The Digital Foundry team continues its detailed examination of the game Crimson Desert on PlayStation consoles. Previously, issues with excessively blurry graphics in 60 FPS mode were noted, and now new, even more critical details have emerged: catastrophic performance during boss encounters.
It has become apparent why the publisher of Crimson Desert avoided providing console versions to journalists in advance. According to fresh gameplay footage, frame rates in boss battle scenes frequently plummet to extremely low values of 10 FPS. This occurs on both the base PlayStation 5 and the more powerful PlayStation 5 Pro. At such moments, the gameplay transforms into a genuine “slideshow,” making it nearly impossible to perform time-critical actions like dodging and parrying.
It appears that the Pearl Abyss studio faces a significant task in optimizing the game. In addition to fixing critical FPS drops, developers need to integrate FSR upscaling technology for the performance mode. In its current state, the 60 FPS image on PS5 resembles games from the first-generation Switch console, which is unacceptable for a modern project.