Albion Online Game Review

Alternate Title: Albion
Developer: Sandbox Interactive
Publisher: Sandbox Interactive
Type: MMORPG
Model: Buy-to-play
Platform: PC, OS X, Linux, Mobile Devices
Engine: Unity
PvP: Guild vs. Guild, Open-world
PvE: Monster Hunting Quests, Dungeons

Ah, Albion. I remember growing up in Oakvale, playing with the other kids, helping the villagers out, and.. watching.. my entire family, along with every friend I had get brutally murdered right in front of me.
Oops, wrong Albion.
Phew, we really dodged a bullet- or should we say.. we dodged an arrow, there, eh? Ehh? .. Too soon?

Albion Online is a medieval fantasy MMORPG that has a large, very large, ridiculously large emphasis on crafting. In the first hour alone I had spent a solid hour going from NPC to NPC collecting materials to craft new equipment.
Which isn’t a problem – I’m just not used to crafting being such a focal point of MMORPGs. Especially at the beginning of the game.

Character creation is fairly limiting – being stuck choosing between white guy, black guy, white girl, black girl, and.. a couple differnt hairstyles, beard styles and colors.

One thing of note was that I began my journey with my wife, Avriee, who spawned on the other side of the world to me.
We had the exact same quests, we just couldn’t play with each other due to spawning at such large distances. This was a little upsetting as we had wanted to play together, but.. ooo, bunnies!

Now, back to crafting for a second.. equipping new gear, or weapons, specifically, in this example, gave me access to new skills associated with that particular piece of equipment.
That was.. kinda cool, and was a little reminiscent of Guild Wars 2.
Unfortunately, as my newbie Warrior self, I had only the most basic of skills.. slightly more forceful stab.
This made it a little difficult for me to engage other players in 1v1 combat – which happened on more than one occasion, actually. I feel like people could just.. smell the newbie on me and target me because of it.

As I pointed out, we started off in different zones, and.. my lord the world map is absolutely massive.
I cannot begin to comprehend how long that would take to navigate on foot considering it took me 10 minutes to get from one side of the newbie area to the other.

There’s just something about Albion’s low poly graphical style that really resonates with me. I’m a huge fan of the style and being able to play through an MMO that looks as beautiful as Albion does is quite a treat for me.
It also helps detract from all the material farming you need to do.. which.. is.. so.. damn.. much.
Collect this log, collect that log.. Yes, I get it. I should’ve pursued the lumberjack career as my profession as opposed to Warrior. I’d probably make a killing off of it.

The combat in-game is fairly basic. You.. almost die, every encounter. Or at least I do. Which could be because I took a wrong turn somewhere and still have newbie gear on, I don’t know.
It just seems as though everything I attack, or everything that attacks me pre-emptively destroyed me.. that is, until I upgraded further.
*Ahem*
But, I digress. The combat itself is tab-target, meaning you need to select your target before you can unload onto them. Umff, that sounded wrong.
As you can see though, gear, like most MMOs, plays a large part in how difficult an encounter is. Where I was knocking on death’s door every encounter prior, I’m now a wrecking machine of raw, unadulterated power.

After making enough progress through the game and learning a little more about it, I managed to obtain my first mount! Finally, a faster mode of travel with which to make it to my wife..
Alas, the distance between us was far too large, even with mounts. So we opted to just play along until it became possible to play together.

That never happened.

I didn’t play long enough to participate in PvP outside of 1v1 duels but from what I read there is quite an extensive full-loot PvP system in place that allows players to engage one another in open-zone skirmishes, being able to loot your body upon death.
Granted, that only applies to “red-zones” – zones being divided between various colors and difficulties, such as green, yellow and red.
While I’ve never been a fan of full-loot PvP, I do see how it can make a game far more interesting by upping the risks and rewards.

Now yes, I didn’t spend as much time as I would have liked in-game, only a couple hours, but from what I did spend I enjoyed.
I’m not normally a fan of crafting but basing a lot of the game around crafting, farming materials to craft, and attempting to survive open-PvP zones can be quite thrilling.
If these are things that don’t interest you though, then you’d probably best avoid the game as it seems to be a PvP focused crafting MMORPG with less PvE than most traditional alternatives.