Upon its initial release, Digital Foundry likened Crimson Desert’s visuals on PS5 to the graphics quality of the Nintendo Switch. Experts have since revisited the game to assess whether recent updates have brought any improvements.
Initially, the game suffered from an unacceptably blurry image in 60 frames per second mode on PlayStation 5, primarily due to the lack of FSR upscaling. However, Pearl Abyss recently released a patch introducing a “Fixed 4K” option that enables FSR. This update has significantly boosted image clarity, making the game considerably more playable.
However, the reason for FSR’s initial omission quickly became apparent: its implementation causes a significant performance drop. Digital Foundry’s analysis reveals that while the blurrier mode without FSR maintained 55–60 fps, enabling FSR causes frame rates to dip to 42–48 fps. Thus, improved clarity comes at the cost of reduced fluidity.
In CPU-intensive areas, the situation remains unchanged: even without FSR, the game hovers around 30 fps. Issues persist in “quality” mode as well, where frame rates can drop to 27 fps during casual exploration.
On a positive note, the developers have successfully eliminated the “slideshow” effect during a specific boss battle on PS5 and PS5 Pro. Previously, this sequence would plummet to around 10 fps, but now it consistently maintains 30 frames. Despite these improvements, Pearl Abyss still has extensive optimization work ahead for Crimson Desert’s console versions, as well as its PC and other platform iterations.