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This continues the theme of no agency and amplifies it to a huge degree. The players are now trapped in Skywatch and meet Sakuachi, the new main character.

The players are immediately tasked with a huge task from her which is to save all her companions that are hidden throughout the whole city. The players have no real reason to do so except being vaguely connected to her.

After they do this, she has an even bigger ask which is to help her on her quest which takes you in the middle of a demon-infested wasteland in the middle of nowhere? Why would your characters agree to this? Well because the plot demands it and there is no other way forward. The book even lampshades this in a section called "aren't the PCs the main characters?" but seemingly does nothing else to try to solve the issue rather than pointing out it exists.

Characters start the campaign by exploring a gate for clues and have been shuffled around ever since with no decisions of their own and now they have to help Sakuachi with her quest.

On top of that it just feels very disjointed and uninspired, walk in Sarkoris and just face a random reclaimer, go into a town and get attacked by an ooze, just walk through a boring travel sequence with 1d6 demons attack you.

When you get to Domora itself it's mostly the same but when you go to the actual gods you find out they are trapped in a literal sewer and that you have to complete their three challenges to get the privilege of saving them. It just felt a bit insulting to the characters and don't inspire much beyond "why are we getting this god with us if they can't get out of a sewer and kill some demons?"

In this book the players explore many mysterious and exotic locations such as the First World and the alien planet Castrovel which is very nice and can let your players really explore the weird parts of the world.

Biggest issue which gets amplified in later books is that there is so little agency for the players. Nothing truly matters as they are forced to stay on the rails the book lays out for them.

Players fail their investigate checks for Kaneepo? Don't worry, he just summons a portal anyways and it didn't matter at all.

This legit is my favourite stretch of an adventure of all time, especially the crescendo of it all.

Fighting the evil amped up version of the party's friends into fighting the amped up version of their greatest enemies into fighting Syndara who might just have the coolest statblock in the game.

Everything just felt incredible when running it and I can recommend anyone picking this up.

The first 1/3rd of the book is about exploring Goka, meeting your fellow teammates, and trying to impress sponsors. It both ties into what the characters want to do (get better for the tournament) but also serves as a break with ample moments for great roleplaying.

The second 1/3rd is the actual tournament, here the players can bet money on their favourite teams and then fight against many diverse teams. For my group it was a bit on the easier side for many fights but that isn't neccesarily bad as it makes it feel like the players are very strong and cool vs the weaker opponents and as they rise they face more challenging teams.

The final 1/3rd Godzilla shows up and they have to go through the city while they are wrecking havoc. Definitely the weakest part of the book but it was still great fun and all of it was very cool so far.

Awesome stuff: Very evocative visuals and themes, fun NPCs to love and hate, all fights vs the special teams are extremely fun and has a lot of dimension to them, exploring Danger Island is fun and indeed dangerous.

The AP having callbacks later in the book to decisions you did at the start is really good and would love to see more of that stuff.

Tino's Toughest and the Lightkeepers are incredible and just oozes with personality.

Less awesome stuff and how you can improve it yourself (in my humble opinion):

Temple of Irori has some nasty haunts with extreme DCs and proficiency requirements, try to solve it using roleplay and hint a lot about what makes these ghosts linger instead of trying to do spam dice rolls until someone rolls a Nat 20 (the DCs are just so high).

The generic building block for teams is very useful for quickly throwing something together though some of them are pretty simple so if you use them too often combat will be more one-dimensional.

Ran this for my group, took about 2 hours for the whole thing.

This has my favourite combo in pre-written adventures, lots of guidance in the book and lots of opportunity to be creative for both players and GM.

The stealthing around and killing guards was very cool and thematic, really got you into the theme of game. Skills were easy so the players felt super bad-ass which is fitting when you are wearing full mantis garb.

Just overall very smooth to run as a GM, very fun and thematic for the players. A bit short (but this may vary a lot between your group).

DISCLAIMER: Only used the story/adventure structure for this as I was running it in another system.

As of writing this my players are going to encounter the BBEG next session which I feel makes me informed enough to write a review.

Chapter 1

Very free-form section and a bit of an sandbox. Heroes need to secure invites for the masque and and also dig up info on all the actors in the adventure. Players can get real creative here and since it gives you a list of clues to be given you have a lot of control to improvise as a GM. The general hostility and fear by the local population is a great mood-setter and a bit of foreshadowing of the influence the Gray Gardeners have on the region.

Here at least my players were very focused on securing the invites and not so much on finding out info about the rest. If that is the case maybe sprinkle some info on them to make them take up a lead that seems interesting to one of the clues that gives info about the whole.

Also very funny to get new clothes for the player characters.

Chapter 2

The big event that Chapter 1 was leading up to, the masque. This section is about mingling at the party and go through very minor dungeon crawls to discover the secrets of the Gray Gardeners and finally a boss battle.

There are some events here that I liked a lot, like the Social Theorist, but I feel like there could have been a lot more fun events here and advancements to the plot by talking to the guests. As of now it's mostly waiting until the next event that lets you advance the plot happens.

Highlights: The social theorist and her death, really cements why people are afraid of talking to the players and makes it easier to understand their grasp of the region. I did like the play as well and I did read the entire poem instead of the abbreviated version.

Chapter 3

The boss dungeon. Here the players are on a clock to go through the bastion of the Gray Gardeners before they finish their evil ritual. The Worm Prophets are appropiately creepy, charming and horrifying. Easy to get into the mind of them and have distinct personalities of all enemies.

Sakhils are great enemies (minus points for there not being a single image of what a Tumblak looks like though). The pendelum trap was also very fun.

The conquerer worm's psionic escape ability is very cool and can force the heroes to make awful decisions for a phyrric victory, love it.

Additional thoughts

As written, the group is basically a bunch of rag-tag heroes hired because they're adventurers, this makes it so you have very little connection and investment in Galt. I think it can be much more fun if your players actually care about what happens beyond getting payed or being a good person in general.