[Mechante_Anemone]

Hey, Andrew! Thanks for the review. I'm in the same case you are, playing in a Scion game, and not too terribly impressed with the system. I have very much the same observations you made in your review. I'm playing this game because I like the GM and the players, but frankly I would have preferred to play several other games that have similar themes but in my opinion do a better job (Legends Walk! and Nine Worlds come to mind, and HeroQuest, Arsenal of Heaven, or Weapons of the Gods would work too.)

One observation: I think I would have had a hard time understanding some of the points you made if I hadn't played the game already; a bit more context about how a mechanic works before you discuss its flaws might be helpful.

By the way, the free demo adventure published by White Wolf and featuring its signature NPCs is terrible. It's one of the most pointless and railroading adventures produced this decade. Our GM ran it as a throwaway demo not connected to her main campaign, and our group was very unimpressed. In addition, it offered our group a good opportunity to compare a reasonable but non-optimized Scion character with one tweaked for combat. It's pretty appalling.

One thing we've discovered is that if you have a perfectly good but non-combat-oriented Scion concept (say a healer, a mystic scholar, a trickster, etc.), you're going to have very little to do -- especially in the WW official adventures, as opposed to our GM's own stories. In order to be of any use and survivability, you need to sink points into Epic Stamina and Epic Dexterity, even if it doesn't work with your concept at all. And even so, that just makes you second-rate both at combat and at your main shtick, since you have to split your character creation points and your experience.