I really enjoy these everything-in-one-box starter sets, I collect them when I can, and this one is the best I've seen, so I'm surprised I haven't reviewed this one yet.
First, the bad: the price is a bit steep for an introductory product, there do seem to be a few minor errata in the booklets, and the Player's Book is rather dense. (To be fair, though, the errata come with the territory of RPG books, you do get a lot for the price, and the pregen character sheets do provide most of the technical information players need to enjoy the first night of adventure right on the sheet.)
The good (including some very nice touches):
* The layout of the beginner pregen character sheets is great: it's basically a two-page "booklet", double-wide with notes in the margins explaining sections of the character sheets in more detail inside, a full-length character portrait on the front, and a short character biography on the back. The contents of the character sheet are fairly transparent and user-friendly. The competition provided some fair, basic character sheets without the user notes in most of its products, and in at least one of the competition's boxed sets the "character sheets" were provided as cramped little booklets.
* The pregen character biographies are very nice, especially compared to the Other Guys' 3.0E, 3.5E and 4E pregen characters in comparable boxed sets: the characters feel fairly three-dimensional and sympathetic, with some heroic motivations to them, and just enough information to suggest the character's role in the party, without cramming the character into a generic stereotype. For example, the fighter is "strongest and toughest, using the biggest weapons and best armor... friendly and brave... sometimes gets in over his head... smart for a fighting man... loyal to his friends... his good heart made him not want to work for cheats, swindlers, and cruel men... became an adventurer, making his own decisions about whom he'd fight and why...." These are all characters I'm interested in and care about, it's a very nice change from their counterparts in other boxed RPG sets.
* You get a choice between the great pregens, and making your own characters with a somewhat stripped-down to beginner-friendly options, but otherwise full-featured, character creation system. Similar boxed starter sets from Those Other Guys generally only provide one or the other.
* Advancement to 5th level using the enclosed rules is possible. Similar boxed sets only provide for 3rd level.
* A good, sturdy, dry-erase map, with a blank grid on one side and a nice full-colour dungeon on the other. Similar boxed sets from The Other Guys provided a flimsy poster-paper map, or a small set of cardboard tiles, which, though nice and still reusable, are somewhat limited in what they can do without expansion. The Beginner Box map, particularly the blank dry-erase grid, should provide lots of re-use for a long time to come.
* A huge number and great variety of beginner monsters, with stand-up pawns. Equivalent boxed starter sets from the Other Company either provided a smaller number of flat cardboard chips/tokens, or a handful of very nice plastic miniatures. The Beginner Box's pawns are a nice compromise, and provide a better variety on monsters than the competition.
* The rules set is fairly close to the full-sized game. A few things are simplified or removed altogether (which seems to have been the cause of much of the errata mentioned earlier), but it shouldn't be a huge leap to move from the Beginner Box to the full set of rules. (Generally, this is true of the competition, too, though some of the Other Guys' recent boxed sets have made it much tougher to move from the starter set to the full game than others.)
* The player's technical information provided on the character sheets is a nice touch: for at least the first night of adventuring, the players won't have to refer much to the Hero's Handbook. Though the information is dense and a lot to take in all at once, the Hero's Handbook itself has a lot of useful information that can be studied between games if desired or easily used as a quick-reference during the game, and the book is full-coloured with great illustrations which do an excellent job of portraying what the game is all about. In comparison, competing products have usually had much cheaper-looking books with black-and-white illustrations which show little more than they need to.
* Though the Hero's Handbook emphasizes rules and begins with descriptions of combat, things like skill checks and ability scores are listed first on the character sheets, with combat listed near the end. The Hero's Handbook does have a brief section on "Playing the Game" which spends more time describing things like talking to NPCs and exploring than it does on fighting. This is a nice touch, in suggesting there can be a lot more to the game than throwing dice at an endless stream of monsters. In comparable products from the competition, especially some of the later ones, combat seems to dominate the player's information to nearly the exclusion of anything else.
* The "Game Master's Guide" is quite nicely designed, and very easy to follow. Like the player's booklet, the illustrations are colourful, though on a neutral note they are more decorative here than evocative of the setting. On the downside, the adventure included is relatively short, but this is balanced out by some great GM advice and some excellent tools for the GM to design her own adventures with, which is, perhaps, even better than a longer published adventure. Another area where the GM's guide shines is the nice "Bestiary" section: this is perhaps the best beginner monster manual I've ever seen, with a nice variety of monsters, great illustrations, and nicely organized stat blocks. Similarly, the section on magical treasures is nicely organized and easy to follow. The sample adventure takes things one step at a time, provides nice advice for running the game, and, as another nice touch, encourages the GM to help the (beginning) players by encouraging them to do things like use "Detect Magic" and so on where appropriate. Aside from a minor complaint about the almost random illustrations in some places in the booklet, this GM's Guide is a pleasure to use and read! The Other Guys' DM's materials typically ranged from bland to annoying, though their 3rd Edition boxed starter set had a fantastic booklet containing nothing but pre-written adventures which was very nice. In contrast, though, the Beginner Box is the boxed set that really shines in making it exciting and easy to be a new GM!
* Advertisements - let's face it: advertisements for other, more expensive products requiring the commitment of players hooked by the starter set are a natural part of this sort of product. In this case, however, the advertisements take up less than a half a page in each of the two (fairly thick) booklets, and are quite unobtrusive. Besides that, this is a complete game right out of the box, which can provide a lot of great fun for a long time to come before buying all the other stuff. The competition's boxed sets, especially the later ones, began to feel more and more like the barest minimum of sample materials to run the first couple levels, plus fliers and full-page advertisements for the full game experience. The GM is given all the tools needed to create her own adventures, the players are given all the information needed to create their own characters and level them up to Level 5, and the replayability for those five levels should be pretty high. The Beginner Box does not insult its customers by leaving them feeling as if they bought a box of nice accessories and an advertisement for something to do with them, but rather a full game experience which happens to include some nice accessories that happen to be useful for the advanced game, and for that alone I would feel quite a bit of good will towards this boxed set! With all the other positive elements, though, this boxed set is a definite winner.
