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BESM Fantasy Bestiary
BESM Fantasy Bestiary is finally out.
For a delightful change of pace from GoO, the worthless fluff text is kept to a minimum. This time around, the book is 94 pages and actually has a very good content to fluff ratio. Everything is geared towards giving stats for fantasy critters and putting those stats to effective use in a game, not only for NPCs but also for PCs.
The art is OK. It is effective in its goal. The art always takes up a full page when it appears, but art doesn't clog the book as much as in other GoO releases. This is because the full page art that pops up every couple of page flips is not supplemented by additional partial page art. This is a welcome change. Although it would be better if the full page art wasn't so frequent (every two page flips).
Another thing to note about the art is that it is consistent this time around. It is all by one artist. This gives the book a much better and uniform feel than the hodgepodge in BESM1, 2, or SAS.
Like most GoO books, it has its organizational glitches. In this case, the critters are not arranged purely alphabetically. They are first divided into subcategories, and then sorted alphabetically in those categories. This little glitch can make the book a minor pain in the ass when quickly searching for something.
Present opinion?
It will be a good tool should I ever get around to reviving my old fantasy campaign from years ago. I've been thinking of trying BESM for the task, and this book will enable a quicker and more consistent conversion.
The book has me looking forward to BESM Dungeon. I'm still considering picking up Uresia. So, overall, I guess I have to say that Fantasy Bestiary worked in its role as a supplement and a promotional tool for other products.
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