Albion

Albion is a science fiction RPG that was developed and published by Blue Byte in 1995 for DOS.

Interestingly, the team that created the games Amberstar and Ambermoon created this game in a move from Thalion to Blue Byte. It is somewhat intended to be a sequel of sorts to the Amber games.

The titular Albion is a newly discovered planet. You are part of a government force that wants to explore this new world and deplete all of its resources, as we humans like to do. Taking control of a pilot named Tom, your task is scouting out the planet and figuring out what the atmosphere is like. During this routine run, your ship malfunctions and you crash land on the planet. Waking up you find that things are not as they were made out to be. Like any RPG Tom can create a party (of up to 6) to explore with. Combat is turn-based and allows you and your party to gain XP to level up. Experience can also be obtained by solving puzzles throughout the world. Like Ambermoon, Albion uses a top-down view for the exploration of the world, and a 3D view inside the dungeons. The game’s storyline is somewhat linear but still allows for extensive exploration and interesting character interactions. While the story itself is based around Tom’s need to tell his comrades not to plunder Albion, you will have plenty of gameplay time to get there.

Albion flew under the radar a bit when it was released. It broke a lot of the rules of RPGs at the time and pushed boundaries. This cult classic takes a more serious approach with its story and ticks up the difficulty a bit. If you missed this one at the time it came out, now is your chance to take her for a spin.