Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen

I played Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen for 100 hours. This game is horrible. Graphics suck, gameplay is ass, everything about the game is uninspired. And that's not even the half of it. The game uses egregious monetary practices and they don't even deliver on those empty promises. The game mods have player accounts that they will use to join certain guilds and give preferential treatment (including spawning bosses, player killing you and banning you for player killing their team mates.) There very much is a hidden whale system that almost nobody will openly admit to. There still isn't even a map. People will defend all of these choices but the fact is, they have about 50 players, with a 24 cap of like 100. And those players are split between realms and the PTR. If you do stick around anyways just to try the game out you will eventually realize this game is basically just a 5m server with people power-tripping and abusing GM and PM relationships, and there are no shortage of examples of that. Tl;dr - For only $40 you can beat yourself in the d-ck with a hammer.

This game has potential, the dev team however has potential to run it into the ground. For a game that has been in development for the past 12+ years, the team chose the past year trying to refine the combat system, most things the community had brought up issues with countless times. Making changes that logically make zero sense. The majority of this early access title just feels like an asset flip. It might seem fun with friends, but for a solo player or anyone new to the genre, this is a big skip. Quests are lost in mystery with looking to 3rd party forums to learn where to begin your quest or even what to do beyond starting the quest. You talk to someone who tells you to talk to another person, they could be mere feet away or on the other side of the world, the game doesn't tell you this, nor does it give you a map to even know where to go. Imagine, getting banned on the forum for saying the dev team treats the game like a private server, meanwhile this same team spawned rares for a particular guild, banned people for this guild, suspended 2/3 of a guild for "harassment" for following their OLD terms of wanting "fair competition" and I'm sure this review will be pushed to get removed, to silence me.

Do not buy this game. The entirety of this games staff supports griefing in the form of camp stealing. Camp stealing is when you find a group, go out into the world to grind, and another party shows up trying to kill the same mobs your party is trying to fight. Competitive Camping as they call it, isnt a thing. Its griefing lol. And theres nothing you can do about it. If higher lvl players want to come kill your mobs, they can. 0/10. Also, the griefers from the one server named their guild after the games title LOL. Theyre narcissist, and it really shows when you ask them to stop. Monsters and Memories early access comes out in June 2026. Thats going to be where youll want to spend your money

Ultra slow development by. Game looked better 8 years ago. They wiped everything they crowdfunded for and released this.. empty, buggy, lifeless, dead game. Huge shame what they did to people. This game isn't going to go anywhere so spend your money elsewhere.

Verdict: Not Recommended (at this time) I’ve followed Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen since the beginning because the original pitch and the team DNA felt like a spiritual successor to the MMOs I actually loved. But after a decade+ of development, the pattern is hard to ignore: the project keeps building around the core problems instead of solving them, and it’s costing the game the one thing it can’t live without — trust and population. 1) Early Access still feels like “foundation work,” not “finishing work” Early Access is presented as playing during active development while classes, races, and systems are still being added. That’s normal for EA in general — but Pantheon isn’t a new project. The game was announced in 2014 and only entered Early Access in late 2024. After that much time, many players reasonably expected the core pillars to be largely locked, not still in flux. 2) Core systems are still being reinvented — and resets are coming The studio has openly discussed major combat and progression updates planned well into the future, described as bringing systems closer to their “final envisioned form,” and these changes are paired with character resets. That’s the exact kind of foundational churn that destroys confidence. If players believe their time investment can be wiped or invalidated, they don’t stick around — especially in a group-dependent MMO where population stability is critical. 3) Roadmaps aren’t the same as a credible path to 1.0 Yes, there are roadmaps and frequent patch notes. But what’s missing is a confidence-building release plan: what systems are locked, what is no longer changing, what defines launch readiness, and what the team will stop doing to prevent scope creep. Right now it still reads like “more features are coming” instead of “the game is stabilizing.” 4) Monetization plus no-refund policies hurt trust Selling access during active development is one thing. Doing so alongside a strict no-refund policy is another. That approach may be legally valid, but it feels tone-deaf given the project’s long history of delays and shifting direction. It sends the message that players are expected to show maximum patience while receiving minimal consumer protection. My ask (simple and measurable): Lock the pillars before adding more “nice-to-haves.” Combat, progression, and class identity first. Publish a clear 1.0 readiness checklist — not vibes, not promises. Avoid time-invalidating design (resets and major reworks) unless absolutely unavoidable — and if unavoidable, over-communicate and compensate players. Put retention first. Population health isn’t a side issue in a social MMO — it’s the oxygen. I want Pantheon to succeed. But right now it feels like the team is trying to win with content updates while the foundation and trust are still moving. That’s not how you bring players back — that’s how you train them to wait another year.

Despite the changes in direction over the last decade, the premise of the game is sound, a return to an "old school" social MMO. The basis for this is there and functioning, but there are gaping holes in current content, features, systems and classes. The current levelling curve is quite linear outside of the starting areas, and a scarce player population to complete the content with makes playing group content more of a chore than it should be. Content *is* being added, albeit at such a slow rate that the population has largely given up playing and either given up completely, or taken an extended break until there is something tangible to come back for. The dev team is small but has big ambitions, which deserves some praise, but they are spending huge amounts of time and effort balancing / re-balancing and changing core mechanics before even implementing all their systems. This seems like an odd choice of where to spend time and effort and has alienated many players due to the aforementioned lack of content. The core gameplay cycle is in and working though, and for those than enjoyed Everquest and similar titles, there is fun to be had here (if you can find others to play with). At the moment though, this would be a hard game to recommend. If it continues to flesh out content / systems and stops rebalancing every other patch, it still has potential, and I really hope it will, but I'd wait until there's more of that before commiting as a new player.

I almost never post game reviews. Don't know why, I just don't. But... Don't buy this. I don't tend to regret too many game purchases I make, even when a project fails. But this one feels wrong in a lot of ways. It's interesting on the surface level but the further into it I got on Live servers, the more I realized this only looked like what I have been searching for (something that would bring back a classic MMO feel, like Everquest). I jumped into the PTR to try to give this more time and another chance and I can't really say I'm liking what I'm seeing there either. Apparently none of it is up for discussion. If I don't like it "I should just STFU and go play something else". So that's what I'm going to do.

the PTR have degraded the game to a generic slop mmo, anything that made the game stand out ,castbars /class combat mechanics have been removed and replaced, with the same generic system seen past 20 years+ of failed WOW clones lack of imagination, press key/cast time/spell fires, making all casters play basicly the same(im almost amazed that the wizard still have the 3 elemetal focuses to pay attention to, for not causing backlash from casting) the limited castbar system is now just 1-12 no more tecniq/utillity/spells just 1 bar for spells and buffs/utillities (the tecniqs seems to be wiped from the game entirely) absolutte disapointment how dumbed down it have become since STEAM EA launch. Especially when you add the weird performance issues, where the game freezes every 10-15 seconds for 1 to 3 seconds in some spots of the map (think its something with the tiles some areas of Wild ends are completely unplayable to be in ,where its happens more often and can take longer to unfreeze)