Not everything Towards The Pantheon offers with its story is brilliant however. Notes are strewn throughout the world in an attempt to pad out the story, and despite myself being interested to learn more of the world, they weren’t at all compelling and were overall uninteresting. The poor ending of the story was also a sour note, leaving me particularly upset that some aspects of the narrative felt unanswered. But while the story overall isn’t stellar, the relationships I formed with the characters left me impressed, and when the narrative drew to a close, I was sad to see them go.

As Freyja and friends make their way towards the Pantheon they will have to battle with an array of enemies. When roaming through the overworld, you’ll be greeted by a bunch of sword and shield icons, that pop up and litter the environment. Interacting with these will result in combat, leading to battles you’d expect from a turn-based RPG. Each character has their own distinct battle stats and mechanics however, which spices up the turn-based strategy somewhat. For example, Phenez the Ghost uses Necro Points (NP), which acts as both his attack bar and health bar, while Frejya as a human has the stereotypical RPG setup of Health Points and Special Points, where the special points are used for attacks. The difference in how each character plays is a novel concept ends up being be rather interesting. Battles are particularly fast paced and are accompanied by a nostalgia-evoking soundtrack that continues to impress outside of battles in the overworld. The combat on display in Towards The Pantheon doesn’t reinvent the nature of turn-based battles, but the difference in how each character plays leads to more than just spamming attack after attack until the enemies fall.