Questline put a dark fantasy spin on Arthurian legends and take on The Elder Scrolls at its own game in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. Can it match up to its ambitions?
In all honesty, very few self-described love letters to open-world first-person RPGs could hope to emulate the success of their inspirations in a commercial sense, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be better games than them. The Elder Scrolls wasn’t exactly cutting edge when we last got an entry, so the bar to clear isn’t as high as it could be. But Skyrim, for all its growing flaws, has a special sauce that makes it a consistent fixture for many RPG fans, and that’s only been proven further by the success of this year’s Oblivion remaster.
The trick to emulating the qualities of The Elder Scrolls is to make the surface level distinct from it and offer some neat twists on the underlying formula. Plenty of times, we’ve seen a ‘homage’ veer toward being a weak copy of its inspiration. Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon sees Questline understanding the dangers of a love letter game, and heeding the lesson to be yourself instead of a bloke in a Dragonborn costume bought off Amazon.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is heavily focused on building its own dark fantasy world that burns bright with the light of King Arthur’s legacy. Set 600 years after Arthur’s death, the land of Avalon is in a perilous state, and the player is tasked with following the legacy of Arthur’s reign as they see fit.
Tainted Grail Difficulty Levels Explained
Questline aims to bring player freedom to the forefront, from the morally grey choices that often fall in the player’s lap to the build that they can shape in myriad ways to become a unique force in the world. The trade-off is that Avalon is not quite as sprawling as you might think, and it’ll only take around 50-70 hours to see and do the majority of what is on offer in Tainted Grail.
I’m sure there are some now saying, ”Well, that sounds great,” and yes, generally, that is a great thing. Tainted Grail’s relatively compact package means the game itself is rarely without things to see and do. And the flexibility of its class-building system and story choices promises replayability. A bit of that special sauce found its way out of Bethesda’s kitchen, perhaps?
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However, that would only be true if Avalon had the right ingredients to make it a tasty experience (I’ll refrain from using food metaphors now, sorry). Perhaps at first glance, it gives a pretty good impression of itself, but it reminds you now again that it’s not quite the pristine, polished package it might appear to be.
Ambition is commendable here, as Polish developer Questline manages to create something quite admirable as an overall package; however, the cracks of a significantly smaller budget are evident in some painfully obvious ways. Character models aren’t animated all that well; the structure becomes a lot shakier in the last act, and there’s a feeling that, in its current state, Tainted Grail is somewhat frontloaded from its Early Access days. Also, you bring a lot more to combat than the enemy AI does, and yes, there are technical issues aplenty. Though they rarely get more egregious than making something look a bit unpleasant for a moment., the deeper you go into the game, the larger the hitches become.
Many of these issues are fixable, but it does seem like the game could have done with a bit longer in Early Access to make the back end feel stronger. The wow factor is primarily located in that first act, and what could have been a great RPG is merely good, thanks to that.
Tainted Grail Playable Classes Guide
But it does have Avalon, a beautiful dark fantasy world that blends European flavors instead of going all-out on Merry Olde England. A world made to dazzle in myriad small ways with its depth of detail and striking art style. The irresistible hook of wanting to investigate what that speck is in the distance or what might be around this next corner makes exploration a compelling experience. I can forgive all kinds of technical flaws in an open-world RPG if the world itself carries a high level of interest. Avalon is Tainted Grail’s standout weapon.
In an ideal world, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon could have done with more time in Early Access or being reshaped to an even more compact RPG experience. The latter option does seem like it would have been the sensible choice, but I get it. Many people want their RPGs to be hundreds of hours long, and perhaps in trying to reach a compromise, Questline fell a bit short. Tainted Grail has so much to admire in its refreshing throwback Elder Scrolls-coded action and well-realized dark fantasy world. That could have been fully celebrated if it kept running at the pace it started at.
Score: 7/10
Developer: Questline
Publisher: Awaken Realms
Reviewed on: PC
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon review code provided by the publisher.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
