RAVE: Tainted Grail Conquest

     To the sound of a death march, you triumphally strike down the tree's (!!) arms and it crumbles to the ground. To your awe and dismay, it becomes a 'lost soul' and proceed to strike you back even harder and your character collapses to the ground. DEAD. All your progress lost. You sigh. You nod. You say 'One more run'.

    While the above paragraph describes a boss battle in 'Tainted Grail Conquest', it also describes many roguelikes/ roguelites specifically deck building roguelites and the appeal they hold for some people like me. Going up against nearly unsurmountable odds however as you play the game you improve yourself and your deck of action cards, then those odds become less unsurmountable but doable and before you know it, you are now steamrolling bosses with the strongest deck imaginable and nothing beats that feeling when you have that 'God' run where you feel un-touchable.

    For the people who mostly visit this blog for it 'Learning Anime Fighters' series of blogs, welcome! The main core of this channel is a series of blog/ reviews which we call RANTS and RAVES. RANTS are reserved for things we do not like, like atrocious tracers (not artist) like Greg Land and believe it or not those are rather uncommon. I try not to be a 'hate baiter' or a 'reaction farmer' it is just not in my nature. If anything, a large portion of my reviews are normally RAVES. RAVES are stuff I really enjoy, whether it be a TV show, a musical artist or in most cases, a video game. In today's case, it is 'Tainted Grail Conquest' a deck building roguelite made by the team at Questline for publisher Awaken Realms. Also note; this is not our first time discussing this game on our blog. I previous did my impression blog about it which can be found here. Tainted Grail Conquest Impressions.

    That impressions blog was written when I had a bit of time in the game but now after 58 hrs we have beaten the game and rolled the true ending and credits and I feel it deserves to be praised so here is my RAVE review for it.

    The origins of this game, Tainted Grail Conquest, was it was originally designed to be a mode in the main game 'Tainted Grail The Fall of Avalon' however the more they worked on it, they realized it could become a full game so they completed Conquest first and got it out there whilst they worked on finishing The Fall of Avalon. Speaking of The Fall of Avalon is out now and if you are into First Person RPGs ala Skyrim I would recommend checking it out. It looks interesting however First Person RPGs are not my thing however deck building roguelites definitely are. The world and lore of Tainted Grail is also based on a board game by Krzyztof Piskorski titled the same as the main line game. He is also a part of the developers of the game 'Awaken Realms', a indie Polish company.

    The game itself is designed like many deck builders. You start with a paltry deck with a couple decent cards but nothing crazy. However the more you play the game the more cards you unlock and if you are doing side-quests (which this game has in spades) you can unlock even better cards. You also open the door for more classes spread out between fighters, archers and summoners. Funny story through. Even tho there are many classes (9 in total) I have only used one my entirely playthrough. I fully intend to go back in and try some other classes but the one class I used, the default one, was the one best suited to my playstyle.

    Despite only using one class through, I enjoyed every moment of this game except in the middle where I felt I hit a wall. Each run was ending in failure and I can now correct myself from my impression blog where I said a boss stayed dead after you slay them. I was wrong. I think I was confused because sometimes you get a different boss and the game also said 'Slay the second beast' so I thought I did not have to slay the first beast again but like all roguelites, when you die, your game progression is completely reset and any bosses you had beaten need to be beaten again. This middle was where a bit of frustration kick in but I realized I was just not building my deck correctly with the best possible cards. Slight spoiler: some of the best cards are locked behind NPCs side quests. There is one specific card that once I realized its potential became my go-to starter card and well, I started completing runs after runs because of it. Speaking of, yes, in a flip on the tried and true formula roguelite, Tainted Grail Conquest has full-on RPG lite meta progression side quests. You talk to the person and they give you a long set of tasks and at the end you can 'save' that NPC. As mentioned, these are meta progressing so they persist between runs thankfully so once you find a certain item you do not need to seek it out again, just need to give it to the right person. I also say thankfully because like all roguelites the 'map' does change between runs so a certain person you might need or a location you need to visit does not show up in this run and you need to do another one and hope for the best. This, I will not lie got a bit maddening especially when you just need to met a certain NPC one more time to complete their task and the RNG won't roll you the 'map' where they are available.

    Saving these NPCs are also part of the game story and to get the 'true' ending you need to save them all and fight the 'true' boss. Speaking of 'true' boss, if you have played 'Slay the Spire' (aka THE deck building roguelite) this final boss concept is something you might be familiar with.

    

    The gameplay itself is done well. Instead of a pre-determined path where you make decisions on which forks to take like most deckbuilding roguelites, each of the 3 randomly generated areas allow you to free roam to an extent. During your free roaming you will encounter NPCs, enemies (which you fight in the conventional turn based deck building style) and events. The game surprisingly gives you a lot of freedom. You start the area and you want to run straight to the boss? Go for it. You see the NPC you need to help but they are being blocked by an enemy? Go behind the enemy and you can still talk to the NPC without even having to beat the monsters. I found this was really helpful in my early runs when I was not as strong but after awhile I became so OP I would purposely trigger battles just so I could get more loot. Speaking of loot; it is plentiful. Of course you have gold but at the beginning and at the end of every boss battle you get to spend some time in the 'village'/ hub you have filled with main line NPCs like the blacksmith or the candle maker (more on that in a bit) and whilst those NPCs use the gold, each of them also accept a unique currency exclusive to them. Give them enough of this currency and you can get more candles when you start your run or more weapon slots or item slots. This progression is also kept between runs as well so building a better village also makes you stronger in the long run as well. This unique, almost base building aspect is what really kept me coming back to Conquest. Helping these poor souls out and helping them deal with their own demons and getting rewarded for it became a enjoyable gameplay loop. Another big part of the loot is 'Runestones', these special stones which you can slot into your weapon or your armor can change your playstyle from a little to a lot. At first I dismissed these are fluff but overtime and as I got better runestones I realize they are pretty key to winning certain battles so do not ignore them like I did and use them correctly.

    I mentioned candles before right? If we are still discussing gameplay, then we must talk about the 'Wyrdness'. The wyrdness is how Conquest conceals the map. The more you traverse the maps, the more the wyrdness creeps in, the more it effects the game. Of course, there is the obvious ones like you can not see in front of you and there is nothing but a strange haze obscuring your vision literally but wydrness also triggers certain 'bad' cards to enter your deck and these are never a good thing. Bad cards can be like giving the opponent a barrier aka a shield before you can actually hit them or you do less damage or have less energy to play cards, crappy things. So you want to keep the wyrdness away so you use a limited commodity item called 'Wyrdcandles'. These special items help keep the wyrdness at bay and having high light from the wyrdcandles can actually cause good cards to show up in your deck too as opposed to the bad ones. You can also see your enemies clearly and what events/ NPCs they are guarding. Generally, it is a good idea to always have high light from Wyrdcandles but no all things are done in the light and some random encounters, important encounters mind you can only be done when you have no light and wandering in the wyrdness. It is a unique concept, similar to how torches work in 'Darkest Dungeon' and I like how they implemented it... most of the time.

    Outside of the gameplay, the game itself is rather well polished for a smaller studio. Most of the main line NPCs are fully voiced for all their dialogue and even some of the lesser character in the map have voice lines too. The soundtrack is suitably moody with an occasional hard rock, almost chanty vibe. I'll share a track with you all below that best shows that.

    The graphics of the main game are passable. Nothing ground breaking but still it is not bad. The art of the cards are nice however with some really good illustrations and effort put into it. However I did have a couple issues with slow down during the game which got progressive worst during longer runs and at one point the game completely crashed on me. One of the biggest causes for the slow down is whether you 'stun' enemies for some reason that special effect always made my frame rate tank for a couple minutes. Whilst not always game breaking, it did get annoying after awhile and with the game 'completed' I do not see any performance patches coming anytime to fix it so keep that in mind. The interface is intuitive in-game and the games has multiple modes like 'Endless Power' and 'Endless Misery' as well. I muck around in 'Endless Power' and it seem its was a stripped down/ streamlined version of the game with nothing but back to back battles and no need to progress the story. I think it would be fun to muck around in but since the story/ RPG elements was the appeal of the game for me I bet I would get bored after awhile.

Pick a card mon ami

    Overall, this is a good game and a good time especially if you love this genre like I do. The game's core structure is solid based on many of the genres tried and true tropes of turn based, knowing what the enemy's intentions are and planning ahead with your deck. The storyline is compelling enough to keep you going with a good cast of characters to help and fight for. The sound design is pretty good and it looks fine. A bit rough in places but it is not horrible. Other then the slowdown/ tanking frame rates after certain actions it runs well too. It is not a masterpiece but I had a great time and I see myself still playing even through I have now completed the game. This 'tainted grail' is actually not bad for you at all and therefore gets a RAVE from me.

AV

P.S this game is currently on sale at gog.com for only $9.99 (50% off) as of the posting of this blog.