Bubblegum Crisis Ex is the third release from Animechanix (AKA R. Talsorian Games) covering the adventures of the Knight Sabres and their war against Genom. This particular volume covers all the stuff that didn't make it into the OVAs, instead drawing from conceptual diagrams, side-story ideas and other materials tangentially related to the original series.
Unlike the previous two books (Bubblegum Crisis and Bubblegum Crisis: Before & After), this book is less about the setting and more about the hardware. Nearly two-thirds of the book details various new hardsuits, weapons, vehicles, characters, boomers, and such in useful detail. The hand of David Pulver seems clear, since the description of each piece is clear as its it's potential use in the game. Further, the equipment is nicely annotated with its source (either rough design or side story) and whether the text is original to this book, or translated.
There's not much you can really say about the equipment except that its almost all cool. Among my favorites are the Super Typhoon II (pictured on the back cover) and the Type-9 Battlemover (a SDF mecha). The new Boomers are both strong and weak, providing a range of challenge for any player group. Of note is the rewrite of the various major characters in the series using a more toned down point level. At this level, it gives them a more realistic feel (and puts them in line with the AD POLICE era described in Bubblegum Crisis: Before & After).
The last third of the book is campaign oriented, including write-ups of various cities and the Knight Sabre teams working out of them. Of note, these write ups come from actual fans of the game (and often include URLs and email addresses... of limited utility now, I suspect). The quality and level of detail in these write ups varies, as a result, but provide a useful guide in how to set up your own game.
The rest of the campaign material includes rules for expanding play into space and underwater. These rules are simple and effective, capturing the dangers of these extreme environments (which, of course, were the intended destination of the hardsuits Dr. Stingray was designing). One disappointment is the cursory handling of "cyberspace", but considering the coverage available in Cyberpunk 2020, this isn't unexpected.
Also included is a section on players as Boomers. While short, it hits all the important points you would expect and provides more than a handful of campaign ideas. Then a far too short pair of pages on building your own hardsuit (long overdue) and a passable adventure (Virtual Vision) closes out the volume.
Bubblegum Crisis Ex is hardly a "must have", unless you're a completist or you feel that your BGC game may be getting stale. Its quality level is up there with the other two books, so if you appreciated them, you will likely enjoy this one as well. On the downside, it is light on the background and setting info, substituting numbers for content. This makes it of less value for the non-gamer that might be looking for more insight into the world of Neo-Tokyo.
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