I have been playing this game since 1975 (Chainmail, 2D6 system), and this is the best world write up I have seen in a long time. This allows a GM to start with a world and add their own touch for each country. You can play several different games with this world and each would feel different but similar to the campain setting. Well done Paizo from one who has seen many changes in this gamming jonera and I will see more. !!!!!!!

First I would like to say something positive, the Inner Sea guide is great to look at. It has great pictures and maps etc. But, the one thing it lacks is INFORMATION, if I wanted to fill in the blanks I would have made up my own world. Its great that the book has so many different nations, but for someone like me who doesn't have time to fill in the gaps, its almost a big pretty, glossy paperweight.

Perhaps Paizo could have created less nations and spent more time fleshing out the rest. I choose to run my game in the nation of Nirmathas. So while looking over the map of Nirmathas I see a place in the mountains called the Lost Mines, hmmmm maybe a good place for some underground exploring. I check out the write up of Nirmathas and curious, it doesn't even mention the Lost Mines??????? I dig a little further and find that of the 5 or 6 towns they show on the map, there is is only a tiny bit of information on 2 or 3 of them.

In my opinion, this isn't a campaign setting, it's the outline for a campaign setting. The title should be "The fill in the blanks Guide to the Inner Sea" Nice looking book, but not much use to me.

This is a great book for players looking for background info on Golarion. My full review is here: http://wp.me/p1WZ0v-77

No matter what style fantasy RPG you like, you will find a country that matches in this book. I love this book with a passion and I normally create my own worlds. Two big thumbs up :)

As far as setting overview books go, this is the best one yet for anywhere, in my opinion.

Most of all, the diverse amount of countries (and their own in a way crashing flavors) is bound together in a very organic way. I might not really enjoy having the Mana Wastes, Cheliax and Numeria show up in the same world - but here it works.

Art is amazing, every country section is inspiring in it's own way, it's well written and it's pretty much a must have if you play in Golarion. I've tried to find a fault with it, but I really can't...

im still on the fence for this setting it seems kind of all over the place and very high fantasy if you liked Forgotten Realms you will probably like this.

personal opinions aside i still run my games in the inner sea beacuse of the wealth of information and the availability of maps

The Inner Sea World Guide gives such an expanse of information that I had no clue what to do at first. I began reading the entire book, falling in love with different nations for different reasons. While I'm a big fan of GMing good aligned parties, I found so much fun in having the 'leader' of the group be from the devil empire of Cheliax. In fact, Cheliax became a major force in about every game we play now, along with Hellknights and other groups, such as the pathfinder society. Of course, after reading through the book three or four times, you wish you had expanded information on larger, more varied nations, such as Varisia, or the River Kingdoms. Perhaps my favorite part of this book is the history tab for each nation, which really adds to depth. The amount of information in this book has added a lot of fun to my games, and its become essential in all of the adventure modules I use from Paizo. No longer is my friend playing an elvish ranger, but a forlorn elvish ranger, who once met Aroden, a now dead god. This book opens up so many possibilities in character development, which I always see as the key to a great game. This is completely worth getting either the paper or digital copy.

The Inner Sea World Guide is one of my favorite game books and my absolute top favorite Golarion book for overall content, new content, design, and flat out beauty.

The book is masterpiece of content as each race, region, religion, and detail of the world is covered in decent enough detail that this book is the only truly essential book needed to run a campaign in Golarion. This book does not only give a starting place to place a game in this world, it gives a truly solid foundation.

New content includes fantastic artwork, new detail in maps, new, updated information in regions including previously unseen adventure hooks, a lot more detail on Gods, and updated pathfinder stats for firearms, prestige classes, feats, equipment, spells, and magic items. The book even had room for a bestiary!.
As far as the art, I was afraid this new world guide would just use previously used artwork; I was wrong as their is tons of artwork peppering the book including awesome images giving a glimpse at the feel of each region. Just being able to see the fashions of a certain region is worth the cost of the book.
To sum it up the Inner Sea world guide isn't just an update to the pathfinder system, it is an upgrade from an existing high quality book to one that puts every other campaign book I have ever read to complete shame. Paizo has raised the bar with the inner sea world guide; a bar that I know that their awesome team will be able to lift higher and higher. The sky is the limit!

So, while I do not own the 3.5 Pathfinder Campaign Setting, I've had chance to read through it. I purchased this new version from Amazon, and I must say the new book is far superior. The setup of pages is nicer, the material is more in depth, and I really didn't notice anything "missing" that I felt was mandatory from the original. The updates to the prestige classes kept the flavor but also made them more in tune with the Pathfinder rules changes. Also, I very much like that the Harrowing spell is detailed alongside the Harrower prestige class for those that don't have the Harrow Deck (which I do, but still)

Overall, I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who likes the Golarion setting, even if I did own the 3.5 book myself, I would not feel bad to have purchased this new version.

About the only complaint I have though is that the Hermean Blood feat doesn't tell you anything about Hermea or where to find info on the region, nor does the index. I had to fully read nearly all of the regional description sections (Something I would have done eventually, just not in the sitting I Was looking at feats and was like "What is Hermea?") before I found it. A reference to the page # Hermea is on might be nice in an update for future printings.

Wow. Just finished reading cover to cover. There is so much information in this volume. It's truly an entire world in print. This may turn out to be one of my most referenced books for Pathfinder. From GMing to character creation there's more background, nations, factions and personalities that I'll never be without inspiration again.