Fine for the mechanics, poor for the setting material. While many Call of Cthulhu supplements try to include accurate descriptions of history, often attempting to dispell myths about them to show more of how things actually were -- Down Darker Trails comes to mind -- this is unfortunately the opposite, hindering its effectiveness in presenting a realistic early medieval setting, whether realistic or fantastical. Many of the tired old tropes of the "dark ages" are present here: all the common folk were ignorant, foolish, and violent, all the nobility and clergy were corrupt, power-hungry, and cruel, no one had any concept of cleanliness or hygiene, the Christian Church worked to prevent the spread of knowledge and education, most everyone was illiterate, and so on. While it's well-known that the "dark ages" have been portrayed wildly inaccurately and have had many of their negative aspects exaggerated, this book not only reinforces them, but seems to do so in a smug, self-righteous fashion that goes beyond simply repeating half-truths and falsehoods about history into relishing doing so. I feel there's a noticeable tone of "Ha! People were so stupid back then. Isn't that funny?" that comes through in the book's descriptions of early-medieval life, and when you pick up on it, it gets grating. Couple this with regular jabs at both Christian and Norse religious beliefs, the former culminating in a cameo of Pontius Pilate -- who traveled to Anglo-Saxon England, somehow, for whatever reason, and is a vampire, somehow, for whatever reason -- whose only purpose being there seems to be gloating that crucifixes have no effect on him. I don't think anything like this was present in the older Dark Ages books. That aside, there's some decent information on the time period here, albeit entirely focused on Anglo-Saxon England, with fleeting-at-best mentions of the rest of the European and Arabic lands. Coming from the older Dark Ages books, this is also disappointing, but if you plan on running games in England specifically, there's a fair amount of useful info here. The mechanics are good, carrying over a lot of spot rules and other forgotten tidbits from the older Dark Ages books. It's entirely possible to run a straight medieval game with no supernatural or Lovecraftian elements here, though you'll need to do some work if you want to run this in a different area or different period of the Middle Ages. One confusing note is that the weapons table includes each weapon's length -- spears are longer than swords, swords are longer than knives, and so on -- but what this actually means is never mentioned anywhere in the book. It's actually a holdover from the previous Dark Ages books, where weapon length was an optional spot rule that could have bonuses and penalties in combat. You can do that here, but the fact that rule never appears anywhere makes the inclusion of weapon lengths pointless on their own. This book has gone through multiple erratas, yet that one's kept slipping through. Some premade scenarios are included set around a town called Totburh. I can't really speak to them as I haven't run them or played in either of them. All in all, I'd give it a 3/5. There are neat mechanics and monsters here, as well as detailed information on Anglo-Saxon England, but given its main purpose is to be a setting primer on the Dark Ages, the book feels limited in scope and you'll need to do a lot of your own work in expanding it beyond Anglo-Saxon England. What it does provide for the setting feels hampered by a frequently condescending, dismissive tone toward the historical period and the people who lived in it, as well as continued misrepresentations of the Dark Ages and Medieval society while similar setting books have often tried to dispell similar misrepresentations and myths of their time periods (Down Darker Trails).

Some of the mechanics are clunky, but there are some generally good ideas here to use.

Whether you want to run a Cthulhu Western, a different type of Horror Western, or just a plain old Western action game, this book is insanely useful and clearly has a passion behind it. It has plenty of non-supernatural, non-horror detail on the Old West's history and life on the frontier, making it a great resource for any kind of Western campaign. My only complaint is the weapon table is pretty barebones, but a lot of the guns in the core rulebook work for DDT too and it's not too tricky to come up with your own. Recommended overall.

Overall, this is a great supplement for games set anywhere from the mid 1800s to the early 1900s, with plenty of research and passion behind it, though I found a few quirks that were disappointing to me. There are loads of guns here, more than you'll probably ever use in your games, complete with pictures, optional rules, accessories, and so on. You (literally) get the bang for your buck, and this guy knows his stuff. All of his Investigator Weapons guides are great, and I highly recommend them.

The two quirks with this one stood out enough, to me, to warrant a drop in a star, though.

For one, the book's predominantly focused on American and British weapons, which means several very prolific weapons of the era from other countries aren't included. No Lebels, no Mosin-Nagants, and no Arisakas. Fair enough, they're not the focus of the book, but what drops my rating here is that some other less-notable guns from other countries are already included. The French predecessor to the Lebel is listed, it's even mentioned that the Lebel replaced it, but the Lebel's not in the book. Why have the MAS and not the Lebel, which would be even more widely available? Arisakas and Mosins are also mentioned but not listed, and a few other notable guns were left out too, like the Swiss Vetterli.

Secondly, there are some discrepancies in stats I noticed. More of a nitpick, but if you like more "realistic" games (or are just obsessed with stats) you might need to make some adjustments. For example, the 7.63x25mm Mauser C96 is listed, but it's significantly weaker in damage than the .45 LC Colt Single Action Army, even though the 7.63 round has a significantly higher velocity and kinetic energy on average than .45 LC. This isn't unique to IW3 though, the CRB has a similar problem.

Some important weapon details are also not made clear or are buried in the weapon's historical info. The Snider carbine is supposed to be less effective against armor, and so armor values are doubled when calculating damage, but you'd easily miss this if you didn't read its entire section carefully.

If you're looking for the definitive Hunt: Showdown weapons table, this isn't it. Very close, but not quite it. I still highly recommend it if you ever plan on running games in this time period though, and while you might have to do some homebrew if you want to add the absent guns in, it's a minor problem compared to the excellent book as a whole. Very good supplement.

Fantastic for Fallout and other post-apocalyptic games. Great quality as always.