Game News Albion Now Available on GOG

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Albion; Blue Byte; Ubisoft

The unique 1995 RPG Albion, particularly beloved by German RPG fans, is now finally available on GOG courtesy of Ubisoft.

It is the year 2227, and the gigantic interstellar factory ship, Toronto, cruises toward a lifeless planet endowed with a wealth of minerals. While studying the planet in his shuttlecraft, the pilot, Tom Driscoll, unavoidably crash lands. Against all expectations, he survives to discover his craft has landed in a world rich in flora and fauna, and inhabited by intelligent beings. How could the data on the planet of Albion have been so wrong?

Take on the role of Tom Driscoll and explore the extensive world of Albion and its endless surprises in this turn-based, tactical RPG. Experience its vast beauty and strange cultures… but beware of its many hidden dangers! You, and the companions you acquire on your journey, will experience countless adventures together and your resourcefulness, skills of negotiation and ability to deal with numerous inhabitants will be repeatedly put to the test. But most importantly, your resolve in battle will determine not only your own fate, but that of the entire world.

• Role-playing adventure with an engaging storyline and interactive dialogue
• Turn-based, tactical combat
• User-friendly and intuitive interface and navigation
• Expansive and captivating game-world

There is no official launch trailer or anything so I will just embed this episode of Matt Chat instead:

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Grab the game here.

Aside from that, the post-apoc sim Archimedean Dynasty is now available on GOG as well.

 

[SausageInYourFace]

Hallelujah!

 

[getter77]

This is definitely a welcome addition---such a classic.

 

[Azalin]

Aside from that, the post-apoc sim Archimedean Dynasty is now available on GOG as well.

Don't forget Anno 1602 that was released along them

 

[Outlander]

Archimedean Dynasty is now available on GOG as well.

spekkio!!!

 

[spekkio]

^

 

[Baron Dupek]

Now that's the AAA games I can appreciate.

 

[Scroo]

That's a really great addition. Buy it, everyone.

 

[cvv]

I remember playing it at around the launch and without internet or walkthroughs it seemed to go on for fucking forever. Very long playtime, some challenging puzzles, a strong adventure element, very fun tactical combat, that's what I remember.

Never gave it a second try so it's about time methinks.

EDIT: Oh also - Albion was the first videogame ever that I didn't pirate. The box sat proudly on my shelf for many many years.

 

[Raapys]

Very overrated. P.much only the first portion is decent.

 

[MicoSelva]

Fuck yes. Worth it for the unique experience, even if the later part of the game is lacking somewhat.

 

[MurkyShadow]

That was the time when I was still venturing to our local small town mall, looking at games in the shelves,
and decide to buy just from the premises on the box. No internet, no magazines. Albion was one of the
lucky choices. I remember that I didn't what the hell was going on, but that it hooked me in.

 

[HiddenX]

One of my all-time favorites - let's hope we get Amberstar and Ambermoon as well.

 

[mindx2]

That was the time when I was still venturing to our local small town mall, looking at games in the shelves,
and decide to buy just from the premises on the box.

Ahhhh, the good old days....

 

[Grotesque]

Archimedean Dynasty is one of the best fucking games out there!

 

[Morality Games]

Ubisoft owns Albion? Ugh.

 

[Lady_Error]

I wonder why GOG doesn't emulate Amiga games like Ambermoon as they do with DOS games.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Mixed feelings on this one.

Predominantly because this game has long loomed its shadow over my marriage. My wife (who is German) has been trying to get me to play this since we met. It's one of the only RPGs she's ever even played (much less finished) and to hear her tell it, it was some major cultural touchstone for an entire generation of nerdy Germans, but... I just remember getting so horrifically bored by it about 10 hours in when I played it two decades ago. I've been using its lack of availability via digital distribution as an excuse against her constant exhortations to stop playing Xulima/MMX/Dragonfall/NEO:Scav/Conquistador/AoW3/SitS/Hearthstone and play Albion instead.

And I was just getting ready to start Blackguards.

Sigh.

 

[karnak]

I wonder why GOG doesn't emulate Amiga games like Ambermoon as they do with DOS games.

Copyright reasons.
GOG would have to sign rights with the emulation software guys (I think DosBox is free so it doesn't apply).
And I think there are even worse copyright stuff associated with Commodore hardware (as bizarre as it may sound)

Basically it's not as simple as it may seem.

EDIT: the Cinemaware guys manage to sell their old games in emulation format. If Starbyte (or other devs) decided to sell their old Amiga games on emulators, maybe it wouldn't prove so difficult. I'd love to play Amiga RPGs like Black Crypt and Perihelion: Prophecy.

 

[KickAss]

Avatar Albion had a nice start, but i gave up on the 2nd island when i realized how much I needed to grind to continue...

 

[NotAGolfer]

Mixed feelings on this one.

Predominantly because this game has long loomed its shadow over my marriage. My wife (who is German) has been trying to get me to play this since we met. It's one of the only RPGs she's ever even played (much less finished) and to hear her tell it, it was some major cultural touchstone for an entire generation of nerdy Germans, but... I just remember getting so horrifically bored by it about 10 hours in when I played it two decades ago. I've been using its lack of availability via digital distribution as an excuse against her constant exhortations to stop playing Xulima/MMX/Dragonfall/NEO:Scav/Conquistador/AoW3/SitS/Hearthstone and play Albion instead.

And I was just getting ready to start Blackguards.

Sigh.

Huh? Cultural touchstone?
It has a very nice premise and a great start but I was bored out of my mind when I reached the Celtic continent. So much hiking around, they might have outdone Bethesda on that aspect.

Will try it again sometime though, combat was retardedly easy (wasn't this another one of those games where the freeze spell is an instawin? in any case there was no tactical depth to the combat) and the wilderness boring, but when there was something to discover it was nice indeed.

 

[Latro]

i dunno whether to be happy albion's on gog, or sad that ubisoft owns it

 

[SCO]

Gog is pretty dog shit for dos games. They pack their games in obtuse ways. Just the other day i 'tried' their version of ultima underworld. What did i find? The cd version in a iso with a weird overlay thing. Also the cd version *had no installer to change sound*. I had to copy it over from another install i had to actually change it. Another game i tried had this weird and ugly 'dosbox configurator' lol.

Meanwhile i'm organizing all of my games with a minimal dosbox.conf in each dir that layers off the main one and about to create a union filesystem that layers a squashfs (a fast compressed read only archive) with the configured originals and a writable dir (for saves and configs). I hope it works fast in 40+ gb (although you could do it individually for each game dir too). This is what is possible today, not that you'd know it with those installers.

Lusers ruin everything man

 

[Excidium II]

Gog is pretty dog shit for dos games. They pack their games in obtuse ways. Just the other day i 'tried' their version of ultima underworld. What did i find? The cd version in a iso with a weird overlay thing. Also the cd version *had no installer to change sound*. I had to copy it over from another install i had to actually change it. Another game i tried had this weird and ugly 'dosbox configurator' lol.

Had the same experience, think I bitched about it here before. From what I remember they installed the fan patch to have midi music tracks instead of emulating it properly...I also had an issue with walking having a piano sound effect and sounds in general being scrambled like things bouncing on the walls making a silly noise, but that part I guess they fixed since then

 

[JudasIscariot]

Mixed feelings on this one.

Predominantly because this game has long loomed its shadow over my marriage. My wife (who is German) has been trying to get me to play this since we met. It's one of the only RPGs she's ever even played (much less finished) and to hear her tell it, it was some major cultural touchstone for an entire generation of nerdy Germans, but... I just remember getting so horrifically bored by it about 10 hours in when I played it two decades ago. I've been using its lack of availability via digital distribution as an excuse against her constant exhortations to stop playing Xulima/MMX/Dragonfall/NEO:Scav/Conquistador/AoW3/SitS/Hearthstone and play Albion instead.

And I was just getting ready to start Blackguards.

Sigh.

Show your wife that you love her and play some Albion, it has a German version so she can play along and translate if you don't know any German

I think one of the reasons Germans remember it fondly is that because it was made by a German developer and maybe because it was something other than Das Schwarze Auge and Gothic? I don't know but one of my German friends who streams on our twitch channel almost died of happiness upon finding out that Albion got released :D