Pantheon vs Ashes of Creation

I have been playing both Pantheon and Ashes of Creation and thought I would give some thoughts/comparisons.

I will first start by saying I am very optimistic on both of these projects. Both seem to have really found it's footing and are making great progress.

Overall Impressions

Pantheon and Ashes are similar but both radically different games. Pantheon is far more immersive and chill. Ashes is extremely intricate, but is also extremely competitive.

For me it really depends on the mood, but currently I am enjoying Pantheon more. It feels far less "meta" and I genuinely enjoy wandering around and getting lost in the game.

Ashes currently feels small because the population is very high for the space available. Finding groups for anything "non-meta" is extremely difficult and pushing levels by maximizing XP/hour is a thing.

Having said that, the social intricacies in Ashes is certainly a thing and there is plenty of drama to keep folks entertained.

Combat

For me it starts with combat and both games do a great job. Ashes hits that speed spot of hybrid, tab target with some action combat sprinkled in. It's very engaging and outside of some mob pathing bugs, it feels great.

Pantheon also feels good but is much more traditional tab target. Instead it pushes tremendous focus on when to use abilities and resource management. Different but also enjoyable.

Also a big difference; ashes is primarily round them up and AoE them down. Pantheon is very much focused on target selection & cc. Depending on which you prefer, this will matter greatly.

** State of the game **

Ashes is much further along in development, but because it's so ambitious is also likely farther away from done. Pantheon seems to have most of the core systems in place, and just need to iterate upon them and add additional content.

Currently I would say Ashes has far more to do currently, but much of the content isn't done because some mobs have better drops/XP than others.

** Value **

Lastly I'll talk value. This is something that I don't like because both are in alpha/early release. But if I had to pick, $40 for Pantheon feels much better than $110 for Ashes. Also Pantheon servers are up 24/7 and seems to have less downtime, game breaking bugs.

Both will be in alpha state for likely 2 years, so if you want to follow the development I think they are both worth.