Crimson Desert Enhanced

This is a positive rating, but not a positive review. I have never felt more conflicted with how I feel about a game more than this one. On one hand, there is so much to do, it truly is an RPG sandbox; play however you want, do whatever you want, the game lets you. On the other hand, it is the most empty, unmotivating, shallow game I have ever played. There are so many things to say, I genuinely feel overwhelmed on where to start. Gameplay - The simplest way to put it is half the mechanics of this game are straight garbage. The UI for quests, the puzzles, the bosses. All of the gameplay elements could be fixed by a single method - playtesting. All they had to do was play it themselves or get a group of monkeys to do it for them, and they would realize a million things wrong. This was very evident by the state of release, to which they have slowly improved, and yet it's still baffling how many absolutely abhorrent mechanics are still in the game. Story - it's bad. That's about it. It's 10x longer than it needs to be, and it has no idea what it wants to do. It has no stakes, it has no interesting characters, and it has awful dialogue and character motions (hold still when you talk, please!) Speaking of characters... Playable characters - whoever's idea it was to create 3 playable characters instead of just 1 needs to be shot in the head. One of the most retarded decisions of all time. Show me the stats, I dare you, I guarantee less than 1% play the other 2 side characters and over 99% play the main guy. And they have the audacity to lock skills and weapons to these side characters, which you will never play, and if you have the desire to play them for whatever reason, they are almost always locked during the story anyway, doing who knows what and you can't even play them. And when the game forces you to play as them for a mission or two, they are severely underequipped, so you white-knuckle through the mission, and then play the main character and never look back. All they had to do was give all the characters the same equippable weapons, then give the side characters a bonus to those niche weapons, so everyone wins. But no, your main guy can only use a certain set of weapons, and the others are locked behind characters you will never play. The World and The Loot - It's big, expansive, and breathtaking. And yet it's the most depressing, unmotivating, empty world to explore. Look at that mountain! I should go check it out. *Checks it out* Well, there were a few bandits, and 5 apples. Um. Okay. That's cool, I guess. Oh, some of these locations have a level up. Cool! And... I have 100 of these now. Oh look, a cave! Now time for some real loot! And... it's a basic sword with the same stats as every other sword in the game. A cloak that looks cool, but has the same stats. If you couldn't tell, the main problem with the world is the incentive. Why is it worth my time to go out and explore? In reality, there is no reason, other than it looks cool. Nothing in this game rewards you for your time. I see so many people comparing this to Skyrim, and to them I say you are retarded. Just because it's an open world RPG does not make it Skyrim. You wanna know why Skyrim still holds up after all these years? Because it rewards you for your time. Because there is incentive to explore every cave, every mountain, every town. CD was too afraid to do anything worth your time, and too afraid to balance the game, so they created every weapon - from the one you craft at the blacksmith to a legendary boss you fight at the end of the game - to have the same stats. And the armor is the same story. The only specialty with armor is that the designs are great, and if you are a fashion hunter, then there are lots of sets to find, and you'll look really cool. But this game has no incentive to do anything. It does not reward you for your time. The Camp - The base of your operations. You'll spend a lot of your time here, sending out workers to slave away and bring back resources. It was a mechanic from Black Desert, and they somehow made it worse. How? INCENTIVE. There it is again. I send my workers to loot for me. Great! They got a ton of stone! What now? Use that stone to make my workers go get me logs! Great! Now I have logs and stone! Now what? Now send them to make you money! Great! Now I'm rich! Now what? There's nothing to spend my money on... Everything the slave system does really has no impact on you in any way. It's a distraction, a red herring, to make you think you're playing the game and making progress when in reality it's wasting your time. The camp is cool having all the necessities close by, but the worker system is beyond pointless. Combat - The supposed highlight of this game, taking inspiration from Black Desert. Black Desert has incredible combat, and yet they managed to downgrade in this game. You can press 2 buttons, and you'll win every fight. Right click, and sometime Left + Right click. And there are so many abilities, so much freedom to fight how you want, and they all suck. You have an AoE ability, cool! Guess what happens when you kill an enemy? Everyone around you goes flying away. So now that AoE ability you love so much can never be used, because no one stays clumped together. I cannot tell you how many times you have to fight in this game, and every time I wanted to break down in tears knowing I had to go up to each individual enemy, press one button, watch an animation, then walk to the next guy who got blown away, press a button, and do the same thing over and over again. All these other abilities, no matter how cool they are, mean nothing if you can't use them properly. I'll also include food here. Food removes all stakes to every battle. No cooldown, full heal, no threat. Fun! BUT NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO EAT. JUST DON'T EAT IF ITS SO BROKEN. Good point. Life is also really easy. Maybe I should intentionally stop eating to make it more challenging. If it's an intended mechanic, and it's fundamentally broken, that's the fault of the creator, not the consumer. Misc - Lots of side Activities. very cool. Also very lame. Do you like Poker? Imagine playing Poker, but instead of playing with a flop, changing your bet and sizing each other up, the game changing dynamically based on what is placed on the table, you now get 2 cards... and that's it. You just bet based on your two cards. Sound fun? Now imagine playing it with retarded AI. Sound even more fun? Fishing. Do you like fishing? Do you like having your line snap on every surface the fish crosses? Do you like not having fun? Trading. Shameful in every way. This is one of those examples where all they had to do was playtest it and they would realize how insanely garbage it is. Crafting. I love crafting weapons and armor. I crafted one time. Because everything is the same. I hear some of you saying BUT YOU CAN TRADE ONE POINT OF ATTACK FOR ONE POINT OF ATTACK SPEED!!! Yes. You can. And you can also kill the same enemy in the same amount of hits, in the same amount of time. Nothing changes. It's all an illusion of choice. The only thing you truly have a choice over is the slots you fill it with, and the look it has. Mining. So many places to mine. So many places to chop trees. So little to do with it. Seriously, I mined every node I came across the first 50 hours and I had stacks and stacks of items I had nothing to do with. Use them for crafting! Sure, let me create another weapon with the same stats. Very worth my time! I have to explain, all of the mechanics in Crimson Desert are fantastic, it is just executed in such an abhorrent, soulless way that it misses out on the potential it has. This game could have been the game for generations to come, but they truly don't understand why people play games. They like rewards, and they like to have fun. This game ultimately has neither, but you don't realize that at face value until you look behind the veil.