Albion
                     (RPG on PC CD-ROM)

                  Reviewed by Bill Commons

After playing Daggerfall for a long time I decided to have a
change and started Albion.

I bought this game in a local shop for fifteen pounds which was a
bargain because the mail order firms at that time were asking
thirty three pounds for it. The box was a bit crumpled and on my
way home I thought it might have been damaged or second hand. The
box is a bit flimsy anyway as it has a double skin top to it to
give a 3D effect rather like some Christmas cards. The CD disk
inside was fine however and I loaded it into my computer.  The
game runs from DOS or Windows 95 and I had no problems running it
from a shortcut icon on my desktop.

It is a top view type of role playing game the same as Ultima 7
series and you start aboard a spaceship playing a shuttle pilot
named Tom Driscoll. First of all you explore the spaceship and
talk to the other members, this is done by mouse movement and
clicking the right button. At first this was a bit hit or miss
because the figures move like lightning and I found that I had to
trap them in a corner or I was clicking on an empty space and had
a message window pop up and asked if I wanted to rest or go to the
main menu. When you do click on a figure a small menu appears
which says "talk to" and then on to further text windows with a
reply and sometimes options on what to say.

It is not long before you find your first dungeon and this changes
to a 3D view the same as Daggerfall. I thought this would be easy
as you have the usual movement arrows on the screen for forward
and back, left and right also curve either way or do a u turn.
This proved to be a nightmare as my mouse developed a will of its
own and any movement would result in it picking a random arrow and
shooting me along the passages through open doors and landing me
across the dungeon anywhere but the place I wanted to go. There is
a built in map showing the places visited on this type of play but
as I had no idea of which way I was facing at any time it took
three more of these dungeons plus the purchase of a compass before
I mastered it. I don't know if it would be better on a slower
system than mine (Pentium 200) because the Ultimas are too fast
without a program called Moslo.

After a while you are told to report to the shuttle bay to pilot
the craft down to a nearby planet along with a scientist to
explore what is thought to be an uninhabited world rich in
minerals.

During the flight there is an explosion and you crash land on the
planet and regain consciousness in a building, being cared for by
some creatures that have a frog like face and stand erect and have
a powerful tail.

The game goes through some set sequences while you recuperate,
meanwhile your companion who was not hurt has learnt the local
language and teaches it to you. You can then explore the
settlement and there is a mini dungeon in it. It is a bit tough

down there though so it is better to get your levels up before
trying it.

The people in this and other places seem to tell you how poor they
are so it seems terrible to rifle through their belongings and
steal the odd eight packs of rations or five gold pieces, but the
game does not penalise you if you do, and if you come back months
later they are still there so perhaps the food would have gone
mouldy. You can also use these chests to store your own items
safely. Anyway my excuse is that I am saving their world by
killing all those monsters that roam around outside the towns.

The game is divided into lots of small Islands and on each you
have to carry out a quest or collect some items before you can
proceed to the next. I found that a shortage of cash was a big
problem as everything has to be bought, this includes food,
training, healing and sickness potions, spells and sleeping at the
inns and weapons. The first shop that you visit has some really
nice weapons but they cost nine hundred to twelve hundred gold
pieces each. I am told that you can steal them from the counter
but I could never find out how. The monsters that you kill leave
behind some valuables but they sell at the shop for almost the
same amount of the cost of potions and healing and until you are a
bit better skilled at killing it is a job to keep adding to your
gold reserves. When on that particular island you can kill the
monsters easily, they suddenly become hard to find, and in
tramping around the country in your search you find that you need
to sleep and rest, so using up your precious food supply. Mostly
you are selling things for below five gold pieces so how anyone
could build up a balance to buy the good weapons is beyond me.

Each island gives you an additional companion until you reach six
maximum although the individuals change from time to time. When
you start getting mages in your party the fighting becomes easier,
but I started saving before a battle so that I used a mixture of
all skills to build the levels up, if it proved too hard I would
reload and freeze the enemy and blow them away with fire balls.
The combat is played on a grid with the monsters at the top and
your party occupying the bottom two rows in any positions that you

choose. Then you right click on each of your team and choose from
a menu what you want them to do.

On about the fourth island there is a dungeon with a puzzle in it
involving a grid of red and green squares with some dead end paths
running through. You must step on the green but if you touch the
red then it releases hoards of really tough monsters, this took me
ages but it finally taught me how to control the mouse. Some
places need to be mapped although one has a built in one, this is
a cave with five levels which you explore by descending down holes
and climbing others, each taking you to a different spot. I
thought that I had thoroughly explored it until I learned that
there was an item down there that I had missed, I went back and
started mapping it on five sheets of A4 paper and I was surprised
at how much I had previously missed. Another place needs eight
locations to be visited but several places look identical, so it
is not long before it has you wandering around in circles, when
mapped it is quite a good compact twisty maze.


I had thought that I could finish this game before I sent in my
review but in a location two areas before the final dungeon I was
stumped.  There is a puzzle here that is unlike any other in the
game. It requires you to push a timed light switch and then run
along corridors pushing buttons, four of them, before the lights
go out. To use the words of one of the characters in the game "
The person who thought this idea up must need his head examined.

The best that I could manage was one. I loaded the game into my
486 computer and although it was like wading through treacle after
playing it on the Pentium the lights still went out after I had
pushed the first button. I asked my grandson to try as he is a
whiz with a mouse on games like Doom and arcade types. He said it
was impossible to do, although he managed two buttons.  I was
really disappointed but I practised and practised until more by
luck than judgement I managed to do it.

There are a few minor bugs in the program, sometimes the computer
locks up when it is trying to load in a new location from the CD.
Also at times it will not close down on quitting the game and
needs a press on the reset button. One infuriating thing happens
at a location with rocks on one side and a row of trees on the
other, you can go through in single file and the exit looks clear,
suddenly you can go no further and your party blocks your return,
no amount of swapping leaders or saving and re-loading will get
you out of this and you have to load in a saved game, I got caught
twice in this.

I can give a small tip here, one which I did not follow, to my
cost. One of your companions, a girl named Sira, can cast a
freezing spell which makes combat really easy as two or three of
these spells can destroy the enemy without too much damage to your
party. At the beginning I used this quite a lot, the only drawback
is that each spell needs a special seed and when she has hundreds
of them it seemed great. In the last but one dungeon I wished that
I had saved them as it was really tough going and she only had two
seeds left, when I used them she told me that I could buy more at
a certain store!  Some hope at that time. Still I managed to get
through it with lots of sleeping until I ran out of food, so find

out where to buy them or don't use them too often unless
necessary.

The gold did become a problem near the end, I decided to sell all
my spare weapons and the gold is shared between the six
companions, when I tried to move every one of them was carrying
too much weight and the game will not allow anyone to walk unless
they are at or below their allowance, this meant throwing it away
or loading a previous game, I chose the latter.

I played the game for five weeks before completing it and enjoyed
it very much.







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