Albion Online is the best sandbox MMORPG that you have never played

MeinMMO author Mark Sellner has played many MMORPGs, but he has always avoided Albion Online. Which, in retrospect, was a mistake, because the game is great if the cash shop wasn’t so annoying and my focus was entirely on sandbox.

In the last two months, the MMORPG Albion Online was able to gain a lot of new players, as you can see on the Steamcharts website. Although this is not all platforms, just Steam, the title is currently on the up.

Reason enough to finally take a look at the MMO, which I have been pushing for an eternity. To get a picture of the sandbox in an idiosyncratic graphic style, I played Albion for a little over five hours. I tried to take as much content with me as possible.

While the game bored me at the beginning and I almost wondered whether it was worth the time at all, I was quickly taught better. Because Albion is definitely not flawless, but it has its moments and can be a lot of fun. Provided you can make friends with the compromises you have to make.

Who is writing here? Mark Sellner is an MMORPG writer at MeinMMO and has already spent over a thousand hours on many titles in the genre. Since MMORPGs have risen sharply in his interest from an ISO perspective at the moment (thanks Lost Ark), it’s time to check out Albion Online.

In the very first few minutes of the game, one thing catches the eye: the MMORPG runs really smoothly. The animations look good and it’s fun to move around the world with a click of the mouse in the iso perspective. This is also the very first task that awaited me in Albion.

What looks like a dull quest design at first glance, actually serves as a tutorial for the MMORPG. Which can even be fun if you get involved. The game sends me up a lighthouse first, only to send me back down from the lighthouse. A task that symbolizes the quests of the next 4 hours. But that’s not as bad as it sounds now.

Shortly after my lighthouse sprint, Albion arms me with a shield and a sword, bringing me closer to its classless system.

Similar to Path of Exile, there are clear paths you can take, but in the end your skills depend on your equipment. So my sword has two different attacks at the beginning, of which I have to choose one. Armed and equipped with a skill, I am allowed to open the great gate and heroically slay my first three enemies.

Stranded on an island with a coast, jungle and high mountains, Albion starts up and teaches me the basic mechanics of the title. The next quest then sends me collecting materials, because crafting is a big part of the game. To do this, I just click on the tree or stone that I want to collect and my character is busy plowing to mine the stuff.

Even if these materials respawn quickly, what I quickly encounter negatively is that other players can steal your resources, similar to New World. And not only that – if you have better tools than me, other players can start chopping on the same stone even after me and be done before me. Then I stand empty and at first I am quite frustrated.

What starts slowly will finally be good

It’s only when Albion finally gives me a weapon of my choice that I really enjoy the game. With the materials I have collected, I can choose which weapon and armor I want to craft. You can choose from the familiar sword and shield with heavy armor, bow with leather armor and magic wand and magician’s book with light armor.

Because throwing fireballs is just the coolest thing, I choose the mage gear. All of a sudden I have four active skills instead of just one as before. That happens after about 20 minutes in the game and really turns the whole game on. Now, freshly equipped, I can attack a fortress to free the island’s harbor and finally to finish the tutorial.

Killed the enemies and caught the ship, it goes on to the continent and into the first larger city, which quickly turns out to be a village. Furthermore, I follow various quests that the overseer of the village gives me. What strikes me as particularly negative is that I can only activate one quest at a time. But that doesn’t bother you later because there will soon be no more quests.

The current tasks help me to improve my equipment and bring me closer to the crafting system. So I spend the next few hours better understanding the skill system, upgrading my equipment and collecting lots of materials.

Once I know how the basic mechanics of Albion work, the game no longer feeds me with quests and gives me full sandbox freedom.

It’s more fun than it sounds on paper and at certain points has almost survival-game aspects. Although the game protects me from this in the beginning, I will lose all my inventory later if my character dies. And I’ve often died.

This is not a problem, however, because the fights against the NPC monsters are not only fun, but also become comparatively demanding at a very early stage and constantly challenge my skills.

Even the normal monsters always have new move sets in stock and the mini-bosses in the dungeons and expeditions even more. I have to actively evade to defeat the opponents and even then one or the other in-game death remains almost inevitable.

The actually rather slow fights quickly gain depth and are a lot of fun, even if I have few skills and my character moves rather slowly than evades quickly. The same combat system that scared me off at the beginning is now the highlight of the sandbox MMORPG for me.

Another highlight are the randomly generated dungeons that you can find again and again on the way in the maps. They are portals that light up a little green (solo) or blue (groups). In fact, the first time I accidentally ended up in one, thinking it might teleport me to the other side of a bridge.

If he didn’t, he opened a dungeon in a mine for me, which gave me plenty of loot. A successful surprise and together with the expeditions, somewhat larger, planned dungeons, my highlight of the play-off session.

Please spend more money

But there is one big downer, and that is Albion Online’s Free2Play concept. The game keeps asking me to invest money in Albion when I’m out as a Free player. I cannot say whether it will be Pay2Win in the long term. It doesn’t feel like that at first.

So why is this shop window popping up all the time?

One of the first quests gives me the premium stats for three days. The premium status is an optional subscription system, which gives a certain bonus and costs € 10.86 per month. Theoretically, you can buy premium with the in-game currency, but according to the community, it is difficult to farm the necessary silver if you are not already a premium character.

With every single monster kill and every time materials are dismantled, a message appears on my screen stating how much bonus I will receive with the current promotion through premium status.

But it’s not just subconsciously that Albion keeps telling me to please spend some money. The shop window opens regularly to inform me about exciting deals.

In the first five hours, as a Free2Play player, I had no disadvantages. I cannot yet say whether it will stay that way later. Nonetheless, the constant nerve with making life easier in the cash shop can quickly become annoying.

For me personally, the graphic style is also a bit of a downer. As much as I liked the gameplay, even after hours I couldn’t get on with the graphical aspect of the game.

But that’s also something positive at the same time, because Albion not only runs on your Windows or Mac PC, but also on Android and iOS systems and with the same account.

Although I don’t play on mobile at all, I made an exception for Albion. And that was a really good thing. Because while I didn’t have access to my PC, I could just continue playing on the smartphone right where I left off.

Albion is well implemented and can be played on Android without any problems. I had no problems setting up my account accordingly and the mobile client also has the same range of functions as the PC version. This is really pleasant for a Free2Play title and offers me more freedom than I am used to from many MMORPGs.

Conclusion

Incidentally, Albion is also one of the best mobile MMORPGs that you can play on Android and iOS in 2022.