Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (PS5) Review

Think of one of your favorite games of all time. Chances are, there’s some passionate team of developers out there trying to make their own experience molded after that same shared love for the game. Trouble is, unless you’re a development studio with the same staffing level as Bethesda or Rockstar, you probably won’t be making the next Elder Scrolls or Grand Theft Auto. Polish studio Questline has tried the impossible with their take on spinning an Arthurian tale with the first-person finesse of Bethesda’s signature RPG series. Does Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon deserve a seat at The Round Table, or is this one folktale best left in history?

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon isn’t the first title from Questline to tell a dark and nearly apocalyptic take on the take of King Arthur and His Knights of his Round Table, but it is certainly the most ambitious. Set in the land of Avalon, Tainted Grail focuses on the bastion of humanity some six hundred years following King Arthur making a pilgrimage to this island of Avalon to escape The Red Death, a plague that slowly cripples and ultimately kills anyone who comes in contact with it. Now, as the legend of King Arthur has been twisted into a horrific facsimile of itself, the tales of the old noble king are instead talked about in hushed whispers and cursing both the king and gods alike for their plight.

Enter the nameless protagonist, a prisoner of the Red Priests who has been locked away in an island asylum to await the aggressive Red Death to corrupt his body and come to an untimely end. Players are quizzed on the circumstances that led them to the prison by an inquiring guard, with the choices players make leading into a small boost in particular stats. Not are particularly drastic enough to justify starting the adventure over if you don’t like your starting stats, but I did enjoy that answering that your background was that in magics and you would rather burn a tree down than heal someone rewards you with a fireball spell that would last for the opening acts.

At this point, you’re left to dwell upon your choices and waste away as The Red Death overtakes you. That is, until a prison break leads to the playable hero crossing paths with the soul of King Arthur and taking that kingly power into oneself. Much as the artifacts of The Round Table have been spread across the land, so too have parts of King Arthur’s soul. What could have been a possession by the strongest human of the era is instead conferred upon the player as an immunity to The Red Death and some novel time-slowing mechanics for combat. It’s here that the player is tasked with gathering up a number of artifacts that house parts of King Arthur’s soul, from his trusted Excalibur to his shield and crown.

One of the hallmarks of Bethesda’s first-person RPG series is that anything can be picked up and most actions have an underlying skill and leveling system underneath. Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon takes these touchstones and simplifies them down without the complexity and nuances that one might expect. Players gain combat proficiency in one of four combat styles each time they land an attack: Unarmed, One-Handed Weapons, Two-Handed Weapons, and Archery. Axes, spears, claymores and the like are all bundled together until the general weapon type and magic is similarly truncated down to a single skill set rather than specializing in a specific school of focus. This was a novel change I rather liked, as this incentivized me to pick up a new weapon whenever possible and not have to worry about getting skilled up in the proficient use of axes just because I was using a wooden club for the first couple hours. And yes, jumping off of cliffs or hopping down the street does help train your athletics.

Leveling up confers upon the player a single attribute point and a couple of skill points. Attributes are divided up into one of six basic stats and each come with both combat and passive bonuses where it’s worth investing in a wide range of stats instead of hyper focusing on just strength or endurance to become a pack mule. Most decent equipment has a stat requirement to put on, so it’s worth being flexible and throwing a couple of points into a different stat just to put on a fresh pair of pants. Skill points can be freely distributed among any skill tree at any time without needing a stat requirement and instead only require to be purchased in order depending on the skill tree you’re investing in. Scattered throughout Avalon are a number of origin potions which help reset your choices and can help if you suddenly find yourself unable to draw a bow again, such as having your arm chomped off for trying to pet a sleeping crockmaw. 

On paper, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon sounds like it hits the right marks for being a Skyrim-inspired adventure. With a 60-70 hour long campaign, three massive zones to explore, and dozens of side quests with branching paths and choices, what’s not to love? Unfortunately, there’s an awful lot to put on that list, especially on the PlayStation 5 Pro. 

During the week or so leadup to the 1.0 launch and finally leaving Early Access, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon had a number of substantial patches that both fixed and broke a great deal. While I didn’t have any particularly save corrupting issues that flat-out blocked my progression, instead I had a number of instances where quest NPCs simply didn’t exist. Perhaps they died in the dead of night during the Wyrdness or to a pack of wolves, or perhaps they simply blipped out of existence when I wasn’t looking. In both of the first two zones, I was soft locked into being unable to progress the adventure by any normal means. Within the first major hub city is a grotesque statue where players must draw Excalibur out to retrieve one of the first pieces of King Arthur’s Soul. The only problem is that there were two factions I could have allied with in order to get information on how to retrieve the mythical blade in one piece. Players can choose between allying with Sir Galahad and Kamelot or the smaller tribal factions; in my case, I came to a stalemate because I killed Sir Galahad for his armor and then the other faction was also hostile and wouldn’t let me speak with words rather than blades.

With both factions essentially stripped of their leadership in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, I essentially crippled my information gathering and was left without a reliable way to secure Excalibur. That is, until some handy experimentation and chugging a whole barrel full of healing potions allowed me to survive long enough to free Excalibur from its resting place on display. Sadly, while this permitted me the opportunity to venture into the second region, I was left with a pile of loose threads and quests left unfinished because of the key NPCs being dead. Similarly, in the second region, one of the NPCs I needed to meet with to finish the main quest in that region simply never showed up for me.

Alas, my fifty-hour playthrough of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon ended with a whimper as I could do little more than roam around the two maps I had fully cleared, a world that’s beautiful when you stop to examine the splendor but is interrupted by hitches and slowdown the moment you start walking forward. Perhaps in another few months time once Questline has had the time to patch out the game-crushing bugs, this is one trip to Avalon worth checking out.

[Editor’s Note: Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon was reviewed on the PlayStation 5 Pro. Review code was provided by the publisher.]

6.5

WCCFTECH RATING

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon