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Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon – Dark Skyrim RPG

In this tainted Grail, the fall of Avalon Video, I’m going to be showing you guys a new open-world RPG, that’s just come out on early access on Steam a day or two ago.

This is a sponsored post. Please note sponsored posts are only sponsoring coverage, our opinions on the game are our own and not affected by any business relationships with developers or publishers.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Hands-On Gameplay Impressions Preview

  • Name: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon
  • Platforms: PC
  • Developer: Questline
  • Publisher: Awaken Realms
  • Release Date: Early Access March 30th 2023
  • Genre: Action-RPG, Open-World, Dark Fantasy

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a video game adaptation of the board game of the same name that was published in 2019. It was developed by Questline and published by Awaken Realms who kindly sponsored this video.

So thanks to them for doing so and if you guys are picking this game up on Steam and Early Access, make sure you use our link below to support us.

Story & Setting

So before I get into the actual gameplay mechanics of how this game works. First let’s talk a little bit about the story of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. This of course follows the Arthurian legend, you might be able to guess that by the title of the game, but it’s a bit different.

It takes place hundreds of years after King Arthur’s death on the Isle of Avalon and bad, bad things are occurring that were once wiped out by Arthur when he first conquered this island. These things are creeping back up, and the island is covered with all kinds of undead enemies and various things that are affecting the residents here, The Britons if you will. You are trying to figure out why this is occurring and put a stop to it before the whole island is consumed in red death.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a gritty, dark fantasy RPG based on the Arthurian legend.

Gameplay of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

Now one of the things that I’ve enjoyed immensely so far about this game during the Early Access period, early access is about 10 to 15 hours of gameplay. It’s going to run for about 9 to 16 months, then it’s going to come out of early access. During that time they’re going to add more content to this game. If you actually take a look at the game map, you can kind of see the area that you can go to. There’s an area on the map part that you can’t see yet. I’m assuming that’s what the rest of the game is going to be.

Playing in first-person players will take on foes with both ranged and melee weapons.

Uncovering the Mystery

But what I’ve really enjoyed so far about this game is the mysterious elements surrounding the game. It’s very much like dropping you in it and letting you sort it out, sort of a game. You are not given tons of direction, but you do have a main quest line. Everything you come across outside of that main quest line is kind of up for you to discover and figure out.

There are things you can interact with that you are missing items from, and there’s like little lore elements here and there of the story. Other than that, you are kind of left to your own devices to figure out. It’s kind of like got that souls-like feel to it, if you will, for lack of a better comparison. They sort of just dropped you in this game world and you’re kind of on your own, piecing things together, other than the main quest line. I really, really like that.

It made for a really fun experience and I think people are going to enjoy just walking around and trying to figure out where to go and what to do and how to interact with things. There will be moments when you figure something out and it just clicks, this is something I very much enjoyed.

Gameplay Mechanics Reminiscent of Skyrim/Oblivion

The gameplay mechanics of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon reminds me of Skyrim or Oblivion, or one of those types of games. It’s got that open-world setting where you go into different dungeons and things like that that you load in and you do these little mini-dungeons and you come back out. But beyond that, your character progression is very, very similar.

The reason I say this is that as you explore and you start fighting enemies you are going to level up the abilities of the things that you use. For instance, if you use A one-handed sword and you attack enemies, then you’re going to gain one-handed which is going to increase your damage with one-handed weapons. The same is true of two-handed weapons, magic or bow. So your character gets stronger in the way that you use abilities and attacks throughout the game.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - Ogre
Use bows, two-handed or one-handed weapons to fight in Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon

Gear Leveling Abilities

As you play the game, you’ll discover better and better gear in Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. For instance, one-handed swords that are stronger or have higher damage ranges so you do gain progression through the weapons and equipment themselves.

Another example is that you’ll use light armor or medium armor, and by then wearing a piece of that equipment you’ll actually level up said piece. This is very similar to the likes of Oblivion and Skyrim, where that was the case with them as well. You will end up gaining more damage protection from wearing those types of armors in the future. This causes the player to figure out what sort of armor they want, which also goes hand in hand here.

The weapons and armor you use will level up as you use them.

Attributes & Stamina

Beyond these elements, though, you also have attributes that you can put points in every time you level up. You gain an attribute point allowing you to get stronger, be able to increase your daily damage or increase your bow damage, or spell damage to increase your stamina regeneration.

The game has a stamina system with dodging, blocking and attacking. You have to manage your stamina while you’re fighting in combat, kind of like first-person souls game a little bit. As you level up and gain these attribute points, you can shape your character along with the things that you’re using in combat.

Obviously you can level everything up if you want to, but you’re kind of going down one or two focuses, usually in order to make your character stronger in those aspects.

Skills & Passive Skills

Beyond that, every other time you level up, you’ll gain a skill point or a perk point. They’re kind of like perks, but they’re called skills. You’ll gain a passive effect that’s wrapped around one of the attributes. For instance, you can gain more headshot damage with both, or you can gain increased stamina recovery so that when you’re fighting, melee combat or whatever, you can dodge more and attack more. Or block more and attack more which is decent for melee fighters.

There are a variety of different perks in that you can gain or skill points you can gain. As you level up higher and higher, you’ll be able to gain access to higher tiers of these skills in each stat depending on if you put points in the previous tier or not.

Attributes, Equipment & Skill Points

Shaping your character through attributes, equipment that you use while you’re fighting as well as skill points makes for a really interesting combat experience and character development. I played probably in the range of five to seven hours of this game, and the more I played, the more I got sucked in because of these elements. It started to make me think maybe I should start over and do a mage build and focus more on magic and see how that goes. Or maybe I should prioritize bows. I found myself gravitating more towards the melee side of combat, which I kind of got down a little bit into the game, it takes a little bit to get used to.

What I really found fascinating was the way these builds happened reminded me of those games of living in Skyrim, and I particulary enjoyed that aspect.

NPCs & Decision Making

So outside of combat, you’re going to be talking to NPCS and making decisions. There are different factions vying in Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. You will find yourself interacting with things on the landscape, trying to solve puzzles, gathering resources to craft food and craft weapons as well as armor. There is kind of a mild survival element to this game. I wouldn’t say it’s very survival, although I guess technically it falls into this category a little bit.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - Consumables
Mmm brains…

Crafting & Survival Elements

You can for example craft food to heal yourself, or you can rest. But you don’t have to eat to not be hungry or sleep to not be tired, so it’s missing some of the basics of survival aspects. When you’re in a dungeon where there is nowhere to rest, you will use these items to heal yourself effectively.

Obviously, you can craft gear and equipment as you find recipes and you know, materials to craft as well. So there is some of that wrapped up in the exploration of this game.

Audio & Visuals

So moving into the aesthetics of the game, you’ll notice while you’re exploring it’s far darker than something like Oblivion or Skyrim though. The tone of this game is very much like a dark RPG. You’ll see skulls, and there’s a lot of blood and undead as well as creepy blood lakes. There are gallows and undead soldiers everywhere. It’s very, very dark. It almost has, a Diablo-type first-world feel to it minus the heaven and hell elements.

I enjoyed this aspect wrapped with the Arthurian legend, which is one of my favorites. The lore and mythology of that makes for an interesting experience. It adds a very adult feel to the game and it’s something probably a lot darker than most first-person open-world RPG’s that you would play.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - Graphics

Visuals

Graphically though, I don’t have a lot of great things to say about how the game visually looks. There are moments where it does look stunning, depending on how you’re standing and the lighting of the game. Particularly with the sun and the rain etc. There are moments it looks very nice, but generally speaking, the graphics aren’t anything mind-blowing. They’re nothing to write home about in Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon.

I’m coming from sons of the forest, which I played recently, which looked gorgeous. This game is just kind of in the middle somewhere. It’s not terrible but it’s not great. I will say I did have performance issues with this game. It was very difficult to maintain 60FPS on a 3080TI playing at high settings on 1440P graphics. At 60FPS it was stable but I couldn’t get really higher than that. Periodically, as you move into a new area for a second it would plunge the FPS and then come out of it. It wasn’t very often, but it did happen enough to note it down.

Bugs

Didn’t really have any bugs other than maybe pathing of enemies that would get stuck in things sometimes, but I didn’t have any other bugs so far. Obviously, this is an early access game, so these things are going to get polished up over time. I want to mention them here and point them out to you so that you know experiences might vary a little bit depending on what PC you’re playing this game on and what settings.

You’re playing it on, but again, it is an early access game. These things are going to get polished up over time. As I didn’t have too many bugs or anything like that, so I think generally the game is in a pretty good state other than that, I worry a little bit about the run ability on say medium-end PCs. If you don’t have a pretty good graphics card, you’re probably going to be playing this game in 1080P, which still isn’t terrible looking, but it’s not the greatest.

Voice Acting

One thing I do want to mention though before I wrap up this video, is that the sound of this game is really pretty good. The music, in my opinion, really sets this sort of sombre, dark tone of the isle that you’re fighting on. It kind of gives you this gloomy feeling and the voice acting in the game is good for a game that’s an indie game. I was really happy with the voice acting. I can’t wait to see more of that. The characters themselves are very well-voiced even just the regular characters. So I was impressed by those things too.

Arguing with the locals in Tainted Grail

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned, Tainted Grail is now available for early access on Steam. It just came out like a day or two ago, it’s brand new. If you guys like the look of it, if you’re looking for a new open-world game to sort of check out and you want to pick up the early access version, use the link to help support Fextralife.

So what do you guys think of Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon from the gameplay you’ve seen so far? Does it kind of remind you of a darker Skyrim? Questline the developer also made another Tainted Grail game that was a turn-based RPG that has good reviews on Steam. So I think fans of that title are going like this one. Let me know what you think in the comments below.


Check out more of our previews in Total War: Warhammer III – Should You Play It? Is It Worth It and Wayfinder Closed Beta Impressions – NEW MMORPG.

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