Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon review

I recently finished my play-through of Avalon, and I actually had a great time. It is one of those rare experiences I simply could not stop playing. I can tell you right now, coming from KDC2, I enjoyed this game FAR more. Both titles are inspired by the classic design of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (I'll do a post on the remastered another time), and we should be very clear about that inspiration.

At its very core, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a modern take on Oblivion. The developers themselves have openly embraced this, going so far as to offer a paid supporter pack that includes a wink and a nod with its own set of horse armour. The game also heavily incorporates familiar design elements from FromSoft, some from Capcom, and bits and pieces of other open world RPGs. There is practically nothing here that feels entirely new or original. And that is perfectly fine (Expedition 33 hint hint). It feels like a game crafted by developers who genuinely love and play other games, and their passion for the genre is clear.

Of course, this is a project from a small indie team. That means it is a low budget title with a healthy dose of bugs and all the other problems that come with such an ambitious project. Yet for what the team has managed to accomplish, it is still a very good time.

A Grim Welcome to Avalon

The story is a dark fantasy take on the legends of King Arthur. This is not the developer's first foray into this universe, as they previously released Tainted Grail: Conquest, a fun roguelite that established their familiarity with the lore. The game presents a decidedly grimdark version of this world, set 600 years after King Arthur's original conquest and passing. Avalon is dying, the Red Death, which is essentially the Black Plague, is ravaging the land while a chaotic force known as the Wyrdness spreads and consumes everything in its path. Kamelot is now a decaying corpse of the great city it once was, its people are divided, and wars are brewing on the horizon.

With the situation so dire, the big wigs at the Round Table decide it is time to resurrect Arthur so he can deal with it all again. However, as the story makes clear, each time they have brought the dead king back before, it has come at a great cost. The world-building and lore that support this premise are surprisingly well done. The world is filled with NPCs to talk to, and they are all voiced when the game is not bugged. There are also loads of books to read, things to examine, and landmarks to visit. I definitely felt like I was in an actual world with its own established history. I suppose having the original King Arthur legends as a foundation means a large chunk of the work is already done for them, but it was still an interesting take.

Contents and mechanics

Let’s talk about the game itself. This is where the inspirations from other titles become most apparent, for better and for worse.

Clunky, Creative Combat

The combat is clunky and unintuitive at first, but it has a lot of oomph and plenty of room for player-induced silliness. If you want to be a sneak archer, you can do it. If you like status effect builds, there are plenty of options. If you want to summon minions, you can, though each summon reduces your maximum mana etc. The variety in both builds and equipment is very familiar but very welcome.

The melee combat feels heavily inspired by Fatshark’s Tide series, even if it cannot quite match that level of quality. The two-handed sword's heavy attack animation, for instance, is almost a carbon copy of one from Vermintide. Once you get past the jank of its single-target focus, where you only hit what your cursor is pointing at, the melee is genuinely fun. You can push, parry, block, and charge heavy attacks. The system applies a large force behind each hit, so the ragdoll physics are a chef's kiss. Bonk an enemy with a warhammer or thrust a spear and watch them fly. There is also a surprisingly decent amount of enemy variety to test your skills against. Sure, some are just reskins, but the roster is varied enough to keep encounters from getting stale.

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"Yeet" - King Arthur

An Unbalanced Power Fantasy

If you play on the highest difficulty, the early game will be rough. Enemies will kill you in one or two shots, and bosses have a ton of health, which is especially punishing if you are running a non-combat build. But once you have explored the first map and done most of its content, you become familiar with the systems and the game gets much easier and far more enjoyable. As for balancing? There really is not any. The game is a power fantasy, and it is entirely possible to create a completely broken character with the variety of gear, buffs, skills, perks, relics, and upgrades available.

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This is one of the hardest boss in the game, that I cheesed in early game, see that status effect? Yep, I applied nearly 700 stacks of bleeding to it.

My own non-combat character, by the mid-to-late game, was a walking Hokuto Shinken meme. I maxed out my unarmed attack speed to 300%, had a critical hit chance over 80%, and stacked bleed effects, increased crits and damage on consecutive hits, damage reduction, and healing on crits. Combine that with Arthur’s special ability to slow time for ten seconds, and a perk that makes all the damage you dealt during that time re-apply in a single burst at the end… see that unique boss over there? It is already dead. The game is jank, broken, and unashamedly fun.

Familiar Systems

The skill and perk systems are basically from The Elder Scrolls. Some perks are simple percentage increases while others introduce cool mechanics that can change the way you play. To level up and spend your points, you need to use a bonfire. Yes, a bonfire, where you can also occasionally speak with Arthur's spirit after important events. It is a very FromSoft design choice, but it is also convenient, as you can create a bonfire almost anywhere outside of dungeons to rest and craft.

The Surprising Difficulty of Getting Rich

Surprisingly, the hardest thing in the game is actually making money. It is not until the late game that you can reliably make enough dosh to upgrade your equipment. The costs for upgrades climb to a ridiculous cap of 80,000 gold per piece. For contrast, a highest-quality potion you can craft yourself sells for only around 200 gold at a 100% barter rate. Since there is encumbrance, you cannot just loot everything to sell either. By the end of the game, I had built my character to carry 400kg and sell things for 450% more!

Exploration

Where the game truly shines is in its rewarding exploration. On the first two maps especially, you will likely find something interesting in every little corner you decide to investigate. This could be a treasure chest, a dead body with a story to tell, a hidden quest, or a piece of unique equipment. Quests can also be discovered just by talking to NPCs about mundane topics, and these can often spin off into entire questlines. While the quests themselves can be hit or miss, they are often designed to lead you toward interesting places or can be done simply by exploring, so they never feel like a chore. Many can be be completed even before you get the quest, and most of them will have appropriate dialogues for that too.

Adding to this is the fact that many quests come with meaningful choices and consequences. You will deal with various factions, and your decisions can have impacts both large and small. Some of these changes are immediately visible, while others are more subtle, which adds a nice layer of player agency and makes it feel like you are actually having an impact on this dying land.

Most of the dungeons, I believe 95% of them, are handcrafted, each completely different from the others. It is a great feeling, and it drove me to explore all three maps and complete all the content that was not bugged.

The Little Things

Finally, the game incorporates several immersive features that, while barebones, are a nice touch. You can fish, buy a house and decorate it (fixed spot), craft gear, cook food, practice alchemy, chop woods, etc. It is funny that a game that does not advertise itself as "immersive" felt more so than some that do. Yes, I am specifically calling out Kingdom Come 2. You can even give alms to beggars in this game, yet in a game about Henry being a good Christian, you cannot, hmm...

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Sights, Sounds, and Stumbles

This is where the game's indie nature becomes most apparent, a mix of genuine artistic talent and undeniable rough edges.

Art Direction Overcomes Technology

Let’s be clear, the game is not a graphical juggernaut. It is, however, carried by its excellent dark fantasy art style and direction. The world has many cool and decidedly grim designs that are, once again, reminiscent of how FromSoft tells a story through its environments. I will not spoil anything, but there were many times I saw a clever area design that made me think, "I have definitely seen that in a FromSoft game before." The second map, in particular, has two huge instanced areas that absolutely nail that design vibe. The first two maps are littered with unique, identifiable landmarks that add to the world's lore and immersion. The game also features weather effects and a day/night cycle. At night, the Wyrdness comes out and shits get real. It is spooky, dangerous, and the visual effects are perfectly fitting. Oh and that boss I cheesed? It stalks you at night and usually one shots you.

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Puzzling Choices and Incomplete Content

Now, for the negatives. The voice acting… well, it is there. I was not expecting much anyway, and I do applaud the team for having all the dialogue voiced. The music is a different story. It seems they licensed most of the music they used and made the rest themselves. The opening song is clearly licensed, but I have to ask: why did they decide to license a NORSE song for a story about CELTIC legend?

The game is full of this baffling choice. The entire third map is practically a Nordic-themed area, and much of the battle musics is Norse throat singing. It is fine on its own, but there is very little variation, and it feels tonally out of place. It is their own take, but again, why Norse?

This brings me to the third map itself. Much like Baldur's Gate 3, the first area was in Early Access and received plenty of feedback and polish. In the second area, the cracks begin to show, with a noticeable cutback on content and mechanics, like the conversations with Arthur. By the third map, the game feels really incomplete and lacking. It is understandable for a small team, perhaps, but it is disappointing nonetheless.

Bugs, Performance, and Writing Suspicions

As expected, the game is littered with bugs and other issues. I finished my playthrough on patch 1.01, and the game felt somewhat demanding despite not being a technical showcase. The bugs ranged from things you would not notice, to minor missing sounds and visuals, to full-on crashes and broken saves. The one that annoyed me the most was quests breaking, purely because it meant I could not consume more of the content. As I have said, this is to be expected from an indie game of this size, and the developers are constantly working on fixes. Hopefully, this includes quality-of-life updates, like marking a cleared dungeon on the map (something the Oblivion remaster laughably still does not have).

Finally, I have to mention my most "sus" moment. I heavily suspect the team used some form of generative AI in their game without disclosing it, at least for the writing and translation. My reasoning? For an indie team to support twelve languages in a text-heavy open-world game is a monumental expense. Furthermore, the writing in the main cutscenes and dialogues with Arthur often felt like it was written by an LLM. There is an abundance of em dashes, that weirdly robotic "it's not X, it's Y" phrasing, and a constant defaulting to bastardised American English… in a story about King Arthur. It was just quite off, a feeling made worse when another NPC's dialogue clearly used the perfectly appropriate word "arse."