The first word that comes to mind after reading this is "repetitious". Maybe it was a technique to help people remember things but I often found myself thinking, "Didn't I just read that a couple pages ago?" The key thing with Genesys is you can fail a check, but still have something good happen, and you can pass a check and still have something bad happen. What happens is determined by the player making the check and then approved, modified or completely changed by the GM.

Other than that the only thing that really stuck out as different is the "looseness" of the magic system. There aren't 200 individual spells that are very specific in their effects. Instead there are 6 or 7 different types of spells and then you can adjust them by making the check to cast them tougher. It's something I've been looking for, for a long time and something I've attempted to create a couple times, though I haven't had much of a chance to test anything I've written.

Having dice that are unique to a system can be a deal breaker for some people, especially those who have amassed a collection of 100's or even 1000's of "normal" polyhedral dice. For me it's definitely a thumbs down, though I do see how they are needed to achieve the "fail, but with advantage" mechanic that pulls players more into the story.

I actually played a session of the game and I was surprised that putting the dice pool together wasn't as cumbersome as I thought it would be, the GM being experienced with the system definitely helped. Having to decide what the advantages/disadvantages were did slow the game down a bit, but it added to the fun so I felt it was worth it.

I'm not a "Theater of the Mind" guy, so no minis or grid is definitely a big thumbs down for me. If I was going to run it I would use minis anyway and a map, if not necessarily a grid. Or I might just homebrew movement rules and use a grid.

This is a big book but don't let that scare you, most of it is not needed to play the game and even GM's can skip large parts of it without impeding their understanding of how to play. ( )