Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen Reviews

I have some time in this game and that this is all the company has after a decade of development is shameful. The first 10 or so levels are fun, but there's little substance beyond that. Several questionable design decisions, such as chevron mobs, plague even the early game. If Brad had never passed, I genuinely don't think this game would have ever released, but with his passing the company also lost their vision for this game. The company's community managers and public communications are hostile towards the player base as well. Their discord is awash with players raising concerns and issues in a polite and professional manner only to be met with sarcasm and the equivalent of "this game isn't for you" from the devs. The incompetence and unprofessionalism on display should keep anyone away. If the bard class is ever implemented I'll come back to try it and see if there has been any meaningful progress on the game or positive changes in company management, especially with regards to community interactions. Until then, run from anything Visionary Realms produces.

at first it will seem like a return to old everquest but the nostalgia will fade quickly. the servers are basicaly dead. dont let strom fool you, its the same 100 players re rolling alts. theres no content after late 20's other than ashbringer stuff. makes it very difficult to level past 30. especialy because you will notice your fighting the same mobs over and over. orcs in orc valley drop thornsteel weapons and mediocre gear, then the knighwolfs in eastern plains higher lvl also drop thornsteel weapons and different armor but similiar to the orc drop. for a higher lvl mob you would expect something different but no. then theres hanggore the tundra orcs drop better armor but the frost is a pain and again your killing the same mobs as orc valley just higher lvl. all ocrs are the same class types theres no variety of mobs. there are no resources in eastern or silent plains. causing a bottle neck for crafting beyond tier 2. theres plenty of newbie resources in thron and avp but no one needs those. this game has a long way to go. they said stats are important yet they dont have a decent formula. example paladin class one would assume charisma and wisdom would be good stats but nah, you need dex mostly. shamens need wisdom charisma intelligence and constition lol try building around the need for 4 primary stats.

Great game ruined bye mindless devs who do not listen to people on discord or here.. there a buncha feckless fools who continue to destroy game thru idiotic changes no one wants.. instead of finishing anything.. when u comment they ban comments on discord buncha total fools ruining a great game.. do not buy till devs replaced

Been playing for the last few months since EA launch. Somehow it’s getting worse with each new patch. Can’t recommend it

tl,dr: game idea good, developers bad, current state of game bad, noone playing Now why would someone with over 1100 hours in a game write a review saying "don't buy this"? It's very simple: I bought it very early when EA started and had a blast playing it at that time. I had a static group that played every day and progressed to the end game. But times have changed: If you buy it right now, you will play until like lvl10 to 15 mostly solo and think "wow, nice game, the climbing mechanic is a great addition too to mmorpgs" and then you will start noticing 3 things: a) you won't be able to find a group because this game has like an average of 500 players online across all levels and all SERVERS and is bleeding 20% or more of its population every month (more about that later). Some servers are so dead you have NO ONE in the lfg tool for DAYS. b) you will start to notice that the starting content is over and the other content is like 1 or 2 camps per level range. Those are either camped by a static group (or a single guy boxing several accounts) which means even if you had a group you had nowhere to level. c) Reading patch messages for a few weeks will make you think "wtf are they doing?" A little bit of background: This game has been in development for like 10 years now. In 2019 Brad McQuaid died who was lead developer for this and key designer for EQ before. He planned this as a new, modern EQ. But the new lead/team don't really know what they are doing: Stuff like "hit rating is now based on Constitution" (yes! That's NOT a joke, it REALLY is currently based on constitution!) or reworking the same system again and again and again. Since the start of EA jewelry for example was reworked 5 times. Stats on all items have changed several times with the developers stating they want to spread stats across the board... with stuff like necromancers requiring dexterity for some of their spells now. Lots of people are royally pissed atm because you can't really plan your gear at all and even stuff you are currently using becomes worthless from time to time (well, hello int-caster-only ring with NO INT on it!) These reworks happen constantly, they happen partially across several patches which leads to half working systems making the game nigh unplayable from time to time and while some systems have the n-th rework now, some stuff gets no love at all. Example? Summoner class... is basically unchanged since EA start at the end of the last year, except for 3 minor nerfs. Even though the class has glaring bugs like in fights with multiple mobs the pets just stare at the corpse of the first mob if you don't manually retarget. Pets warping through the floor or ceiling, a whole spellline that does NOTHING (literally!) except consume resources when you click the spell. Or another example: Enchanters STILL don't have their charm ability. Official reason it wasn't added yet (months ago!): NPCs might start fighting amongst themselves when it wears off... no updates since then (that's like half a year!). And this is where the player loss is coming from. The developers ask for feedback, but then do whatever they like anyway. The official discord has turned into a castle of white knights meanwhile, since everyone that tried to change something for the better just left after getting ignored for months. Check Steam Charts... like 20%-30% of the player base gone... EVERY. SINGLE. MONTH. (And constantly having to regear because of the rework of the rework didn't help either or, while people are complaining about no content being added and bugs existing for far too long, you have the devs release articles about "the crafting stations have new graphics now") Financing the whole thing was a nightmare with a backer program running for years through pre-alpha and alpha. The smallest packages that let you play for like a day every month were 250$+. I guess they ran out of people willing to hand them money, so they had to release it into EA in the current state to get some more $$$. Oh and they had the engine changed several times, starting with their own engine, ditching that several years ago for Unity 5, atm it is at Unity 6. Content is added very slowly, like a single dungeon every few months. Stuff that's added is usually bugged and fixed a week (or several) later. All the time while this is happening they are reworking stuff that was already working or has been reworked already. I have to say that several times, since it goes on and on and usually makes stuff worse or changes it just to be different. Graphics don't get updated either (except for the crafting stations, lol!)... your lvl 40 gear looks exactly like the lvl5 beggar gear. If you are desperately waiting for a "new EQ" there will be better alternatives soon. This project isn't dead yet, but don't waste your money on an EA that is just a bumpy ride through fail-city. If they manage to find back to their roots (as an EQ-like) they could still make it, but as it is looking currently and especially with the changes they keep making, it is unlikely this is ever going to release.

I should have known not to trust the devs when i saw all the negative reviews of this game. Well they did it again, patched with nothing that people wanted and actively killed things that were working. The game has some cool stuff but does not feel rewarding or fun.

this game is dead. Sorry guys, we all hoped and waited for this to turn into what we were wishing for. There's not even 1k players playing on the reg anymore. Most of everyone played til 30's and enjoyed what they could from this game. Not a whole lot of content for the 40's. Hell, when i was playing some of the classes still didn't even have their 30-40 spells implemented. Since EA release they've released druids, 2 dungeons, pvp, and focused on balancing. There's just not enough content or players to recommend this game. Especially after what like 10 years of development? Might come back and play if this game fully releases

i want to love this game so badly but i feel as if it's too big for its britches there isn't enough to do and updates are too scarce and small. if this game was what it is on paper, then it would be absolutely incredible. but it just isn't there yet, and truthfully i doubt it ever will be

This game is never reaching its potential, its a huge mess of a project. Go play something else, this is never getting close to being in a finished state.

Played for months on release, first few weeks were a weird punishing kind of fun. Lots of deaths/corpse runs back to the goblin caves. Followed up with lots of re clearing to get back to corpse since only a handful of classes/players can/will corpse summon without charging arm and a leg. This might have changed, its hard to say, as i tried to log back in recently to find a completely dead server on a game that forces group content. Poking around i see they have had a huge drop in players since i stopped in Feb to now, July, which is unfortunate. You would expect a loss of some of the player base. Not 95%. This is what happens when the content updates arent very meaningful, still no bard?!? more level 40 content? how many players actually made it to 40 vs those stuck around 20-25? So my only choice is to switch to a new server, lose the hundreds of hours ive already spent on a character? Ok its EA fine and i got no life, logged on the highest pop server to find no one in LFG/chat lower than 25-28. Welllllll that sucks. So i have to play alone, 1-25, on a game with limited solo content, very little to no actual story/lore driven background? I suppose its up to me to make my own story? i will be Boars Bane by the time im done! Since you know not much to solo kill but some boars, and bears, oh cant forget the random cat or snake! I will check it out again if i ever see they get out of this hole, re do some of the leveling/solo content, and add some actual quests, with detailed story of the land so im not running around wondering why its called Rise of the Fallen, who fell? who is rising? am i the fallen for all the times i died to bears and geckos?