yeah, Crimson Desert is a guaranteed GotY nominee— I just listened to the IGN and DF previews, and they’re treating it as though it’s the next BotW/ER. Whether this will be universal acclaim? Hard to say… there are some outlets complaining about the difficulty (specifically in the lack of hand-holding).

Sounds like a game that might be a tad bit divisive with outlets, but will be praised by the community.

The general impressions I'm getting from perusing the final batch of Crimson Desert previews (as well as earlier batches of previews I have looked at) are:

• The game is highly ambitious, multiple critics describe the game as an "everything and the kitchen sink" game, keeping every system and idea the developers had over it's 7ish years of development, as well as borrowed ideas from other games, and while it sounds like it would be a jumbled mess of conflicting systems and story tones, most of the critics say it mostly meshes together well
• However some critics in their previews do warn that the sheer scope of the game and it's many different systems could confuse and overwhelm more casual gamers, calling it a "gamey" game for core gamers
• The "everything and the kitchen sink" mentality extends to the story of the game, some critics describe missions that feel family friendly like Fable, but others that feel ultra dark and mature like Witcher, but they also state that both somehow feel at home in the same game
• The combat is fun but also kind of janky, with a mix of typical action RPG hack and slash and fighter-esque button combos, fairly forgiving against normal enemies with a considerable difficulty leap on bosses, especially hard against bosses because there are so many abilities and button combos and such to keep track of while also dodging attacks
• Incredibly deep skill tree that continues the theme of the developers throwing in every idea they had while scrapping nothing, there is even a skill that allows a Spider-Man like web swing according to one critic
• The game has both a flyable dragon and a rideable mech (because why not)
• Most critics say they feel cautiously optimistic about the full game after their preview sessions, however one critic said he would be able to simultaneously write both a larely negative preview of the game and largely positive preview of the game, due to how much is going on in the game and how some of it works and some of it doesn't, and believes the game will be divisive as a result, with some loving it and some hating it