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This adventure is great! It is a solid Starfinder adventure that takes the humor of the Fallout games and combines it with the heroics of Cloud City. Not only are there a number of times where the PCs get to do genuinely heroic things, they will also be laughing while doing them.

Over all this is a good adventure. It gives us a chance to get a lot of the flavor of both Eox and the Diaspora and it gives us some interesting fights. Its only major flaw is that at one point the primary antagonists act incredibly stupidly for no explained reason (see spoiler for details).

This adventure starts with some fun open ending roleplaying, but quickly devolves into a tedious and boring jungle trek that involves horribly crunchy game mechanics. In a setting about starships and speeder bikes, this is an adventure about dying from diseases and heat in the jungle. Details in the spoiler.

There is a lot of good content in this adventure, but some major issues. It does a good job of introducing the setting and gives you a chance to uses some of the unique starfinder rules. The major down side is that there is one fight that is so incredibly hard that it almost guaranteed to kill a PC, if not all of them. Additionally, there is some major rail-roading (see spoiler for details).

This book is by far the worst of the six and probably the worst adventure path/module I have run. It starts out with a peace summit which will be interesting to maybe one of your players and then gives you some boring and non-challenging filler to get them to higher levels. At the begging of the book it promises that you will go to epic places and do epic things … but you really don’t get to do either (see spoiler for details). It is worth noting that this book has a content warning early on for some truly dark and terrifying content, but none of that dark or terrifying content was necessary for telling the story and just distracts from the actual plot. The most unforgivable thing is that after six books it leaves you with the emotionally unsatisfying sense that your characters didn’t really accomplish anything (again see spoiler for details). Avoid running this book!

PS. I know this is just a minor pet peeve of mine, but the writer claims that Azata don't have genders when we have seen LOTs of evidence to the contrary in other material. If he wanted a genderless race ... why not just make his own new race?!

The previous four books have been rather good, so you might be surprised that this book is so sub-par. The PCs leave the city of Kintargo for very railroaded reasons and have to do mini missions that are forgettable. There have been mini dungeons in previous books, but there is usually a main dungeon near the end. This time however there are two equal sized dungeons, and both are forgettable with some convoluted set-ups. Nothing in this entire book was really challenging or interesting to either myself or my players.

This book continues what has been a solid adventure path, but it isn't the best we have seen so far. The adventure manages to use game rule to make the players feel like they are leading a city wide open rebellion against evil. It manages to make each of the single session side missions flow together and feel like they are just a continuous part of that rebellion. It gives the players a chance to defend a dungeon from invasion by enemies, which was a nice twist on the classic dungeon invading narrative. The problem comes when we get to this books true "dungeon". Unlike previous "dungeons" this one is bland, repetitive, and doesn't seem befitting the dangerous villain that the place is supposed to be protecting (see spoilers for details). This books continues the tradition for bad backstories and gives a backstory for a character that was introduced last book that makes a lot of people hate her (this character's backstory is the most complained about portion of the adventure path) (again see spoiler for details).

This book ends with a sense of closure and emotional satisfaction and given how much worse the next two books are, it probably a good place to end running the adventure path.

This book continues what has been a good adventure path. Again, the book is broken down into single session sized side missions and a “dungeon”. The side missions are unique and remember-able and really contribute to the flavor of the area. The “dungeon” is the least dungeony feeling area I have seen in pathfinder and was a nice change of pace (see spoiler for details). My only complaint is that a lot of the dungeon is probably going to be skipped and the villain’s motivations don’t really make sense (again see spoiler for details).

The adventure path continues going strong with a good second book. The adventure path has now settled into a formula of combining a major dungeon with smaller single session sized side missions. The side missions in this book are decent (but don't really feel like they have anything to do with a rebellion and could have been part of any city based adventure path), but the dungeon was a work of art that managed to be different and interesting, but also still be thematically consistent. It also manages to do something that I have wanted to see in an adventure path for a while, but never have (see spoiler). My only complaint is that this book is right where the rebellion rules (as detailed in the player's guide) really start to require the GM to keep track on the date "in game" and this will quickly become a major annoyance for the GM.

This is a solid start to an adventure path. It does a good job of gathering together PCs from different backgrounds and making them invested in accomplishing the objectives of the adventure path. The villains are remember-able and easy to hate and the plot does a good job of encouraging the players to go to places and do things, but doesn’t make them feel railroaded. The only reason I am not giving this book five stars is because some of the fights were unfair for lower level PCs and because the NPC backgrounds that were provided seemed to not-sych with the main plot and sometimes directly contradict the main plot’s themes (see spoilers for more information). This adventure path will go downhill in future books (see my review of other books for more details), but this book is solid and a good start.

I should start out by saying that I have never given a game 1 star, despite reviewing a couple of games that resulting in my party or my players having a TPK, but I thought it was warranted in this instance.

The Fights:
The biggest flaw of this special is that the fights are repetitive (I played tier 1-2, but I also heard this from people who played higher tiers). The fights in the first section are somewhat diverse and used different creature types, but the second and third sections used the exact same type of creature over and over again; often literally the same monster. Not only was this boring, it caused our PCs who were ineffective at fighting that monster to feel unnecessary. The final fight showed a lot of promise of being climatic … but it can be rendered laughably easy if a very common type of PC is in the party, or if the party just uses some tactical knowhow.

The Skills:
At one point, we had a chance to use skill checks (which is rare in a special) to acquire something we needed, but instead of using our skills to help people in exchange for the stuff, we just used them to impress people into giving us stuff. The worst part is that the game tells you that these items are rather valuable, but there is never an explanation given for why these people would part with it just because we impressed them by possessing a skill set.

At another point, we had to use our skills to convince people to undertake a daring, but risky plan. The problem is that one of the people you must convince is the very person who came up with the plan, and who earlier was willing to risk their people’s lives to get the McGuffin needed to make the plan work. No explanation is given for this NPC’s sudden change of heart and the PCs get bonuses on this check for political correctness (see spoiler below for details) which felt heavy handed.

The story:
The story starts out by making fun of Nigel Aldain (which we enjoyed), but then it continues to do so multiple times, long after it stops being funny. For some reason, the pathfinder leaders decide that Nigel asking for help requires hundreds of pathfinders instead of the usual 4 to 6 and at no point even tries to explain why so many people are being sent into a relatively small building (or how they all fit). We then have a set of minor fights and our introduction to the real story, which shows a lot of promise and causes us to have to travel through a relatively un-explored part of the pathfinder world. We are attacked on the way by an army of monsters … but we are never given any explanation for why they were attacking us, which is especially grating because the game that earlier explained that it was well known that there would be serious consequences to anyone who did attack us. We then moved to a new area where we had to fight several minor battles, so that we could fight a major battle and stop a great evil (as often happens in specials) … only to be told that we didn’t really accomplish anything (see spoiler below for details).

Overall:
This special should not have been a special. It didn’t feel big and epic like most of the specials and left us feeling like our characters had not accomplished anything. What’s worse, if it had been flushed out and had had a normal amount of fights, it might have made a decent regular game, but as a special it was very disappointing.

This game starts off as a "throw back" to the plot of an earlier three part series, but you would only know that if you did the three part series. Otherwise it seems like a solid stand alone adventure. The game seems to have stakes and interesting combat and introduces a new group of people, but doesn't make them feel forced upon you. I have played and GMed it and both times it went well.

My only complaint is that one of the character's motivations seems off, but that is something a GM can easily clean up, if it comes up at all.

This game is confusing both as a player and as a GM (I have been both). The NPCs motivations and actions seem illogical at best and outright insane at worse. But what makes it worse is that several times it uses a story telling tool called "forced failure" to move the story forward. Forced failures can be great if used well, but usually aren't and these are no exceptions. Player work their hardest and try their best, only to have no way of succeeding no matter how clever or lucky they are, and are forced to watch things fall apart. The game also makes use of a lot of Occult Adventure's rules but most of the time it feels like they are forcing it into a non-occulty storyline just to make you buy the book. Do not play or run this game! The sequel wasn't bad though (and can be run independently of the original).