A few years back a little game called PalWorld launched, and the internet crapped its collective slacks over how similar many of its art assets were to Pokemon. It made numerous headlines, spawned countless memes, led to a lawsuit or two. It was, in some areas, fairly blatant. But one of the most common and consistent defences came not from the PalWorld team, but from the fans of the game who, in their deviance, were just happy that a thing they liked existed. The defence was that, although few people like to admit it, there’s a very thin line between plagiarism and homage and anyway, there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m reminded of this whole debacle as I fire up Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon and find myself double-checking that I haven’t just installed and booted up a Celtic-themed Oblivion mod.
To suggest that Tainted Grail was partly influenced by Bethesda’s fantasy RPGs would be to suggest that there were other factors influencing the game at all. Yes, it swaps Tamriel for Avalon, but they’re both fictional and, at a glance, utterly interchangeable. Avalon is, in Celtic and British mythology, the final resting place of King Arthur, the Once and Future King, to which his body was borne after his death at the hands of his own son, Mordred. In Tainted Grail, Arthur was a tyrant (a not entirely unique concept given the existence of NeoCore’s King Arthur – Knight’s Tale), who used brutal methods to lead a desperate war against the Wyrdness, a corrupting magical force that spreads through the land and its people, manifesting as a plague known as the Red Death. Tainted Grail takes place six centuries later, when Avalon is a dark and twisted land suffering in the grip of a re-emerging Wyrdness.
Just to hammer home certain associations, you begin the game imprisoned. You’re held by the Red Priests, a dark order of mages and clerics bent on finding a cure for the Red Death via means fair and foul. Though mostly foul, to be clear. Before you’re freed from your cell by a mysterious archer named Caradoc, you create your avatar in a fairly straightforward character creator, and set about making your escape.
Class selection is handled wonderfully. During a lengthy interrogation before your emancipation, you can explain to a guard why you were imprisoned and what you did before. These answers form the backbone of your starting class, deciding roughly whether you’ll be a tanky fighter, a sneaky thief, stalking ranger, or wizened magic-user. There are nuances to it, of course, and nothing is set in stone, but since this was basically an Elder Scrolls game to my eyes I went for my usual default of ranged assassin.
Even aesthetically – hell, even graphically – Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon looks like Skyrim. And what I mean is it’s not just about the artistic direction but the level of performance and fidelity. It’s not a particularly pretty game, even when you eventually escape your prison and emerge into the mist-shrouded highlands of Avalon. While it may not be entirely original, the atmosphere it conjures it effective and impressive. Once you’re out into the world, the Elder Scrolls nods persist, but weirdly I began to notice them less and less. Tainted Grail weaves an ambience all of its own, which might never make it feel unique but does allow it to cultivate its own personality.
The world is far more grim-dark, for a start. It’s a nightmarish, oppressive place, where once Kamelot (with a K, yeah) and the Round Table were beacons of light and truth but are now used in cautionary tales told to frighten children and ne’er-do-wells. One of the first things I encountered while exploring the map was a lake filled with blood and dead bodies with no context. Talk about setting out your stall early.
One thing I found really enjoyable was the way Tainted Grail integrates gathering. Instead of just walking up to resources and clicking on them, you can fish, mine, or use a shovel to dig up buried crates and caches. It lends a more rugged feel to the idle wandering, as do multiple points of interest that you won’t be able to interact with yet. Part of the progression of both character and narrative is in developing the ability to cross over into the Wyrd, where the spirit of King Arthur himself acts as a mentor and guide for his own unclear reasons. Jaunts into this netherworld often result in you coming away with powers and abilities that allow you to interact with ancient artefacts of power, opening up the world in gradual, satisfying ways.
Sadly though, it’s just really hard to fully shake the Elder Scrolls thing. Levelling is very similar. Tanking hits in my cute little hood resulted in a pop-up text declaring that my “Light Armour has increased”, while merely running and jumping will increase Athletics and Acrobatics. It’s so blatantly derivative that it genuinely made me go “huh” more than once. When you clear a character level by combining 10 skill increases, you have skill trees to progress along that, thankfully, stop short of being actual constellations, though only just.
Just as in the games that influenced it so strongly, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon gets away with an awful lot by virtue of simply being good. It’s a good game. The world is huge and dangerous, the treasures are many and guarded, your enemies are numerous and vicious. It’s a world where you’ll constantly meet people holed up in ruined forts or makeshift camps who can’t wait to give you jobs to do instead of the trained soldiers they’re surrounded by, where traders and blacksmiths will take time to teach you crafts as well as hock you their wares. It’s a realm of distant mysteries you will want to uncover, and powerful abilities you’ll itch to learn.
It does struggle under the weight of its own ambition here and there, most notably where performance is concerned. I play on a 4070 RTX and have no trouble running games like Wukong or Assassin’s Creed Shadows, yet Tainted Grail positively chugs at times. I had to lower a number of settings including draw distance to prevent crippling asset-pop and texture delays, and there are moments when the physics engine just can’t even with this shit, and the game slows to a crawl. I had a couple of crashes, some bizarre enemy AI, and more than one problem with just picking stuff up off tables or shelves. Also, don’t expect too much yet from the experimental third-person mode. It’s there if you want to use it, but the animation is a little off and it does weird, weird things to the game world.
Awaken Realms tell a solid, compelling story, though. The writing is decent but sometimes painfully anachronistic, such as when a beleaguered solider can’t give you any information because it’s “above his pay grade” or when some of these characters in an ancient Celtic land have strong American accents and sound like they’re serving you drinks in a Chicago bar. It’s a little jarring and certainly affected my immersion, but others may not care as much.
Yet Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon balances these shortcomings with intuitive crafting systems that encourage exploration and resource farming while not quite succumbing to the grind. Combat is a little janky but satisfyingly weighty, and the ability to wield weapons and magic together and switch seamlessly between three loadouts makes character building a joy. It’s all full of lore and tidbits of backstory, plumbing into the history of this world with reams of data plucked from the award-winning TTRPG from which it spun off.
Despite some obvious influences that it doesn’t so much wear on its sleeve as cover itself in from scalp to toenail, Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon manages to be an excellent action RPG with an interesting, dark world to explore and many challenges to overcome. It suffers in terms of performance now and then, but the developer will no doubt continue to support and improve the game after its 1.0 launch. If you can either overlook or fully embrace the Elder Scrolls flavour, you’ll find a deep, exciting adventure that will keep you entertained for hours.