Crimson Desert

Crimson Desert is a single-player action RPG from Pearl Abyss, the same Korean studio that created Black Desert Online. The story takes place on the fictional continent of Pywel, a medieval fantasy land torn apart by war. You play as Kliff, commander of the Greymanes mercenaries ("Gray Manes"): after the death of King Akapen, various factions fight for power, and the young prince flees to your company for protection. Important: this is a standalone single-player game, not an MMORPG and not a sequel to Black Desert Online.

The gameplay combines open-world exploration with a dynamic combat system: swordplay on foot and on horseback (on horses, bears, wolves, dragons and late-game machines), and boss battles with elemental abilities, including the aerial boss Ironwing REN-X and the mechanical dragon Golden Star. Besides combat: fishing, hunting, cooking, herb gathering and airship travel. In structure, the game is closer to The Witcher 3 or Elden Ring than to Black Desert Online. The main campaign takes about 40-60 hours, a full playthrough 80-100+.

Localization: Pearl Abyss officially added a Russian interface and Russian subtitles, so you can play fully without knowing English. The studio has no official Russian voice-over: over the whole history of Black Desert Online (12 years) Pearl Abyss never released a Russian dub. Fan-made AI voice-overs exist (Shimon Mood v0.3 on playground.ru, free; SynthVoiceRu on Boosty, by subscription). They are unofficial and made by a neural network, not by actors.

Technical details: BlackSpace Engine (Pearl Abyss in-house development). Minimum requirements are GTX 1060 / RX 5500 XT, recommended RTX 2080 / RX 6700 XT, 16 GB of RAM. Disk space is 150 GB on an SSD, which matters for Steam Deck owners with a 256 GB drive. The game works offline after installation; no external account is needed.

Reception: Metacritic 78 (PC and PS5), Steam: Very Positive (~150,000 reviews). The Steam rating rose from "Mostly Positive" to "Very Positive" after several patches: Pearl Abyss fixed Intel Arc GPU support and removed neural-network-generated illustrations, replacing them with hand-drawn ones. First-month sales exceeded 5 million copies. Critics praise the open world, graphics and combat system; the downsides noted are an overload of mechanics and the pacing in the final part.

What the Standard Edition includes: the single-player campaign, all open-world activities (fishing, hunting, cooking, gathering), Steam achievements, Steam cards and cloud saves. Deluxe Edition with additional content is a separate SKU.

Crimson Desert is a single-player open-world action RPG from Pearl Abyss: command the Greymanes mercenaries, fight bosses on horseback and on foot, hunt, cook and fly airships. Russian interface and subtitles; the official voice-over is English. 5 million copies sold in the first month. Steam, PC.