So first thing first, this is the book that starts the bait and switch from "Town Guard AP" to "National Security AP". I guess police procedural inspiration was "You become FBI". AP really likes introducing new characters in watch that never get focus on and no matter who you work for, you don't get that backup.
Second thing is that this is first book that explains Twilight Four's plan in any respect. So far no big problems with it, but problems once again become a thing in later books related to it. But for now, gist is this: Infector makes heavy use of contingency plans and making use of his pawns, but his masterplan to take control of plot is basically "Do his part early, ruin other two's plan, pray norgorber rewards him with victory". Aka it paints him as fanatic and not the mastermind with plans upon plans fourth book tries to portray him as. You can sum Infector's plan with "step 1: explode bomb early step 2: ???? step 3: I'm primarch because Norgorber says so"
Problem 3, book really assumes the players ally with gang against the worse gang to get information on Infector. When this gang was introduced as kidnapping victims for Skinner's cult. You know the skin people alive torture murder cult. Yeah I wonder why our group started to feel like AP liked to pressure pcs to making deals with criminals. Yeah this is where book 2's copperhand thing came to bite us back because most of players were really unhappy with having done that and here with gang appearing with overwhelming numbers... It kinda broke camel's back. Maurisa is kinda meant to be neutral "not as bad as other criminals, potential antihero in some situations", but that has holes as result of other thing. So to save time with us wanting to clean her gang afterwards, our gm did rather cool move with having blackfingers do something threatening and try to poison both gangs around same time to silence them meaning after sweeper's gang leader was poisoned into coma we rushed back to save her from poisoning and then arrested her.
Either way yeah, I don't think idea of "anti hero criminal for players to have choice to ally with" is bad idea (as long its actual choice), but this being same gang connected to kidnapping people for Skinner made it feel inapproriate.
Problem 4, it become really silly to everyone in table that each individual gang member was tougher than regular skinsaw cultist. Like I really think gang toughs should have been level 5 with maybe couple "elite" named level 6 members and only gang bosses to be like level 9(or even 10) out of them. Pathfinder might have level scaling, but it still needs to justify how dockworkers with wooden boards are level 7. You could justify diobel sweepers being tough with mutagens or something I guess.
Plus it didn't help with party's exhaustion. So after exhausting fight with cult, we get thrown without much of downtime into this operation to dismantle Twilight Four and even gang members are now suddenly rather tough. With switch to Starwatch there aren't really anymore "normal town guard" events and now even gangs feel really tough when they should have been breather to show how tough we have become.
Additional chapter 1 nitpick: party really found a chase obstacle solution of "fix wagon's wheel in alleyway with craft check" instead of just jumping over it or something too ridiculous. Like its not like it established wagon getting stuck in cramped alleyway without ceiling or something :p
But oki, so after this shenanigans, we finally get to name sake of the book, aka the casino heist! Which... Is extremely extended scene for middle chapter where you learn "Oh, someone else stole the thing first, but you know who stole it!"
...Party felt like their time was wasted and extremely angry at that. Plus its kinda non sense that only after safe is opened can you follow a smell trail. But really, if scene was going to be "only clue you find is name", it really shouldn't have been this extensive, it should have been as long scene as like... Well two pages at most? Well thing is this is 21 pages long extensive skill/roleplaying challenge with few surprise combats, large npc cast, infiltration, planning, and for what? "Congratulations, your device was already stolen, but you know who stole it". Yeah party just felt like their time was wasted, it was rather underwhelming reward.
It feels harsh because scene itself is great, but at the end it feels like it wasn't respecting tables' time and effort.
So okay, let's say in alternate universe chapter 2 had either better ending or was just two pages of "find place, break into place, open the safe, ah it was taken, now we go forward" that didn't take our table 3 sessions. What about next part? Well umm... Next part is kinda harsh too.
Our party was at this point kinda annoyed at having to move at Norgorberite's pace so kinda rejected Asilia's infiltration plan(since it would put civilians at risk in our opinion) and just instead got police dog to follow "distinctive smell" of bomb to locate it.(thus we defeated Franca and found bomb before Oggwurm encounter). Let's say we hadn't done that. (we did chat with gladiators though)
Well its another neat cast of npcs that won't return again. The ap is really harsh on concept of recurring npcs. But besides the fight before climax is "severe encounter" with this description "This isn’t intended to be a particularly challenging fight, and it should be over well before the agents have expended all of their best resources (since they still have to delve into the Irorium’s under-level to find and defeat Franca)."
...Its severe encounter, that by definition is difficult encounter that spends resources. And thats without creatures being overtuned and having potential of stunlocking party with bad luck as single action aoe(sure party is immune to it for 10 minutes afterwards, better roll goood).
So oki, assuming we defeat severe difficulty encounter without losing resources, and assuming we didn't manage to take care of Oggwurm in advance somehow, we would be rushing to Irorium, have 2 moderate encounters, severe boss encounter with Franca, then head out to see gas bomb attack in progress and have extreme encounter. Encounter which is supposed to be TPK level without full resources.
Yeah this ap loves to be meatgrindery :'D
On final note, Franca being presented as possible rehabilitate feels kinda odd because nothing about adventure itself foreshadows it, so it feels like players are unlikely to take that option since at this point pcs have learned to assume worst of Twilight Four plans (since we started with skinsaw cult). So her being brainwashed would have been nice thing to foreshadow at her apartment better.
Oh yeah one positive thing: I legit love twist that Gage is actually legitimate businessman :p
