Crimson Desert surprises on Metacritic: press and players agree on its review

The RPG from Pearl Abyss breaks the usual trend and shows a very balanced reception.

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Crimson Desert continues to make headlines after its release, and this time it’s not about its performance or initial controversies. What’s catching attention now is something much rarer: the almost total coincidence between what the press thinks and what players think.

In a time when it’s common to see significant differences between both evaluations — especially in ambitious games — Pearl Abyss’s title has achieved just the opposite. And that, honestly, doesn’t happen often.

Crimson Desert aligns critics and players with the same score

On Metacritic, the game shows a 78 average from critics and a 7.8 from users, a practically exact equivalence that makes it clear that, beyond personal tastes, there’s a fairly common perception of what it offers.

This is usually complicated in games of this type, where ambition or complexity generate very divided opinions. That’s not the case here: both press and players agree on pointing out its virtues, but also on recognizing that it’s not a perfect game.

From our side, at Generación Xbox, we rated it with a 94, highlighting especially its open world, gameplay proposal, and the constant feeling of discovery. It’s a title that demands time, but when it clicks, it delivers moments well above average. In the end, beyond numbers, what’s interesting is seeing how Crimson Desert has achieved something that doesn’t always happen: getting almost everyone to agree on the same starting point.