good game

An enjoyable JRPG experience that had great music, memorable characters, and an interesting plot. It was 10 hours in length, which I don't think was long enough for all of the story or character development that the game contains, especially with how deep the party member friendships are shown to be after meeting early in-game. Additionally, I felt the dark tone change, reminiscent of the prologue/demo chapter, was a jarring switch into horror that would have benefited from having some time built up to it. All of this said, I still enjoyed it, and am glad that I played it! 3/5.

⠀

The pixel art is simple but beautiful! good soundtrack. It helped me learn some pixel art detailed. God bless the developer and his family.

i really enjoyed this.

Towards the Pantheon is a game we got from the developer...4 years ago.

It sat in the back of my steam library after I completely overlooked its existence and then... I found it. I am so glad I did.

While this game has flaws, as most do, they're so far and in-between that they're easily overlooked for one of the cutest, unexpectedly heartfelt, sometimes creepy and enjoyable stories I have ever encountered. The combat is diverse and fun, the dungeons never overstay their welcome and the main characters are memorable. I'm blessed to have played this and encourage you to do the same.

I may have forgotten this game until recently, but I am so happy that I found it.

A while back I replayed Toward The Pantheon: Escaping Eternity for my Free Highlights series(Which is still on Hiatus) and thought that while it didn’t have any real threats, it had a tense atmosphere that made me scared just being in that place. But since it was a prequel for the game the dev was really developing, I thought I’ll check if the guy finished his game yet and if you expecting a horror/adventure game, prepare to be disappointed.

Story:

The Sworn Light is invading the land and Frejya must travel to the Pantheon, along with any friends she meets and defeat the bad guy.

That’s it. That’s the whole plot. I’m might spoiler some stuff but there isn’t much to spoil. Sure there’s lore but that just flew over my head. The most interesting thing about this world is that medieval humans, talking cats, cyborgs and ghosts live in the same world together.

One thing that’s cool is that the Sworn Light are everywhere. You see them everywhere and more and more will appear as the story goes on and it’s pretty intimidating. At first they were intimidating with there presence but after a while with no direct confront ions with them and all of them just saying to go away made me stop talking to them and be annoyed when they showed up. And the big bad being just another generic solider felt very underwhelming. And the ending felt underwhelming with the final boss and they a short happily ever after epilogue. You know I don’t think we ever learn what the Sworn Light even are. Are humans? Zombies? Eldritch horrors?

I could comment on the mini arcs that feed into the main plot, themes or characters but there doesn’t seem to be any. It’s mainly a series of roadblocks that require to take a detour to progress the plot like finding a legendary cat gem or finding 5 keys to enter the haunted house from the prequel. There was a cyborg city that was covered in smog but it somehow sorts itself out.

So the plot is barebones and the villains are just there and there are no side stories or arcs so is there anything good I can say about the story? Yes. The characters. Sure, we have the silent protagonist but the devs had the smart idea of confirming she is mute to have her character portrait emote that you know how she feels even it’s just her for the first hour of gameplay. Shame they ruined it by having her speak during the final battle. I know it was mentioned in the beginning that she might speak some day but it feels unneeded. Pleases correct me if I’m wrong but I like the idea of a character having a disability and not being lesser for it. I think Avatar did that years ago with a blind girl and Family Guy has Joe in his wheelchair.

The other characters are good too. Sure, they don’t have arcs but I enjoy it when they just chat about whats going or just talk about themselves. Every time I see a save point, I knew we were going to have another campfire and some more time getting to know them like the adventures Bam and his brother got into or Mishama not getting as a freak for not replacing their heart or Phenez being all philosophical and not talking about why he was in that mansion in the prequel. Spoiler I guess. Those campfires really were the highlight of the story.

Gameplay:

If you came to this hoping for tense horror or just a good adventure game, then I’m sorry to day that this is a very basic RPG. Now I see what they were trying to do with the combat. Each character has they own cost system to perform a skill like Freya has stamina that recovers after every turn. Bam has MP for magic and healing that he can recover with a nap or use catnip for infinite magic for a few turns. Mishma can use CPU(health) for single attack or include some GPU(MP) to use a group attack and can use a battery to recover both. Although she those have a recover move to get more GPU but that stuns her so it’s easier to just use the battery. And Phenez only has health to spend so most likely to die a lot with how late you get him.

And to make things interesting, you have no equipment. Aside from some defense upgrades and new attack for Frejya, the only way to have a stat increase is to level up which would give you a skill tree that’s mainly filled health and skill upgrades and at least one attack upgrade with a few accuracy buffs and other skills on it. Or with items that increase health like the yellow berries or attack like the protein powder. Or just find little sparkles on the over world that increase health. And with all that money not being used for equipment, you can spend on items to help stay alive in combat.

So we got a basic combat system and a decent idea for a level system. Now we get to the mixed side of things as there are two things that made engaged with the combat. The first is that saving recovers all your health. But a lot of games do that these days so that’s nothing new. The second is that all encounters pop up as icons on the over world so it’s possible to avoid all encounters except for bosses. So with recovery at save points and avoidable encounters, combat becomes an annoyance you only do near save points to grind a few fights. Now this can be helped with some boss fights that really get you thinking about what to use but it comes down to “Who has the bigger numbers”.

So combat is basic and unengaging. What’s next? There’s sidequest. But those are just finding random items that do nothing and giving them to random people in towns. There were the dungeons but only two stood out. One was a dark forest when you’re on the hunt for the evil cat wizard and go through a maze and looking for the odd path. The other was the haunted house. That was the highlight in the game but it’s all the way at the end.

What other things to talk about? There’s a card system which I never used.The fast travel system is really good and adorable. Each character has there own overworld skill like Bam can go through small holes, Mishma can hack certain doors, Phenez can turn invisible and Freja has the amazing skill to climb ladders. There’s also New Game + which is a plus for any RPG.

Presentation:

Music is just there. It’s not bad but I struggle to remember any of it. Overworld graphic are simple but there’s a cute charm to them I like. But the art work for the character portraits and the campfire scene looks really good.

I’ll love to end on that note but the game missed out on a opportunity to make the card enjoyable even if they don’t use the cards in battle. When a game has some kind of collectable cards, I like the collect them. I think it started with LEGO Island 2 for the Gameboy Color. But the cards are just items in a inventory instead of actually cards you can look at. Sure there’s lore but the lore isn’t that interesting. So instead of something pretty to look at and collect, it’s just something else to gather dust in my inventory.

Verdict:

If there’s one to describe to this game, it’s basic. Basic story. Basic gameplay. It’s a fine time but you aren’t missing anything.

6/10

Overall, Towards the Pantheon was a nice, quick turn-based RPG at an affordable price. The overall plot is fairly standard, but the numerous smaller moments of interaction between the main cast are fun. The overworld art style and some psychological/horror-lite elements present in the game reminded me a little of Earthbound (Mother 2). Gameplay is on the easier side; the only time I died was early on in my first playthrough, before gaining any other companions. Once you start building up the party, you'll be crushing most enemies: As one example I noticed, status effect attacks seem practically guaranteed. I was able to poison and paralyze most enemies--including the final boss--with no issue. Each of the party members play a bit differently, which makes combat and resource management more interesting. I finished in about 10 hours, while taking my time and trying to find everything.

The game includes a New Game+ feature, but I'm unsure how much it changes the game. I was able to determine that New Game+ allows access to a few small areas in the world containing some additional items and what seem to be passwords to activate different modes for the game. I wasn't able to get those codes to work, though; not sure if it was a problem on my end or the game's.

If you're looking for a little RPG pick-me-up and don't mind it being not too revolutionary or jaw-dropping, it's a decent pick. Considering checking it out, especially if you're looking for something that won't hit your backlog too hard.

I'll start out by saying that the game is amazing. There were a couple of minor glitches (one sprite got stuck on screen, following me onto every new map until I restarted the game. One exit led to the wrong place (in one of the forests, not THAT place)), but nothing major at all.

It's no 10+ hour game though, I will say that. My end time was 5h22min, granted I didn't do all side quests (think I missed half?), but I doubt doing all the side quests would double the time it took. :)

Still, the game is amazing, and if you got a day to spare, why not give this a go? It was loads of fun, great writing, mostly good combat, fun exploration, and decent puzzles. Basically everything you could want from an RPG. Go play it!

Lovely game, totally deserves more <3