I'll be honest; I did not want to buy the 2nd edition of Legend of the 5 Rings when I first heard about its release 2 years ago. this was in part because I had just gotten comfortable with the game in first edition form, and partly because I was afraid it would be nothing more than the publisher using a few errata changes and an advanced storyline to squeeze an extra $60 out of me. When I began GMing the game I finally broke down and bought the books and was pleasantly surprised!
The main appeal of this edition for me was the fact that it reprinted much material from the 1st edition sourcebooks in one volume, thus keeping me from having to go buy 15 splatbooks that are usually 30% filler just to have a well fleshed out campaign. Many of the special "clan specific" spells, skills, advantages, and disadvantages from the "Way of the..." books are added to the existing list, thus making character creation more convenient. The GM's guide also condenses several books into one to make the Shadowlands and other adversaries easier to portray. When a Game saves me time, space, and money, it's a good thing.
The main changes new to the second edition are the clan war, the introduction of the Naga character class, and a few rules changes. The biggest rules change is that instead of rolling trait skill and keeping trait, players now roll just skill and keep the trait. I have not tried this yet, to be honest (I want to finish out our current adventure using the same rules we started it with,) so I cannot say exactly how drastically this will affect gameplay. Skills now have a cap of ten instead of 5. My players liked this change, since a series of battles will quicklt get them to the 5 point cap. The charachter sheet is also improved, it is much easier to find things and has more information.
The storyline advance does not hamper the book as much as I had feared; a GM can choose to omit the clan war, or change its circumstances. There's alot there to play with as far as the future is concerned. There is alot that I can work with for many sessions to come, and a whole appendix of random encounter charts to spice up a slow scene.
Things I did not like mainly concerned the books' style; I know I've said it many times before, but isn't a 2nd edition of a game supposed to have better artwork than the first? A lot of the illustrations in the second edition were amateurish and frankly not very asian looking. I thought that perhaps Alderac would do something similar to White Wolf's "Hengeoyaki" supplement and give some of the art a manga flavor, but manga-style illustrations are sadly few and far between.
Other than a few nitpicks though, I feel these books were well worth my money. if you felt the first edition was a bit light, check out the second.
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