As with any MMO title much of your responsibilities consist of doing simple quests early game, which then lead to more challenging objectives as you progress. What you’ll find in Albion Online is a lot of what you’d find in other MMO’s, but it does a great job of creating a unique experience with its cross platform play and sandbox style gameplay. Just as a refresher for those who may not be familiar with the term sandbox, it refers to a game where players have the freedom to forge their own path and take their character wherever they desire in an open world. Albion Online allows you to dive into a medieval fantasy world where everything is under your control, and managing your character’s growth is just a part of the fun. Anyone who’s a fan of Runescape or the classic Ultima Online will find Albion Online to be a wonderful treat that’s full of flavor, and is filled with a plethora of activities to take part in that hours will just fly by without even noticing. Character customization can be taken to a new level with the Destiny Board, which has a ton of versatility is where the fireworks happen in the game. Go classless and never feel like you have to live up to your role since you can always swap your roles at any given time. Build your own real estate and grab bonuses for doing so also!

In a vast and open MMO world, there’s much to expect as there’s much to do for your character to progress and take on the beasts in the wild. Let’s not forget establishing guilds and teaming up with other players to take on stronger foes on the battlefield, along with raids that will certainly be common once you reach the appropriate levels. Albion Online has everything you’d expect from your typical run of the mill MMO but its simplicity in terms of visuals and higher focus on the more creative side of gameplay is that makes it enjoyable for the long term. If you fancy MMORPGs and are looking to dive into a new one to test out the waters, then Albion Online is certainly one you should dive into and there’s quite a substantial amount of people on reddit to help you out in order to guide you in the right direction. Look forward to plenty of gathering, farming and teamwork to get the job done in this game.

You start off in a small town where all of your objectives are laid out, and it’s really up to you to decide which path to embark on. Are you the more aggressive type? Then try out the warrior class, or if you’re like us and prefer striking foes down from afar then the Mage class is certainly a good choice as well. The game basically allows you to go whichever way you like from the get go and doesn’t try to force anything unnecessary down your throat. Everything is player-driven in this game meaning that everything that happens throughout the game is solely dependant on you and the responsibilities that you’ve been tasked with. It’s backed by a strong community that works hard to ensure cheating is kept to a minimum and gameplay experience is always at a high. What this means is that every shopkeeper you encounter, every trader you speak to, whatever items other mobs tend to drop after defeating them—all of that is based on the player which keeps the whole economy running in order.

Albion Online is a buy-to-play game meaning that you’ll need to purchase Starter Packs, Founders Packs or Legendary Packs to get in on the action (around $30.00 at the time of this article), but it’s totally worth it since everything is pretty much in your hands once you’re logged in and ready to go. We will say though that there’s going to be a lot of exploring in Albion Online since mobs (enemies, creatures, etc) are scattered all throughout, and even with our Tier 3 fire staff Mage in hand it took us quite some time to find the creatures we needed to kill. Perhaps that’s one of the gripes we’ve had thus far and it’s that finding the appropriate things to kill and collect from can be difficult at times, since you’ll be running around quite often and end up Tier 2’s lying around. Of course, some players may find the exploration to be satisfying but for anyone who’s new to MMOs, it’s going to be something either they’ll get used to or it would turn them away.

Everything within the game is based solely on skill meaning that if you want to advance your character in any way you’ll need to grind your way through in order to fully maximize that skill’s potential, for example fighting with a Fire Staff will increase the Fire Staff’s skills, etc. So learning how to manage your time effectively and allocating time to skills that you feel are necessary to go forward are what make the game feel very free, since you’re not locked to a specific skill tree every time. Technically, you could learn every skill on just one character alone and destroy everything in your path, or you could make things interesting and create multiple characters to fully optimize everything. The way to think about it is like this: small tasks eventually lead to big rewards if you stick to them. If you continue to mine for metals or stones or pick cotton in order to make materials for clothing, all of that helps to advance your skill in that particular area and helps you to advance in order to grab stronger tools down the road.

Once you’ve established yourself within a guild or want to go solo then that’s where the PvP takes over entirely where you can test your strength against other players wherever they are, and trust us there’s a lot of players running around. To get the most out of this game you’ll certainly need to get accustomed to just about everything meaning the bank system, and the economy as a whole. We say this because once you’re able to fully understand the pros and cons of how things are managed both with and without a guild, your strategies will start to evolve and you’ll be able to tackle obstacles no problem.

There’s honestly a plethora of things to dive into but if we were to do so it would genuinely ruin the experience going forward. The best way to approach Albion Online is to go about it with an open mind and not try to compare it too much to other mainstream MMOs at the moment. Albion Online is pretty much its own game at this point and so a lot of what transpires in game has a lot to do with you as we’ve stated previously. We do recommend however that you grab a group of friends to play with because the fun factor will only increase as you all go hunting down mobs, gathering items to sell at the market and just leveling up on the fly in this vast open world. We understand that some people will be turned off by the buy-to-play aspect of it but Sandbox Interactive has tried out the F2P method before which only led to a lot of headaches for the development team. In the end, this game will thrive if more players continue to support it over the long term, which we definitely can see happening since it’s all cross platform so you can play on your iPhone, Android, Mac, and have no issues finding players.

We spent a great deal of time with Albion Online and it certainly was entertaining for what it provided. It allowed us to free roam just about anywhere on the map and take our character beyond the limits which only added more replay value down the road. We eventually joined a guild which made playing even more exciting since you can plan on strategies and so plenty of things on the go. We recommend this game to those who are familiar with how MMOs work and for those who are new, just be sure to keep an open mind to what comes at you because there may be a lot to learn in the beginning. Don’t worry though because all of it will pay off in the end. We hope you found this review to be resourceful and if you own a copy of Albion Online be sure to let us know your thoughts of the game in the comments below!

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