Towards The Pantheon is a jRPG-styled indie game that released on Steam and itch.io on May 16th. Visually, it looks like a cross between Earthbound and Final Fantasy IV, while the gameplay diverges from the more vanilla approaches of those games to create more of a Cosmic Star Heroine setup where you’re trying to balance effectively attacking and restoring the resource pool that allows those attacks in the first place. There are also talking cat people and other quirky elements that are vaguely reminiscent of Undertale, though they appear to be a more fundamental part of the world rather than simply being present as meme bait. Still, all of those games that I’m comparing Towards The Pantheon to are great, and while I haven’t played very far into it yet, it’s been an undeniably pleasant trip thus far.
Where does she keep all of these weapons?
My party currently consists of two characters—namely, the mysteriously mute main character Freyja and a cat named Bam. Freyja can attack with either a sword, bow, or axe, with these attacks costing 1, 3, and 5 SP, respectively, and her SP pool regenerates slightly each turn. Since these attacks seem to break down into weak/medium/strong categories, this forces you to consider the timing of attacks and adds a layer of strategy. Bam, meanwhile, functions as more of a healer. While he doesn’t regenerate his EP resource every turn, he can rest to refill it somewhat.
HP and SP/EP aren’t replenished between battles unless you level up, so finishing off an enemy with a strong attack can potentially force you to open up with a weaker attack in your next fight. Fortunately, there are frequent save points that restore your HP and SP/EP, and these serve a dual purpose; not only do they allow you to save the game, but they also frequently provide you with a chance to make camp and watch a short campfire scene with dialogue between characters. This is a nice touch that goes a long way toward making game progression feel like a bona fide journey.
You may have noticed in that last video that encounters are handled uniquely among games of this style. Rather than relying on random battles or roaming monsters, there are battle icons that randomly pop in and out of existence as you wander around. This is slow enough that you can avoid them and make it through potentially dangerous areas without getting into a single fight, but fast enough that doing so requires a great deal of care. Boss fights appear to be handled in a similar way, with the first boss being an unavoidable line of stationary icons blocking off the next area.
Another thing to note is how leveling is handled—this plays out similarly to Final Fantasy X’s sphere grid or Final Fantasy XIII’s crystarium (only, you know, not awful) where you spend points to improve stats and learn new abilities. Right now I’ve put some points into raising Freyja’s maximum SP as well as how many she regenerates per turn, which is proving pretty handy to have. It’ll be interesting to see how much of a difference this makes and whether or not it’ll be possible to fill out the entire tree by the end without grinding. Speaking of which, I haven’t felt the need to grind levels yet, which is nice. It remains to be seen if grinding will become a thing later, though.
Puzzles and party member abilities
Once Bam joins up, the dungeon-type areas start including puzzles. Right now they’re mostly of the “find a crank to open a door” and “push blocks around to fill in some holes in the ground” variety, but it adds a nice bit of variance regardless. This often requires switching between the active party member to use their unique skill (which is reminiscent of Lufia: The Ruins of Lore and probably some more obvious examples that I’m drawing a blank on), with Freyja being strong enough to push blocks and mine carts around, while Bam is small and can fit the party into holes.
Smooth sailing thus far
The only negatives I can point to at the moment are incredibly minor things such as the camera occasionally freaking out when you stand in specific spots and the descriptive text for one or two objects (such as locked drawers) lacking the period that you get when trying to open a locked door. We’re talking things that barely register as a nuisance, which speaks to how good Towards The Pantheon is early on. There’s still plenty of game to go, but I definitely have a good feeling about it.
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