I was as excited about Crimson Desert as the next person, perhaps even more so. Little gets me out of bed in the morning, so when a game piques my interest, I lean in. I bought into the hype, watched all the trailers, talked about it enthusiastically with my friends, and wrote about it a lot on this very site. I fully bought into the Crimson Desert fever and was ready to get my boogie on when it dropped on March 19, 2026. I stayed up late (it released at 10 pm here in the UK) only to see there was an update, and then waited an interminably long time for it to download. But then, as the download completed, I booted it up and was finally playing the game I had been waiting years for.
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Sadly, as should be evident from this article’s title, I was extremely disappointed. The soul-crushing feeling of being so utterly deflated after a bout of extreme hype is debilitating to say the least. I had been so excited for Crimson Desert and then so swiftly let down that I felt I would never recover. As dramatic as it may sound, in the moment, staring blankly at my blindingly bright TV at 1 am as the bafflingly bad opening played before me, it was true. Crimson Desert’s introduction is one of the worst things I have ever experienced, but it isn’t indicative of the entire experience. I hope I can persuade a few others struggling through the beginning of the game to carry on, because I am extremely grateful I did.
Crimson Desert Has The Worst Introduction Of Any Game
Crimson Desert proved to be controversial at launch, and I would wager that its abysmally bad introduction played a rather substantial role in that. I had heard via reviews prior to its release date that one needs to persevere through Crimson Desert, but I had no idea it would be this bad. Without going too much into spoiler territory, not that there is a great deal to spoil, Crimson Desert’s opening hour is a sequence of disjointed and convolutedly random objectives that have zero connective tissue, ensuring it all feels utterly surreal and pointless. One moment you’re in an inn, arm wrestling someone for absolutely no reason, the next you’re inexplicably rescuing a woman from the sewers, above which a beggar you just gave a coin to teleported away.
These initial missions don’t introduce you naturally to any of Crimson Desert’s main gameplay mechanics, nor do they do a good job of dishing out story information. Not once since the introduction have I had to use the broom to unclog a chimney, yet Pearl Abyss felt it was a relevant task to make me do in the game’s opening hour, for some reason. Instead, it is just a series of unrelated tasks that then inexplicably lead to Kliff jumping off the sky islands after nonchalantly accepting magical wings. It is worse in practice than it perhaps sounds (I’m doing my best not to spoil anything too major here), and was bad enough to make me want to quit the whole game entirely.
This is Crimson Desert’s first impression, the start of your journey in Pywel. It makes you believe that this will be what the whole game is, randomly being led from one nonsensical objective to the next without any rhyme or reason. Kliff never voices a line of dialogue that justifies going to sweep that aforementioned chimney, nor does he explain why arm wrestling that guy is worthwhile. It just happens because that’s what the game tells you to do. Yet, after this hour, once you get to Chapter 2, this ends. The game never does this again once you’ve completed the first Chapter and the watch tower at the start of Chapter 2.
Kliff is given a task to help out the people of Hernand in exchange for a new place to rebuild the Greymanes a little bit into Chapter 2, and that starts a series of seemingly unconnected missions that actually lead to a greater conspiracy. It’s great stuff, but absolutely missable if you gave up long beforehand. It has been said that you need to play 100 hours of Crimson Desert to enjoy it, and while I appreciate the sentiment, I truly believe you only need to overcome the first hour or so to get to grips with what it is trying to do. After this introduction, it is quite confident in letting you roam about, showcasing its gorgeous world, fun activities, and legitimately great writing. So, why is this intro here in the first place? What was Pearl Abyss thinking when it put it together? More importantly, is it fixable? Well, I can answer that last question fairly confidently: yes, there’s actually a very simple solution to fixing Crimson Desert’s opening.
There’s An Easy Fix For Crimson Desert’s Abysmal Opening
The very easy solution to fixing Crimson Desert’s biggest problem, the aforementioned intro, is simply removing it. Crazy, I know. What is so baffling about it is how completely unnecessary it is. The game starts with Kliff dying, then going to the sky islands, returning to land and doing the aforementioned arm wrestling nonsense, before returning to the sky islands and getting his wings. If you were to cut out the bit when he returns to land, absolutely nothing would change. In fact, the game would be all the better for it.
Peal Abyss simply needs to have Kliff stay on the sky islands after dying and completing the second set of puzzles, get his wings, and then fly down to Hernand, where he meets Barden Middler and is set off on the quests to help the townsfolk. Absolutely nothing of substance would be lost, but the introduction would be far less confusing and set a better example of how the story will play out going forward. This may legitimately be the most necessary update for Crimson Desert, as the introduction legitimately made me almost give up on the game.
As it stands, the random nature of Crimson Desert’s opening hour is so off-putting and confusing that I figured it was’t worth sticking around to see what else it had to offer. As aforementioned, you’re not engaging with the game’s most interesting aspects, but instead an assortment of boring tasks you’ll likely never do again. You also have no idea how long this will last, nor if once it is over, it’ll be worth playing regardless. With reports circulating that you need to play for at least 10 hours to enjoy Crimson Desert, chances are you’ll bail long before you get there.
However, I assure you, if you persevere, you’re in for an incredible time. Crimson Desert is a phenomenal game, easily one of my top five, as it has so much to offer patient players. Its best stuff needs to be discovered and isn’t merely handed to the player. Simply put, Crimson Desert is a mature TOTK, a game that is so rewarding, so fulfilling, so beautiful in its execution of practically every facet of its design. I strongly encourage anyone struggling with those opening hours to stick with it. I also strongly encourage Pearl Abyss to revisit that introduction and tweak it, if only by removing the initial moments in Hernand, in order to make the onboarding experience a little better and less likely to make people, like myself, rage quit.
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