Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon Review in Progress

The first item I ever picked up in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon that wasn’t clothing or weapons was smut. I know what you’re thinking. “Will, you degenerate, of course it was smut. We know all about you, bro.” Listen. I didn’t know it was smut. But I learned real quick. I found it in what looked like the guard’s break area after I was busted out of my cell. I don’t remember what happened next; there was a drawing of a very pretty woman, and then I read the phrase “love apples” and blacked out. But I’m getting ahead of myself – let me back up a bit and tell you about my experience with this fun but familiar open-world RPG so far.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a reimagining of Arthurian myth. When his homeland is overwhelmed by a plague known as the Red Death, Arthur leads his people to Avalon, conquers the island, and (with Merlin’s help) cleanses the land of the Wyrdness – a chaotic, primordial force capable of reshaping the landscape and the beings in it. That was 600 years ago. Now, the old legends are gone, the Wyrdness has creeped back into Avalon, and the Red Death has returned. You play as a no-name prisoner of the Red Priests, who are desperately searching for a cure. It's a cool setup, and one that gives you everything you need to know while preserving Fall of Avalon’s greater mysteries.

After a brief cutscene that lays all of this out, you’re dropped into a character creator. What’s here is fine, but it’s kind of hard to make a character that looks particularly good, mostly because everyone’s skin looks like it was made out of Play-Doh. Everything else about the process is fine, though, and certain things, like the hair, are really impressive. Besides, you’re going to spend basically all of Fall of Avalon in first-person anyway, unless you opt for the optional and (by the developer’s own admission) not-very-polished-and-mostly-intended-for-accessibility third-person mode.

Once you’re done creating your doughy hero, you’re dropped into a jail cell. Now, if you’re a person who has only ever played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, you’re probably getting huge Oblivion vibes from this. Fall of Avalon does clearly owe a debt to The Elder Scrolls throughout, but don’t let that sense of familiarity fool you — it’s definitely a game with its own ideas. One thing I appreciated was the decision to have your character’s starting stats allocated by how you respond to an interrogation by a guard. I wanted to specialize in ranged combat with a trusty bow and arrow, so I told him I was hunting before being taken in, and then I used what I bagged to make clothes. That meant boosts to the associated stats. I wasn’t even out of prison yet, and I was already making something of myself. Who says rehabilitation doesn’t work?

I’m not going to spoil how you get out of your cell, but you do get out (I like to think of it as time off for good behavior), and the first tooltip I got as I navigated the prison told me how to parry. An ominous sign, to be sure, but as far as first-person melee combat goes, Fall of Avalon feels pretty good. Hits have weight and impact, and when you block an attack, you’ll often stagger a bit. Even weapon choices matter. I used a club early on, but once I got my first knife, I could immediately feel the difference when I hit some poor guy. Less impact, but a very nice slicing sound.

I haven’t landed a single parry yet (the window is pretty tight, or at least it feels that way to me), but I’m glad that I really haven’t had to so far either. Blocking works just fine and you’ve got a nice backstep if you need to quickly disengage. This combat probably isn’t going to win any awards for re-defining what first-person RPG fights look like (although hey, I’m early, who knows?), but it’s engaging enough to keep my attention.

Otherwise, a lot of the 5 hours I’ve played of Fall of Avalon so far has been spent exploring, accidentally picking up smut, talking to people, and so on. This is a pick up everything, speak to everybody, the world exists to be your playground kind of game, and if you’ve played The Elder Scrolls, you’ll probably be right at home. Yes, I need to pick up that bucket, and the one next to it. Why wouldn’t I? I might need it.

I’m still very early in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. This is a big RPG, and I have a lot more to see and do before my final review, but I dig what’s here as someone who’d read way too much Arthurian literature. Nothing I’ve seen really feels incredibly unique yet, but what’s here is at least interesting. Now I just have to avoid killer rabbits. I’ll bet you anything there’s one around here somewhere.