tAinted gRail: fAll oF aValon

Caliane

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Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon - Sanctuary of Sarras

Welcome to Sanctuary of Sarras, the first full-fledged expansion for Tainted Grail: The F
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DLC dropped the other day.

I decided to bite, and buy the game and dlc when it did. Can't really review it yet. I'm not that far in.


I saw a couple others talking about it. So it seems like 3 of us are playing this right now. Thought I'd bump it.



My early thoughts are mixed. early act 1 review:

Lots of very good things. Fantastic ES-like by an indie dev.. but also major jank shows up constantly.

like, demo/island was great. you see reactivity, as a guy will comment if you are wearing red priest garbs..
one of the patients in the asylum was terminal. so I tried to kill him and put him out of his misery unprompted. can do.
the surprise fight at the end of the prologue is winnable.
But, in the full version as soon as I got off the island, i noticed graphical fidelity took a big drop. as I looked at the beach and its poor textures..
but then I tried picking up the crabs.. didn't work.. but then.. stabbed the crabs with my dagger.. +1 crab. that did work.. nice.

npcs have day/night cycles. how much they ACTUALLY react to what your wearing.. no idea..

world seems to be zoned off by chapter. its not a giant open world. but at the same time, the towns aren't zoned off like skyrim. they are part of the game world.

world seems dark and gothic, but the tone of most of the quests and dialogue is jokey.
overall world cohesion is a bit low. no villages. 75% of the world are bandits. etc. the world isn't very believable how horrible it is, while no one is acting like its in that state.

I'm not sure how much alternative quest design exists. I know two clearly had some major options. 1 was a necromancer, which can go a multiple different ways. Another, involves a druid circle. and that one has hidden quest markers. like. the quest doesn't TELL you to go talk to a druid. but, you can think, hey maybe I should go talk to this druid about this druid thing first, and boom alternative direction.

the jank aspect is heavily "follow the quest marker" though. you can not follow npc directions, and HAVE to follow map markers. like they don't even try.
 
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Kajiimagi

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Started this last week when I got fed up with the fag french RPG CO33. Really liking it, I'm getting a mix of ES games and early jank-ass Gothic. Last night I had to force myself to stop playing.
 
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Grabbit Allworth

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Kajiimagi said:
Started this last week when I got fed up with the fag french RPG CO33. Really liking it, I'm getting a mix of ES games and early jank-ass Gothic. Last night I had to force myself to stop playing.
Click to expand...
I've been closely watching this game since release and even played the demo for a few hours. I really liked it, but what's prevented me from buying it is that A LOT of people say the longer you play the more the quality falls off and by Act III, the game is below-average.

My hope is that the wild commercial success will be enough incentive for the studio to do a bunch of polishing and bring the entire game up to the quality of the early-game experience.

If that happens, I'd be more than happy to buy it at full price. I'm just over playing shitty and/or half-baked games.
 
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Kajiimagi

Kajiimagi

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Grabbit Allworth said:
I've been closely watching this game since release and even played the demo for a few hours. I really liked it, but what's prevented me from buying it is that A LOT of people say the longer you play the more the quality falls off and by Act III, the game is below-average.

My hope is that the wild commercial success will be enough incentive for the studio to do a bunch of polishing and bring the entire game up to the quality of the early-game experience.

If that happens, I'd be more than happy to buy it at full price. I'm just over playing shitty and/or half-baked games.
Click to expand...
Well I got it for cheap, with the new DLC and I am loving it. Steam says I have 15 hours in so far. Not sure what act I am in , nor when it tells you when you change acts so I'll guess I'm still in 1? I have a blast just wandering around and I have to keep reminding myself that I need to follow the quests. Very strong Morrowind vibes, bit o jank, graphics not too polished. But really fun wandering.
 
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Hateyou

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Grabbit Allworth said:
I've been closely watching this game since release and even played the demo for a few hours. I really liked it, but what's prevented me from buying it is that A LOT of people say the longer you play the more the quality falls off and by Act III, the game is below-average.

My hope is that the wild commercial success will be enough incentive for the studio to do a bunch of polishing and bring the entire game up to the quality of the early-game experience.

If that happens, I'd be more than happy to buy it at full price. I'm just over playing shitty and/or half-baked games.
Click to expand...
Are you talking about Tainted Grail or Clair Obscur? Guessing CO since you’re talking about acts and wild commercial success, which Tainted Grail wasn’t.

If CO didn’t label it act 3 no one would have criticized it. The main story ends at the end of act 2 and act 3 just opens up the world and there’s one last main story thing to do, kill the last boss. There’s a bunch of optional stuff to do in act 3 but the quality of the game doesn’t go down. If you enjoyed the first part you should absolutely get it. Calling it shitty or half baked is totally unreasonable just because they labeled the final boss fight as act 3.
 
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Grabbit Allworth

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Hateyou said:
Are you talking about Tainted Grail or Clair Obscur? Guessing CO since you’re talking about acts and wild commercial success, which Tainted Grail wasn’t.
Click to expand...
I'm talking about Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon.

How did you come to the conclusion that the game isn't a huge success? The game was developed by a studio of ~50 for ~10-12 million dollars and it has sold ~700,000 copies (so far). I have no idea how many copies of the expansion have been sold, but even if the devs only cleared an average of $22 (of the $45) on the base game, they've recouped their entire investment and made millions in profit. Undoubtedly, the expansion considerably expands the profit margin, but I don't have the numbers.

Granted, it's not the type of success Minecraft, Clair Obscur, or Schedule I experienced, but I don't see how what Tained Grail has done is not considered a major success. Particularly, for a relatively small indie studio.

When you consider the fact that literally thousands of games are being released on Steam every month, breaking through all that noise to make millions in profit is an incredible achievement.
 
Hateyou

Hateyou

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Grabbit Allworth said:
I'm talking about Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon.

How did you come to the conclusion that the game isn't a huge success? The game was developed by a studio of ~50 for ~10-12 million dollars and it has sold ~700,000 copies (so far). I have no idea how many copies of the expansion have been sold, but even if the devs only cleared an average of $22 (of the $45) on the base game, they've recouped their entire investment and made millions in profit. Undoubtedly, the expansion considerably expands the profit margin, but I don't have the numbers.

Granted, it's not the type of success Minecraft, Clair Obscur, or Schedule I experienced, but I don't see how what Tained Grail has done is not considered a major success. Particularly, for a relatively small indie studio.

When you consider the fact that literally thousands of games are being released on Steam every month, breaking through all that noise to make millions in profit is an incredible achievement.
Click to expand...
Nevermind. I didn’t realize it sold that many. I just saw 170 steam reviews (was looking at the expansion by mistake) and assumed it was low. Well, good for them. Hope they can make more digital stuff. If they can reach the level of polish of their board games it’s a win for everyone.
 
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