Has IGN gone overboard praising *Crimson Desert*? This time, it’s really not criticism.

I’d give it a 7. Because this game looks like it’s about to crash and burn, yet somehow it crashes with real personality.

On March 20, 2026, IGN published a long feature on Crimson Desert, and its core point was pretty straightforward: it’s not polished, not crowd-pleasing, even a little awkward—but it absolutely refuses to become the kind of open-world assembly-line product that reeks of market research. In 2026, when more and more new releases feel like they were poured from the same mold, that kind of attitude is rare instead.

IGN’s characterization of it was harsh, but accurate. They said it feels like a love letter to The Witcher 3, Zelda, and GTA, while also resembling some monster stitched together from parts of those classics. Put simply, you can tell it wants to learn from a lot of predecessors, but what it ultimately grows into isn’t standard at all—if anything, it’s a little bizarre.

That feeling won’t be unfamiliar to veteran players. It’s like those PS2-era games whose ambition far exceeded their budgets: systems piled on top of each other, controls that were awkward almost on purpose, and gameplay that made you curse while still wanting to try one more time. In IGN’s description, Crimson Desert belongs to exactly that lineage.

The most interesting part is the combat. IGN thinks it’s not the usual RPG setup of overwhelming enemies with stats, but something closer to traditional fighting games, or the rhythm of side-scrolling beat ’em ups, emphasizing combo inputs and timing. It’s a pretty contradictory setup. Dropping that kind of demand into an open-world RPG is naturally going to throw players off. But looked at from the other side, the combat can only feel distinct precisely because it didn’t take the autopilot route.

That said, IGN still specifically criticized the boss fights. The enemies are both tanky and brutal, capable of taking players out quickly. If that kind of design isn’t backed up by strong enough feedback and a solid progression curve, then it stops being a challenge and starts feeling like the game is throwing a tantrum. It’s already 2026—are we seriously still treating oversized health bars as difficulty?

Another issue is bloat. IGN mentioned that the game crams in a large number of scattered systems that barely feel meaningful, to the point where even basic cooking gets dragged out as filler. It’s like how so many open-world games back then failed to learn GTA’s restraint and only learned to scatter icons all over the map. They want everything, and in the end, nothing gets polished enough.

As for the visuals, though, IGN rated them very highly. They went as far as calling them “surreal landscapes,” arguing that this is what true next-gen progress is supposed to look like. That’s not a light compliment. After all, a lot of so-called next-gen games today have only upgraded the resolution, while their souls are still stuck in the late PS4 era.

So my take is simple as well: Crimson Desert may not be the kind of “standard answer of the year” that you absolutely need to buy at launch. It’s more like an old arcade cabinet that was never properly leveled—buttons a little stiff, rules a little strange, but memorable all the same. IGN ultimately tagged it as “refusing mediocrity,” and I think that matters more than whether the score is high or low.

The buying advice is also very clear: if all you want is a smooth, hand-holding open world that you finish in 30 hours and delete, then wait. But if you’re tired of industrialized canned content and willing to accept clumsiness in exchange for something distinctive, then this game is actually worth putting on your wishlist and taking your time with—even for a few months. Whether it’s good or not is one thing; at the very least, it’s not like the others, where a week after finishing it you can’t even remember why you hated it.