[Hywel]

sturmkraehe, thank you for your considered reply. I agree that a review not based on play has limited validity, but don't believe it is totally uninformative. RPGnet has a whole category of reviews, capsule reviews, based on that premise.

I intend to post a follow-up full review when I have had chance to run and play the game. That will certainly be more informative... but I'm not sure anyone can really pass judgement on some of the rules issues until they've been playing the game for a long time, and probably not until the rules expansions have been issued.

For example, combat that can be quick and great fun at 3rd level might turn into a veritable nightmare of conflicting options at 30th. It is probably not fair to judge by jumping right in and running a 30th level game without playing up through the levels, either. So the best any playtest based review can say at this point is how it plays for low levels, really. That's fine, that's informative too, but it is just another point on the curve for deciding whether you like the system enough to spend a year running a campaign using it.

Another point on the graph is whether the expansion books do indeed include a non-combat-based book of rituals, or whether they are all just more combat kewl powers to make your character have to buy the expansion book or fall behind the power curve.

As I said in my review, only time will tell. Those were my first impressions. I'd not read too many other people's reviews before writing mine as I wanted to record my own impressions. If lots of people have the same impressions, there is probably something to them, even if some of the worries don't work out that way in play.

Cheers, Hywel.