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Like many fans of the original Palladium Robotech RPG and the anime, I've been anxiously awaiting the release of this RPG (originally scheduled for March 2007). Now it's out and here's my take on the product.
The first thing you'll notice is the smaller manga/paperback book size and format. The smaller size was chosen by Palladium because of the upsurge in popularity of manga. Unfortunately, while this makes for easier casual reading and storage (ideal for manga), it's not the best choice for a frequently referenced RPG rulebook. I'm not sure about the rest of you but when my old group was playing Robotech, the dm would photocopy the character sheets and have us use them for conformity. With the new format, this will be difficult as more of the page will be photocopy obscured unless you decide to break the binding. The same problem occurs if you want to copy the character sheet; good luck keeping the book together after you do that a few times! IMHO, if you're going to make a book in this format and this thick, you should put the most frequently photocopied pages in the very back. Perhaps this is all part of the rush to get the book out (albeit a year late) with a 100+ extra originally unexpected pages.
The art work is comparable to the original Palladium Robotech artwork, which is a good thing! Although still completely in black and white, the artwork is top notch and nicely combines the different styles of all the different artists. The only thing that suprised me is that they seemed to have gotten rid of some of the B&W shading on some of Kevin Long's work to make it better fit with the new artists' styles (see the pic with the Alpha Shadow Fighter in the new book and compare it with the old Sentinels Vindicator pic).
The format of the book and content is laid out similar to previous Robotech books with RPG stats in the first section and the RPG rules in the back. The format is what you would expect from Palladium: crisp two column entries with occasional large pictures (no fancy computer formatting here). The content consists of equal portions of restatted material from the original releases (Invid War/Sentinels) and completely new mecha (like the Veritech Dune Buggy!!). From two read throughs of the rules, they're mostly unchanged from the original 1980's release with the same OCC system/%based skills as well as the attack/parry for free/dodge using an attack system. Depending on your opinion on the original rules, this could be either a good or bad thing. If you're a fan of the MDC ruleset, you'll be happy as a clam. If you're not, don't expect much of anything to change our mind in this release.
Overall, this is a decent release but honestly I was expecting more (perhaps too much). The previously billed "40% new material" is mainly stuff that fan sites could have made up (except for the art). Despite there being little chance of it, I was honestly hoping for a complete revamp of the Palladium MDC ruleset that has mostly remained the same since the release of the Robotech RPG in the 80's. This "newness" of this release is more along the lines of a Robotech Original RPG/Sentinels RPG, Rifts/Rifts Ultimate Edition, and D&D 3.0/3.5 change. In the end, I'm glad Palladium reaquired this license; more of the same is better than nothing if you liked what originally came out (like me).
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