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Crimson Desert

erek said:

“Crimson Desert Now Boots on Intel Arc GPUs, Full Optimization Coming Soon​

by AleksandarK Today, 06:50 Discuss (6 Comments)
After the controversy surrounding the open-world fantasy game "Crimson Desert" not being supported on Intel Arc GPUs, to the extent that the game wouldn't even launch on systems with these GPUs, Pearl Abyss has faced pressure from the gaming community. As a result, the game now officially boots on Intel Arc GPUs, with full optimizations to follow. In a statement on Friday, Intel claimed they had offered Pearl Abyss assistance in delivering full optimization for Intel GPUs, which the studio did not utilize. "Over the past several years, we've reached out to Pearl Abyss many times to help test, validate, and optimize support for Intel graphics, providing early hardware, drivers, and engineering resources across multiple generations, including Alchemist, Battlemage, Meteor Lake, and Lunar Lake."

As the controversy spread and the studio noticed the comments circulating online from millions of Arc GPU users, the situation improved. Pearl Abyss is now allowing Intel Arc GPUs to boot the game, with further performance optimizations to come. Previously, the Crimson Desert FAQ stated that there was no current support for Intel Arc graphics cards, but it has been updated to indicate that support is now present, with optimizations being added. The studio asks gamers to be patient. "We apologize for any confusion our previous FAQ wording regarding playability on Intel Arc GPUs may have caused. Please regard this as our latest official news on the subject," says Pearl Abyss.“
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I will wager those numbers are 100% fabrication and I would be VERY surpised if the number is +350.000.
 
Played about 30h now. This game's tech has probably got to be the best ever released in an open world game. The lighting, draw distance, LoDs, packed cities/PoIs and smooth as butter no-stuttering performance on ultra settings is phenomenal. Yes there are other open world games that have some of these features but not with the density of content this game has.

As mentioned yesterday here the overall sentiment and reviews toward the game are now trending positive as those playing it get out of the tutorial areas, spend a few hours in and are getting somewhat acclimatized to it's systems. There's even content creators making videos about the "sudden turnaround" but truth is there have always been players from day 1 saying that you have to let the game grow on you, it won't be amazeballs from minute one.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_VPtdJAjkQ

Asmon tends to eventually dislike games with complexity to it's combat systems, no handholding / no yellow paint, or difficult puzzles. His chat and youtube comments are full of "you're doing x wrong" and "you're missing y important information" constantly. Nothing wrong with preferring simple 1 or 2 button combat systems, yellow paint and easy puzzles, but I'd take those persons reviews about a game like this with a grain of salt. Yes he is correct to some level that there is room for improvement, but also the devs deserve some leeway for making an attempt at a living breathing game world with this level of density and scale.
 
1. The game is "hard" as in does NOT hold your hand, most of the things i found out hapeend by chance/mistake.
2. It doesn't follow all the norm and have a "difficulty slider". Get good or find another game.
3. People try and "rush progress" the game and thus fail hard.

I am having fun and I laugh when someone gave it 0/10 because of no "homosexuality"....get stuffed DEI muppet :LOL:
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Absalom said:
He'll beat the game after sinking 100+ hours into and then make another clickbait video that says "Final verdict? It sucks!"

As long as it got you to click the video.
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Only thanks to people like you sharing his videos (I did not click) so you post make zero sense since your are his enabler.
 
My game should be Downloaded by the morning got a uber 2.1meg download speed.
 
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The controls on controller are good, and make sense once you have spent some time with the game.

In particular, I appreciate being able to target skinny rails and edges, for the precision jump. Make climbing certain things a real treat.



Also.....I enabled the new NVME driver meant for Windows Server. And it pretty much literally cut my Crimson Desert load time in half. Which is really nice, because the load time is pretty long, even on a high end system.

(This particular system has an SN8100 SSD (its like a top 3 SSD right now) in a PCIe 5.0 slot.)
 
Yesterday was where I think this game "clicked" for me. Yes, the controls need more refinements and there are some other rough edges and jank but they clearly are already working on that. I felt like I was playing RDR2 the fantasy game in *some* ways and that's a very good thing for me.
 
20260324080811_1.jpg


I had to turn up the brightness a bit after I entered the starting area. I turnned off Bloom and Ray Tracing still look ok. I don't feel anything about the game the bushes and trees area a little out of contol I mean alot actually.
I know my Oled doesn't do blacks very well but I rather just stick with it due to the overall brightness.
 
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Comixbooks said:
View attachment 793319

I had to turn up the brightness a bit after I entered the starting area. I turnned off Bloom and Ray Tracing still look ok. I don't feel anything about the game the bushes and trees area a little out of contol I mean alot actually.
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You know what it could use? Some yellow paint to really enhance that immersion.

Screenshot_20260324-082041.png


Although I kind of like the fact they didn't go that route from what I've seen and just let you suffer through.
 
Ray Tracing was baked into the engine the way they did this. The consensus is that people should run it unless they really can't handle it. It doesn't hurt performance and some outlets say it actually helps. Ray Reconstruction, on the other hand, will destroy your performance.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iC-0tCUfKWo On my "to do" list. ;)
 
MikeTrike said:
You know what it could use? Some yellow paint to really enhance that immersion.

View attachment 793320

Although I kind of like the fact they didn't go that route from what I've seen and just let you suffer through.
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I would hate if the game becomes "holding hands" just let me try and figure this stuff out it tickles my neurons.
 
Comixbooks said:
View attachment 793319

I had to turn up the brightness a bit after I entered the starting area. I turnned off Bloom and Ray Tracing still look ok. I don't feel anything about the game the bushes and trees area a little out of contol I mean alot actually.
I know my Oled doesn't do blacks very well but I rather just stick with it due to the overall brightness.
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An OLED that doesn't do black that sounds wrong on a fundemental level?
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
An OLED that doesn't do black that sounds wrong on a fundemental level?
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Yeah they do crushing blacks early models anyway not enough brightness you can turn it up higher but it will be washed out. The New Tandom LGs oleds are suppose to be really good. Still blows away most lcds even my Samsung VA panels.
 
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Decided to give this a shot, the more I read about the experience the more I think I'll enjoy it. I'm out of town for work though and didn't bring a controller with me, so going to give kb/m a whirl. I noticed a setting for adaptive triggers so I'm guessing it has dual sense support? Anyone using one?
 
littlegreenmenfromhome said:
Only thanks to people like you sharing his videos (I did not click) so you post make zero sense since your are his enabler.
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Whoa there. I didn't share anything that wasn't already shared by someone else (I timestamped a previously posted video). You might want to get your facts straight.
 
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lol "enabler". he (asmon) gave his opinion at the time, and its changing with the patches.
 

"Crimson Desert Handheld Performance Review​

by 17th Dimension,
on Mar 24th, 2026,
in Handheld Gaming.
Manufacturer: Pearl Abyss
(0 Comments) »

Conclusion​

Gameplay and Visuals
Crimson Desert looks amazing even with most settings set to "Low," as long as you use FSR for antialiasing. Without AA, the game exhibits a significant amount of pixelated noise, even at higher resolutions. Now, we haven't been able to test the game with DLSS or FSR 4 upscaling, but we assume both improve image quality considerably when used as upscalers compared to running the game at native resolution without AA. FSR 3, on the other hand, looks awful when used as an upscaler, regardless of the quality preset.

The game features detailed lighting, a ridiculous draw distance, lush vegetation, and a fantastic level of detail and physics-based interactivity. Its cities are dense with NPCs and teeming with small details, and the heavy use of displacement mapping makes most surfaces look very "rough" and detailed. We also like that, to our eyes, distant trees look like 3D models even on low settings, which is impressive. Overall, aside from medium and lower-quality shadows and "boiling" indoor lighting when the lighting quality is set to low or minimum, Crimson Desert is one of the best-looking games on the market.

Gameplay, on the other hand, is a mixed bag. The animation-based, combo-heavy combat is solid, but a bit sluggish. It also takes time to unlock enough combat skills for it to really take off, so be ready to invest about a dozen hours before you can start chaining combos effectively.

The game also has a very slow start. We played for about two hours and have barely begun. That said, it looks like it has a lot of potential, with its dauntingly large world and a ridiculous number of quests and activities. If you like massive action-adventure games with tons of exploration where the game doesn't hold your hand and gives you (sometimes too much) freedom, this should be right up your alley. As for the story, it's more or less non-existent, so if you play games mostly for the narrative, you might bounce off Crimson Desert.

Performance and Controller Support
The game performs very poorly on Steam Deck. It's fine in the middle of nowhere, but once you encounter more than a few NPCs or reach a settlement or camp, the ~30 FPS performance drops well below 20 FPS. There's nothing you can do to achieve a stable 30 FPS aside from enabling frame generation and setting FSR to "Performance," but after these tweaks, the game turns into a watercolor-like mess with tons of input latency. In other words, Crimson Desert is not playable on the Deck. The game is also utterly unplayable on Intel Arc GPUs. Pearl Abyss has promised they will improve Intel GPU support in future patches, so there's a chance you'll be able to enjoy the game at some point if you own an Intel handheld or gaming system.

On the other hand, owners of Z2 Extreme handhelds will be able to play it at 720p native with AA, with performance reaching up to 50 FPS outside settlements. Inside cities, camps, and other outposts, you should be able to maintain at least 30 FPS with our optimized settings, although some areas of the map may be more demanding. The game doesn't play nicely with the latest ROG Xbox Ally X GPU driver, so be aware that you'll likely have to roll back to a previous driver if you own an Xbox Ally X and want to play Crimson Desert.

Z1 Extreme handhelds can run the game at 900p with FSR set to "Balanced." This hurts image quality, but the game remains playable, even in large cities.
Crimson Desert works fine with a controller, but the default scheme is unnecessarily convoluted, so you'll need to spend time getting used to it. Worse still, you cannot remap controls, at least on controllers. If you end up playing the game docked with a mouse and keyboard, you will be able to adjust bindings to your heart's content.

Closing Thoughts
We had fun during our short time with Crimson Desert even though we barely did anything. The visuals are stunning, even though the game is fairly noisy without antialiasing and with FSR 3 upscaling. We have mixed thoughts about combat and general gameplay, but we've barely scratched the surface, and since it takes about ten hours or so for the game to open up, you'll need to persevere until Crimson Desert starts fulfilling its potential.

This is a truly massive open-world action-adventure with animation-based, combo-heavy combat and tons of side activities. Anyone who enjoys this type of game should at least give it a try.

As for its performance on handhelds, we can recommend it to owners of Z2 Extreme devices. Just be aware that you'll likely have to roll back to a previous GPU driver on the Xbox Ally X. Z1 Extreme handheld owners should see the game in motion before pulling the trigger, as it looks very noisy at 900p with FSR upscaling. Steam Deck owners, as well as people who've got a handheld powered by an Intel chip—at least until Intel GPU support improves—should steer clear of Crimson Desert unless they plan to stream it via GeForce Now or locally from a gaming PC."

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/...ox-ally-x-claw-8-performance-benchmark/8.html
 
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erek said:
how hard is it to get out of the tutorial zone?
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What? It's an open world, once the intro and opening scenes finish you can go almost anywhere on the map, just mount your horse and hold any random direction... (though some areas will be locked behind skills or quests you get during the campaign). I read somewhere it's advisable to complete the first four chapters of the campaign before going many miles exploring off the beaten path, but the game is still relatively new so not everything you read will be accurate.

Unless you mean 'how difficult is the game?' - then the opening areas and first couple bosses are not too difficult at all - it's the control scheme and combat that you need to get accustomed to (controls are different from typical games) but once it clicks you'll have a blast.
 
grifter_66 said:
There is no "tutorial zone". The game introduces it's multitude of mechanics when needed as you progress through the quests. Most of the early write ups were very disingenuous at best at flat out bullshit at worst.
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ah, yea i heard one article mention about the early reviews being mixed due to struggling to get out of the training / tutorial but then after that the game is better
 
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erek said:
ah, yea i heard one article mention about the early reviews being mixed due to struggling to get out of the training / tutorial but then after that the game is better
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That was so called "gaming journalists" being stuck at the VERY first puzzle for +50 minutes, before you are put back to the "real world".
You know the people crying more about no DEI than actually play games.
 
Played for 49 minutes it's pretty nice I'm playing with a controller Keyboard and Mouse being a bit complicated with combat jumping and climbing.
The game seems kinda void of shadows unless I turned them off it's just like Black Desert Online.
 
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