Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon

If you've seen the music intro you've seen the best the game has to offer

[h1]A solid game with a lot of soul, IF you can look past a borderline egregious use of AI. [/h1] Let's get it out the way first: These devs have clearly used generative AI with this game. You will see it in character dialogue, codex entries, and the in-game art. There may be a few other cases but those are the primary areas. Overall, I do recommend this game ON SALE, if you can look past this. [h3]Dialogue[/h3] I do feel a little bait and switched, because the first act, I feel like I didn't notice it that much. By the second act, you can clearly tell they started using it to create a lot of dialogue. By the third act, I was skipping through dialogue because it was near 100% AI generated and got to the point of being cumbersome and tiring. Maybe they started to run out of time, and had to really crunch or something, because it's pretty clear as you progress, so too does their reliance on AI. Or maybe it was a translation thing, and the game in the devs' native language is wonderfully written. Who knows. [h3]Codex and Art[/h3] To be totally honest, I'm not really one to get bothered by the art in particular. It's pretty obvious that it's generated, but it's easy enough to just look past or rush through the dungeons that have it. It isn't a huge deal to me, but understandably, it may be for you. As for the codex, which is essentially lore in the in-game menu regarding characters, monsters, and what have you, it's also pretty obviously AI generated. In my opinion, the game didn't even need this feature. I only looked at it a total of three times, and each time, I said "Huh. An AI wrote that." It doesn't add anything to the game, and from the ones I did read, they do that thing that AI does where it tries to sound profound but isn't actually saying anything. Lot's of "X doesn't Y, it Z." or "Not X. Not Y. [b]Z.[/b] A lot of dramatic emphasis that adds nothing. Anyway, if you can get past all the above there's a pretty solid RPG with a surprising amount of soul. [h2]Gameplay[/h2] The game doesn't shy away from its inspirations. Yes, it feels quasi-Skyrim in terms of combat: Each hand can have a different or magic. You can dual-wield, you can spellblade, you can stealth archer, it has a constellation-like skill system, it's got stamina. But that's kind of where the similarities end. I do think they had a little bit of Souls influence, or maybe it's more accurate to say that it's just a more modern 1st person RPG. You can dodge, with i-frames. You can parry. Both feel responsive. Stamina management is a bigger deal. Enemies don't really react to your attacks unless you get their stamina bar down, which really rarely happened for me. I think overall, it's kind of Eurojank, but it still feels good. There's a very good base for future improvements. I for one would have liked to see better enemy variety, movesets, and especially boss fights, but there's definitely something there. The skill trees are MUCH better than Skyrim's. Some are the basic "20% better" perks, but some are super interesting, like the Red Death tree (you can get multiple ways to generate Red Death stacks, which increases your damage based on how many you have). I didn't really use magic much, so I can't comment on it. I went with a crit build and by the end of the game, found a 100% crit chance weapon. Thanks to my build, I was restoring stamina, HP, creating more stacks of Red Death, breaking enemy armor, increasing my movement speed, stealing HP, increasing my attack speed (all of these were proc on crit) every single hit. Super fun. The combat is good on the player end, when you are attacking. It just needs more work on the monster end, when they are attacking you. Hopefully that makes sense. Another thing I think is interesting is that armor has weight, and your total armor weight dictates whether you are using light/medium/heavy. So the same set of heavy iron armor can be light or heavy depending on your equip load, and you can also use upgrade mats to decrease the weight of armor. Definitely makes for interesting build variety since some armor sets have interesting bonuses. [h3]World Design[/h3] The game is very, very, very grey. I don't know why all dark fantasy has to be so grey. Just add some color, PLEASE. Elden Ring proves you can be dark fantasy and not just have a grey/green/brown color palette. The map isn't one singular map, but split into three zones, each of which serve as the "level" of each act. You can't move to the next one until you finish the storyline in the previous, but you can go back to areas you've visited before to continue exploring or do quests. There's a noticeable difficulty spike when you move to the next area, but it gets quickly curved as you level up. There really isn't much of a difference visually between areas one and two, but the third is snowy, so that's kind of neat I guess. I didn't encounter a lot of bugs during my playtime. Really, any. It was a surprisingly bug free experience. That said, there are spots on each map where you can physically see through the world mesh and even fall through into the endless abyss. They're avoidable for the most part, and you'd have to go really look for them. There is one right in the city in the second act though that is very easy to find. Don't jump in. In terms of aesthetics, like I said, it's pretty grey. I would also say it's pretty generic, in terms of architecture, monster design, dungeons. The real stand out though are the Fore Dwellers, which I won't delve into too much, but all I can say is that King Arthur legend + HR Geiger aliens makes a very interesting combo. [h3]Story and Lore[/h3] I already spoke a lot on the use of AI for the story. I do think it detracts, because I started skipping a lot of dialogue by act 3. There's still some good though, and I can tell the devs/writers had interesting ideas, just not executed in my preferred manner. Without spoiling much, the plot is injected directly into the player's head. King Arthur is long dead (though he's apparently resurrected a few times before, and every time he does, crazy stuff goes down), but his soul gets placed into your own body. You get to talk to Arthur's disembodied voice throughout the game, as you hunt for the other fragments of his soul as well as his relics like Excalibur. Various people in the world have differing opinions on Arthur, and you get to hear multiple sides of his legend. It's pretty obvious from the start that there are multiple possible endings, depending on how you feel about Arthur. I thought that was neat, but the actual narrative is not much to write home about. My favorite aspect of the lore is the Fore Dwellers, but even then, I think the writers didn't go far enough with it. They could have been super interesting and truly alien, but IMO it doesn't really come off that way in game. And, like I said, I also just stopped caring by Act 3. The game was fun enough to continue but the plot was tired. The game sells itself on a complex, branching storyline, but I would argue that this is false. Really, some quests have different endings, and you get a slideshow after the credits that tell you what happened with the characters. [h2]TLDR, Final Thoughts[/h2] Overall, I still enjoyed actually playing Tainted Grail, even if I didn't enjoy it's story by the end. I still recommend it on sale and the AI use doesn't bother you. Pros: +Good first person combat +HR Geiger meets Arthurian Legend +Interesting skill trees +Varied playstyles and build variety +Skyrim inspiration but improves upon it Cons -Heavy AI use -Lack of enemy variety, strong boss fights -WHY SO GREY -Momentum slows as the game progresses -Abrupt, anticlimactic ending

Oh yeah! Well I'm gonna make my own Elder Scrolls with weird scenery and better combat mechanics.

jogo muito divertido, recomendo ainda mais na promoção, realmente entrega muita coisa.

Na falta de um "novo Skyrim", esse jogo supre muito bem. Vale bastante à pena.

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Seems like it is going to be really cool until everything is either 1 shot or 1 shots you. Art and music are awesome, but the combat took me out of the game every time.

Very good game, The story was good not amazing but it was good, The build potential was honestly really fun to mess around with the only thing I wish was in the game is a implemented online co-op that you can play with one other friend (Not more than 1 friend cause it would be to easy then)