The thing is that with Unity you get 120 pages of fluff first. Or, if you want to count setting information and covers, 136 pages of it.
The actual game starts with Character Creation (chapter two) on page 134 (136 if you count the cover and dedication page).
The book breakdown continued:
Chapter 3, Classes, page 156. 94 pages of class information.
Chapter 4, Core Rules, page 250. Brief and to the point.
Chapter 5, Combat Rules, page 258. Decent, it merges 13th Age, 4E and 5E's advantage/disadvantage.
Chapter 6, Colossal Combat, page 270. Since it's something not present in the previously mentioned books, here's chapter preview:
- Piloting a Titan Rig
- Titan Rig Combat
- Titan Rig Power (supply, and how it works).
- Sample Titagn Rigs and Colossal Monsters
Chapter 7, Equipment, page 282.
Chapter 8, Foes and Fiends, page 306. Not too many monsters (each takes a page, with some illustrations taking also toll on the count): 25. To be fair, some monsters are actually monster groupings.
Chapter 9, GM Guide, page 352.
So, assuming that you're for the content, and not the art (it's beautiful, and the layout is simply stellar - almost on the par with the Numenera), is the book worth it?
If you have a taste for fantasy, and you haven't invested already in 5E, 4E, 13th Age, the answer is most likely yes.
If you care about the setting:
Ma and Pa wanted to have babies, totally-not-Menilboean-Elves (with Protoss uplink), two-meter-tall-furry-not-Dwarves and lackluster-as-usual-but-of-course-on-the-rise-humans. Pa had a middle-age crisis, went off to buy some cigs and never returned. Ma pined for him, then decided to punish kids for being too noisy and too quarrelsome and almost accidentally killed them... yes, it gets dark - the kids pooled resources, picked knives and killed Ma.
Pa felt it in the ether, suddenly returned and declared end of days by fusing spirit world (that accidentally also housed demons of Id) and material world. He also punished the kids - broke Protoss uplink, granted rage issues to not-Dwarves and finally indirectly taught humans how to turn themselves into self-inflicted cyborgs (it's a fourth race, not an actual upgrade for humans).
If you're just looking for a game to have fun:
Unity is like a friend who tries too hard. Reach out to them, tell them to drop some of the stuff and it should work great for both of you. Otherwise, you may get buried under mechanical details (no, icons don't make a game interface great). Be prepared to do some work - despite the long intro, there is almost no ready-to-use in-game material (NPCs, scenarios, locations) - the Ruin section is a bit over a page and a half. Finally, the game follows a lot of fantasy tropes - don't expect it to surprise you.
Brace yourself, some random downsides are coming:
1. My PDF is copy-locked. If you're looking to copy/paste text, too bad.
2. A location is a wall of text. When I compare it to Cavaliers of Mars hardcover I get also Hooks, Characters and Hazards.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Ruemere
