20 Best Games Like Crimson Desert on PC

A griffin in Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is big enough to climb, and it can take off with you still clinging to it. That sense of improvisation is what makes Gransys a good follow-up to Pywel. Your AI Pawns bring their own skills to a fight, so the group you take matters when something huge blocks the road.

Gransys is a more compact world, and your vocation shapes the moves. Take a torch on a night trip and even the road back to town can feel like an expedition.

A ride between villages can be the highlight of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. You can stop at a tavern, follow a lead into the woods or see what trouble Henry can get into before heading back to the main quest. It scratches the same itch as taking a detour across Pywel, with a world grounded in medieval Bohemia.

Combat happens in first person and rewards learning how to read an opponent. Even a familiar road feels different when you've taken a wound far from shelter.

Few worlds are as good at persuading you to ride over the next hill as Ghost of Tsushima: Director's Cut. The wind points Jin toward his destination without taking your eyes off the landscape. Follow it to a duel or change course for a fox trail, a shrine or an enemy camp worth scouting.

Sword stances are the main draw if you liked Crimson Desert's melee. Fights are cleaner and more focused on matching the stance to the opponent. A duel can leave you facing one blade in tall grass.

The outline of a castle in Elden Ring is enough reason to turn your horse around. Roads split toward caves, old forts and places you may want to come back to with better gear. Like Pywel, the Lands Between reward a willingness to investigate a strange sight without needing a quest to send you there.

The emphasis shifts to bosses and character builds. A discovery might be a weapon that changes how you approach the next difficult fight, or a dungeon entrance tucked below a cliff you'd already ridden past.

On a good ride in Red Dead Redemption 2, Arthur might stop to hunt, help a stranger or get caught up in somebody else's trouble. If the pleasure of Crimson Desert was having a camp to return to after a day of wandering, the Van der Linde gang offers a strong parallel.

This is a slower Western with firearms and a tightly scripted story. Take a horse out early and the world can feel quiet enough to hear its breathing before an unexpected voice calls from the roadside.

Start a fight in Rise of the Ronin and the timing of a counter can decide how it goes. Switching combat styles and learning what works against a particular opponent give melee fans something to practice. The surrounding districts offer enough space to ride, look for trouble and approach a stronghold.

The setting is Japan in the final years of the shogunate, with rival factions and choices that steer the story. A rooftop route through a city gives the adventure a different feel from crossing Pywel's wild country.

Geralt can ride into a village looking for a contract and come away with a problem nobody there agrees how to solve. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt makes that sort of detour its strength. There are monsters to hunt and landscapes to cross, but the real reason to go looking is the story you might find.

Sword combat has a narrower set of possibilities than Kliff's grapples and weapon combos. Preparation gives it a character of its own when tracks and clues tell you what to bring.

You can spot a ruin from above and be on your way toward it in seconds in Enshrouded. The grappling hook and glider make vertical exploration feel familiar if you spent time climbing and leaping around Pywel. You also have a base to improve with what you find out in the world.

Crafting and building take up a bigger share of the adventure. A trip through the fog can end back at a shelter you've carved into a slope, with the materials for a new room in your pack.

A fortified compound can be a stealth puzzle or a place to put a heavy blade to work in Assassin's Creed Shadows. Naoe is quick and has a grappling hook, while Yasuke's weapons suit a direct fight. The two approaches make scouting an enemy position worthwhile before choosing how to go in.

Feudal Japan and its strongholds give the game a more historical focus than Pywel. A dark route over the rooftops can get Naoe past guards that Yasuke could challenge on the ground.

The crowds in Middle-earth: Shadow of War are an invitation to chain attacks and push deeper into a fortress. Talion can cut through a group, then meet a captain with strengths and weaknesses that make the next exchange more personal. It's a good fit if you like the rush of breaking into an enemy stronghold.

The Nemesis system gives the fighting a purpose beyond clearing the map. A captain who survives can become a recurring problem, and a surprise reunion can interrupt your next fight.

The Valley of the Mines in Gothic 1 Remake makes an unfamiliar path feel worth taking, even if what's at the end can kill you. You start as a convict and have to find a place among competing camps. Learning which routes are safe and which people can teach you is part of getting stronger.

This 2026 remake takes place in a smaller, handcrafted world. The pleasure is knowing the lay of the land well enough to make it to a camp that once felt too far from safety.

High ground is worth seeking out in Horizon Forbidden West. Aloy can use her glider to move across gaps and descend toward ruins, settlements or machine territory. The landscape gives you the same reason to stray from a destination as Pywel, especially when a machine below looks unlike anything you've taken on before.

The major difference is how you fight. Ranged weapons and planning around detachable components do much of the work. Knocking a dangerous weapon off a machine can change the rest of the encounter.

A trip across Aurai in Outward starts with deciding what you can afford to carry. You can cook, craft and prepare for fights, then set off through a landscape where being far from town has consequences. If you like the feeling of making your own way across Pywel, there's plenty of it here.

The pace is more cautious. You're an ordinary traveler, and a safe camp can be as satisfying as a win in combat when the weather turns and your supplies are running down.

If you're after a big world where a trip can end in a martial arts fight, Where Winds Meet is a free-to-play option worth considering. The Chinese wuxia setting gives it a different flavor from Pywel. You can explore ruins, learn techniques and find quieter activities between stretches of combat.

It has online features and a very different approach to progression from Kliff's adventure. The draw is finding a move you want to learn, then taking it out into a world with plenty of reasons to get sidetracked.

The fantasy of charging into a large fight is the main reason to choose Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Raise a company, decide whom to fight and ride alongside your troops when armies meet. There's plenty of room to set your own goals, from earning a living as a mercenary to taking territory.

Travel happens on a campaign map, and managing people and supplies is part of the appeal. A cavalry charge feels especially good when you trained the riders and picked the moment to send them downhill.

A ledge in Immortals Fenyx Rising is a place to pause and see what you can reach with your wings. Glide toward a puzzle, climb to a higher perch or go looking for a mythological creature to fight. It's a good pick for exploring above the ground.

The Greek myth setting is bright and playful, and puzzles have a bigger role here. A vault can have you switching from swinging a weapon to working out where an object needs to go.

The pleasure of Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning is how quickly a fight can go from a flurry of close attacks to a burst of magic. You can build a character around different combinations of weapons and skills. It's a good choice when the pace of melee is what you want to carry over from Pywel.

The map is a series of connected regions with more traditional RPG questing. A trip into a cavern can be an excuse to see what a newly acquired weapon does against a crowd.

When a big enemy makes you want to practice your moves until a fight clicks, Nioh 3 is a good next stop. Its fields leave room to explore, while Samurai and Ninja styles can be switched during combat. That gives you a reason to experiment with how you move, defend and attack.

Yokai and demanding encounters set the pace. The world has fewer reasons to spend a quiet afternoon than Pywel, but the moment a style switch changes the course of a fight is a reward of its own.

A road in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon can lead to a dungeon, a strange conversation or a quest that pulls you deeper into its version of Arthurian legend. It's a strong fit for anyone who likes following rumors. The world has a darker mood than much of Pywel.

The game plays in first person and puts more weight on building a character and making choices in quests. A quiet stretch of exploration can end at a doorway that sends you into a ruin you hadn't planned to visit.

A cave entrance or a light in the distance is often enough to change your plans in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition. You can spend a trip climbing toward a ruin or stopping to see what a village needs. The freedom to set aside the main quest is the strongest connection to Crimson Desert.

The combat is less elaborate, with more of the appeal coming from the character you build. Walk up a mountain and the view down into the valley can be worth the trip.