TAINTED LOVE

TAINTED GRAIL: THE FALL OF AVALON is a competent open-world, first-person RPG

- Sam Desatoff

There's a confidence in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. You can see it in the world design, feel it in the colorful cast of characters. 'Skyrim but you're also haunted by the ghost of King Arthur' is a concept that demands ambition. But developer Questline is an untested studio, and fumbling the ball was always going to be a strong possibility. I'm happy to report that we have a fascinating open-world first-person RPG experience on our hands.

It's not without blemishes, though. For every moment worth celebrating there's also a frustrating enemy encounter or a confusing UI feature to endure. The resulting game can be summed up in one word: inconsistent.

Tainted Grail is a dark fantasy take on Arthurian legend set in the same world as the popular board game; in fact, it came to be thanks to the success of the 2018 Kickstarter campaign for the tabletop game.

Being a first-person open-world RPG, Tainted Grail invites comparisons to genre mainstays like The Elder Scrolls and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and it unabashedly leans into those influences—it even opens with an Oblivion-style prison break.