Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon by developer Questline and published by Awaken Realms—Sony PlayStation 5 review written by Nick with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.There is so much to enjoy about Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon that it’s almost difficult to figure out where to begin. The dark, gothic setting is supported by an interesting story. There are tons of deep lore that plays with Arthurian tales in a creative way, and the overall presentation is fantastic. Fans of open-world first-person RPGs should find a great deal to enjoy here.
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. It’s a first-person (okay, you can set the view to third-person, but the gameplay is not optimized for that) RPG where you wake up in a jail cell. You need to escape so you can work your way into an open-world where you can follow the primary questline or venture off into any number of directions to pursue other exploits. Given that Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon was released so close to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered, you would be forgiven if you thought the above description was about Bethesda’s popular RPG series.
The parallels are many between The Elder Scrolls games and Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, especially in the early going. But it also doesn’t take long to realize that Tainted Grail is also very much its own thing. You aren’t battling rats to escape the prison – you’re fighting undead created from gruesome experiments performed in the dank confines of the prison. Sure, you’re picking up weapons and armor – but also brains, saws used for hacking off limbs and more disturbing finds. There’s a palpable grittiness to Tainted Grail that comes out almost from the very beginning and stays throughout the journey. There's smaller details in this opening stage that further drive home the sort of dark, oppressive feeling that the game is going for. Sometimes the events are a bit more obvious, such as someone who was experimented on asking you to kill them and put them out of their misery for the well-being of all, and others require just a bit of effort as you pick up and scan the pages of what amounts to a smutty novel that one of the guards was reading. Either way, the team does an excellent job of illustrating their own unique vision of this world.
The story is an interesting one. The stories of King Arthur are often fundamentally similar and to many people well-known. Tainted Grail plays with this premise as your protagonist encounters what amounts to the spirit of King Arthur as they travel together and start to peel back the layers of the story that builds off of these familiar tales with unique elements established in the series’ prior game Tainted Grail: Conquest. Now, I absolutely loved that title as well. The roguelike deckbuilding mechanics were enjoyable, but more than the gameplay I found the world teased in that title to be intriguing. Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon takes that foundation and allows you to really explore the Wyrdness - the name given to the strange, foggy representation of corruption steadily engulfing the land. It immersed me in its story through great visual design and a solid sound and musical score.
The moment you escape the dungeon and see the sprawling landscapes and massive statues holding walkways up, you can see the developers' vision extends past the story and into the art direction as well. It's not quite as perpetually dark and gloomy as say Bloodborne and Elden Ring, because there are some lush landscapes as well sprinkled in. It reminded me more of games like Diablo where there's often a strain of grim darkness tinged throughout, but it's not all inky shadows and things jumping out at you in the night either.
Now, it’s not just the opening scene that harkens back to The Elder Scrolls. Combat, whether you prefer melee, ranged or magical has a similar if somewhat more visceral feeling to it. You still swing, block and cast like in Skyrim, but there are nuanced additions like perfect parry, dodging and greater spell variety that breathe new life into the refined combat. Some of the elements work better than others – group combat is frantic and somewhat frustrating as it can overwhelm ranged playstyles a bit too easily and those relying on stamina for attacks seem to tire a bit too quickly, but those are quibbles about a system that is by and large a good deal more fun than the average Elder Scrolls game.
That is not to say every gameplay element is perfect or even really an upgrade over the tried-and-true Elder Scrolls formula. Crafting and fishing and such are alive and well, but there’s not much nuance to them. They’re helpful, sure – but they’re not particularly interesting and it can be a bit challenging sometimes to find a specific recipe item as the UI doesn’t necessarily do much to hold your hand. Also, while I liked the art design itself, with a score of macabre Diablo vibe to it, there are visual glitches (screen tears, objects falling through floors, bodies that sit at angles they shouldn’t) that occur more often than I’d like to see. Characters look good at a glance, but facial movements and details don’t hold up to close scrutiny but man… the landscapes are amazing at times.
Minor rough edges aside, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is an incredible experience. It would be easy to glance at it and think this is an indie Skyrim or something of that nature, but once you start to play it readily becomes apparent that there’s so much more to this game. There are numerous ways to play the game and often multiple ways to complete quests, while the deep, rich lore is well-represented in both the writing as well as the graphics. For a relatively small development team, what they have churned out is broodingly beautiful, incredibly imaginative and most of all exciting to play.
Score: 8.75 of 10
