Tainted Grail - The Fall of Avalon

The game is a quite good RPG. It borrows heavily from Skyrim, Gothic, Morrowind and a bit of the Witcher and Elden Ring, but the mix is quite good.

You start as somebody possessed by King Artus, who wants to regain dominion over Avalon. The island has been taken over by the Red Blight, and the Knights of Kamelot are reigning from afar, not necessarily well. It is a grimdark setting but manages to be not entirely bleak.

Graphics

I'm playing this on an old(ish) PC with an Nvidia RTX 1080, with graphics at 1080p and "low" setting. The graphics are still OK. The world feels very handcrafted, and for example some of the ruins feel hand-placed but without much transition from the landscape to the ruin blocks. It strongly reminds me of Gothic in that regard. The general idea of the landscape reminds me of Elden Ring, except that the landscape is more gray and not in the glorious colors of Elden Ring.

World

The world is compressed, but still feels believable (for a fantasy RPG open world world). It is not littered with Ubisoft-style fetch quests and collectibles, and soulless question marks with nothing to explore there. There are some side things to do, like collecting cooking recipes, collecting ingredients for magic potions, some mild crafting, but it is all for making you a better fighter, or keeping you alive. The crafting feels very close to Skyrim.

The characters inhabiting the world are grimdark, mostly, but there are also some weird characters and even mild attempts at comedy. They are not as present as Jaskier in The Witcher, but not having everybody be within the grimdark framework makes for good entertainment.

Gameplay

The game loop consists of exploring the world, mildly guided by quests, and then selling the loot at merchants, and maybe crafting new stuff. The skills / leveling are taken from Morrowind, where doing any activity improves your ability in it. So, cooking a meal slightly improves your general cooking ability. Running around a lot improves your running ability. And conjuring monsters improves your general magic ability. The fighting feels very much like Skyrim, having bow and arrows, magic and close combat. The fighting forces you to switch weapons more often than Skyrim did, but that adds to the variety.

Story

There are various factions and various side quests that are well-written. There is a lot of (English) voiced dialogue, which can get tedious at times, but on the other hand, it is spoken well and the voices feel in-character. Even the side quests have a lot of spoken dialogue and I haven't found a quest without talking yet.

Conclusion

Overall, the game is interesting and touches the right buttons for me. It's enjoyable to just go through the scenery, finding new caves to explore or citizens to speak with. I am currently in the first act of the game and already am overpowered (summoner magicians usually are), but that's fine.