In 2021, Awaken Realms partnered with Questline to bring its board game, Tainted Grail: Conquest, to life. The final result was a roguelike deck-building game with turn-based combat and some RPG storytelling elements. The game received very positive reviews, leading to another collaboration, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon.
For this project, Questline went a different route and took the board game, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, and transformed it into a dark and gritty gothic RPG based on the Arthurian Legend. I walked away impressed by the gripping story and rich world that sucks you in.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Review
Before getting into everything I loved about Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, there is something you should know. I reviewed this game on a base PS5, so the performance is likely to be much better on other platforms. In saying that, I experienced jarring frame drops when going into a new area, fighting a large group of enemies, or even just randomly. Additionally, the game crashed several times, and textures didn’t always load in.
I didn’t want these issues to tarnish my enjoyment, but they did at times, and that’s unfortunate. It’s clear that this game was developed with PCs in mind and needed more polish before being released on consoles.
Yet, performance issues weren’t a deal breaker, because the rest of my time spent in Avalon was so memorable. Like other games of this genre, there is no hand-holding. You get thrown right into the Horns of the South, an area ravaged by a plague, bandits, strange creatures, and warring tribes.
And getting crushed by enemies around every corner was frustrating at first, but that made mastering the fighting system and finding a playstyle even more satisfying. I ultimately landed on a stealth archer build, but there are endless build possibilities with a simple but engaging skill tree and attribute system.
What I loved most about Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, though, was the world. Some open-world games feel empty because even though the space is massive, there isn’t much to do or interact with. But with Avalon, I felt incentivized to explore every corner of the map, because there were dungeons to discover, hidden chests with rare armor and weapons to open, and NPCs to interact with that helped breathe life into the world.
I found myself getting sidetracked in a good way, as I would be doing a quest only to stumble across something else in the world along the way. The story is also compelling, as I struggled to make a few decisions because they had a meaningful impact on all of the characters I met. Taking all of that into account, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon checks off every box of what you’d want from a long RPG that intends to keep you around for the long haul.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Review Verdict
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is estimated to take you around 50-70 hours to complete. There are three expansive regions to explore, and just based on the first area alone, all RPG fans will find something they enjoy. For players to invest so much time in a game, you want it to be worth it, and this title delivers that, for the most part.
If the performance issues were less glaring, this would undoubtedly be a better score. Hopefully, there will be some updates soon to stabilize frame rates, but even without any optimization, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is worth trying out, and it’s nice that the game is $44.99 rather than the standard $69.99.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
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