Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon – Sanctuary of Sarras Review – An Excellent Addition

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When Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon officially launched earlier this year, our review found it to be a solid game with a few flaws, but it excelled in its immersive world, detailed story, and enjoyable atmosphere. The new Sanctuary of Sarras DLC builds on this strong foundation in a surprisingly thoughtful way. While it doesn’t fundamentally alter the gameplay of The Fall of Avalon, Sanctuary of Sarras is a compelling expansion that delivers in the areas that matter most: story, atmosphere, and lore. Please be aware that this review contains major spoilers for the original game’s story.

The main game explored the Arthurian legend with a dark twist, and the new DLC expands on this world with rich details. You can uncover a lot of history through side quests, conversations, and by reading books and item descriptions. What’s remarkable is that Sanctuary of Sarras actually enhances the story of the original game simply by being there.

Sanctuary of Sarras is remarkable because it enhances the original game’s story, which is a rare achievement.

The story of Sanctuary of Sarras begins with a group of people who found life in Arthur’s Avalon to be surprisingly difficult. Led by Nimue, Merlin’s apprentice, they decided to return to their original home, a land far from Avalon. Arthur was understandably upset by this attempted rebellion, but ultimately allowed them to leave, assuming they wouldn’t survive the journey. However, Merlin intervened, sinking their fleet and magically ensuring the travelers remained alive. This led to the creation of a new underwater kingdom called Sarras, named after the group’s lead ship.

This story connects to Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. You and Arthur are drawn to the ocean by a mysterious stranger who suggests it holds important secrets. Once there, you begin to unravel the history of the ship Sarras – how its sinking created the realm of Sarras – and learn more about what Avalon was like during Arthur and Merlin’s rule after the Red Death. Sanctuary of Sarras largely tells a self-contained story, keeping you within the underwater realm throughout. However, its strong connection to the original game is what makes it truly compelling, as you also get to hear Arthur’s personal reflections on Sarras and its inhabitants.

Okay, so the basic idea behind Sanctuary of Sarras is really interesting. Basically, this group of people decided that life in Avalon, even with King Arthur in charge, was getting way too awful. They just couldn’t handle it anymore!

The main addition in Sanctuary of Sarras is a new progression system focused on exploring the world to unlock a new passive skill tree. This tree offers bonuses to help you overcome the challenges in the DLC. Enemies scale to your level, so getting stronger relies heavily on these new skills. The skill tree is divided into three branches – Warrior, Rogue, and Mystic – each offering different passive bonuses. These bonuses simply enhance your abilities, like increasing damage output, and allow you to specialize in your preferred playstyle. For example, the Warrior tree offers bonuses based on armor weight, while the Rogue tree focuses on applying debuffs with faster attacks.

You’re free to change your character’s build whenever you like, so trying out different approaches is easy. For instance, if you get tired of playing as an archer, you can simply change your equipment to focus on magic, and even gain extra abilities from the Mystic tree while you do.

Sarras, the new area in this DLC, offers a unique gameplay experience. Unlike the main game’s open world, Sarras is made up of separate underwater islands. You’ll need to find and overcome guardian spirits to unlock access between them. While the islands themselves are small, and the overall map is smaller than the base game’s, this design keeps the action close by, so you’re never wandering aimlessly for long. It’s a compact experience that prioritizes consistent engagement.

These islands are all quite small individually, and the entire map is smaller than the one in the original game.

At some point, you’ll want to explore the rest of Sarras, but you’ll need permission from the sea creatures guarding the routes – known as Maws, like the Maw of the Current or the Maw of the Tide. Each Maw asks for something different before they’ll open the gates to other areas. These requests vary widely, from defeating enemies to having a debate about government, or even preparing a certain dish. Once you complete the task, you can freely use the gate to travel around the DLC map.

Beyond the compelling main story, this DLC truly shines with its side quests. While the main quest is well-written and adds depth to the world of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon, the side quests really immerse you in the details of this underwater civilization. Almost every quest explores a different facet of life – from how humans transformed into ocean hybrids and formed bonds with sea creatures, to what daily life is actually like for these new beings.

The game features a diverse and engaging range of enemies, both in how they look and how they fight. Visually, you’ll encounter all sorts of underwater creatures, from beasts with tentacles to zombies covered in barnacles, along with fish-like humanoids and serpents. In combat, enemies generally act as you’d expect: agile serpents rely on quick attacks and retreats, while zombies simply try to overwhelm you with numbers.

The enemies are well-designed, with both their appearance and how they act being particularly noteworthy.

Boss battles aren’t very complicated; most involve waiting for a chance to strike. Some bosses are slow, making ranged weapons like bows and magic more effective. Others are fast and quickly close in, so strong armor or dodging are better choices. While Sanctuary of Sarras doesn’t have bosses that require solving puzzles, they are still memorable thanks to their impressive appearance.

The new map features lots of dungeons filled with new enemies and bosses. While many of these dungeons simply offer more enemies to defeat while searching for valuable loot, a select few stand out. These special dungeons are usually connected to side quests and a bigger story, offering unique interactions – like encountering a pair of unusually intelligent snakes focused on research instead of fighting. Although the dungeons themselves might not be complex, the stories attached to them make them worthwhile.

The new DLC adds plenty of gear – weapons, armor, and accessories like rings – but these items mostly just offer stat boosts and don’t significantly change how the game plays. Depending on how far you are in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon when you start the DLC, you might find the new gear is actually more powerful than anything in Sanctuary of Sarras. Because of this, exploring the world and completing side quests are more rewarding for learning about the story and lore than for finding better equipment. Since you need to reach Cuanacht in Act 2 to begin the DLC’s questline, you’ll likely already have a good collection of gear by the time you enter Sarras.

This downloadable content includes a wealth of new items, such as weapons, armor, and accessories like rings.

I was really excited to revisit Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon after hearing about the fixes, because honestly, the initial release had some frustrating technical problems. I’m happy to say it’s a much smoother experience now! I was playing on a pretty beefy setup – an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, Radeon RX 7800 XT, and 32GB of RAM – and I consistently got over 100 frames per second. There were just a few little stutters when first loading a new area, but overall, it ran beautifully. I was even able to max out the graphics settings to High at 1440p without any major issues during my playthrough.

The Sanctuary of Sarras expansion is a great addition to Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. It really expands on the game’s already rich world and story. While the expansion’s story stands on its own, it also adds depth to the characters of Arthur and Merlin, and introduces an interesting take on an underwater civilization. You don’t need to play it to understand the main story, but it significantly enriches the overall mythology of Tainted Grail, building upon everything established in the original game.

This game was reviewed on PC.

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2025-12-17 14:43