Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon The Dark Fantasy RPG That Continues to Impress
Nov. 29, 2024Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon The Dark Fantasy RPG That Continues to Impress
In thisTainted Grail: The Fall of Avalonarticle, I’m going to be kind of taking you guys behind the scenes and showing you some content that’s going to be in the full release of the game that is scheduled to release in Q2 of next year. A lot of this stuff will not be present until then. The game has been in early access for over a year now, and the version of the game you’re going to be seeing here is not the version of the game that you can currently play if you own the early access.
If you’re not familiar with whatTainted Grail: The Fall of Avalonis, we haveseveral videos about it on our channel. But just to give you a quick recap, this is a video game adaption of a board game of the same name that is a dark fantasy first-person RPG. Remember when games used to be dark fantasy? That follows the Arthurian theme or a very, very dark version of the game. And frankly, it’s one of my most anticipated games for next year.
Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalonhas gone through many iterations through its early access period, and I’m going to get into the changes that they’re making with the 1.0 version of the game or some of them. Before I do that, big shout-out to Questline and Awaken Realms for sponsoring this article. Love you guys. Love what you guys are doing. If you guys like what you see in this article,you can use the link found in our latest video about the game to support the channel and also help support this game through the last stages of its development and help make it a success.
So getting into the changes, the first thing that we’re going to take a look at is melee combat. This has been worked over so that all weapons have been rebalanced in terms of damage and stamina costs. And I think what they were going for here is to make it cost less stamina and deal more damage across melee weapons. And the reason for that is that ranged combat is just kind of superior in a lot of cases because when you’re fighting a very, very difficult enemy, being near them for any length of time, if you’re playing a melee character, it’s difficult because you get hit for a lot of damage in this game. And that can make melee combat very challenging. But also when you’re outnumbered like three to one, five to one, four to one, etc., melee is very difficult to play because it’s difficult to get an attack off when four dudes are trying to hit you at the same time. So by increasing the damage and reducing the stamina costs, the scenarios where you just get like really stuck because of those two things happening should be reduced.
So the next thing is that enemies were rebalanced in terms of their behaviors and animations, or a lot of them were improved. I don’t think you notice this in the sense that like enemies seem smarter, in my opinion, but you definitely notice that like what their priorities are. Like wolves will just chase deers around all over the screen every time they see them, because that’s what wolves do. And you can also see in their animations that like the undead, for instance, they look more lifelike, which is a weird word to say for undead. But they look more realistic the way they move and things like that. So you definitely see that. I don’t think it affects the combat in an overall sense, but it does affect the immersion in the way that you view the game.
Another thing that’s in progress and they’re still tweaking is that ranged combat has been nerfed. So the raw damage of bows has gone down, and it’s harder to use bows than it was before. That way you can’t just one-shot everything from stealth. And I think this is obvious. I mean, what they’re trying to do here is they’re trying to make more play styles viable, and they don’t want just everyone to default to the path of least resistance, which is typically stealth archer in these types of games. Let’s be real. So what they’ve done with the combination of rebalancing the skill tree is they’ve tried to make it so, yes, you can play an overpowered stealth archer, but you need to invest lots of skill points into bow or archery in order to make that more viable rather than just being able to do it and still have all your skill points in something else.
Since this is still in progress, I don’t know what this actually means in terms of the full version of the game. The way it stands right now, you can still put a couple of points in and still use archery to your advantage. But I did find that playing a spellblade, which is kind of what I did in my playthrough of 1.0 so far, that at some point it just made more sense to use spells from range and stop using a bow if I didn’t go deep into that tree, which I did, which I think means that this is working as intended.
And one of the big changes to something I just alluded to is that they’ve added lots of skills to the game, particularly in the strength, dexterity, and endurance skill trees. These are still a work in progress for the rest of them, and they’ve kind of broken them down by what they focus on, whether that’s one-handed or two-handed or parrying or blocking, etc. So you can kind of see, like, OK, if you’re trying to look for a specific play style, this is the part of the tree that you’re probably going to focus on.
And kind of what I noticed from them doing this is that you’ll also notice that the attributes of the game were nerfed. They don’t give you as much benefit per point. And it seems like the game has kind of gradually over its iteration shifted from a more attribute-focused game with skills being secondary to now being a lot of your progression coming from your skills, with your attributes being kind of secondary. They’ve kind of made this change. And as that skill tree gets fleshed out, you’re going to find that your skill tree is going to be more beneficial to you than your actual attributes.
The way it is right now, it seems like attributes’ most important value is being able to meet the requirements for weapons or spells that you want to use. You are going to be locked out of better and better bows or two-handed weapons or one-handed swords or spells if you don’t get higher and higher into those attributes. So mostly what you’re going to be doing with attributes is trying to meet the requirements for equipment that you want to use, more or less. And as far as skill trees go, you know, you can never really have too many skill trees in a game like this. The more skills you have, the more variety of builds you have, etc.
But one thing I’ll say that I’ve noticed so far, and I’m curious to see how the total end version of this will be, is that I end up basically putting my skill points in something that benefits every play style most of the time. For instance, I’ll take points in critical chance or critical damage or things like that that benefit melee, range, and spells that benefit all these different play types, because I find it’s very difficult to just play one play type in this game. Maybe unless you’re playing a stealth archer and you kill everything in one hit before it gets to you.
What’s challenging is that even though melee has been buffed, it’s still difficult to go fight four dudes or five dudes at the same time as a melee build or a challenging enemy. So you try to thin out enemies at range a lot of the time, and that means that you’re going to be using either a bow or a spell in order to do that, or maybe like a thrown weapon or something. You want to make sure that you’re still doing high damage when you’re doing that. And the best way to do that is to pick skills that benefit everything like the ones that I’ve been picking.
I guess my consideration to this is how does this affect replayability, right? Like if you know you’re going to start a new character and you’re going to play through the game, but you think you’re going to pick the same skills again because it gives you so much flexibility at the beginning in order to use whatever you pick up and play with a bow, play with a dagger, and play with a two-handed weapon and play with spells and still deal good damage no matter which one you’re using, does that detract from some incentive to play again?
And I thinkAvowedmight have similar issues to this. And it’s a bit too early to say for sure because I’ve only got 10 hours of that game compared to the 60 hours I have inTainted Grail: Fall of Avalon.But because they have very few active skills and a lot of passive skills, I feel like you’re expected as a player to kind of mix and match between those three skill trees. And the more you mix and match, the less replay value you have from a build perspective, but not getting into the dialogue or anything like that. But from a build perspective, the more similar builds you have across all your players, the less replayability there’s going to be. So I’m hoping thatTainted Grailmight maybe make some adjustments here so that it starts out more specialized and then gets broader the further you go, rather than starts very powerful generally at the beginning and then gets more specialized the further you go. We’ll see.
Proficiencies have also been rebalanced. I guess I can’t really feel it in the game. Like I don’t know exactly how and what way and how much they’ve been rebalanced, but supposedly they’ve been rebalanced as well. But another thing that’s been changed is statuses. They’ve made it more difficult to set the freeze and burning status effects on enemies. You definitely feel that in the game so far. I almost think they’ve gone a little bit too far in terms of the status effect nerf, particularly when trying to set burning. It feels like the status effects that you’re most easily able to set in the game right now are poison and bleed, which are fine if you’re playing those sorts of builds, but I feel like this could definitely use some more tweaking as they continue to go through the process of refining this game.
So another big overhaul with one point now is adding more quests to the game. The main story has been overhauled. The beginning part has been overhauled. The kind of prologue to get you acclimated to the game. And I really like that you learn now that King Arthur is the passenger that you have in the prologue, for lack of a better word. And it’s definitely more interesting. I feel like you become more invested in the story and immediately upon playing the game, you sort of get the realization that you’re either going to help Arthur or you’re not.
And you are going to have to make a big decision at some point later on in the quest line as to what you want to do with that. And you don’t know what the ramifications are going to be. You don’t know what the right choice is, but it sets the stage. You know, as a player, you’re going to have to make a really hard decision later on in this game that’s ultimately going to change the ending. I like knowing that so early on. It adds a bit of tension and it adds a new lens to view some of the quests that you’re doing as you progress the game. Are you going to help them? Are you not going to help them? Like, how are you progressing as you go? I really like that.
From a side quest perspective, there are just so many activities and side quests to do now. It feels like you’re almost overwhelmed with things to do. I think that’s a good feeling. Like when you go in and you have like 18 quests in your quest log, initially you can think like, wow, that’s a lot. But if you know and you can systematically go out into the landscape and clear three or four quests at a time, which you can do in this game, it feels really good to do that. And there’s no shortage of content to do.
I think one of the things that’s mind-blowing to me about this game is that even with like, let’s say half the quests that they currently have, you’d still feel like it was a good amount of content because exploration in this game is just so much fun. Just going out and seeing like a statue in the distance and going like, what’s that? Going up to it and interacting with it, trying and solve its puzzle isn’t even necessarily a quest, but it’s still something that takes up your time, makes you think and you engage with. So I think with the amount of quests they have right now, it’s like a lot. Players are definitely not going to have a shortage of things to do in this game.
Something I don’t think I mentioned is that there are different outcomes to many of these side quests that, you know, you can mess up, you can fail them, you can get completely bad outcomes, you can get really good outcomes, you can pass or fail dialogue checks that, you know, make a fight happen that wasn’t going to happen or maybe prevent a fight that was going to happen that was almost certainly going to happen. And I really like that that element is in the game. I don’t think it’s like quite on the scale of something like you had seen about in terms of different outcomes, but there are still plenty to be had. And I really, really like that.
Something else they’ve added to the game that I didn’t really get to see much in my time playing because I didn’t find these quest lines is that they’ve added guilds to the game. They basically added factions to the game, one that has to deal with stealthy, every murder called Children of Morgan. They have alchemists and stone wardens and different factions were added. I think the idea here is to add different endings to the game. That’s what they suggested. There will also be unique gear from these quest lines and give you more lore and dialogue behind like what’s happening in the area, et cetera. So, you know, you can never have enough complexity in these games. And this just gives you another avenue of things that you can do. I think one of the things people loved about like, let’s just say Fallout games in general, was that there were different competing factions and you could side with one and have a different ending depending on that. It seems like a similar concept is being enacted here. It’s not something we’ve seen in the game yet. So that’s something that’s going to be interesting to see how that all shakes out.
They’ve also added new enemies to the game. There are also new dungeons in the game. Some of the dungeons have been reworked. Some boss fights have been reworked. So there’s definitely more content to be had in these departments. The dungeons, in my opinion, are some of the most fun content in the game. They’re usually quite lengthy and they usually have a lot of engaging things to explore within them. Some of them can be quite short. But usually, there’s like a good amount of exploration and content inside these dungeons. So definitely think players are going to be looking forward to that. And knowing that they’re there is something I think is going to be good.
Thenighttimemechanic inTainted Grail: The Fall of Avalonis also getting some updates. Nighttime in the game is notoriously dangerous, with new enemies appearing alongside the ones already roaming the landscape. Existing enemies even get a bit of a twist, dropping items likeethereal cobwebs, which are used to identify theunidentified itemsyou can loot from nighttime foes. Early on, venturing out at night feels almost impossible—you’re likely already struggling during the day, and the darkness only adds to the horror. But as you progress, grow stronger, and get more familiar with the game’s mechanics, nighttime exploration becomes more manageable. What once felt terrifying slowly shifts into something both eerie and genuinely enjoyable, as the rewards make the risks worthwhile.
I don’t know how I feel about the unidentified system as a whole. I think I would prefer it if they just removed it from the game. It just doesn’t feel like it fits the game as a whole. But I do like the weird night mechanic, and I hope they expand upon it at more events and more enemies and more things to do during the nighttime for those who can brave the darkness. Kind of reminds me of like old-schoolWitcher 1or something where you have to go hunt certain monsters at night and it’s horrifying, but you have to do it. There is sort of a new character too, like a weird stalker that will show up and haunt you at night, which actually made me jump the first time that I saw it. But then it doesn’t do anything currently. I think they’re planning on implementing some mechanics with this as they move forward. But something I hope they do is maybe extend the day and night cycle a little bit more. It seems very fast like it becomes night really quickly and day really quickly. So maybe extending that would be better.
Something I hope they add is maybe a sundial somewhere telling you the time of day. You can kind of get an idea of how much time you have left. I had the unfortunate circumstance while I was playing this time to go into a crypt doing a quest. There are no windows in a crypt. And when I came out, I was just attacked by like ten guys that were standing outside because it was the dead middle of the night. And I basically had to reload like eight times to just flee from my life because I didn’t even know it was nighttime. There’s no way to tell. And since you can’t rest inside the crypt, I couldn’t pass the time quickly. So my choices were to make a run for it or just wait it out in real-time, and neither of those were great options. So I do hope they add something like that. You can kind of get a sense of how much time you have left in a day.
You’ll also notice that the Horns of the South Keep has been completely overhauled. It’s much larger and has a bit of a different layout than it did before. It looks a lot better visually. That’s something that I really noticed while playing 1.0 is that the visuals of the game continue to get better and better. Like it looks better and better. This isn’t the best-looking game I’ve ever seen, but there are moments in this game where it absolutely looks beautiful. And I love the art style of the game as a whole. So if they continue to improve that performance has been a bit better. It’s still not the best performance I’ve seen, but it’s still better and better with every update. I hope by the time 1.0 comes around, we have better, a little bit better graphics and a little bit better performance. I would be perfectly happy.
The last thing I want to mention is Fog of War. This is kind of maybe a small thing for some people, but it’s really nice for me. And they put Fog of War over the whole game map so you don’t see where everything is. I think that’s good for making that feeling of exploration feel valuable. And also it helps to remind you where you haven’t been yet because this is a game where you really want to explore every nook and cranny. After all, there are so many interesting things to see and so many puzzles to figure out and weird NPCs to talk to and bosses to fight that it can help you remember, oh, yeah, I haven’t been to that section because I haven’t uncovered the Fog of War. So I think that’s a really good addition.
So that wraps up our article on most of the changes that are coming to 1.0. There are other changes I didn’t talk about because it would probably be another article. I did things like crafting is getting an overhaul. You can farm in the game. You can sketch in the game. There are accessibility options being added. There’s new gear being added to the game. You can duel in the game. The crime system is being added to the game. There’s so much going into 1.0. It’s impossible to put it all in one article. I just wanted to highlight some of the things that I got to see in my playtime that were good.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
