When Pearl Abyss launched Crimson Desert, the game was met with a mixed reception. What felt like an overambitious game stuffed to the brim with content, some of which hampered the experience more than added to it, left players with a mess of a game to explore and conquer.
Yet, those brave warriors with the gumption to stick with it eventually got rewarded with an experience that only got better with time. Pearl Abyss deserves praise for the level of support they’ve shown, offering pure dedication to the player base with a steady stream of patches, hot fixes, and a roadmap for the future of Crimson Desert.
CGMagazine sat down with PR & Marketing Director for Pearl Abyss, Will Powers, during Summer Game Fest 2026 to discuss the transformative state of Crimson Desert’s post-launch. After a long and insightful conversation, those on the fence about jumping in, or for those wanting to give the game another shot, can take a breath and dive into our top five reasons why Crimson Desert is worth your time.
A More Freeing Open World:
One of the grievances of Crimson Desert when it launched was its often unintuitive feeling controls, which at times felt overly complicated, getting in the way of simple things, such as looting or contextual commands that made the experience feel overly clunky. Flash forward to the present, and Kliff feels like a new man, with Crimson Desert now offering players the ability to remap the controls completely.
On top of this, an expanded inventory and category tabs have made the UI and menuing in the game much more in line with other AAA experiences. Finally, controller presets for those who want to jump in have completely eliminated the weirdness of long pressing and contextualized button prompts from the experience, making the whole game just feel more fluid and responsive.
“We’ve just added more options for people to have a lower barrier to entry if they’re starting fresh. At its core, it maintains the same DNA, but this is a much more polished and refined. A game with a lot more options.
Originally, when the game launched, it forced you to play in a specific control style. At its surface, it resembled a lot of other games, and that might have been confusing, because it didn’t play like that, whether in genre or in control scheme. Now I think it, its facade matches its substance a lot more.”
A Flexible Power Fantasy:
For me, one of the most frustrating things about Crimson Desert during the review period of the game was how, eventually, bosses became more of a chore than a challenge. This problem was only compounded the further I got into the adventure, often making boss fights feel more like major roadblocks rather than a cool set piece or a pivotal moment worth engaging with.
With the latest build of the game, Pearl Abyss has given players much more agency over the challenge of the game, with three distinct difficulty sliders that tailor the experience to the player, making the game as breezy and breathtaking as the world itself, or as hard and forboding as the sheer scope of its massive sandbox.
“Pearl Abyss’s approach post-launch has been mostly around what we can do in order to reward the players that have been there from day one and continue to make the game this living, breathing experience.”
Combat Prowess and Saved Loadouts:
On the topic of bosses and combat in general, a pain point in Crimson Desert stemmed not from the combat itself, but rather the clunky UI and constant menuing required to adjust your loadout after a death. Booting up the game now, instead rewards patient players with a more robust combat experience, as Crimson Desert now remembers your elemental sets and loadouts as they were before you died, making it possible to immediately jump back into the action to hopefully vanquish your foe(s).
When asked about this steady trickle of improvements, Pearl Abyss’s long history of working on MMORPGs has seemingly been a major contributor in helping Crimson Desert evolve.
“It all comes down to the DNA of the developers, as they come from the live service background, so where this shouldn’t be as surprising if you look at what the Black Desert team has done, they’ve released weekly updates for the past 11 years, so this is kind of business as usual for them as a development team.”
Nature, Nurture and Pet Simulator:
One of the most underrated yet underbaked features of Crimson Desert was the inclusion of a pet and mount system, something that initially was limited to cats, dogs, and a few other exotic, more fantasy-based creatures. Mid to late-game players can now look forward to looking after and raising pets such as the Kuku Bird chick and Wyvern Baby chick, respectively. Furthermore, the following pets, once matured, can be used as mounts, adding a fun incentive beyond simply raising the creatures, giving returning or new players something new to engage with.
These mounts are also meant to improve the quality-of-life in Crimson Desert, which Powers touched on in the interview.
“I think quality of life wise, there the game became a lot more player friendly, and through additional fast travel points—that was like the first couple weeks of the game or being able to fast travel without having to stop moving or while flying or while riding your giant wyvern or your horse. You can now fast travel regardless of your player state which I think was unnecessarily restrictive originally.
A lot of those things, where it’s like, ‘Okay, are we doing this because it makes sense in the DNA of the game, or is this just impeding fun?’ The things that were impeding fun, those have been the substantive QL changes that don’t change the DNA of the game, so I would say that the game is a lot more fun now, and there aren’t little things that could have been impeding it for some players.”
New Minigames and Better Stronghold Blockade Battles:
Crimson Desert’s late game offered players blockade challenges that saw strongholds that could be taken over, only for them to fall to enemy threats after a short period of time, an element that made the prospect of going after these points of contention a sometimes frustrating experience. With version 1.10, Pearl Abyss has further improved this late-game element within Crimson Desert by introducing players to a rebalanced and improved re-blockade system, one that now has interim stages that better signify to the player its state, with a “Battle” and “Reconstruction” stage to even things out.
Additionally, to add even more things to do in the massive open world that makes up the land of Pywel, there are brand new mini-games that expand beyond the arm wrestling, brawling and archery found in the base experience. These new mini-games include Pinball and Orb Ball, both of which come with new treasures to be had, including crafting recipes, furniture, abyss shards and more. Finally, when probed about the level of effort Pearl Abyss is putting into Crimson Desert’s post-launch effort and plans for the future, Powers left us feeling positive about the future.
“A new IP selling five million copies in a month, should be celebrated. There’s too many layoffs and studio closures, and bad news that I think that we all could benefit from spending some time around the good news.
And this is this should be a celebration in general, because Pearl Abyss isn’t taking a victory lap in the sense of ‘All right, how can we sell more?’ It’s ‘How can we give more back to the community?’
So their approach post launch has been mostly around what we can do in order to reward the players that have been there from day one and continue to make the game this living breathing experience”
That wasn’t all Powers left us with, as Summer Game Fest was certainly a time to hint at announcements and future content, too.
“I will say that the one thing that I’m saying here explicitly is that words are very important, and previously we’ve called them patches or updates. We’re using a different term here, we’re using DLC, that’s because it’s whether it’s in scope or scale, it’s substantively different than what we’ve previously been previously added to the game, which is kind of crazy, because those patches are beefy,”
For a game released less than three months ago, Pearl Abyss has shown the playerbase that they’re serious about Crimson Desert’s initial, less-than-stellar reception. With improvements and QoL changes abound, those on the fence about experiencing Crimson Desert are encouraged to reconsider or, at the very least, wait it out, as the game is only getting better, day by day.
Crimson Desert is available now on PlayStation 5, XBOX Series X|S, the Epic Games Store and Steam.
