Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon / Questline
The indie RPG Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon has officially been released from early access on Steam — and it resembles a Bethesda classic.
The game was developed by an independent indie studio Questline, which operates under the brand of the Polish Awaken Realms (created S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The Board Game). The developers have created a dark open-world fantasy inspired by the myths of King Arthur, which players have already dubbed «Skyrim, but depressed».
In the game, you find yourself in a world where 600 years have passed since the fall of Arthur. The country is mired in endless wars and is gripped by the Red Death — a plague that slowly turns people into monsters. The world is divided into three large zones, and the story offers 50-70 hours of playthrough and more than 200 side quests. There are also activities such as farming, home decorating, and even keeping an illustrated diary.
As night falls, the world of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon changes — a chaotic force called the Miracle is activated. It makes enemies much stronger. And users, in turn, can level up their characters as they wish: a crazy berserk alchemist, a necromancer blacksmith, or a typical stealth player.
The work of the indie studio was positively evaluated by the press: 76 points on Metacritic and 83 points on the Opencritic. For the most part, critics have noted the gloomy and interesting atmosphere of the world, which captures the story, characters, art style, and music. In particular, they rated «a nostalgic set that will absolutely appeal to any fan of dark fantasy role-playing games». Both the press and users noticed the similarity to Skyrim.
«Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon reaches its ambitious goal: to pick up the torch from Skyrim and Oblivion, delivering a game that looks the classics straight in the eye. Incredibly fun and varied, it offers total freedom to live all kinds of adventures in Avalon, and its epic scale is a testament to the outstanding work of this independent team», — writes Hobby Consolas.
User ratings were higher than the press — the game received 87% positive reviews on Steam. Many users managed to spend more than an hour in the first act in three days and praised the game for its atmosphere, freedom of action, and interesting world. Some saw similarities not only with Bethesda classics, but also with soulslike-games or The Witcher.
«From the very beginning, the game seemed familiar to me — it is very similar to Skyrim. But if it’s Skyrim, it’s a dark fantasy game. Everything around is gloomy, bloody, dead, crazy», — the user writes.
But the launch was not without problems. Players complain about bugs, FPS drops, and the lack of Ukrainian localization. Not everyone has problems with optimization, but they still exist. For example, there have been complaints about stuttering and FPS drops on PS5. There were also complaints that NPCs get stuck, the balance of magic seems a bit underdeveloped, and touching water sometimes randomly changes the color saturation and then brings it back. So the game definitely needs time to be finalized and bugs fixed.
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Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. It costs ₴835 for the regular edition and ₴1,025 for the Supporter Edition. The latter is a special DLC for those who want to support independent developers. It contains 18+ content with violence, alcohol consumption, and swearing, as well as soundtracks, an art book, and exclusive horse armor.
Source: Rock Paper Shotgun