Albion Review - 1995 CRPG
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- čas přidán 9. 09. 2024
- Tom Driscoll explores Albion on a journey of discovery,mystery and diplomacy in late DOS era RPG that went under the radar ..
Albion GOG- www.gog.com/ga...
Albion ost- • Albion Soundtrack - Intro
Albion info-"Albion is a role-playing video game and features a number of gameplay elements typical of that genre. The player controls a party of up to six characters, each with their own skills and abilities. With these characters they may explore the game world, fight enemies, and engage in conversation or trade. Characters earn experience points by defeating enemies or by solving certain puzzles. When a character has sufficient experience points they will advance in level, increasing their maximum life and spell points. They will also receive training points which can be expended at a trainer to permanently increase one or more of their skills.
Albion uses a hybrid 2D/3D graphical system to depict its environments. Most interior locations are shown using a 2D overhead view, centered on the player's party. Movement is possible using either the keyboard or the mouse and the mouse is used to examine or manipulate objects within the reach of the party leader. A similar view is used when exploring the larger world outside the cities, but with objects and characters shown on a much smaller scale. Upon entering most dungeons, caves, and the exteriors of larger cities the game switches to a real-time first-person 3D view. As in the 2D view, players may use the mouse or keyboard to move around and the mouse is used to select objects to interact with. A 2D automap is available to assist navigation in these areas.
Combat occurs when the party runs into one or more enemies. The combat system is turn-based and takes place on a five-by-six grid similar to a chess board, with the player's characters arranged at the bottom and their enemies at the top. At the start of each turn, the player selects an action for each character to perform: Attack, Move, Use magic, Use Item, or Flee. The order in which party members and enemies execute their actions depends on their relative speeds and is an important tactical consideration. Since attacks are targeted at a grid square rather than the character or enemy in it, attacks will miss if their intended target moves before they are made, even if that target is still within reach. The movement of the player's characters is limited to the bottom two rows, but there is also an 'Advance Party' option which moves all enemies one row towards the party."
I'm back to once again tell everyone how good this game is! Just look at your screen, it's incredible. Art, story, combat, puzzles... a giant, immersive world to explore!
I remember playing a demo version of this game somewhere around 1996-1997 when I was still a kid. The world in this game really seemed magical and unique.
Yeah I had really fond memories of that demo as well!! Doing the little logic puzzle on the ship to get the gun. Being stuck in the hut for ages til I realised you could open doors by right clicking. Exploiting the infinite respawn of items in the merchant's crate to sell and get all the best gear (so the local warrior could 1-shot enemies with his Lance). Sadly my younger self could never work out how to finish that demo, kept getting lost in the cave.
@@cameronjames3499 thanks for sharing :)
same
I loved this game..
Play it, play it now!
Thanks for that review - good old times. I was making the music for that game decades ago :-)
This game is amazingly underappreciated and unknown!
Exactly, sir. Even today, I still love playing it and find new details.
Between 0:37 to 0:50 I thought at first that I had a stroke.
You were saying (almost) the identical sentence twice in a row.
I'm happy u didn't have a stroke
I played this game as a kid. I think I even played in in English at 5 years old when I could only speak German and I was so frustrated. But as a kid I already realized what a gem this is.
It's crazy when you compare it to some new games
It's a German game, how comes you had the English version :)?
@@Mindinvasion Yep, ironic, huh? Was developed by German developers.
one of the best RPG's of all times and STILL absolutely playable and enjoyable in 2021!!!
trust me, I finally finished it this year and had a truly wonderful time :-)
Hoo! I realised you had an Albion review after watching your Ishar video. Albion was the game that took over the hole Ishar had left in my heart. :) Thanks by doing this.
I love this game! You must use your spells until they reached a decent level early to be prepared for serious encounters.
Yeah, just cheese the game by talking to the healer again and again in Jirinaar, so she gives you a blue healing potion, keep selling it for mana potions and trii seeds and then go around the island every day and use spells. Grind those spells early :)
Just a heads up... I made a mistake .. I said you could not drink potions during combat .. that was a mistake.. I simply didn't left click my party member's screen so I assumed you couldn't
RetrospectiveGaming lmao
@@pontoexclamacao9158 let that be a lesson ... click everything
This game is a spiritual successor to the Amiga RPGs Amberstar and Ambermoon, developed by the same team. If you like Albion, those might be worth checking out ... they received excellent reviews in their day.
One of my all time favourites. So unique and beautiful. You do get a 2nd warriror btw (haven't seen him in your party during the video), even if a bit later into the story, and Tom can become a fairly decent tank as well. In arond 2000 I found a hard copy of it for practically free in a supermarket, was so happy that I got an original copy (that I still have to this day).
Great video, Che! I remember a bunch of these guys at Blue Byte started out at Thalion Software, who released the popular Amberstar and Ambermoon games. I don't know how Albion stacks up to them in popularity and nostalgiarity (yes, I just made that word up), but Albion is supposed to be a spiritual successor to those games. I've been wanting to get into Amberstar for awhile now.
This game is a gem. I love it. I played it through several times and still find some new details.
I played that game when I was about 7 or 8 years old and couldn't speak or read a single word of English (I'm born in Germany) and it still fascinated me. The world was just so unique that it didn't bothered me much that I was never able to make big progess. When James Cameron's Avatar came into the cinemas over 10 years later it absolutely reminded me of Albion but I didn't remembered the name back then. Another 8 years later, the game Albion Online was released and despite it has nothing to do with the DOS classic, the scales fell from my eyes and it gave me the name to the game I searched so long for.
It's really a heavily underrated game of the DOS era.
the first version of the game was literally german :D
Cameron was inspired by Albion. He has some ideas of the Avatar story. But the story was developed and changed after the release of the Albion.
This is and will always be, my all time favourite game!, What I wouldn't pay for a remaster/updated version of this game with modern graphics/engine etc!
Indeed it's a gorgeous game, the selection of colours and texture details are amazing, specially for the FPS areas that...dare I say it... *beats the living shit out of Bethesda's Daggerfall*
This comment will be carpet bombed with deslikes for *heresy* in 3... 2... 1...
You can't see dislikes on comments anymore, so hey... it might've been bombed with dislikes. We'll never know...
Daggerfall was the main thing I thought about. I need to look up whoever did the art for this game.
This game looks utterly beautiful.
Awesome review, I've just started to play it today, and it actually is a beautiful game.
Great video Che, I had never even heard of this game.
Yeah, I remember stepping on those colored tiles in a wrong manner just to get experience :) Albion was dope.
From this game they stolen the Avatar movie idea.
NAh, they stole Avatar from Pocahontas. Same story.
Advanced civ arrives in tribal area, explorer "gets lost", falls in love with daughter of village chief, makes peace with tribals and kind of allies his world to theirs.
They just changed different continent to different planet and added more sci fi stuff. other than that it is a 100% copy.
Even the "evil" leader of the expedition who is the main villain and forces the others to fight till the end.
Challenge: count how many times he says "elves, trolls etcetera". Dude, you're completely off the mark here. This is a sci-fi game, not a fantasy one. The key difference is that sci-fi stories usually take place in our universe, in the future, or some in alternative history version of our universe. Fantasy stories take place in a wholly different universe altogether. They usually come with creatures based on old Earth mythologies and some form of magic. Now why would Albion's devs rely on classical fantasy tropes like elves etc., when their story is clearly sci-fi?
This game is very similar to Amberstar and its sequel, Ambermoon - two underrated games initially developed for Amiga and later on ported to DOS and other platforms. Combat mechanics based on grid and how resting works are identical, while the rest of the game is pretty similar (word system in conversations, species languages, trainers, etc).
Albion was an absolute masterpiece and one of my all-time favourite RPG memories. I doubt I'd enjoy playing it today, though. Fond memories are also best left alone - trying to relive them usually leads to disappointment. ;)
Nah, I play it every 6 years or so, still pretty much worth your time
Good review pal. Love old rpg's, will be sure to check the game out eventually.
This game is really good and deserves more recognition. Beat it so many times as a kid. A lot of freedom for 90s rpg with a very detailed world with various cultures to explore.
I would LOVE to see it remade in 2023 "standards".
Changing your party around really changes the experiences, there are just ways to min/max ofc.
Don't forget to steal powerful items from the shop counters :D
Edit: Hmm.. interesting you did not use the 2 magical iskai daggers, both can be found from Brevik. They can be used on the Iskai tails, so I gave one to Drirr another to Sira. Brevik dropped one magical dagger when you defeated him and another one when you spoke to him later on. Pretty powerful daggers and I used them till the end of the game.
This is one of the best games of the era, on par with the Ultima series though it's only a one off. The ending isn't quite as disappointing as it might seem on initial inspection though, it's extremely subversive for the time, especially if you read between the lines. The planet, as named by DDT (the corporation that paid for the construction of the Toronto, which was the mothership, not the shuttle), albion is what some of the denizens of the world call their planet.
Spoilers below.
Ned was intentionally programmed to do what he did, he wasn't going rogue, DDT made him that way and explicitly told him to do what he did. There is dialogue, in the beginning of the game, if you talk the ears off the crew, that heavily implies what was about to happen to albion had happened before. With the first alien sentient species humanity had encountered, (I can't remember the race name, only the slur humans used for them 'lop-ears') basically, a mining expedition came to their world, and they were attacked, and killed, while 'settlers' took over their planet, and exploited all of it's resources, eventually ending in a near genocide, with the few remaining native inhabitants of that world being forced onto reservations. The 'plan' was for the ship to land in the middle of the desert, the sensor readings were being falsified, along with the AI telling the crew that the atmosphere was unbreathable, essentially that the entire world was unhabitable, strip mine the entire planet, killing everyone on it, while the materials were blasted back to earth via automated over-c, with the crew none the wiser, since all mining and construction was fully automated [only one of the six sections of the ship even had life support.] That's why Ned killed inspector snoopy, he was a government official sent for oversight, to prevent something like this from happening a second time, he scanned the planet just as they came out of over-c, found it wasn't dead, and attempted to 'phone home' to the earth government so that the mission would change from mining to xenobiology. Ned found out, and overloaded the comms console, splattering him all over the room, same reason that he overloaded your shuttle controls and tried to kill you and rainer by crashing it.
Also, you can find a gun at the very beginning, it's under the comms console in the room where snoopy died, you just have to go back into the maintenance ducts and hide it, since leaving through the door with it in your possession gets it confiscated by security. It's one of the most powerful weapons in the game, but it has extremely limited ammunition.
@BTIsaac Ohhh, I didn't notice, I tend to multitask while watching videos. it's a very handy starting weapon, for it's sheer damage output, it can even be useful later, if you can resist the urge to waste all your ammo blowing away nominal threats.
Coming in blind, playing for the first time, and got the gun? Oh really? :)
In 2015 someone did an enhanced port to Windows and Linux (and Pandora hand held) with improved 3D gfx github.com/M-HT/SR/releases
Interesting and I see it's been last updated in January 2022. Will check it out.
Such beautiful artwork and graphics!
definitely one of my all time favorite games, wish they would remake games like this.
an absolute classic gem of CRPGs!
Enjoyed the review a lot!
one little mistake tho:
i noticed you saying that u cannot chug potions whenever u want but that is not true at all, u can go into ur inventory by double clicking the character face on the bottom left to do whatever u want mid battle, drink as many potions as u wish, swap out equipment, whatever it is u want to do...
I have played a crazy amount of RPGs ranging from Apple II up to modern day PC, and everything in between. I played every SNES and PS1 RPG and at least half the fan translated one's. But these guys are the best. Better than all the rest. Better than the mighty Squaresoft even. Their Amberstar trilogy is excellent. Same with Dragonflight and their platformers. These old games are the best, in my opinion, because they're relaxing. RPGs post-Amiga all have a quality of excitement, which is great of course, but you can't relax with them the way you can relax with a game like Albion, or my favorite of the series which is actually the first, Amberstar. The best games of a genre are rarely recognized as such because games tend to be judged on how many people like playing them, rather than how great they are in the eyes of those with the patience and mindset to complete them. Amberstar is the best but they're not for everybody. Thalion are underrated but rightly so. It's where they belong. There are countless movie collectors out there but very few of them have Citizen Kane in their collection.
This game had a cool dialogue system and a very nice isometrical mode...
thank you very much. its one of my top 10 favourite games. a little bit slow but such an epic game. Erm, the picture is wrong. Its "Albion" not "Albion Online"
Yup ..changed the "CZcams Gaming" pic to Albion .. no problem .. Hopefully more people will play this
I hope there is gonna be a remake with better grafics like in Legends of Grimrock...
Albions biggest issue is its accessibility. The game deserves a remake, with quality of life features. Not necessarily to make it easier. But to make everything less tedious and problematic, like User Interface and Invertory managment etc. And decent tooltips, that you don't need the internet to figure out mechanics etc. Especially the Grid Based Combat System needs a different approach. More of the likes of Wizardy 8.
But most of all, the the Lore of Albion is very very intriguing. The Society of the Cat people, how they devloped and handle their quick life with the problem of people reincarnating. Its a heinous crime to say the least. It actually makes you think and appreciate how much effort they put into such an "alien" to us, species.
Amberstar and Ambermoon are also great games worth playing. But they are even older! With even more issues.
Our PC didn't have a sound card, so I could only imagine how it sounded like. Funny that I was kinda correct in my guesses. The game started to become much more fun once I figured out how to farm potions and sell them. Then I could buy better gear for my characters and had the courage to take on fights.
My first RPG and I'm still playing it nowadays. You can buy it on GOG last I have checked. I have a hardcopy and I bought it there as well. This game is the best.
A prime candidate for Ross's Game Dungeon.
I only played the demo of this game and could tell it was something special. I really should have bought it :( Excellent review!
Sounds like Star Ocean's long lost twin.
its the best and most in depth dos game in every way, i v ever played. and yes there is more tank charactersavailable later or with certain items you can make tom quite tanky but you have to start training him from the beginning. rainer is kinda usless all the way. later you can raplace him. the most succesful playthrus i allways had with dirr and the alien girl maxing out freezing spells and the druid dude with later powerfull fireball like spells. you dont need much more once you focus on maxing out thier stats and spells. the other chars i usually use to support with magic items or ranged attacks. like i said i played many playthrus and once you know all secrets and how to obtain the most powerful items its quite easy. another pro tim is if you give the alien girl speed items like i think there is a ring and such. it makes her attack first before anyone else and you can freeze tho most powerful enemies. then you hav dirr meleeing the frozen enemies..... btw. you can play albion on the phone using dos box turbo. it is a bit hard to control at the beginning because of the touch screen but u ll get used to it. there is 2 glitches (intended or not idk but) you can go to the potion vendor woman in the alien town and after a conversation there is a x-% chance she gives you a blue healing potion. you can repeat the talking as many times as you one and sell them or keep them. you can get insanely rich but your fingers and wrists will suffer trust me. then you can go to most vendors and "run" to the vednor desk holding right mousbuttion moving it up and down. you wil be able to touch items one tile further than if you would just stand at the vendor table. you can steal most items in all the shops.
Just picked this up. Been enjoying it so far. Any beginning tips or tricks, spoiler free please 😅. I've been tasked with going go old Former building.
This was my first pc-game like 1996, cd is still somewhere and manual but I'm afraid the box is nowhere anymore :(. We as me and my brother played the hell out of it, got stuck in the first island for maybe even over a year. We leveled that island for HOURS - if If you ever played the game you understand when is say that the Drirr I had was so jacked that she hit 4 times every turn . Never got to finish the game. Furthest I have played it in the 3d place where all walls are eyes
You say, that the game needs more tank-charakter. There are 2 warrior (Drirr and Siobhan -an optional charakter from Beloveno-) and Tom. So you get 3 tanks. Maybe Joe can be a tank, too. But he is better with ranged weapons.
The group is powerfull, when you walk into the lights of god in the formerdungeon on Jirinarr. They will get more speed and strength.
Thanks for this video, I will have to give this game a try.
The plot is basically Fern Gully or Avatar. Nonetheless, it was a great game. Love how detailed it is.
"The story starts off with the main character Tom Driscoll, being tasked with exploring the world of Albion. The story starts off with the main character, Tom Driscoll. He is tasked with exploring a world named Albion."
I'm not sure if this is an editing mistake or just that you're not using a script.
The sun has blasted your brain!
You mentioned my favourite game, maybe once review it? Lands of Lore - Throne of Chaos :-D
Seams to me the developer was trying to make something that's more like a Console JRPG than an open ended nonlinear WRPG of the times.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Thanks for another great video, Che. Could you bring us one or two videos about the Black and White series from LionHead Studios?
Any thoughts about reviewing Shadowrun: Dragonfall? Pretty curious to know what you think about that game.
Albionest, this game looks pretty amazing
if you explore enought there is armor enought to make the mage character quite tanky especially since some gear is cross species and may work on more classes also Sira can use some decent tail weapons which can raise her damage output... and tail weapons do increase throwing weapon damage i think... so that can be a bit of a cheat
I absolutely loved this game back then. Played through it twice.
Edit: After I watched the review I have to ask whether you didn't get the blond celtic girl?! She's as I remember correctly a very good tank and you were complaining about not having enough of them. Also the black haired girl mage can learn a spell that is at max lvl basicially like cheating, because it kills every enemy on the screen instantly.
I just tried the game, but only for 15 minutes or something. It was not enough time for me to get caught, but after this video, I may consider to give it a couple of hours more!
Che, ever though about reviewing thief?
Think I mentioned that too in the past. But I bet he has a very long list, needing decades to finish :)
My brother tried to get me into this but I was big into Elder Scrolls Arena, then Daggerfall came out, so I never played this.
The thing that bugged me about this game is the outdoors 2D looks good, and the indoors 2D looks gorgeous, but then it has all those 3D segments that are ugly, low-res, and horribly low-FOV. If those were done better, or just dropped in favor of making everything 2D, it'd be a better game.
Absolutely awesome game :)
8:22 oh good im not the only one who miss read dRirr
hey man... nice video as awlays... you should try septerra core legacy of the creator (a nice jrpg with a cool and imerssive story line :D )
Played the game a LOT back in the days and came back to it now and then again and again .. kinda specially since now most movies are absolutly not fun .. so this games fills in for me and sends me to a world and setting thats far more interessting then anything Hollywood or Disney cramp out by now.
PS : I think Drirr and Sira are some kind of Feline species and less a Grasshopper based race but that can also just be me ^^
When you said you were going to talk about a forgotten DOS rpg I thought you were gonna talk about the Dark Sun games but great video nonetheless, always good to find another obscure Crpg to play.
Are you ever going to do a review of the grimrock series?
Why did you repeat his name twice in the beginning lol
You have to find the gun on the ship at the start of the game. Otherwise you are screwed in the first battles as your characters are very weak.
that game was love on first sigth(demo)
I love this game
This review full of mistakes and inaccuracies is a real damage saying the writing is not anything phenomenal or mindblowing. Myabe you just have trouble paying attention to the writing considering all the mistakes you did here? I'd like to see what you consider a phenomenal or mindblowing writing in games as I have not encountered more than 10 games during 35 years of searching for games with such writing... and I consider Avatar story heavily inspired by this game.
As a fan of saints row, you should review agents of mayhem
Hi, che , i would love if you do a video about classic genre of gaming that are dead or sell poorly, like car combat games. The last AAA game title was twisted metal 2012
And Reinar is extremely weak in battle and useless. He should have stayed in the first town. One of the best points in the game is, when Reinar tells you, he is going to leave your party. He is an exobiologist and helps you learn the language of the Ascari, but he is unused real-estate in your party selection screen.
+retrospectivegaming you should cover the up coming fallout nv mod the way of the chosen
One of the BEST RPG EVAR! I mean it. Thanks God, only decent RPG-fans knows about it. ^_^
It's so unique...and underrated game for sure
To someone who grew up playing that game this review sounds more like you didn't actually play it and just read some summaries or took pieces from other peoples' work.
The endgame....:( .
Do I have to pay for the true ending or something like that?
Rodrigo Campos This game came out in 1995 so the answer is ..no :)
grasshoppers? really?
There was this game in my father's pc, I played it for few minute when I was a kid. you start in a castle in the middle of nowhere with people inside. I skipped the conversation with the characters and entered a hovering vehicle(I think) and went for the desert. but suddenly a gameover scene appears where the main character's body start to decompose. I restarted and attempted the same thing many times and every time I die. at one point I get stopped by a talking hostile humanoid(looked like super mutant?) and the same gameover screen appeared. I didn't touch the game again because it creeped me out and I didn't knew english then. I thought this game albion was it, but it isn't. Any chance you know the game I'm talking about?
Also 16:42 meesic? lol XD
I went jar jar for a second " ME SO MEESIC" btw can you give me more details ..like what decade it came out or anything else?
I don't remember much but I could tell from the old graphics that it's a 90's game. I'd guess that it's an adventure game. I think before you leave for the outside you can speak with your wife(or mother?). I think as you leave, you get a full 2D view of the castle or whatever. games like albion and "I have no mouth and I must scream" remind of it.
like I said I didn't play it much. I came across it when I used to play flash games, then I messed in the games files and found it. Another game I played and found the name of it later is Gubble.
Sorry can't think of anything else
Amberstar. The first game in this series. And the reason you died over and over is that it only had one save. So you messed up your dads save game :)
My favorite game of all times.
Here i play it on emulator: czcams.com/video/txlgXny6L3I/video.html
PS! I still got the albion box laying around. It is a very cool box.
@petrus
sorry to disappoint you but that's not it.
But thanks to you I just watched an Aimga games compilation and found the game I was talking about. Its name is "Dune"
Great review! But I think you made it harder on yourself than it had to be. You mentioned that you cannot drink health potions during combat. That is simply wrong. Not only can you drink as many as you happen to have with you, but you can even take them from the inventory of party members that are currently unconscious. I had Rainer downing those potions like they were water on a hot summers day... Huge pussy, that guy. Anyway, this is an awesome game =)
Thanks for watching.. I feel like a dummy now hhaha ..just launched the game again and found out I had to left click on my the party member's screen to access inventory .. for some reason I didn't do that during my game ..welp .. Ill keep this comment pinned so ppl can see the correct info on that
Glad to help :D
Graphic better than some steam game 😅
The art is professional
You ever play 'the cat lady' or 'downfall'?, I think you'd be into them. Great dark indie games.
Is Albion Online related to this game?
2027...eh :D
Back in 1995 this game was too big anyway, and so much text to read...
Only minor spoilers in the game 🤔
josh tuttle do it
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBS
1:53 Beware of furries.
wow you use TROLL and GNOME as generic fantasy creatures? How many games in the last TWENTY YEARS have let us play as Trolls and Gnomes? 7? Less? Can we please stop conflating "X is in video game so its overdone" with actually being able to play as X? Giant Spiders are overdone as fuck but i've yet to get to choose GiantSpider for my race.
My problem with the game is the combat. There is so much of it in the dungeons, its way too hard and has no depth, and doesn't add anything to the story. Instead it just serves to keep me away from the story.