert won the PlayStation Blog's Players' Choice vote for March 2026 and is nominated for PC Game of the Year and Best Soundtrack at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026; it was nominated at gamescom in 2025 and 2026 without winning.

Is Crimson Desert nominated for Game of the Year? Crimson Desert is nominated for PC Game of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026 (voting until Oct 23, 2026); The Game Awards 2026 had not named its nominees as of Oct 21, 2026.

Sources

• Crimson Desert, Metacritic, read Oct 20, 2026
• Crimson Desert, OpenCritic, read Oct 20, 2026
• Crimson Desert reviews, OpenCritic, read Oct 20, 2026
• Crimson Desert review, IGN, Mar 20, 2026
• Crimson Desert Metacritic scores review roundup, Kotaku, Mar 18, 2026
• Crimson Desert charts, SteamDB, read Oct 21, 2026
• SteamDB on X, launch night, SteamDB, Mar 20, 2026
• SteamDB on X, all-time peak, SteamDB, Mar 29, 2026
• Crimson Desert Enhanced, Steam, read Oct 20, 2026
• A Message to Our Players, Pearl Abyss, Mar 21, 2026
• Dev Update: June-September 2026 Preview, Pearl Abyss, Jun 2, 2026
• Crimson Desert apologizes for using AI art and issues first big patch, Game Informer, Mar 23, 2026
• Pearl Abyss blames pre-launch builds for Crimson Desert's 77 Metacritic, Wccftech, Oct 9, 2026
• gamescom award 2025 nominations, Pearl Abyss, Aug 18, 2025
• Players' Choice: vote for March 2026's best new game, PlayStation Blog, Apr 1, 2026
• Vote for Crimson Desert at the 2026 World Soundtrack Awards, Pearl Abyss, Jul 2, 2026
• Crimson Desert Has Been Nominated at the 2026 gamescom Awards, Pearl Abyss, Aug 24, 2026
• gamescom award 2026 winners announced, Inven Global, Aug 2026
• Vote for Crimson Desert at the Golden Joystick Awards 2026, Pearl Abyss, Oct 8, 2026
• Crimson Desert on PlayStation 5 Pro - The Digital Foundry Deep Dive, Digital Foundry, Mar 12, 2026 (video)
• Crimson Desert First Look: The BlackSpace Engine Tech Preview, Digital Foundry, Mar 5, 2026 (video)
• Crimson Desert Enhanced Official Announcement Trailer, gamescom ONL 2026, Crimson Desert, Aug 25, 2026 (video)