Masters of Albion

Peter Molyneux does his greatest hits, mixing god sim, business sim, and third-person adventure into a charming, appealingly tactile - if slightly awkward - whole.

Despite my gripes and the moments of frustration during my first ten hours, I still find the game fun to play. I want to see how this map expands and how my settlements might look once these systems are finally humming in sync. [Early Access Impressions]

When it stumbles, it falls flat on its face, but when Masters of Albion succeeds, it reminds you why Molyneux is still in the business after all this time. It has a quality to it that lets you overlook a lot of its most glaring flaws, a sense of humour that reminds you of your first time playing Fable, and a unique, ambitious approach to a genre we don't see enough of these days (aside from the other recently released god game Sintopia). Masters of Albion is not a triumph. It won't knock Fable down to become Molyneux's new legacy-defining game, but it certainly leaves its impression. [Early Access Score = 60

Quotation forthcoming.

At the start of its early access run, Masters of Albion shows no signs of reinventing the god simulator genre – because it doesn’t even come close to that subgenre; it merely pretends id does. It’s just a run-of-the-mill game: colourful and pretty, with an exciting building system and a story you can play through. And that’s about it, because the rest is either in its infancy or simply not very interesting.