7MMO
Moderator
Crimson Desert’s biggest strength is in the sheer volume of stuff it throws at you, allowing you to spend hundreds or even a thousand-plus hours doing everything from hunting animals with a bow to developing a gambling addiction at the tavern. So it’s not very surprising that Crimson Desert’s first paid DLC, called Charting the Unknown, prioritizes adding more on top of its already staggeringly large repertoire. So far, the interesting new activities that mostly focus on oceanic adventures are exactly as compelling as you’d hope, with ship-to-ship combat, underwater exploration, and romance options being among the list of new worthwhile features. On the other hand, existing activities that have added content, like the extra story missions, have mostly been uninspired retreads that don’t do anything to improve upon their established shortcomings. When Crimson Desert came out, I said that its content was a mile long and an inch deep, and for better or worse this DLC seems to say, “Here’s another half-mile.”
The most disappointing part of the DLC so far has been the additional story missions, which are only accessible once you’ve completed the base game’s already dense main story (a feat which only 10% of Steam players have done, judging by the achievements system). At least the handful of missions I’ve completed at this point have mostly served as an expanded epilogue of sorts, with Kliff fighting more difficult versions of old bosses from the existing story, and Damiane and Oongka fleshing out their less substantial stories as well.
I’m not far enough to know if any of these quests eventually become more interesting, but most of their objectives have been an oddly bland retracing of your steps, like going back to spend time with a familiar character and share a moment fishing together or arm wrestle someone to gather information as an apparent callback to an identical moment in the original story. I did get to a new stretch of the map just before getting distracted by the separate seafaring content, so hopefully this part of the DLC will pick up the pace, but so far it’s been about as unimpressive as I expected given the low bar for storytelling in Crimson Desert.
Much like the base content though, most of the effort seems to have been put into things that aren’t related to the story. Although most of my time has been spent dipping my toes into the water-based ship-crafting feature that’s the focus of this expansion, it feels like I’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg, with new resources to obtain, crewmates to hire, and even more activities to learn like harpooning fish and ship-to-ship combat before you can really begin your voyages properly.
It's going to take more time to fully engage with these new activities and judge whether or not they have the sea legs to keep me entertained for longer than a few hours, but at least right now I’m just impressed (yet again) by the fact that these systems exist in this adventure that’s already so damn packed with things to do. Gliding underwater on the back of a sea turtle and captaining your own pirate crew truly just feel completely bizarre in the context of Crimson Desert, and so far that’s been compelling enough to keep me moving forward even if some of the other added content isn’t great.
There’s still a ton I have to investigate, like additional base building and property management features, a challenging combat arena-style gauntlet, and my personal favorite – social links and romance mechanics for NPCs, which I’m very excited to check out once I’ve gotten my bearings (I’m just not ready to settle down yet, okay?!).
What I said about Crimson Desert
"There’s lots to love about this quirky, kitchen sink design, and I admire that it’s managed to pack a metric ton of unique mechanics and interesting areas into one package. But it takes work to dig your way through the thick layer of gunk that covers it all, and the mostly competent action-adventure game that’s buried beneath is only sometimes worth that effort." (March 20, 2026)
Score: 6
Read the full review
For all the stuff that’s been added, one thing that is the same since the last time I played is the number of bugs I’ve encountered in my brief time with the Charting the Unknown DLC. I’ve already had two hard crashes, one character wig out on me while I was trying to arm wrestle him (he was hilariously standing behind me during the match, arm bent unnaturally), and quite a few blurry or flickering textures that are impossible for me to not focus on during cutscenes. I’m still too early to tell if this is going to be a consistent issue, but in my time so far it’s been quite rocky from a technical perspective considering how much wonkiness I’ve encountered per hour played.
As expected with Crimson Desert, it’s going to take quite a bit of time to see and do enough to reach a definitive conclusion on Charting the Unknown, and I’m hopeful that the engaging and unexpected content that’s been added will be able to make up for some of the activities that feel like empty calories.
Continue reading...
