City of Strangers offers a hodgepodge of seemingly disparate elements, servicing the cliche of the "City of Anarchy", reminding me of 7th Sea's Freiburg and Exalted's Nexus.
Paizo pulls it off with more panache and style than most other offerings, though. The city is kept just on the very brink of believability, and for all its oddness and quirks remains a charming vista (though by no means pleasant place to live.)
Secrets of the city are revealed every other line, though usually the promise made in the opening section holds true - for every curtain pulled back, you are less content with what you know, asking even more questions. The background mysteries just keep coming, but keep tight enough to not overburden the reader.
All in all, an excellent "location book". Not too limiting, but sparking all the right ideas.
Classic Horrors Revisited does not disappoint by any stretch. The usual Paizo values of sound mechanics, style and art are all there. So it's a good monster book.
Still, four stars is generous, while three would have been miserly. What's not to like? Well, although each monster revisit is interesting and well-rounded, it lacks the genuinely new. The mummy and gargoyles come closest to a new take on the old monsters I enjoyed with the Goblins and Ogres in Classic Monsters, but mostly the authors stay close to the classical interpretation of the monsters (or, in the case of the Derro, the Paizo-established one).
The sidebars explaining the sources of horror for each creature are insightful, and elevate this from three to four star status.
I only own this mighty tome in PDF form, so my review necessarily limits itself to that. So no flowery praise for production values, or other aspects limited to the physical product.
The content is good, however. It carries over the best innovations of the Beta editions, while cutting the dross and improving compatibility. In fact, most of the rule messes in 3.5 seem to have been cleared up without violating the "core concepts" and making the game drastically different from what I have grown to love.
For the PDF only, I had to knock off a star for problems with the bookmark navigation. A true pity, given that Paizo worked very hard to produce a great PDF. Hopefully, an update will become available soon, allowing its full glory to be restored.
Let me start this review off by saying I nearly would have missed new years because of me going against the final boss of the game. Yes, it is that addicting.
The main campaign is relatively short, but features a huge number of twists on the already-varied gameplay. Usually, one or two "terrain cards" are added, which affect the battle rules in a significant way, or additional objectives are added to either win or lose the battle.
Duels against the computer allow for a quick fix, and a number of "achievements" is available for you to rabidly collect. All three play modes (Storyline, Duel and Online) are covered.
What knocked off a star then? I had hoped for a somewhat larger number of cards, truth be told. The arbitrary selection of cards for each duel can result in selections that are much harder than others. And a special stinker for me: The game crashes unless launched with administrator privilege.
This book, like any book redefining a well-loved and followed product is torn between keeping the good of old, and finding its own voice.
It absolutely found its own voice. The merits of that voice are, to say the least, questionable. The redefined realms could just as well be any of a huge number of more or less indistinguishable homebrew worlds.
As for keeping the old, the Spellplague might as well have been called Armageddon. Some of the names remain the same, and you might even run into a few "familiar faces", but the entire setting has changed so much that these seem to be anachronistic throwbacks, rather than reminders of old.
As for the book itself: Quite gutsy, starting off with an adventure. Very time-oriented, very much in what seems to be 4th Editions "ready to go right now" philosophy. Kudos for seeing it through with such consequence. If only the adventure had felt less like generic filler, this might have been easily another star. Production values are good, too. All in all not the best deal, but there is worse in the RPG market.
