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A pretty good substitute for The Elder Scrolls

2K View2023-04-08

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon (Reviewed)

Developer: Questline

Publisher: Awaken Realms

Released: 30 March, 2023

Price: $39 USD

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon is a distinctly familiar open-world survival RPG currently in Early Access. The game is very similar to that of the Elders Scrolls series like Morrowind & Oblivion, with heavy focus on the narration.

Caradoc the man who liberated you from jail assigns you and two other prisoners the duty of killing King Arthur and stealing the sword Excalibur.

This puzzles you because King Arthur has been dead for over 600 years. He responds by telling you that there is dark magic afoot and that it is possible to bring him back to life through a ritual only his subjects know of, an he will return.

You might just be able to save the people of Avalon from their current state of chaos and despair. As you proceed with your adventure, you will be fulfilling tasks, leveling up, equipping your character, and honing your preferred talents.

Major Problems Currently

Consistent Crashing

There is as of now no way to play the game for longer than a few minutes to twenty minutes before it crashes for no apparent reason.

This has been like this since since it was published. This is a recognized problem with the game for many gamers. It is not a hardware problem.

Making a game requires a large effort. There will be several problems, some of which may be simpler to fix than others, but despite the fact that a patch was released two days ago, the problems still exists and has not yet been remedied.

I don't mind minor stuttering, critters and monsters phasing into walls, NPC's loading oddly when you enter a room while they are asleep, or anything else of the sort. Because I can still physically play the game that I want to play.

NPC's do silly things

Did you cause trouble for someone? You would think that they are securely locked away and unable to hurt you, but the AI in this game is quite poor.

No matter where a person is, if you start a fight with them, they will just stand up and start attacking you. These are the small issues that, in my opinion, should be resolved over the course of a few months or years since it is Early Access.

I do genuinely like this type of dialog and banter between the player and the world. It makes it feel like the world is alive, rather than having generic NPC's saying something like "Good Morning" and never interacting past that.

Early Access

I am aware that the game is still in Early Access, while being worked on in time. In actuality, the first part of the game only allows for a maximum of 10 hours of playtime, which is actually quite substantial for an Early Access game, however.

The usage of artificial voice serving as a stand-in for some selections doesn't exactly sit well with me. You feel yanked out of the experience because it seems so forced and alien. I would have liked it to be silent, while being a bit confusing, it's not too much of an issue for me since most games do this.

Outside of this, the voice acting for most of the dialog is not terrible. It's okay.

25 Minute Gameplay

Beginning

In order to make progress in the game, you basically at this time have to save the game constantly no matter what you are doing and be going in and out of locations so that the game always has a recent save spot to reload back into.

I must praise you if you can manage 20 minutes or more before the game crashes because I tried for three hours straight with no success.

Walking everywhere is more appropriate because it doesn't place too much strain on the game, which I believe has to do with it having to render in new stuff as you advance deeper into the world, making running too strenuous for it.

Every time I try to play the game, it crashes while forcing me to start over from a previous location. Hence, exploring the world without regularly saving the game results in returning through the same locations and killing the same monsters.

Crafting

Works just like you have seen in games like Skyrim. Collect the material, craft the product or weapon upgrade. There isn't much else to it than that.

There is a little depth currently, with infusing your weapons with relics to increase their power with things like "do double damage to staggered enemies" but I have yet to be capable of making much progress with this aspect of the game.

Combat

It's quite simple and sort of lame as long as you're fighting a normal-sized monster or person. If you parry at the right time, you receive no damage and are free to launch a swift attack afterward, that is all there is to melee combat.

Continue this and when your stamina is running low, retreat when they attack. It's not really demanding or difficult. Nevertheless, as you can see, 1 minute after loading a save file, performing the simplest of tasks in this game will crash you.

Skills

You will increase your abilities as you commence actions throughout the world. Sneaking, Fighting, Blocking, Alchemy, Jumping, Running, everything will grant you levels in your skills which will help level you over time.

The system for leveling does seem a bit slow and pointless at this current time due to all of the issues surrounding combat, specifically the perma-stagger.

While also not offering much outside of casting spells and using range weaponry instead of the standard melee approach I personally prefer to use.

The World

Really does have a wonderful visual design. It's not bad and is of a higher caliber than what you may anticipate from games of this kind, looking unique.

The ambient vibes it emits while exploring and fighting are really well suited to the music. But, like I continue to mention, it doesn't take much work for the game to catch up with you after you attempt to take in the scenery with a crash.

Conclusion

Wait a few weeks

We frequently see immense potential in any game that comes across our path in the gaming world. While indie creators typically try their best to offer timely and effective updates to maintain a continuous and efficient turn around with their games, many triple A titles typically half-ass their projects in order to make a quick buck and gradually improve it over the course of a few years.

These games in particular have a lot of appeal for me. I'm optimistic that within a few weeks, the series of crashing will be fixed and I will be able to completely play it through. I love exploration and spend a lot of time wandering around, stealing, killing which the game currently has a lot of obvious potential for.

I'll let you know in the coming weeks whether this is the case. If not, it's possible that I'll have to add another game to my discard list because the developers.

I would really like to see this game succeed

This concludes my review of this game, while my opinions may be met with criticism, that's what makes gamers unique, you don't have to like the same things that others do, nor do you have to agree with them.

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- Pawkt

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