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Hey everyone,

I've just recently started playing this game, and I am now in Beloveno. The game story features a very interesting setting, and the script seemed to be very good. I was especially surprised by how the conversations in Nakiridaani made sense, how they payed attention to details, how that Old Former's dungeon made sense, etc. I could really immerse myself into the game world, which I am very rarely able to do, and it was easy to ignore some complete gamey nonsense, like a 23rd century pilot being able to wield a sword and wear armor just right away, or use a bow and arrow.

However, it all started going down in Gratogel, and the entire experience started looking like a game, rather than a world I could immerse myself into. "Hello. I am Rifrako, a merchant in an insignificant little village with orchards, and I happen to have magical items. Very profitable to be dealing with such things here." And then you go off killing those bandits in order to earn enough money to buy better equipment. "What will we do today? I know, lets go to that mountain pass and wait for bandits to attack us, so we can sell their goodies, and buy better equipment. And, we can improve our magic abilities in the process." Repeat 7 times. Oh, wow, so interesting, so full of immersion, ties well into the story. Of course, you can say that I don't have to do that, but I do, because I need to survive those Animals in Arjano.

And Arjano was a blast - oh look, for some reason, there are these wild flying animals, warniaks, just lounging around in this dungeon, for 400 years, waiting for me to kill them, and gain XP. And, obviously, somebody had a knack for making perfectly logical traps - why not just make pressing this floor plate move green barriers around, while at the same time starting a fire? That just makes sense in the war that happened here - I'm sure the enemies would be bored to death by puzzles. And, it's oh so very immersing, interesting, and "in the story" to be walking next to walls in a careful search for buttons, which open rooms, closed for 4 centuries, where wild animals have been subsisting on stale air, ever since Drinno was sealed off from the rest of Arjano. And why? So you could pick up an item! Yay, I'm so very happy! It's a good trade-off: get to boost your characters in exchange for immersion.

So, I hoped that Beloveno would be different. But no. There I am, walking into a stranger's residence, and saying: "You look like a magician."

"Why yes, it's tatooed on my forehead.", said the stranger.

"Well, would you like to come with us on our quest, complete stranger?", said I, explaining in short what the quest is.

"Of course. Why not? I always accept invitations by strangers who walk into my house. Especially if it's a quest for searching for giant metal objects which fall from the sky, which makes no sense whatsoever for me.", says the magician.

"Good. Well, we just first have to go kill some krondirs, warniaks, and the like, so your magic can become more powerful. Not absoultely necessary, I know, but we seem to have such luck, you know, running into fights, so we better have you in top shape. True, you say you never were so powerful as you are now, but that's just bull. Look here, this much younger and more inexperienced girl here, Sira, is so much more powerful than you. But that's because we were in this dungeon where wild animals have subsisted on air for 400 years.", says the party.

"Well, that must have been some dungeon! Good, we're off to kill some game!", and so we go off, wandering around, camping a bit in the nature, and killing the creatures of Albion.

Then, after a while, I go to Kuonos, and realize that I cannot ask anyone about Toronto. And then I kill a guard inside a house, while the denizens around not notice anything. And I go into a dungeon, with colorful force fields, and a puzzle to open them. And then to another magician, who does not seem to be concerned that I killed his guard, and whom I also cannot ask about Toronto. Then I open a walkthrough, and read that I am supposed to go to Kariah (who told me nothing the first time), and get a quest. Fine, I load, go there, and, lo and behold, comes a perfectly meaningful conversation.

"Hello. Welcome to my house. You know, you look like you can handle yourself well. Well, I have to tell you - some of my customers told me that two of our councilors care only about themselves. Can you kill them?", says Kariah.

"Well, not quite. You got carried away, haven't you? But, we'll go ask around about them and get back to you.", which is, I am sure you'll agree, a perfectly sensible answer, to a perfectly sensible question.

"Good, do that. Yes, I do get carried away, but know that you would make a lot of people happy if you killed them.", Kariah said. We ignored her subtle insisting on us killing those councilors.

"By the way, can I ask you about this big giant metal object falling from the sky? Has any of your customers mentioned that?"

"I can't say anything about that."

"Oh, OK. Sorry to have asked. I'll be off now, to find some information about your councilors."

Poof - there went the last vestiges of the illusion and immersion I had. A living world became a map, with dots, where you can boost your stats, after you've done something else, e.g. killed raoming monsters (i.e. roaming dots). The fact that it looks like shops, gold, creatures, etc. are in play, became just a bad illusion. A living, breathing city, like I felt Nakiridaani was, became just a cover for those dots. People became points where you get instructions on how to find the next puzzle, a next dot on the map, and in that puzzle there would be, among other things, some flying balls, pretending to be fireballs (flying completely pointlessly in a puzzle like setting), which you must not touch. And some other stat (XP) boosting dots, waiting patiently behind the next portcullis, which are there just so that you can boost your stats, and to protect some other stat boosting bit of computer code (pretending to be an item).

So, what started off as a very immersive game, with attention to detail, with some thought provoking elements (e.g. the Vatican being watched by the EU, and children protected from religion, because it's harmful), believable characters and conversations, etc. just transformed into a disappointment. And, I'm really sorry about that, because Albion seemed very promising.

However, I am still interested in the main story, and, most importantly, about how they explained the magical part in the end. If somebody would care to write a few sentences about that, I would be very grateful. (I can find walkthroughs, but no story line anywhere on the Internet.) I know that I won't be able to bring myself to play Albion further, but I do want to know this part. Thanks in advance!

[Bejelith]

Walking into other people's homes, level grinding and looting the enemies' corpses, is typical RPG gaming, although Albion's dialogues could be a bit better. Personally, I could immerse myself to the story, but maybe being 14 years old when I played it helped a lot with this. Hell, each people had its own language! It seemed very original to me back then.


Part of the game background required the player to read through entire pages of dialogue partially unrelated to the game's plot. That's right, ENTIRE PAGES. FULL OF TEXT. That's why I couldn't fully grasp the story either.
Only thing I understood, was that Albion's Celts were REAL Celts from OUR Earth, that somehow (through magic maybe) managed to travel to Albion. That, and the fact that the Iskai were the real indigenous inhabitants of Albion.

[bairloch]

having some trouble here. i've used the batch file and all the exe's and nothing seems to get albion running on dosbox. not sure what i'm doing wrong. can someone walk me through the basics? i can run Trazere and High Seas Trader and CnC and a bunch of other games, but not Albion. frustrating.

[DarthHelmet86]

I think this will solve your problem, run the setup.exe and change the top sound card to Sound Blaster Pro (I used New).

Let us know if that fixes the problem.

Originally Posted by Drake3

This seems like a great game, but I have run into a problem and have been unable to continue enjoying it. :angry:

SPOILER WARNING! (Only slightly...)

The problem occurs in the Iksai village whenever I get the third party member. After Akiir's murder, I am joined by Drirr to investigate the murder. We go talk to Frill to gain some information. Every time after the conversation with Frill is over, I am unable to move the party.

I have the same problem with Frill conversation. It is many solution on Abandonia forum, but for me any of it doesn't work. I run the game with plain Xp, with DosBOX 7.4, full ISO version, abandonia version, even demo version from Blue Byte website and still nothing. So I have very, very big request. Below is link to my save file. If anyone could load my save, talk with Frill, save game and send me back save file that'd be awesome. Thanks in advance.

http://hotfile.com/dl/91099521/cd692ff/SAVE.002.html

Sorry for my English, but i still learn.

[Zalewa]

Does anyone know if source code was ever released? I can't find anything relevant. Try typing "Albion" in Google and get flooded with sites about England or Fable...

I like this game very much and I've done some multiplatform (ie. something that runs both on Windows and Linux) computer game programming before. I'd like to try my skills in bringing a new life to this game, perhaps even "fix" the gameplay issues everyone has been complaining about.

Any idea who I might try to email in order to ask for the code?
Ubisoft?

[Astaldo711]

I was so used to just barging in people's homes (been playing RPG's for some 25 years or so) that when I encountered a locked door I didn't know what to do. Maybe it was in Morrowind? Don't remember. I was sure it was something great behind the door. I broke in and got into trouble. Nothing but a boring house...

[The Fifth Horseman]

Originally Posted by Zalewa

Any idea who I might try to email in order to ask for the code?
Ubisoft?

Blue Byte still has an official website, try that first.
Else you could try using some disassembly/decompilation tools (Results May Vary).

[Zalewa]

I've been toying around with the 'schnosm' cheat. It seems that the game has some unused content and a lot of test maps. Try teleporting to map index 210. It's a whole new continent filled with random jungle stuff.
Teleporting to map 211 gives you psychedelic graphics and a message about the main quest phase (I think) and then about Herras's status.

I was also curious when Rainer gets the second attack so I used ALT+F7 shortcut cheat to get him to the place where infinite Animals are spawned. Here's the result:

Oh, my...

Also, since Rainer is obviously the best character in the game, I used the ALT+F7 cheat to do this:

(the horror, the horror...)

Seriously now, regarding Rainer:
When I was younger I hated this character for being completely useless in combat but now I can see that he brings a lot to the plot and the story background.

And last, but not least:
If anyone ever wondered what happens if you ...

... kill the AI, here's the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5V-KcVcmXw

Game ending spoiler

[_r.u.s.s.]

wow man that's a lot of cool stuff