15+ Hours of Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin – How is it?

Tainted Grail: Kings of Ruin is a lengthy campaign game, and even though I’ve managed to put about 15 hours into the experience so far, it is worth noting that I still have dozens of hours of gameplay left to enjoy. That also means I’ve probably only scratched the surface of what this game has to offer, and I’m so excited to see what happens next.

Many felt that Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon was a really well written game that had too many mechanical issues to make it really fun. Kings of Ruin allowed the development team to hone their mechanics and improve on areas of the game that people felt frustrated with in Fall of Avalon. And thank goodness they did – Tainted Grail is such a smooth experience, and while we’ve had some issues, they have been self inflicted. I forgot to fill in a status on our status sheet, for example, which required us to do some backtracking to figure out exactly what I had missed.

But it’s not really the game mechanics that keep me coming back here. It’s the story. I’ve played a ton of story based games over the past few years, and while many have been incredibly enjoyable – looking at you Descent: Legends of the Dark – the story in Tainted Grail blows those stories out of the water.

The way the various story arcs mingle together is phenomenal, and I can already see how the story could have changed if I had made different decisions or brought different characters along for the ride. In all honesty, Kings of Ruin isn’t necessarily a single play experience – you could run through this campaign multiple times to see different aspects of the game.

I love that, especially for those who are not purchasing a ton of games. This might be an expensive investment, but as someone who has hundreds of games lining shelves in my basement, I can tell you the price-per-hour on this game is already MUCH lower than almost any other game in my collection. It’s expensive, yes, but it gets played a lot!

It is the story that makes this game so worth it. Yes, the production is fantastic. Yes, the miniatures are great. But that story, my oh my, it keeps drawing us back in hour after hour. Characters develop over time, their back stories are fleshed out, and new and exciting relationships are formed, all based on your decisions.

In some ways, you get to have a say on the world around you, and how it plays out. For example, you do get to the point in the story where someone will die. That is a guaranteed fact – however, the decisions you make will determine WHICH character dies, which will obviously throw you down a different path. I love that.

So often, bold branching stories like this just fall flat after a while, but this one hasn’t. And from what I’ve seen online from those who have played the entire game, it’s not likely to falter either.