Starfinder Alien Archive 3

My wife loves the creature companion rules. 5 stars for that alone.

So the capstone for monster statblocks has been reached and we finally know what sort of creature players could fight on ground, but would
most likely still wipe them out at level 20 :D(APL +3 is epic level encounter, meaning system wise CR 23 is highest level threat that is still plausible for PCs to defeat. Which means CR 24 is impossibly hard and CR 25 is straight up unfair unless there is something to buff PCs or weaken the enemy)

Not sure what capstones are really left. Dead Sun's part 6 had max Tier 20 starship statblock so both combat system's max strength level is now accounted for. I guess only thing missing is Tier 20 Starship Monster maybe?

Anyhoo, this book has tons of cool stuff :3 Most of the new races are bit wackier than in previous two books, but they are all charming as hell. This book also teaches tidbits like Vesk-2 having population of intelligent squids(one of the playable races), having exploding snails AND large bipedal badger like animals that vesk consider a status symbol to have as a mount or pet. I guess even vesk appreacite the honey badgers :D I also liked some of the mechanical gimmicks, like shakalta being always multiclassed and having to take classes in order.

Hard to pick a favourite from the new races since all of them are great. I guess from more serious ones, Shatori have great tragedy to them as immortal but sterile species who have been vassalized by azlanti star empire(and know they can't risk fighting back). Oh yeah, some of the new races are either conquered by azlanti star empire or vesk :D And two of them are from pact worlds. So it was great for expanding the known parts of setting again.

...Anyway back to topic, from more silly races I think my favourite might actually be telia(I find dromada to be funniest though just because they look bit like jar jar so lots of people cringe at the picture little :D). They aren't actually particularly funny, but they are straight up turtles. Anyway, they have great old people dignitity to them as 1000 year old living races of story tellers :D I love their optimistic philosophy on life

Now onto the non player races: I was positively surprised by this having lots of Drift native monsters :D I also love creatures with abstract shapes like Time Eater and Drift Architect. We don't have too many of those yet, only other one I can think of is the one with geometric shapes from Dawn of Flame part 6(that one was great :D The NG Gargantuan one! I should write their name down!) Spektra are pretty cool too and so were Driftdead (especially the amalgam) creepy.

Philosopher Worm(Lawful Good) is one of my favourite creatures in book because I love the trend of Hylax's servitor creatures looking stereotypically evil or scary bugs to human eyes :D Plus who doesn't like philosophers?

I love that Thorgothrels returned from Iron Gods bestiary :D Those things were pretty memorable encounter back in that AP when I run the optional side dungeon.

If I have to be negative about something, there being seven star metal dragons means we only got brief sentence about their personality so they don't have lots of identity yet. Especially since only one was pictured out of seven.

Its nice that trolls returned, but seems like they haven't started to use technology much :D I guess they got brought out of golarion by unethical companies for sapient creature experimenting with their regeneration so thats why they haven't culturally changed much.

I wonder if Tripods still come from Mars :D And I find it cool that they also work as vehicles. Tripods are in general cool.

On rest of the creatures I consider to be high lights of the book, but have to avoid the word limit, I'll just list there: Diaspora Wyrm, Gwahled, Oracle of Oras, Tzitzimitl, Valkyrie(specifically the vesk valkyrie art, more non human traditional outsiders are cool) and Vorthuul.

(I also found Kami, Wollipeds and Yithians returning cool and Equinoxian, Ferrofluid Ooze, Flayer Leech, Giant Space Tardigrade, Paraforans(<3), Neutronium Golemz, Quantum oozes, Stridermancers, new Swarm and Weaponized toys cool as well :'D But there isn't space to talk about ALL creatures in the review and there literally isn't creature in the book that I didn't like. Its kinda 3 tier system, 1 what I consider high lights of the book out of stuff I loved or found cool 2 is stuff I loved or found cool and 3 is rest of the stuff I liked, but were beaten by other two tiers.)

Okay, let's hope I have space for talking about pets before I run out of word count: EMPATHNIDs AND PROOGs ARE CUTESTS THINGS EVER. I love the friend spiders and pet oozes :D

On topic of "What next?", what I personally would like next is aboleths to make a return along with new creatures created/engineered/uplifted/enslaved/breeded/mutated/altered by them :D I would also like more fiends to come back, I'm still missing my qlippoths, rakshasas, asuras and daemons.

Any hypothetical new creatures I would like to see? Hmm... Well, I guess I'd like to see more new takes on old scifi cliches or weird combinations of creatures. Like, Starfinder has decent amount of alien parasites that take control of your body, so having friendly symbiont creature or even friendly parasite would be cool. Also more silicon or non carbon based lifeforms is always cool :D

...Wait this was only about 923 words? Geez, I could have spent more time on gushing about empathnids...(ALSO HAH, this time I saved the review in advance! So you won't win this time the review disappearing bug because I wrote it for too long time!) Edit: Crap, had to edit 5 stars back in because review disappearing bug meant also rating got reset'd :P