The thing I love about Drop Dead Studios's work is that even the "joke" books have well-designed, high quality content. The Catgirl Handbook has some genuinely good options like a feat for applying Life sphere effects to shapeshifted targets and a much needed trait for Alteration's Retain Ability where you can shapeshift someone into a hybrid between their normal self and their new form. Even the silly options like purring feats and a maid outfit that turns you into a catgirl are well thought out. Overall, a fun read with useful options!

This volume is packed with lots of strange yet interesting and fun options and systems for fully realizing the bold tropes of science fiction and fantasy in Starfinder. It's also just genuinely fun to read.

Science fiction and fantasy has a wealth of great tropes and storytelling beats. As much as I like Starfinder, the game's official content base barely scratches the surface of the enormous potential of the genre, especially with bold tropes like mad science, genetic mutations, and alien supernatural things.

This is where Advanced Occult Guide steps up.

The real value of this book comes from rules and options that enable tropes and stories otherwise impossible or weakly supported. We get better support and options for transformative effects. We get rules for rituals, corruptions, building curses, age alteration, and pact magic. We also get some rules that even most major science fiction/fantasy systems won't even touch, such as miniaturization, rules for causing characters to grow into giants, and ghostbuster-ish technology. The bestiary is full of unusual monsters using these rules, too.

You can dedicate entire campaigns with the content in this book. And best of all, they're all surprisingly well-written and well-designed. These rules are deep enough to feel fun and interesting, but not so complicated to make it feel like a chore to read and memorize how they work.

I have a long list of things I love, including a solarian that manipulates solar/lunar energy to gain a lycanthrope-like form, the rather flexible and simple curse-building rules, and the corruptions that are just fun to read. There's a staggering breadth of rules and options for transformative effects, which have received surprisingly anemic support in most fantasy and science fiction games. This book also has a lot of really weird yet interesting surprises, like a gigantic monster made entirely of Medium creatures, complete with illustration.

If I had to find something to nitpick and criticize, it would be that many options will cause your character's gear to break or become destroyed when you shapeshift or get transformed. This could be understandable for curses and corruptions, but even some player options do this. This can cripple a character financially or make them unplayable since many Starfinder adventures assume the characters wear armor that grants life support and environmental protection. Some of the content in this book can also get unsettlingly weird. This can be quite fun and allow the GM to deliver scary or quirky unexpected twists, but for some people, it might not be their cup of tea.

Admittedly, it's hard for me to criticize this book. The writing, formatting, and rules language are solid. The volume carries the author's distinct character of bold design built to enable stories and character fantasies. It's one thing to have rules to cover certain topics in a game, but it's a whole new level to realize and inspire character concepts and new types of campaigns.

For these reasons, I plan to use Advanced Occult Guide the next time I run a Starfinder campaign. If you're looking to spice up your Starfinder, I recommend you do the same!

This is a great book. I like the GM advice and recommended house rules. However, it feels like some of the options break some of the very advice it gives. Some of the path abilities are way too powerful, even for mythic. There's one Tier 1 general path ability that makes you immune to having anything stolen from you. That alone would make it worth as a Tier 3 ability compared to similar narrative immunity abilities like Beyond Morality and Unchanging. But the ability goes further by also letting you automatically know when someone is trying to deceive you or swindle you out of something you own -- no saving throw. While most of the options in the book are pretty fun and mostly balanced for mythic, abilities like this stick out like a sore thumb as they seem like a pain in the butt to GM for.

Regardless, I recommend this book.

A must-buy for any fan of the Spheres of Power shifter or a fan of the Alteration sphere.

With only 2 pages, the Apex Shifter manages to fix the biggest longstanding issues with the Spheres of Power shifter. One of the issues plaguing the shifter lie with the fact that the Spheres Druid can extend the duration of their shapeshifts starting at level 4 whereas the shifter cannot do so until level 9. The apex shifter fixes this so now the shifter can extend their shapeshifts to 10 minutes per level at 4th level and 1 hour per level at 9th level. That alone is a game changer, but this volume goes further. The apex shifter also gains a few abilities to help them stand out from the druid, including a bonus talent that can be changed each day. This volume also introduces new bestial traits that give you evasion or stalwart when you change your size and a bestial trait that lets you gain a combat talent when you shapeshift. There's also a much needed rework of the historically underwhelming Elemental Transformation talent.

Overall, it's a small but much needed volume definitely worth the $1 price.

Short but sweet. Exactly what I hoped. I particularly love the talent that lets creatures use a breath weapon as a ranged attack and the talent adding Dual Wielding sphere support for multi-armed creatures.