AVALON CALLING

Is KING ARTHUR: KNIGHT'S TALE the Holy Grail or a wholly fail?

- Matt Killeen

There’s no canon version of the Arthurian legend, and as such it’s fertile ground for reinterpretation. From Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur to T H White’s The Once and Future King, or from Frank Miller’s Cursed to John Boorman’s gorgeous but somewhat flawed Excalibur, everyone has their own notion of what it is and what it represents. In my case, it was a lifelong thing for Cherie Lunghi.

King Arthur: Knight’s Tale sidesteps much of this by picking up where NeocoreGame’s 2009 dark fantasy King Arthur – The Role-playing Wargame left off, and where most retellings stop. Arthur and Mordred have killed each other at the Battle of Camlann, and the Lady of the Lake has taken Arthur’s body to Avalon.

The Lady awakens the deceased Mordred on the legendary island, which is a kind of purgatorial upside-down of the real Britannia, to save the world. Your mission: to reconstruct Camelot, reassemble the Round Table, and go after Arthur, who has become an undead monster.

The game is a party-based RPG with turn-based tactical combat along the lines of XCOM, Darkest Dungeon and Divinity, taking mechanics from each. This makes it very familiar territory. It can also be a roguelite, depending on your chosen difficulty level, with save-free permadeath available for the masochists out there.