For starters, I love OA campaigns and was really looking forward to the Dragon Empires material allowing me to run such games in Pathfinder.

So....I made the mistake of paying almost 25 bucks for a print edition of the Dragon Empires Gazeteer (nearly 5 bucks in shipping and handling for this thin little booklet is excessive). Not only is it thinner and (through S&H) more expensive than 2E or 3E softcover supplements were (62 pages of actual content, if I count the inside-cover geographical map, relative to the 127 black-and-white pages of a 2E splatbook or 95 B&W pages of a 3E splatbook), but it contains only the briefest descriptions of each country, a few organizations, some deities, core races, Tian Xia humans, and the five new races.

The timeline (2-1/2 pages) and much of the "Life in the Dragon Empires" chapter are at least reasonably descriptive. But still only a cursory look at the continent of Tian Xia and its history/cultures. For a book whose introduction describes Tian Xia as more than 5 times the size of the Inner Sea region, it suffers rather badly from compressing a continent's worth of info into a few dozen pages of scant overview (roughly a fifth as many pages as the Inner Sea World Guide, and what I've heard about that book leads me to believe it's only slightly better than the DEG in descriptive content).

There's a very basic geographical map of Tian Xia and a geopolitical map that only really shows the capitols and borders. No zoomed-in maps of the individual countries/regions and their features, and no cities or the like beyond capitols. Each country/region of Tian Xia gets a 1-page description or less, with nice but useless illustrations stealing space away from some of those pages. Only a few actually show leaders or locations within the country/region described on the page. Others show monsters that must be detailed in other books like the Bestiaries. They're interesting places but still terribly lacking in detail for an actual campaign in any of these regions.

There are a few pages of scant description for major deities of Tian Xia, such as Daikitsu the Lady of Foxes, including a few Golarion deities like Irori and Shelyn with notes regarding their worship on Tian Xia. Each deity gets hardly a paragraph, with a few useful bits of info beside their holy symbol and domains. The Moon subdomain is given a sidebar, but nowhere is the Moonstruck spell described; you need the Advanced Player's Guide for it. There's 1-1/2 pages describing philosophies and 1-1/2 pages describing some factions in the Dragon Empires. The 5 races get a page each (1/4th illustration, 3/4ths description). For some reason, you need the Dragon Empires Primer (not free) in order to view the kitsune's 3 or 4 measely racial feats (1 for fox form, 2-3 related feats). Core races get a paragraph each regarding their place in Tian Xia (generally as solo wanderers), while human ethnic groups get 2-1/2 pages total.

All in all, I'm not even sure if this is enough to run the Jade Regent AP well, let alone make my own campaigns in the Dragon Empires.

I alsways like my fantasy game worlds to have many different cultures because lets face it every land being like eruope is boring. So thanks to Paizo we get some nice info on an asian style continent and not just Japanes and Chinese ether. This book has interesting places such as a huge mountain range with a portal Leng, a steamy jungle with anciemt ruins build by 15ft tall lizard people, a kingdom run my a dragon, a land ruled Oni, an underdark with undead clockwork creatures and so much more. My only regret is we didn't get a big hardcover book for this (and the other continents) but maybe one day we will.

Being Asian myself (might be a Tian-Shu, in Golarion), it's both exciting and interesting to see the setting of "eastern culture".
As it turns out, this book is full with interesting ideas, especially in races and deities. I can't stop smiling when I saw Sun Wukong made into the list.
However, as the other reviewers point out, it's a relatively short book, every regions only has one page or so. For a Gazetteer, it might be enough.
For someone who's looking forward to run a full Tian Xia Campaign, you definitely need more.
Here's hoping we can see the hardcover Tian Xia setting book in the near future.

Dragon Empires is a highly flavorful product, rich with a "Paizofied" spin on a high-fantasy Asian setting. It's clear that the same brilliant design philosophy that was applied to Avistan went into Tian-Xia, and the result is a shining fusion of various east-Asian settings that pulls from both real-world myth and culture and from stylized fantasy tropes. What I appreciate more than anything is the lack of distinct analogues. Despite clear inspirations, there is no country that is "just Japan." There is no China in the Dragon Empires, but rather various elements have been picked out from various cultures, then combined in some places and redistributed in others. The result is a highly organic setting that leaves you yearning for more, and that's also it's greatest problem.

I understand the limitations of manpower, and that Paizo needs to keep its other products in mind, but this book really warranted more than 64 pages. Tian-Xia seems to be at least twice the size of Avistan, but due to each nation getting a single page, it feels like less than half of that. Each country in the Dragon Empires has a fantastic basis, but they're barely explored, and the result is that they feel more like small states of a larger nation that contribute small regional quirks, as opposed to the fully developed cultures we saw in the Inner Sea World Guide. This is a setting that's screaming for more detail.

My other beef with the product is the five new PC races. I know a lot of people are excited about them, and they certainly have their place, but I think the focus should have been on how the existing races (elves, dwarves, gnomes and whatnot) can be culturally and mechanically adapted to this new region of the world. To much exoticism in these new races makes Tian-Xia feel a little bit like a nation of monsters. The new guys, I think, should have filled a role similar to aasimars and tielfing. That is, they exist, they have a presence, and they're suitable options, but they take a backseat to the more established guys.

All in all, the Dragon Empires Gazetteer is very well-done given how much space was allotted to it. It's intriguing and certainly grabs one's interest, but it left me far from satisfied.

After reading the Inner Sea Guide I was thrilled to see this book was being made, after all, the Inner Sea World Guide added many new traits, feats, and prestige classes to the game on top of an amazingly detailed look at all the nations and races.

I thought this was going to be that same. It wasn't. Four new races and a look at a new continent as well as some hints that there will be cool things to come in other books. That's it.

I'm quite disappointed with this over all, especially since it's $4 more than the Bestiary 3 pdf(which was amazing). Like I said, maybe I'm just spoiled, but I'd come to expect more from this company.

Another fantastic book! Here are some of my favorite things:

Five new races(well the Tengu aren't quite new but they are updated) which are all really intersting. I found the reincarnated Samsarans to be my favorite, but I expect the Kitsune to be the real fan favorites.

Of the nations/regions(27 in all), a few surprised me. A Taldor offshoot, a communist state, Elven samurai, info on Taumata and Sarusan, Shenmen(move over Ustalav I have a new favorite evil nation), Catfolk, and a Post-Apocalyptic Kraken-Ruled Swampland(you though the Sodden Lands had it bad).

14 new deities (6 reinterpreted old ones) are also included. Daikitsu, Lady of Foxes and Lao Shu Po, Old Rat Women are two of my favorite.