Saturday, July 4, 2015

Hands-on preview of upcoming cross-platform MMORPG Albion Online on Android

Published on Friday, 03 July 2015 14:19
Written by AndrewH

A couple of days ago we reported on the upcoming cross-platform MMORPG Albion Online and the fact that the Summer Alpha had started. This is the second testing phase for this game this year, with the first being back in January/February this year. If you currently own an Epic or Legendary Fonuder's Pack, even if you purchase one right now, you can access this Summer Alpha phase.

For those of you not familiar with Albion Online, this is an open world sandbox MMORPG with a player driven economy as well. Players can essentially do whatever they want to do, and be whatever class build they want to be. Since there is no class structure in this game, you can switch between a mage and a warrior build, a ranger or rogue, or a hybrid build at any time. Your abilities and spells come from the equipment you are using at that time. Crafting new gear will allow you to change the abilities you're using.

Players can either run through this game solo or with a guild. You can either do lots of questing, or decide to be a gatherer of materials, or maybe an auction professional, or a maker of rare equipment. While there are plenty of towns to handle all your needs, players can set up their own houses in select regions. Not satisfied with just a house that you furnished yourself? You can build an entire town instead if you want. Like we said, you can pretty much do whatever you want in this game.

You start off with a short couple of quests that get you familiar with how the game works and the basic commands. These also get you your first set of equipment. After that you are basically sent out into the world to do you as you see fit. The main town you'll be dealing with during the beginning is Tanner Brook. You'll be able to craft slightly higher gear, get tools, refine raw materials, and even get your first horse there. However, you can travel to any other town by simply following the paths out of Tanner Brook, there's no 'level requirement' type of thing. Mind you, enemies do get harder in different areas so you want to be properly equipped. Also keep in mind that green areas are PvP free while the red areas are free-for-all.

The user interface for the Android version of this game is pretty much identical to the PC version. What's really interesting about the mobile version is that it is exactly the same as the PC one. The UI scales to your Android device of course, but content-wise, it's the same. In fact you play on the same server as PC players. Since the controls for PC are Diable-style, by that we mean you're clicking to move your character and pressing keys to cast abilities, this translates over to mobile by being able to just tap everything on your screen to produce the same effect. I have a feeling that syncing up a bluetooth mouse and keyboard to your Android device will let you play the game just as though you were playing it on the PC control-wise, although I haven't checked that out just yet.

The best way to describe the mobile version of Albion Online is that the developer took the PC client and stuffed it into an APK file while adding touch controls. There's no difference in visuals or content at all. Everything is cross-platform compatible. Logging into your account on your Android device will let you play with your character from the PC version and vise versa. Albion Online is a fun game to play on PC so having the ability to play this game in full on your Android device is a good thing indeed.

For those of you having wanted a full PC MMORPG for your Android device with cross-platform support, Albion Online matches all of that criteria. I did experience some lag in the game, which appeared to be regarding the rendering of visuals, but that is to be expected when playing an Alpha and the lag isn't happening often. Once this game is fully optimized for mobile, it'll be quite good. We will be posting an update once we've gotten further into the game than the two days we've been playing since the Alpha started, especially when get get into buying and building on our own land.

If you're in the alpha, or plan on playing, we are thinking about forming a guild with people who come here to DroidGamers. Of course that's if we have enough interest. Maybe a merchant guild with a guard? Run the whole economy! Seriously though, feel free to look us up in-game (my character is ExtremeT) and come join us. We'll also be streaming this next week on Twitch, so stay tuned!

Official Website: Albion Online

AndrewH
AndrewH - Andrew is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of DroidGamers. Having been a hardcore PC and console gamer all his life, this passion is now applied to Android gaming and writing about it. When not playing or writing about Android games, he spends his time with is wife and son.
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