Crimson Desert<\/a> isn\u2019t my cup of tea by any means, but to give credit where it\u2019s due, Pearl Abyss did an outstanding job with the game\u2019s open world. It\u2019s enormous, looks gorgeous and seems to have just enough to do if you\u2019re willing to put the hours in.<\/p>\nIts open-world scale is a double-edged sword, though. As impressive as it is, the sheer size of it was just too much for me with all the other AAAs we\u2019ve had this year; the same\u2019s true for other gamers.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, if you\u2019re unwilling to buy a full-priced, 250+ hour RPG without knowing if you\u2019ll like it first, a free five-hour trial is available now on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X\/S.<\/p>\n
How to play Crimson Desert for free on PlayStation and Xbox<\/p>\n
Accessing the free trial is straightforward, but Xbox users are going to have an easier time.<\/p>\n
For PlayStation users, you need a valid subscription to PlayStation Plus in order to play it, whereas Xbox owners can just play it outright.<\/p>\n
Five hours should be plenty to determine whether the game is right for you, and you\u2019ll be experiencing it at its best as well because the version playable is the upgraded Enhanced Edition.<\/p>\n
Should you enjoy your time with the game and purchase it, your progress from the trial will carry over to the full game, so you won\u2019t have to start over. That\u2019s a godsend because the early parts of the game can be quite tutorial-heavy and you won\u2019t want to replay them.<\/p>\n
There are a few limitations for the demo, however. For starters, you can\u2019t endlessly replay it. Once your fives are up, you\u2019ll either have to ditch the game entirely or buy the full version to keep playing.<\/p>\n
It also doesn\u2019t include access to the Charting the Unknown DLC. This isn\u2019t a big problem, to be honest, as that\u2019s late-game content anyway. You wouldn\u2019t want to play it in your first five hours.<\/p>\n
All in all, this is an excellent and generous taster from Pearl Abyss. What\u2019s more, you\u2019ve got plenty of time to play it, as the free trial will be available well into next year.<\/p>\n
PlayStation users can access it from the time of writing to October 27 2027, whereas Xbox users have significantly less time. Their trial will disappear on January 7 2027.<\/p>\n
Crimson Desert is certainly one of the better games to launch this year, and while it\u2019s an easy Game of the Year contender, it still has steep competition. The Game Awards 2026 is going to be an interesting show.<\/p>\n
READ NEXT: The Game Awards 2026: Date, UK and US start time, tickets and how to watch<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Crimson Desert has officially gone free-to-play to celebrate the successful launch of its new DLC expansion The 2026…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[194922,2647,2211,74,1298],"class_list":["post-902003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-crimson-desert","tag-free-games","tag-playstation","tag-technology","tag-xbox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}