Sometimes I’ll pick out a game to cover just out of pure faith that it is either interesting, popular, or good (why review a game that looks bad just to confirm “yep, this game you wouldn’t have bought is bad after all!”?). Other times, there is a personal interest in me that makes me lunge out for a title. So, as someone who’s favourite part of MMORPGs is the crafting (often wanting to see if I can level up with just gear I’ve crafted), Albion Online drew me into its dream of relying on crafting like a sweet honeyed dream.
I recently managed to try out a beta build of Albion Online by Sandbox Interactive, stumbling around doing PvE. For those scratching your heads confused, it is an upcoming free-to-play MMORPG for PC and tablets (iOS and Android) that has gotten the idea of crafting and polished it into a reflection. You venture out, with knowledge of all the crafts, to level up your craft by crafting things while doing more quests that involve crafting. Suffice to say, if making things isn’t your cup of tea then you may want to run the other way right now.
By crafting, gathering, or killing things (including animals to skin) you gain fate points that slowly level up various skills so you can access the next tier (e.g. such as being able to gather new materials, create new gear, and equip new items). As complex and tedious as it sounds, due to the rampant availability of materials, usually you’ll be hoarding countless items with each step or doing a quest only to randomly be told “oh, you can do these new things now!”
Fortunately, the crafting in its current state is fantastic. As odd as it is, the heavy availability of materials is more pleasing than easy as it means you’re always progressing along the main focus of the game. I also ended up oddly enjoying how equipment can be traded or made, not bought from a vendor or earned in a quest. It felt more and more like my own character that I made with the equipment I hand-crafted with these two virtual hands, rather than following in an all-too familiar path created by others before me.
It is everywhere else that the game may lose people, sadly, as it is as basic (and sometimes drab) as Call Of Duty‘s environments. The quests, at least so far 5+ hours in, have boiled down to either gathering so much, making so much, killing an enemy so much, or the ever-tedious “go to X with Y item” quests. I found the combat is incredibly simplified, with 6 skills depending on the gear you have equipped (something that can be customised when you make the weapon/armour) and no levelling/class system beyond the skills you slowly level up, giving you access to better armour and weapons to equip. This in turn leaves you about as effective as your equipment and your playing-ability allows for, rather than having those moments when a level 20 stomps on your level 1’s face.
The environments are also often small. You’re able to stumble from one edge of the map to the other as though on a pub-crawl in a shockingly short amount of time before you get thrown into a loading screen for the next short place.
However, despite all that, I genuinely had a lot of fun. I gleefully tried to gather as much silver as I could (only earned via quests) to make my own guild: Potato People. This was before noticing you can get premium membership (and therefore a house) using silver rather than the player-bought gold. Currently, at least until the beta ends, I’m trying to gather enough silver for membership and a house so I can grow my own food on farm on top of all the other exciting crafting I enjoy doing.
I can imagine Albion Online being an awkward sell for those looking for a PC MMORPG due to how basic it is (at least if you’re not the type to fall into a time sink gleefully making inane things in a game), but for those with a tablet it might actually be ideal. Plus, it is free to try on release if you’re like me in the sense of having a warm fuzzy feeling every time you make better gear to use.
Albion Online will be releasing for free onto Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as iOS and Android tablets, in Q1 2016.