Not entirely what I was hoping for. If you REALLY want to play Werewolf, then you need this book, but other than improving the rules from First Edition, it really doesn't do itself justice. The writing isn't the best, and the artwork is, to be brutally honest, not worth the price of color-ink. As for the rules-update though, I'm actually very happy with the rules though, and that's really why you get the book, but I kinda feel like it's pretty expensive for a set of rules in such a cheap package. I wouldn't complain so much, but it was $50 for the PDF and Standard book, making me expect something alot better than what I got. If I had found this book in a store and been able to look inside, I dunno if I'd want to pay $40 for a hard-copy.

• Writing - There are a few spelling errors, and the way things are laid out is both confusing and repetitive. They repeat things like the origin story multiple times, which is annoying because it makes it harder to get to the meat of what's going on, and I know they cut out the Bale Hounds for time. Granted, I DO like some of the concepts they threw in, and the way they present flavor-text throughout, as it really sets the mood, but I think it could've been done better with the old "Lore, Character, Rules, Antagonists, Storytelling, Appendexes/Sample Settings" format and not this meandering thing which is gonna require me to put post-it notes in the margins. It feels like they were experimenting with a new way of telling the rules through a more artistic, story-driven approach, but it fell a little flat with me. That might just be because I'm used to the older books, so it's not a major concern...

• Artwork - DO NOT GET THE PREMIUM-COLOR VERSION: it is a waste of money as there is no artwork that warrants it.

In fact, the artwork is actually relatively bad. I mean, the drawings are alot better than some of the fan-supplements (I'm looking at you Dragon, though I found those whimsical doodles to be appropriately quaint for such a whimsical book), but after reading through a friend's copy of the 20th anniversary edition of Apocalypse (which opens with a 20-page comic book and pretty much has a beautifully crafted and inspiring depiction of something being talked about on every other page) and thinking "Wow, I want something like this!", this book was a HUGE letdown. So far, it even lacks the clever stuff like how First edition's Tribe-pages had the human-form in the foreground and the Garou-form watermarked in the background.

Most of the things depicted either seem generic or completely unexplained (there's a particular depiction of what I'm guessing is a pack, but some of them don't even look like anything described in the book), and quality wise, the vast majority of the art I see seems to fall into one of 2 categories: high-quality drawings of unimportant things like the wolf used on the cover which appears several times, or mid-quality depictions of important things which I can find better drawings of on Deviant Art. Most of the mood-setting art is in sepia, which would be fine, but the book was pretty expensive for being 99% uncolored. Come on guys, no red blood, blue skies, and green leaves? You're describing some extremely interesting stuff in what's supposed to be a flagship book, and you couldn't spring for better art?

• Rules Update - I actually really like the rules update, despite the poor presentation as it throws down more detailed explanation, more options, and alot more potential when working with Werewolves. I'd always felt that there were a few tools missing for Apex-Hunter-Spirits in first-edition, but this one really fills in alot of the gaps. I'm also a fan of stronger and more versatile characters, which this book does, and on that note I really like the new Wolf-Blooded stuff. The decision to make the morality bar Horizontal is a mixed-bag, though overall a good one: there's alot more focus on exactly how a werewolf should maintain a balance between the man-flesh and wolf-spirit and all that stuff, which looks like it's going to make for a really good story about Werewolves being non-human on some level, but it's going to take some clever GMing to keep the whole "wanton destruction wears on the psyche" aspect in, seeing as a character can go on a murder-spree, and all it takes is torching the forest to put them back at perfect-harmony.

The rules ARE a bit more geared to the whole power-fantasy aspect, making werewolves feel noticeably stronger, which means the Storyteller needs to keep focus on the non-physical challenges and the fact that plowing through problems in Garou form has consequences, but it really helps with the visceral nature of the game, especially with the renewed focus on cannibalism, the spirit-world, and animalistic brutality.