Close Menu
  • Login
  • Support Us
  • Newsletter
  • News
  • Features
  • Interviews
  • Reviews
    • Video Games
      • Previews
      • PC
      • PS5
      • Xbox Series X/S
      • Nintendo Switch
      • Xbox One
      • PS4
      • Tabletop
    • Film
    • TV
    • Anime
    • Comics
      • BOOM! Studios
      • Dark Horse Comics
      • DC Comics
      • IDW Publishing
      • Image Comics
      • Indie Comics
      • Marvel Comics
      • Oni-Lion Forge
      • Valiant Comics
      • Vault Comics
  • Podcast
  • More
    • Event Coverage
    • BWT Recommends
    • RSS Feeds
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
Support Us
But Why Tho?
RSS Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube
Trending:
  • Features
    Cosmic Spider-Man card details

    [EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW] The Spider-Man Set Gets A 5-Color Legendary Spider

    09/02/2025
    Lee Corso from College Football GameDay in EA Sports games

    EA Sports Always Understood Lee Corso’s Legacy

    09/01/2025
    Peacemaker Season 2 Episode 2 But Why Tho 10

    Spider-Man Is Coming To Magic And It’s Just Like The Comics

    08/29/2025
    Star Wars Visions Volume 3 Black

    ‘Black’ Sets The Tone For A Bold New Mixtape In ‘Star Wars Visions: Volume 3’

    08/28/2025
    Olivia Colman in The Roses

    ‘The Roses’ Is A Reimagining, Not A Remake, And That’s Why It Works So Well

    08/27/2025
  • Indie Games
  • K-Dramas
  • Netflix
  • Apple TV+
But Why Tho?
Home » PC » REVIEW: ‘Tainted Grail: Fall Of Avalon’ Brings Dreamy Darkness

REVIEW: ‘Tainted Grail: Fall Of Avalon’ Brings Dreamy Darkness

Arron KluzBy Arron Kluz05/25/20254 Mins ReadUpdated:08/23/2025
Tainted Grail: Fall Of Avalon
Share
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reddit WhatsApp Email

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon, published by Awaken Realms and developed by Questline, is a sublimely bleak and dour first-person RPG. Set in a world of twisted Arthurian legends, it lets players freely explore its world, piece together a set of gear, and build their abilities from a variety of skills and perks. While it does not innovate within the genre and lacks the polish of other recent releases, it offers a solid and imaginative adventure in a wonderfully dark setting.

Like so many games in this genre, Tainted Grail begins with the player in prison. After making a character with a relatively basic character creator, the player defines their starting skills by answering questions from a guard about their past. Then, a mysterious figure kills the guard and lets the player go free, leaving them to fight their way out of the prison.

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here

But the player quickly learns that they are not being held in a typical prison. They are being held in a housing facility for the victims of the plague ravaging the land, where strange and terrible experiments are performed on them. The prison acts as a handy tutorial as the player explores and kills off evil scientists one by one.

As the player explores the prison, they start to see just how dark and twisted the world of Tainted Grail is. The scientists perform heinous experiments on their prisoners, desks are covered with chunks of brains and blood clots, and the scraps of writing spread throughout the place speak of incredible horrors and suffering. It serves as a great microcosm of the world the player spends the rest of the game exploring.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon’s combat is simple but satisfying.

Tainted Grail: Fall Of Avalon Combat

The game’s world is its strongest selling point. Tainted Grail is set in a world of ruin and disease, and goes much darker than most games of its ilk. It doesn’t go dark in the way of trigger warnings, but rather in the general sense of death and misery that permeates every part of its dream-like world. This is not a world that people believably live in, it is a world where the corpses of faceless giants strung up on rocks serve as landmarks and giant stone hands are scattered across the landscape. Exploring this world is exploring a dream in the final stages of a terminal disease.

Apart from its setting, Tainted Grail offers relatively standard offerings for its genre. For combat, players can equip weapons or spells in both of their hands with the standard assortment of swords, bows, and whatever else. Stealth can be used to deal additional damage to unsuspecting enemies, blocking within a particular window parries the attack, and players have to manage their stamina usage to avoid running out and being left vulnerable. It does not bring anything new to the genre, but it is fun and satisfying throughout the entire playthrough.

Tainted Grail also puts a lot of effort toward enabling the player to approach combat however they wish through its leveling and gear systems. As players use skills, they improve them for the future, and when the player levels overall, they can increase their basic attributes and unlock perks from several trees.

Increasing your attributes allows you to equip better gear, and unlocking perks carries numerous effects like increasing damage with a type of weapon, improving spells, or giving the player bonuses while dual-wielding. There are enough synergies to make it fun to build out a character and keep leveling up, feeling rewarding.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is dedicated to absolute player freedom.

Tainted Grail: Fall Of Avalon

The game also feels rewarding thanks to its dedication to absolute freedom. After finishing the tutorial, the player is free to explore the world in whichever direction they please, finding hidden gems and playing through the stories scattered throughout it.

Tainted Grail excels in empowering the player to explore what appeals to them and always offers rewards for the effort. Some of the storylines are better written than others, but its crown jewel is undoubtedly its dark and original main questline with its twisted take on King Arthur and his legacy.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is a very ambitious project from a young indie studio. It has traveled a long road in early access to reach this point, but it was well worth it. As it stands, Tainted Grail is an extremely strong RPG filled with a unique personality well worth exploring all on its own and a rewarding structure that makes it a consistent pleasure to see what is around the next corner.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is available now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon
  • 8/10
    Rating - 8/10
8/10

TL;DR

Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon is a very ambitious project from a young indie studio. It has traveled a long road in early access to reach this point, but it was well worth it.

Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Email
Previous ArticleREVIEW: ‘Forget You Not’ Finds Hope In Impermanence
Next Article Ryu Jun-yeol and Sul Kyung-gu To Star in Netflix’s ‘The Rat (WT)’
Arron Kluz

Arron is a writer and video editor for But Why Tho? that is passionate about all things gaming, whether it be on a screen or table. When he isn't writing for the site he's either playing Dungeons & Dragons, watching arthouse movies, or trying to find someone to convince that the shooter Brink was ahead of its time. March 20, 2023

Related Posts

Cronos: The New Dawn Nest
8.0

REVIEW: ‘Cronos: The New Dawn’ Does Post-Apocalyptic Psychological Horror Right

09/03/2025
Is This Seat Taken Diner
8.0

REVIEW: ‘Is This Seat Taken’ Seeks Place And Purpose

09/03/2025
Hell is Us
10.0

REVIEW: ‘Hell is Us’ Turns Getting Lost Into An Art Form

09/01/2025
Shuten Order keyart
8.5

REVIEW: ‘Shuten Order’ Is Fantastically Chaotic In Almost Every Way

08/29/2025
Shinobi Art of Vengeance permotional key art
9.0

REVIEW: Lizardcube’s ‘Shinobi: Art of Vengeance’ Is A Must-Play

08/25/2025
Fresh Tracks Key Art But Why Tho
9.0

REVIEW: ‘Fresh Tracks’ Brings Fresh Tunes And A Fresher Story

08/21/2025

Get BWT in your inbox!

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter and get the latest and greated in entertainment coverage.
Click Here
TRENDING POSTS
Cosmic Spider-Man card details Features

[EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW] The Spider-Man Set Gets A 5-Color Legendary Spider

By Kate Sánchez09/02/2025Updated:09/02/2025

An exclusive look at a new 5-Color Spider entering Magic: The Gathering’s Spider-Man set, and Cosmic Spider-Man is going to be a tough one to take on.

Hololive EN at Radio City Music Hall Events

Hololive EN At Radio City Music Hall Was A Pure Expression Of Fandom

By Adrian Ruiz08/31/2025Updated:09/03/2025

Hololive EN turned Radio City in New York City into the pure expression of fandom: chants, penlights, and community in perfect sync.

Foundation Season 3 Episode 8 promotional still from APple TV+
9.0
TV

RECAP: ‘The Foundation’ Season 3 Episode 8 — “Skin In The Game”

By Will Borger08/29/2025Updated:08/29/2025

Still barreling toward a knock-down, drag-out fight between Gaal and the Mule in Foundation Season 3 Episode 8 ups the stakes.

Karl Anthony Towns in NBA 2k26 But Why Tho
8.5
PS5

REVIEW: ‘NBA 2K26’ Brings Basketball To Life

By Kyle Foley09/03/2025

NBA 2K26 combines improved visuals with some important tweaks to keep the series feeling fresh in the latest yearly release.

But Why Tho?
Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest RSS YouTube Twitch
  • CONTACT US
  • ABOUT US
  • PRIVACY POLICY
  • SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
  • Review Score Guide
Sometimes we include links to online retail stores. If you click on one and make a purchase we may receive a small contribution.
Written Content is Copyright © 2025 But Why Tho? A Geek Community

Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

But Why Tho Logo

Support Us!

We're able to keep making content thanks to readers like YOU!
Support independent media today with
Click Here