Crimson DesertPearl AbyssThere are many stories about games that launch poorly but, through months or years of hard work, manage to craft something worthy of its initial hype, be it No Man’s Sky or Cyberpunk 2077. I can’t say I’ve ever seen a game do that in a weekend.Crimson Desert launched late Thursday, and now on Tuesday morning, its Steam reviews have gone from 51% “Mixed” right at launch to 80% “Very Positive, a 39% gain in around just four days.Forbes‘Crimson Desert’ Review (PC): I’ve Never Seen Anything Like ThisBy Paul TassiWhy did this happen? How could a game shift sentiment that quickly? Two main reasons:1) People played for more than two hours – While everyone hates the idea that a game may take 6-10 hours to “get good,” many players who bothered spending $70 pushed past that, and have discovered what I have been saying all along, that this is actually a really good game. Those who rated it low at the start gave up during its onboarding, maybe some technical issues or a dislike for its controls or early missions, hence the very low initial scores. But as I’ve maintained, it is just a wildly different experience from hour two to uh, 10 through 200, and many are now starting to “click” with the game.Crimson DesertSteamMORE FOR YOU2) Crimson Desert immediately patched its biggest issues – Pearl Abyss patched problems with Crimson Desert during the review period, on Day One and now, this past weekend, and has fixed a large number of problems and almost all the game’s biggest pain points outside of well, its story. Among them:Way more fast travel points. They added city and base ones from our review period (thank god) but now they’ve scattered even more around.Big changes to control responsiveness. The game just feels way different to play with no more input lag from everything from jumping to combat.The addition of camp storage. Now, instead of needing to hoard everything in your on-character inventory, there is Greymane base storage that now doubles your capacity.Combat buffs to players and nerfs to bosses. The game nerfed some of its most frustrating bosses, especially those in the main story quest, blocking progress. It also gave universal buffs to food healing, making essentially all fights easier.Alterations to confusion mechanics/puzzles. There were many complaints about unclear directions in some of the early puzzles, which have now been changed. Systems like the “memory vision” system are now more straightforward.There are more minor gameplay and technical fixes past that, but those are the major ones, and fast travel, inventory, and gameplay feel changes are transformative for the entire game.But one Bonus: A community has formed. Pearl Abyss told me they wanted this to be a community game, which I didn’t quite understand as it was a purely single-player experience. But over the weekend, my feed was filled with advice for players and crazy, hidden finds on the map that were being shared with others as they start to discover all the secrets and cool gear and hidden bosses on the map. It’s helped it feel more fun.Crimson DesertPearl AbyssSomeone mentioned the other day that other critics and I had played the “worst version” of the game. That’s true. Inventory was tiny (they gave us dozens more slots during review). We couldn’t teleport to cities or games. Bosses were brick walls. Fast travel was awful. I suspect this is why the game had lower scores than many expected, though I feel somewhat vindicated by my very high score, as I really could see the diamond in the rough there.But I don’t blame my fellow critics or players who were frustrated early on. It is insane that Pearl Abyss didn’t catch these sweeping issues before launch; some of the most obvious needed changes I’ve ever seen. You don’t have base storage? You can’t teleport to your own camp? Come on, man.There are still more fixes to come (let’s talk about the alternate characters), but for now, go out there and experience what practically is a new game.Follow me on Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.