So, I've been playing Crimson Desert for the last couple of weeks and while it's definitely not the game for everyone and a flawed one, but it's a flawed game and I'm absolutely having a blast.
The world itself (eg terrain, locations, exploration) is one of the most enjoyable experiences since RDR2. There is absolutely no handholding and while UI is not making your life easier with discovering *dozens* gameplay mechanics, it's so much fun to uncovering them all. Special shoutout to many puzzles on this game. I usually tend to getting frustrated pretty quickly when I don't figure out solution, often just googling it out, but solving those puzzles in Crimson Desert is do much fun I haven't done that yet, even if some took me an hour or so to solve.
There are two main issues I have with his gsme, of which one is beyond repair. Mainly, story, narrative and main character. The latter two is simply terrible (really, just shamefully terrible). I wish Pearl Abyss decided to release this game even year later, but invested in good writing team and deliver story and narrative at better level. Story itself has some potentials and I often scribe my own ideas how this could be executed, unfortunately what PS offered is just bad.
The second issue is awful lighting, especially at nights and indoors. It's distractive, completely unrealistic and I hope team will fix it in upcoming patches.
Also a big shoutout to Pearl Abyss for tremendous post-launch support. They gave us couple of pretty hefty patches, each fixing stuff and adding feature *community requested for* and the roadmap they presented is looking fantastic too.
I'm over 50h in game and still deep into the first region (there are 5), so at this rate this will be 300-400h game for me. It's crazy how much content this game has. I'm hooked and loving it, despite the obvious flaws.
If you are looking for deep story and narrative, memorable characters, this is definitely not the game for you, but if you just look for a massive sandbox with interesting exploration, like for instance Zelda games on Nintendo Switch, you may love it.