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If I could rate 6 stars I would. This is simply the best Bestiary Paizo has released to date. The usual stunning artwork is present for every single monster entry and I cannot heap enough praise on them for this. As usual there is a wide array of challenge rating available in this book from cr ½ all the way to cr30 and the cr30 monsters are no joke! Honestly I feel like someone at Paizo heard the rule “If you stat it they will kill it” and laughed maniacally and said “NOT ON MY WATCH!!” then proceeded to make the Arch Devils and I love them for it. The horsemen are here and so are their horses! Best of all Krampus and he is amazing I won’t spoil it but whatever you wanted from Karmpus you are getting, I imagine for the month of December this year our party will cross paths with the naughty list, and according to his description he has a long memory for those who make that list so it might be our new December tradition for years to come.

The best and most welcome change of all are the monster descriptions / stories. Bestiary 5 was the worst for these, some monsters literally getting 1 sentence descriptions. This book really addressed that issue with flying colours. The big bads all get full page descriptions and the smaller guys each get at least a paragraph. This is one of the best resources for campaign and encounter ideas and you will not be disappointed with this purchase.

As with all bestiaries before it there are new player races included in this and they are all pretty great. The unfortunate thing is as far as I can tell there is no easy way to dig them out quickly you pretty much need to read through it cover to cover and just remember what ones there are. It is a minor gripe for me because I love flipping through the bestiaries but it was something one of my group members mentioned.

People often complain about having a lot of high CR monsters in these books sighting that “most people never make it far enough to encounter these things” Well I come from a group running a 3 year campaign and I for one am thankful as heck for their inclusion. You need big bads to keep people playing keep the challenges ramping up and keep the players striving for that next big victory.

This book is not the best put out by Paizo as far as utility goes but it’s also far from the worst. To start with this book is essentially really a DM only book. The format is near identical to the Monster codex which is nice because it’s a familiar format. There are some new magic items and spells and feats and so on but ultimately they are of little use to players and especially little use to good aligned player character. The book is broken up into factions the first page of each faction tells you basically their backstory and evil mo. Then there are about 5-7 pages of “villains” who are part of this faction there are 2 per page and this is sort of where my issue with the book comes in. These NPC villains have no life in them, they have no flavor text about the villain and what makes them tick. This has come up with me a few times in the past especially with bestiary 5. I like the flavor text because it gets the imagination going and helps with coming up with some creative stories or encounters. My example is the Wyrwood in bestiary 4. The description of that monster alone is enough to set the mind racing with ideas for entire campaigns, societies, villains and heroes all from a description that is 2 short paragraphs. This is just lifeless stats over pages and while they are fine for what they are it over all takes away from the book as a whole to me. Also each entry does not have its own image to go along with it. I hope that they remedy this with the pawn set which is supposed to be coming out but I will be making sure I look out for a review on that before purchase I can promise that. I will say that some of the evil organizations are very interesting and things that really you could build entire adventures around and there are handy adventure hooks in the book as well to this effect. Finally at the back of the book are about 2 dozen more organizations with small paragraph descriptions of how they function just to give you some more food for thought which I did appreciate. The art that is present in the book as always is beautiful and that is one of the best things about the pathfinder books. They have the best art of any RPG out there.

Ok so I have really got 3 main issues about this book. But before that lets do the good. As usual the artwork is nothing short of gorgeous. It ranges from beautiful to frightening as you would expect and fits in perfectly with the series to date. The challenge ratings are varied and even has many which are godlike in challenge rating CR20 MR9 comes to mind. Many of the creatures are unique and fun which again is a staple of the series to date. There are many monsters which can easily slot into any campaign which is always welcome but equally there are many which seem very unique and could lend to building entire adventures around them.

My first issue is that several monsters in this book are ripped straight out of the Iron Gods campaign. Specifically all the robots, The Androids and the mutant. This really bothered me because I already own all the books in that series so therefore already have their stat blocks. I buy these bestiarys for new monsters of that same sub type so that I can mix it up for my players. I don’t want my players to fight gearsmen in every fight so I want other similar creatures but with different tricks that I can use to keep them on their toes. As it is there is a small enough range of creatures that fit in the Numeria campaign it would have been nice to see a few more.

Second issue I have is some of the write ups given to creatures are criminally short. The Devastator is a prime example. Its description is literally one sentence. It looks amazing and the stat block make this creature one that seems like it would be an amazing fight to see my players try to get through. It has lots of interesting attacks and abilities. But that lack of a description just irks me to no end. I read every description of every single monster because so often I find those descriptions play with my imagination and really get the juices flowing and without it I'll grant you that I can just invent a story around it myself but that could be said of every creature ever made. I pay Paizo to tell me the story of these creatures not just stat them.

Finally the new playable races also kind of bothered me. Nothing really stood out to me as something unique or interesting. Most of them just seemed like stuff I have seen before an example is the Reptoids which are basically just Kitsune but lizards. Again this isn’t the end of the world but I want things like the Wyrwood from the last book or the Trox really interesting options that were unlike anything from the pathfinder universe until that point.

None of these issues would ever stop me from buying this book because the good greatly outweighs the bad in my opinion however I really hope that in future I see less of these same issues.