Tainted Grail was the most anticipated game of 2019 for us. Today, after finishing the campaign WE must say one thing – Tainted Grail is one of the biggest disappointment of last year. We were expecting a board game with a unique story and unfortunately Tainted Grail is not a board game, its paragraph game on steroids. If you like gamebooks you will love that game and you don’t have to read the rest of this review, otherwise, hold your horses before the purchase.
Pros
- Amazing artwork, beautiful design, outstanding minis. All of that gives you a feeling of the really premium game.
- Interesting world and lore, great concept based on Arthurian Legends.
- Innovative system of combat and diplomacy never seen before
- Very well designed main characters with personal storyline and skills created for them.
Neutral
- The story is good, one of the best in the board game world, with few awesome side-quests we gonna remember. BUT it’s slow, not very dramatic, not many spectacular events. Too many descriptions, not enough action.
Cons
- Minis, except those from the core box, don’t have any real purpose. They are beautiful and that’s all.
- Gameplay bases on three elements: reading the book (70% of the game), walking around on the map and constantly doing exploration action (which means reading the book;-)), and fighting/diplomacy. For us, that is not enough to be a board game. It’s freaking reading a book all the time.
- The game gives an illusory feeling of freedom when exploring but that’s not the truth. You can spend 2 game days for going to some location, collecting resources on the way cause it’s a must and finally when you will explore your final destination suddenly you don’t have any necessary statuses/titles on your exploration sheet so you can’t do anything there. That is really frustrating and disappointing.
Verdict
For us, TG started great, but after half of the campaign, the game becomes a constant struggle of boredom and repeating the same and same actions. Maybe we fall in love with the game again when the companion app will be launched. We really hope so, cause Avalon is tempting, fantastic universe.
