Pathfinder 2nd edition, a readthrough,

Disclaimer: I was not a fan of the PF 2e dev diaries, or of the play-test. This does not mean I'm going to do nothing but bash this book, and I legitimately hope to be pleasantly surprised, but keep in mind this read-through is likely to be very biased. A fair bit of it is also for comedic purposes. It is by no means a declaration that people should not play PF 2e, that people are wrong for enjoying it, or anything along those lines.

For those unfamiliar with the game, Pathfinder is a d20 Fantasy game that originally started as a successor to the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragon when the 4th edition was made, due to the somewhat large backlash to changes made. The publishers are Paizo, makers of many 3rd edition campaign books and publishers of the Dungeon and Dragon magazines. Pathfinder 1e is a personal favorite game of mine, and was published up until a bit over a year ago, when development began on Pathfinder 2nd edition. Pathfinder 2nd edition has been divisive from what I can tell, and what I saw during the dev diaries was not encouraging. So, I've decided now that the game is out and I got my brand new shiny pdf from Paizo, to read this blind from the very start, and share what I think.

Before I crack open the books, I did scan through it to check on the art because some of the criticism I heard was about the artwork and how it's less mature, in the sense that Seoni's outfit covers more of her body. This is in fact true, and would maybe matter if maturity=level of skin exposed, or if I cared. The clothing of the Iconic characters does not matter that much, and if the level of maturity in the artwork is the sex appeal, I don't really care for it being there. As is, while I haven't started reading yet, the complaints were linked to Golarion being overall made lighter and softer. If this proves to be the case...fine. I do like some of PF's mature writing for Golarion, but at other times it comes off as really forced and pushing the boundary of good choice. The ideal solution would be to have two settings, one for younger players and one for older players, but whatever floats their boat. Anyway, time to start the actual book

The title page is essentially a redo of the 1e title page, which I approve of thematically. I also approve of the red dragon remembering it has a breath attack, although I dock it points for not doing fly-bys, further confirming my theory that the bigger dragons get, the more their brains shrink. As far as the Iconics, I have no idea what the significance of Seoni and Random Fighter dude (I can't remember his name) being replaced with Harsk, Merisiel, and Kyra is, but I do find Harsk's axes looking like a side view of a helmeted dwarves' head from the side. On the negative side, both Harsk and Merisiel look like some kind of rodent, or at least their heads, with the large noses, black eyes, and Merisiel's pointed ears. Otherwise the art is fine even if it is a little more cartoonish than the 1e illustration.

On to the table of contents, and confirmation that this book is 628 pages of content with 11 chapters and several appendixes. Lotta reading. Anyway, artwork here is pretty good, we have some nice thematic pieces of art that avoid making the characters look like they are were-rats. We also get the staff listings, and thankfully it is not the lists I'm used to out of some of the later WW materials, so we didn't have ten designers working on the same game here. 7, 4 if developers means something else, all of them veterans of 1e for good or for ill. We do have a repeat of character creation being before the explanations of the rules in-depth, which I consider a mistake since people will be reading about character creation without a good idea of what the game's rules are like, but it's common enough I won't make a fuss over it here.