Literally came out about over a year late from promised release. But besides that, this is an underwhelming splatbook for a bad game in its own right. And certainly not worth the wait.

Yet another boring generic ""space opera rpg"" that brings no new ideas to the table. Having said that, the real problem is not lack of originality in terms of setting tropes, but a lack of examination and follow-through on the tremendous potential of scifi tropes it attempts to interact with. Technology is a confusing mishmash of what is and isn't possible that seems arbitrarily decided, the most important aspects of which are enabled by made up ""space magic unobtainium"" to justify wars over not!oil in the game world. The treatment of how certain cultures of Earth might develop is handled in a manner that is simply bad and illogical, and the metaplot is another ""evul aleeyunz hordes vs teh hoomanz race"" military scifi cliche that is not only unnecessary, but handled outright poorly compared to other pieces of media that utilize it. Still, if anything else can be said, it's admitting that this rpg earns the dubious distinction of rpgs such as Degenesis and Faith in that it demonstrates how throwing enough money at the artists can make up, however superficially, for a bad game (to a degree), since I'm certain some individuals bought it for the sake of the ""hawt gurlz in leotards"" they saw in the previews.

Good ideas, but underwhelming and scattered in execution. Honestly works much better as a repository of ideas, concepts and inspiration than a game. Ironically, it ultimately comes off as ""insufficiently advanced.""

Not GURPS Transhuman, why bother? Jokes aside, its approach to the scifi elements it incorporates is decent, but the setting itself is somewhat underwhelming. Also, why the weird obsession with ""space aristocracy""? Doesn't make a lot of sense.

Decent ideas, disappointing execution. The real travesty here is a lack of examination of the tremendous potential of scifi tropes it interacts with. Also, the ripoff of Eywa from Avatar doesn't help.

Yet another boring generic ""space opera rpg"" that brings no new ideas to the table. Having said that, the real problem is not lack of originality in terms of setting tropes, but a lack of examination and follow-through on the tremendous potential of scifi tropes it attempts to interact with.

A boring generic ""punk scifi rpg"" that brings no new ideas to the table. Having said that, the real problem is not lack of originality in terms of setting tropes, but a lack of examination and follow-through of the tremendous potential of cyberpunk/scifi tropes it attempts to interact with.

Yet another boring generic ""space opera rpg"" that brings no new ideas to the table. Having said that, the real problem is not lack of originality in terms of setting tropes, but a lack of examination of the tremendous potential of scifi tropes.

Yet another boring generic ""space opera rpg"" that brings no new ideas to the table. Having said that, the real problem is not lack of originality in terms of setting tropes, but a lack of examination of the tremendous potential of scifi tropes.

Frankly, not a good ""multiversal crossover"" rpg.

Decent ideas, but crippled by a lack of examination and follow-through on the tremendous potential of scifi tropes it attempts to interact with. Certain important or highly interesting plot points are either underdeveloped or simply not interacted with, and the setting comes off as a confused muddle. Also uses the awful ""Kardashev scale"" which is a practically meaningless level of measure of development.

Good ideas, but the gaping inconsistency of theming and incoherent plot/setting points badly harms its playability as a game and enjoyability as a setting. Frankly, I suspect the authors could have gotten much more support for this if they had billed it as "the Precursor civilization rpg" rather than trying to awkwardly tie it to their lackluster fantasy title (via the same clunky naming convention). Of course, that would require the setting to be coherently and competently written. Despite the interesting and reasonably engaging fluff text, like most rules-light rpgs based on systems like pbta or Fate, vagueness prevails in the actual game. Massive lists of weapons with no descriptions or flavor beyond some dull game effect tags. Lists of ships and vehicles that are little more than clumps of effect descriptions practically indistinguishable from each other and of course absolutely no guidance on how to portray them. In terms of story, for whatever reason the authors decided that their game about very high scifi civilizations that are millions and billions of years old should just not have any ftl at all until literally very recently, which is played up as an incredibly major plot point. Frankly, this is highly dissonant to the rest of the setting considering that the setting also has actual literal space magic in it, so arbitrarily singling out one of the most common elements in scifi as ""impossible until now"" falls utterly flat for me. Speaking of the space magic, it is also rather derivative and certain aspects of it rather cheesy (the space magic is called “”the Flow,””, and certain aspects of it are referred to as “”Heart power””), so that may not be your thing. The game also explicitly describes itself as a ""heroic adventure fantasy"" and a ""space opera,"" but lacks any real room for the main species of the PCs, called ""the Hama"" (insert obligatory ""name aged poorly"" joke here) to actually do anything. That is, despite claiming to be a mainly personal scale game of heroes, the many ""plot seeds"" and setting element descriptions hardly show how any GM is meant to run an adventure in the setting (which, to be fair, is par for the course for an unfortunately high number of rules light systems like pbta and FATE based rpgs, in which writers confuse ""rules light"" for ""license to be lazy""). At times the writers seem more concerned with beating off to their special snowflake super duper ""main character"" civilization than writing actual usable adventure points, which is only exacerbated by the confusing formatting and outright absence of explanations for central elements of the setting’s foundation. Overall, this setting is decent if you want to mine it for ideas for use elsewhere, but I absolutely could not recommend it as a good setting in its own right. PS: Incidentally, the art team seems to suffer at times a serious case of mismatch with the actual written content, where it seems to illustrate a setting much lower tech than what the setting presents itself as.

Good ideas and decent art, but ruined by a lack of follow through. The example setting is massively underdetailed and hardly matches the expected tone of ""scifi at the end of time."" Certain portions of the game make it feel more like some kind of weird ""cheesecake"" game than a real exploration of the topics it purports to be about.

It really was not good. The book was disappointing.

While this book is technically sound enough, I must forewarn any buyers of the finer points of this book's claims. You see, the book transposes all of the "original" classes into an actual, historical modern setting--as in right NOW modern, not "magitech" or "fantasy cyberpunk". As such, clerics are PC and wizards/sorcerers are either nonexistent or regarded with disbelief and suspicion. If you were looking for "Greyhawk 2000" or Shadowrun, this book is not that. In addition, the armor section has retained most of the problems with d20 Modern with all of the DR and fortification in a game that is not balanced with those features casually floating around. Archaic armor also has no tangible penalty in this game, which makes the idea that those armors could have ever died out in the assumed modern in the first place ridiculous.

If I could have given this a higher rating, I would. The author really goes the extra mile to avoid the weird gestalt templates of d20 Modern, and they honestly put a lot of work into this. Sadly, it simply did not fulfill the needs of my gaming group, and thus I have no choice but to rate it as such.

Edit: Responding to the publisher, I figured that since the book was for Pathfinder (ie a setting where the Gods have a VERY real and tangible presence in the world) that the content would be influenced by it. That it was not greatly influenced by that setting is a big letdown since all of the main classes come from that setting, a fact that caused me to think that it would be "Golarion but in the 2000s".