This year seems to be the one for strong AA games, what with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 releasing just a short while ago, and now Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon appearing wearing its Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Skyrim inspiration on its sleeve. The Tainted Grail board game is also heavily story based, just like this role-playing game with which it shares a name, and both use a dark take on Arthurian legend to immerse players in a fantastical adventure. So, is Tainted Grail just tainted, or is this a grail worth drinking from? Let’s find out.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is available for the PC through Steam and also for the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. But to begin with, it’s almost impossible to talk about Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon without likewise talking about the RPG titles that very clearly inspired it: The Elder Scrolls. Moving around in first person, engaging in copious amounts of dialogue, and collecting every single possible wheel of cheese that you can find are both common practices that you would do in both this and Bethesda’s flagship RPG series. The largest singular difference, however, is that in Tainted Grail, you can turn your enemies into cheese too. That’s not even a joke, you can turn enemies or even your own summons into cheese, which you can then cook into dishes to recover health or even sell to vendors. You can overtake Wisconsin in cheese production should this be a path you decide to travel, which is very funny.
That being said, Tainted Grail has a lot of things in common with The Elder Scrolls, but it also has a massive amount of creativity in how the player engages with both the story and in combat. The tale of Tainted Grail starts off simply: you’re a sickly individual who has been cordoned off at some asylum where terrible experiments are being performed but through a stroke of luck you’re able to escape. Of course, escape isn’t without its own issues, as you soon encounter some strange zone and find the soul of King Arthur himself, though he can no longer remember anything and wants to see what has happened to his kingdom, Avalon.
This effectively begins your quest, paired with the benevolent king for whom Arthurian legend is named after. Of course, not everything is as it seems. Why is King Arthur an amnesiac? Why are there groups who have a vested interest in reviving him, while others seem to have a goal of preventing his revival at all costs? Tainted Grail seamlessly weaves together its worldbuilding and storytelling in very interesting ways, providing twists and decision making consequences that kept me interested in the story developments until the end. Which, there aren’t that many story quests, maybe around 12 or so, but it will still likely take you around 30 to 40 hours to see the end of the game.
The tale is steeped in dark Arthurian legend, and your player character’s adventure with King Arthur will lead you across the land of Avalon to find the plights of various characters who all have very solid voice acting. You’re able to adventure and even solve major problems however you see fit, sometimes skipping the quests entirely by using subterfuge or thievery. Even just chugging potions can give you some pretty inventive ways to finish the plethora of quests you’ll experience in Tainted Grail. The fact that you’re given so many story-deciding choices with permanent ramifications gives the title solid replay value too.
It definitely helps that many of the NPCs are interesting, and the resolution of their storylines can have branching paths where you get to decide what happens. Involving players directly in the lives of many NPCs is an amazing way to make them directly engage with the life story and situation of these characters. Tainted Grail truly is best enjoyed going in without any information because sometimes the climax of a side quest or character story may have consequences that are best observed without any foreknowledge.
The visuals of Tainted Grail are notably dated, and probably the least polished portion of the title. The graphics are still very much serviceable, but a lot of characters will have strange or outright goofy face and body animations at times, like something bugged out that wasn’t supposed to. It didn’t happen all the time, but it was pretty funny and memorable when it occurred, though I imagine for those who prefer more immersion, this may impact that a bit. The open world of Avalon gives the player a lot to do and explore across its variety of locations that all bear a uniqueness from one another.
The combat is where Tainted Grail sets itself apart from Elder Scrolls the most. When you begin the game, you’re given a brief questionnaire about your past to determine whether you’re going to be more of a warrior, an archer, or a mage, and which of these you develop into will significantly change how you interact with Tainted Grail’s combat systems. Becoming a stealth archer is a strong choice if invested into, which makes sense given this title’s Elder Scrolls inspiration (it’s often an overpowered class in Bethesda games). But interestingly, I found all different sorts of melee and mage builds to be viable, if not strong, after journeying a ways into Tainted Grail with them. The only one that didn’t really seem to pan out was a summoner build where you create little creatures to fight for you. It did not work because the summoned creatures’ AI would constantly get confused and not help much in battle.
Sneaking around from outside of your enemy’s range and pelting them with arrows and spells is very strong, but a well built melee character will likely be able to kill a boss in one or two hits if given the opportunity. The best part of combat in Tainted Grail is that if an enemy gets into your face, you actually have access to a dodge or a parry, depending on your equipment, which makes combat significantly more engaging. Going all-in on spell damage as a mage is entirely viable, and you can dodge around attacks pretty easily, but if you get hurt, it really hurts. If you’ve enjoyed Elder Scrolls: Oblivion or Skyrim’s combat, Tainted Grail will be familiar, but more engaging, primarily due to the inclusion of dodge and parry mechanics.
Players will find new equipment, spells, and items nearly everywhere, and spells can have wildly different effects than what you may expect. Summoning a creature, for example, will reserve some of your MP until the summon either dies or disappears, and you may be able to shoot a lightning bolt with the click of a button using another spell, which can arc across multiple targets should you charge it. Weapons and armor you find will have all sorts of special abilities attached to them that will work in tandem with the skills you invest into to make your character more powerful.
Leveling up is similar to Elder Scrolls: Oblivion in that you have a variety of stats like Athletics, Evasion, Theft, etc., and performing actions representative of those stats increases them which in turn can level up your character. Every level up provides a skill point (though you can also earn skill points in other ways), and you can spend those points on skills that increase your damage resistance while wearing armor, make it more difficult for enemies to notice you, or that increase your spell damage against targets with full health. Every skill point you spend brings you closer to completing your build, which in turn makes it more likely you can fight back against the powerful creatures of Avalon.
There are lots of strong enemies in Avalon, too, so you’re going to need all of the power you can get. Many locations have optional bosses with great rewards that require you to explore off the beaten path. You can even find one in the prologue area that’s quite challenging, for example. To handle these, and many other challenges, you’ll need to cook up food to sell or recover health, brew up your own potions and elixirs with alchemy, and make your own specialty arrows to take out your foes. You can even improve your gear at blacksmiths you find dotted throughout locations on your journey and hunting some animals for leather or other components to improve your armor or weapons is always helpful.
All in all, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is an amazing time. Your choices having consequences is impactful and can even have mechanical changes that affect the player should you, for example, pet a large creature you probably shouldn’t touch. Tainted Grail’s story, side quests, and especially voice acting are all way better than expected, and they did a lot of the heavy lifting to maintain my interest the whole way through the adventure. Finding out the backstories and motivations of the various factions in the title, and how they are intrinsically linked to King Arthur, was also very interesting.
The only real downsides of Tainted Grail are that the visuals aren’t exactly cutting edge, and the character AI can get pretty stuck sometimes, just like your summons, and wind up jittering back and forth instead of trying to, you know, fight you. Thankfully, those moments where enemies or bosses do that is quite rare and dodging around enemies while flinging fireballs or bashing foes in the head with a huge sword is always entertaining. This is an easy pick for those who enjoy Elder Scrolls games but wanted a darker story rife with consequences, while those who don’t enjoy talking to NPCs in their first-person titles should likely get their enjoyment somewhere else.