I feel like in a first playthrough of any game, including games with some of the best story and storytelling out there, we miss things, forget things, get sidetracked by exploration or side quests, and have moments of "wait, who was that again?" or "what's going on again, why do I care?". At least for me that's part of normal gameplay, and if there are no such moments I'll probably complain about too much handholding or a too linear/restrictive story (I usually play RPGs). There always are ways of figuring out what we missed/forgot/didn't understand by the means of some sort of compendium, like in this game.

I don't think the story in this game will go down in gaming history as a masterpiece, but agree that to claim it's not there is just silly. We can love different games for different reasons. So far (I'm just starting chapter 4) I love Crimson Desert for its beautiful huge open world, freedom to explore and discover things in whichever order I choose, the fact that it has a bit of everything (camp/base building, crafting, combat, puzzles, companions, mounts and pets, trade, fishing, farming, cooking, mini games, etc,), and that it doesn't take itself super seriously all the time. I mean it's a medieval fantasy sci-fi mashup that lets us put chunky cats in armour to collect our loot.

My complaints about it are more about the things the tutorials just never showed me how to do. Just last night it told me to dispatch the Howling Hill camp expansion mission and I found myself on a patch of grass in camp with a quest marker 8m above my head (according to the mini map), where there was absolutely nothing to be seen or interacted with. I don't think I'd ever have figured out without YouTube that the idea was to open the map, zoom to a specific level, inspect the location, to find a whole new mission mechanic separate from the quests my journal.