I bought the core book a couple months ago as a bit of a compromise; I know this will sound like heresy to a lot of people, but I vastly prefered 4e to 3.5. I didn't love it, but to me, 4e's faults were much easier for me to overlook, than 3.5. But I had found a gaming group, who hated 4e, and so it usually ended up with me begrudgingly playing 3.5, until one day I talked it over with the DM, who offered Pathfinder as a compromiae. As it turned out, after a few sessions, all of us (except one guy, but he's so resistant to change, that anything post-TSR was stretching it) loved pathfinder more than our respective favorite editions.
Pathfinder really just fixed a lot of my problems with 3.5 (though the addition of archetypes, as well as later books, like ultimate (insert book here) contributed more than the core book did, truth be told), and I really like the setting, much more than anything TSR/WotC produced, with the possible exception of Eberon.
The one reason I'm only giving it 4 stars is I'm a bit OCD with my books, so the fact thst it's so fragile is a big draw back; I've resorted to using the PRD almost exclusively. Though, the Art is gorgeous, so if you're not adverse to digital books, I'd recomend the $10 investment in the pdf ahead of the PRD. If you don't mind page tears, the hardcover is good too, but I can't really get over the cheap construction.
