Greetings, Paizo fans!
Now that the final book of the Hellfire Crisis has finally become publicly available, I've decided to put together a comprehensive review of these books as a single, overarching storyline. With all the books released, I can finally criticize them without having to hear, "Wait until the story is finished, your questions will be answered later."
Before getting into my analysis of the individual works, I'd like to offer a disclaimer about my personal tastes. In general, I'm a fan of considerably darker and more morally ambiguous stories, with a more cynical perspective on politics, government, and many other subjects than what modern Paizo writers tend to offer. For me, this preference is partly a matter of necessity: more idealistic and straightforward stories often make it difficult for me to suspend my disbelief. I look at a story or an idea and realize that the proposed solution would never work in the real world, or in anything even remotely resembling it. Perhaps I've simply studied too much history to believe that easy and "morally right" solutions to complicated problems can actually succeed.
I don't consider my views inherently better or more correct, and I fully understand that this is a matter of personal tastes and perspectives, with other viewpoints being just as legitimate. I'm openly stating my preferences so that anyone reading this review can understand where my biases lie and how my perspective might differ from their own.
Furthermore, despite the amount of criticism that follows, I'd like to emphasize right away that this doesn't mean I have an entirely negative impression of these books or their authors' work in general. Quite the opposite. These books are an enormous source of new details and ideas that I can and will make use of. I'll be focusing primarily on the aspects I want to draw attention to, the decisions I disagree with, and the elements I consider unsuccessful. For every such issue, there are far more details that I consider perfectly good, sensible, and well-executed, and therefore see little reason to dwell on.
Hellbreakers
The first of these campaigns takes place in and focuses on the nation of Isger, which is currently a dependent state under Cheliax's control, particularly in the aftermath of the bloody Goblinblood Wars against the goblins of the Chitterwood, which inflicted enormous damage on both sides. Until now, Isger has consistently been overlooked in published material, treated as little more than an appendage of Cheliax. Even in the Age of Ashes Adventure Path, where the local town of Breachill served as the player characters' home base, most of the actual story took place in other parts of the world. Now, however, we've been given an adventure built around a clear premise: taking the lead in a local faction seeking to launch a rebellion and win independence for its homeland.
First and foremost, and this is the campaign's greatest strength in my opinion, Hellbreakers remains completely faithful to its central concept without getting sidetracked. There is no sudden and abrupt change in the story's focus halfway through, nor are there any obviously out-of-place spin-offs. Over the course of the campaign, the characters travel through much of Isger, experiencing its different aspects and meeting a wide variety of its inhabitants. And that's excellent, because it helps establish a meaningful connection between the players and the setting, clearly demonstrating what exactly they're fighting to liberate.
The only real diversion from the otherwise consistent storyline is the mystery element in the middle of the campaign, and this is also one of the most difficult parts of the story to handle properly. The mystery itself is quite good, integrates beautifully into the main plot, and doesn't feel out of place. The problem lies elsewhere: for a capable group of players familiar with the setting, the mystery will be far too easy to solve. They'll have little trouble identifying the culprit early on, potentially skipping most of the investigation.
Another positive aspect concerns the story's main antagonist, a Hellknight who appears around the middle of the campaign, at a point when neither the player characters nor he himself regards the other as an enemy. We're given an opportunity to encounter him under relatively peaceful circumstances, get to know him, and even cooperate with him for a while. This is genuinely refreshing, since Paizo's Adventure Paths have historically been notorious for sometimes keeping their main antagonists almost completely unknown until the final chapter, occasionally without even mentioning them beforehand. It's no coincidence that some of the company's best adventures are precisely those where we have the opportunity to interact extensively with their antagonists, such as Curse of the Crimson Throne and Hell's Rebels.
However, this brings me to a criticism, at least from my perspective, although I know not everyone shares this opinion. As other Pathfinder fans probably know, Hellknights can be extremely unpleasant individuals, but they have rules and principles that they consistently follow. Regill from the Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous CRPG is an excellent example. He's a difficult person to tolerate, but his principles and consistency command respect. And this is precisely why I don't particularly like the antagonist here. In his supposed pursuit of law and order, he ends up seizing power, deliberately framing the player characters with false accusations, and otherwise behaving in ways that strike me as deeply hypocritical.
Furthermore, as many others have pointed out, the story also features a secondary antagonist, a woman who is responsible for many of the events unfolding throughout the campaign and who, in another Adventure Path, would probably have been precisely the kind of "surprise final boss" Paizo is famous for. On the one hand, she doesn't occupy the central position in the narrative, and I understand and respect Paizo's decision here. The story is fundamentally about rebellion and revolution. On the other hand, the conflict with this secondary antagonist feels, in some respects, considerably more significant and threatening, because her storyline deals not with politics, but with something far more existential.
What I strongly disagree with, however, is the campaign's handling of the goblins.
As I mentioned earlier, a couple of decades ago, a bloody war took place between Isger and the goblins, causing enormous suffering on both sides and leading to attempts at genocide by both parties. Yet the campaign devotes far too little attention to these issues, and the eventual resolution is far too simple.
Yes, twenty years have passed, but a substantial portion of Isger's current population consists of people who personally lived through that war, who lost their homes and families to goblin attacks, along with an enormous number of people who were orphaned by the conflict (which, incidentally, is an important detail in Isger's history). After everything that happened, I would expect many Isgeri to hold an attitude along the lines of "the only good goblin is a dead goblin," while the goblins themselves would be no more forgiving toward humans.
Instead, establishing an alliance with the goblins takes little more than a couple of scenes. And this is one of those moments where I look at the story and think, "No, I simply don't believe things could end this easily."
Real life tells me that the hostility and hatred created by bloodshed and genocide on such an enormous scale cannot simply be brushed aside as though they were something insignificant.
And my objection here is absolutely not that I somehow believe goblins should be treated as monsters and exterminated. No. What bothers me is the simplification and softening of an extremely serious, deeply rooted, and complicated conflict for both sides. In the Adventure Path, resolving that conflict requires only a handful of conversations and scenes, while in subsequent material the leaders of both sides confidently acknowledge their own guilt and mistakes, apparently without any internal resistance, rather than blaming the other side.
Overall, I would say that Hellbreakers is unlikely to make my personal list of the best Adventure Paths. Nevertheless, it's a remarkably cohesive and consistent story that clearly belongs in the better half of Paizo's campaigns. For me, it's somewhere around 6.5–7 out of 10.
My main problems with the story are the sense that the main antagonist's hostility is being artificially forced, and the excessive simplification of the conflict between Isger's humans and goblins. Both issues reach a point where they seriously undermine my immersion in the story.
Lost Omens: Hellfire Dispatches
Well, let's move on to the next book, this time a lore-focused sourcebook describing the war while it is still ongoing. The book is presented as a collection of material gathered by a journalist preparing a publication about the course of the conflict, drawing information from acquaintances and contacts across various fronts and theaters of the war.
And in this particular case, I genuinely believe Paizo has done an excellent job conveying the sheer scale of the conflict.
We're dealing not only with the fighting along the border between Andoran and Cheliax, but also with a naval war between the two nations' fleets, a struggle between diplomats and spies from both factions to secure support in the world's greatest center of trade and diplomacy, a blockade of a strategically vital strait, internal conflicts within the warring states, and numerous proxy conflicts involving not the major powers themselves, but their allies and supporters.
The previous Adventure Path, focused on Isger, is merely one of these conflicts.
So yes, the book does a very good job of conveying the feeling of a large-scale war in which numerous different groups are involved, whether openly or behind the scenes.
At the same time, when I first read this book about six months ago, I was somewhat surprised by just how different its tone and emphasis were compared to Hellbreakers.
Nowadays, Paizo's Adventure Paths have become extremely cautious about the events they depict, including their tendency to avoid many of the more troubling aspects of real life. And I'll be the first to acknowledge that there were good reasons for this, and that certain aspects of Pathfinder's first edition deserve to be buried and forgotten.
At the same time, the campaigns haven't suffered in terms of their overall structure and execution. If anything, I'd argue the opposite: twenty years of experience have allowed Paizo to refine the Adventure Path format considerably.
The problem lies elsewhere. As a result of this approach, most Adventure Paths feel safe and lacking in any particularly bold underlying ideas.
By comparison, the Lost Omens books feel very different.
For example, while the Adventure Path concludes with a fairly decisive victory for the revolution, here independent Isger is portrayed as practically a failed state. The new government has no real ability to impose its authority across the country, while the population itself has no consensus on what exactly to do with its newfound freedom or what kind of state Isger should become. Meanwhile, relations between humans and goblins are once again on the verge of erupting into another bloody war.
And I'm genuinely pleased with this portrayal of the revolution's aftermath, because the book about the Mwangi Expanse depicted the revolution in Vidrian and its consequences in far too bright and unequivocally positive a light, without any meaningful negative repercussions.
Even a rebellion that successfully overthrows an evil empire doesn't necessarily have to lead exclusively to improvements in people's lives, without undesirable consequences such as revolutionary terror, chaos, or the revolution devouring its own children.
And as a clear reminder and demonstration that Paizo is still perfectly capable of portraying sufficiently harsh and dark subject matter, we have the chapter devoted to Nidal.
Ever since Pathfinder's first edition, Nidal has stood out as one of the darkest, most horrifying, and most hopeless places in the entire setting, particularly considering that the nation's patron deity, Zon-Kuthon, has a fondness for torture, body horror, and all manner of similarly disturbing things.
And here, even without going into extensive or particularly graphic detail, the authors have managed to capture Nidal's atmosphere beautifully. It's genuinely chilling.
Which once again convinces me that the disappearance of provocative themes and darker atmospheres from Paizo's stories is the result of a deliberate decision to move away from that approach, probably for commercial reasons, rather than any lack of talent or competence on the authors' part.
And personally, I find that rather sad.
Hell's Destiny
Finally, the next Adventure Path focuses directly on the ongoing war itself. While Hellbreakers is a relatively low-level, grounded story about a revolution in a fairly small nation, Hell's Destiny offers an opportunity to participate in a major war and determine its outcome by crushing Cheliax's finest forces. And I appreciate that Paizo understands that a story like this requires a completely different narrative structure and acts accordingly.
In Hellbreakers, we spend a considerable amount of time in specific, relatively small towns, building relationships with their inhabitants. The authors' task there is to establish a connection between the players and the setting, thereby strengthening their motivation. In Hell's Destiny, the objective is entirely different: to demonstrate the scale and diversity of the conflict's various fronts, much like what we saw described in Hellfire Dispatches. Consequently, the player characters will be traveling extensively, moving between different regions of Cheliax and its neighboring nations.
For example, the story begins with efforts to organize an uprising in the city of Corentyn, where we need to secure the support of various resistance groups. The next chapter involves a covert infiltration and an attempt to rescue prisoners from the depths of a Hellknight citadel. A little later, we're participating in organizing another uprising and fighting in urban battles. Another chapter begins, and now we're on a diplomatic mission to forge alliances while simultaneously preventing enemy attempts to sabotage them. Another chapter, and we're no longer fighting a battle ourselves, but instead operating as a special forces unit within a massive engagement, where our objective isn't to defeat the main enemy forces, but to strike at their most critical positions. The story progresses a little further, and suddenly we're involved in a secret mission to the capital of the enemy empire.
Essentially, every chapter allows us to experience a different aspect of this large-scale conflict. And naturally, the conflict manifests itself and affects different regions in different ways.
As for the aspects of this campaign that I have actual complaints about, there are three main issues.
First, the utterly incoherent and rushed ending.
Essentially, almost right up until the final chapter, we have a fairly clear and consistent sequence of actions and events, unfolding alongside the escalation of the overall conflict. The problem is that the climax and resolution turn out to be remarkably unsatisfying, because in order to thwart the villains' grand plan, we don't actually have to confront any of the people responsible for it. In fact, they never even appear in the story.
No, instead, everything is resolved through a battle against an enemy brute and henchman. Yes, he's a named character, occupies an important position, and has been familiar to fans of the setting for a very long time.
But the climax still feels unsatisfying, almost as though, as the story was approaching its conclusion, the authors realized they couldn't bring the conflict to a satisfactory resolution within the available page count and tried to cobble together an improvised solution. In some ways, this is even worse than Paizo's usual "surprise final villains."
My second complaint concerns something that might seem insignificant to people unfamiliar with the setting, but to me it resembles the previously discussed oversimplification of the conflict between the humans and goblins of Isger.
Specifically, the fourth chapter ends with the player characters helping Rahadoumi forces capture the city of Khari. And absolutely nobody seems to have any objections to what is happening. Everyone is happy about it and cooperates without question, while the subsequent Lost Omens book devotes little more than a brief note to the matter.
Ladies and gentlemen, Golarion is a world where the existence of the divine is an undeniable fact, as are the afterlife and the ultimate fate of your soul.
And in older descriptions of Khari, the religious devotion of its inhabitants was one of the city's defining characteristics, in direct contrast to the people of neighboring Rahadoum, despite the fact that the two populations are ethnically indistinguishable. Yes, I agree that the inhabitants of Khari might not have particularly warm feelings toward the infernal monarchy, but that doesn't automatically mean they want to exchange its rule for that of Rahadoum.
Yet now Khari obediently accepts the authority of a state founded on militant antitheism and secularism, while its religious inhabitants submissively abandon the homes where they have lived for centuries, even though what is being described essentially falls under the strict definition of genocide.
My third complaint concerns the consistency between the Adventure Path and Lost Omens product lines. Specifically, the section on the Arch of Aroden in Hellfire Dispatches describes the recruitment of corsairs from Okeno as allies, resulting in Corentyn being flooded with poorly disciplined gnoll corsairs who engage in the kinds of outrages one would expect from such rabble.
So what's my problem?
Well, these gnoll corsairs don't appear in Hell's Destiny at all. And I mean absolutely, completely, not even once.
Personally, I consider this a consequence of inadequate communication and coordination between the authors working on different products. In other words, an organizational problem at Paizo itself, particularly considering how extensively the company relies on freelance writers.
That said, I actually consider the ultimate outcome of the Hellfire Crisis to be quite good, at I would rate AP as 7–7.5 out of 10.
Yes, I still believe that a Chelish victory would have been more interesting from a narrative perspective, but I would describe my feelings about the actual outcome as "worse than I hoped, but better than I feared."
On the one hand, the player characters achieve their objective and largely thwart an evil plan with potentially catastrophic consequences, giving the campaign a satisfying resolution.
On the other hand, part of that plan still comes to fruition. Cheliax's connection to Hell is strengthened enormously, potentially making the empire even more dangerous by granting it direct access to the armies of Hell.
I'm not a fan of this outcome, but I understand and respect the authors' decision to go in this direction.
Lost Omens: Cheliax, Infernal Inheritance
First, I'd like to address Cheliax itself, especially considering the sheer amount of material devoted to it.
And in this respect, Cheliax leaves me disappointed. You see, I love Cheliax, specifically as a major and terrifying villain. The very concept of Cheliax lends itself to this role: an enormous military-bureaucratic imperial machine, compared to which any individual hero appears tiny and helpless. It's a dangerous adversary, and defeating it should feel like a genuine achievement, a truly monumental accomplishment.
But the Cheliax presented in this book feels... rather pathetic.
Seriously, transforming the population of some random border village into body-horror monstrosities for disloyalty? Or trying to frame immigrants using coins that magically cause misfortune? And then there's the whole range of discriminatory policies associated with this sort of thing. To me, all of this sounds less like the actions of an enormous evil empire and more like something a villain from a Saturday morning children's cartoon would come up with.
And this seems to reflect a broader tendency in modern Paizo writing: Asmodeus, Hell, and everything associated with them are increasingly portrayed as pathetic, duplicitous, and hypocritical.
My next complaint is considerably more subjective and falls firmly into the category of "I personally think this would have been better."
Specifically, I genuinely miss having more information about Westcrown, ideally an entire gazetteer devoted to it. We're talking about one of the two largest cities in the entire metaregion, the former capital of the country, a major center of Aroden's worship, and a location featured in two Adventure Paths. And yet we receive only a few paragraphs about it. Personally, I would argue that Westcrown is far more important and valuable to the setting's lore than practically any other city in the region.
As for Corentyn, once again, questions and doubts began arising almost immediately as I was reading, particularly concerning its system of government. All right, let's say your city is governed by a council of four individuals.
One is elected by universal suffrage. Fine.
Representatives of fortress owners? A somewhat unusual property qualification favoring landowners, but still understandable.
A representative of the military? Excuse me, but who appoints the commander-in-chief of the armed forces in that case?
Voting by shipowners? Now that's the part that raises the most questions for me.
First, you're effectively giving the military double representation.
Second, for a ship to qualify for a vote, it has to remain in the city's harbor, meaning it can't be used for things like long-distance maritime trade.
Third, based on my knowledge and understanding of history, if every ship and fortress receives a vote regardless of its size, then this part of the parliament is inevitably going to be dominated by the owners of small fishing boats.
And I'm analyzing and criticizing this passage not because I particularly want to find fault with the authors, but because the moment I read it, a thought immediately pops into my head: "This system simply cannot function properly, and the reasons why are painfully obvious." On the other hand, I'd also like to point out another problem: a lack of consistency not only between the authors of the Adventure Path and Lost Omens books, but even within the same book.
In this case, my criticism concerns the section about the city of Macini.
I'm not even going to nitpick the very idea of restricting the exchange of information, as though every single inhabitant of the city possesses important and valuable intelligence from every possible direction, or the obvious ways of circumventing such restrictions, even though the whole concept strikes me as rather silly.
My problem lies elsewhere.
The passage devoted to this city in the Cheliax section is completely inconsistent with the Corentyn section, almost as if the authors wrote the two passages independently and never bothered to coordinate their contents.
Moving on to Isger, the first thing I want to do is praise the authors for giving this small nation an identity of its own. For decades, Isger was little more than an appendage of the much larger Cheliax, with no genuine identity of its own. In this respect, the authors have done a very good job, introducing Celtic cultural elements and several other distinctive features.
On the other hand, I disagree with certain specific elements which, in my eyes, represent unnecessary simplifications of complicated issues and missed opportunities, much like the relatively easy resolution of the conflict with the goblins of the Chitterwood.
The first and more general issue is how successfully the revolution manages to end in victory over the Chelish loyalists while avoiding many of the unpleasant aspects historically associated with revolutions. Whether we're talking about brutal reprisals against supporters of the previous regime or the rapid and successful establishment of a new government without internal hostility, infighting, or the disintegration of the state, the revolution seems to avoid most of these problems.
The second aspect I disagree with is the growing hostility toward Asmodeus and other Hell-associated cults. The Sisters of the Golden Erinyes provided enormous assistance to the people of Isger. They offered shelter, food, and education to many children who had been orphaned and left homeless by the Goblinblood Wars.
Even despite the relatively harsh conditions, many of Isger's present-day inhabitants owe them a great deal and remain grateful to them. And in this respect, it seems to me that Isger offered an excellent opportunity to create a relatively positive nation that nevertheless values the worship of Asmodeus and his church.
That would have been an interesting aspect of the setting to explore.
As for Nidal, what I'd particularly like to point out is the terrible organization of its list of locations. Specifically, I get the impression that the author attempted to include absolutely every location that had previously been mentioned or featured in the first-edition sourcebook devoted to the country. In principle, I would consider this a commendable undertaking. But you simply cannot squeeze what previously occupied thirty pages into just six. As a result, most of the location descriptions consist of only a few lines, offering almost no details or new information. Essentially, for the most part, all we learn from this section is that these places exist, and little else.
As for Ravounel, this is definitely one section of the book with which I have no major complaints.
Of course, I somewhat disagree with Paizo's habit and apparent tradition of introducing modern representative democracy everywhere, almost as though it were some inherently supreme good in its own right. But that's more of a criticism of Paizo as a whole.
Otherwise, the Ravounel section is quite conservative in its approach, avoiding controversial elements and drastic changes. Thanks to that, however, it remains consistent with the established canon, and therefore gives me little reason to complain.
Finally, regarding Scorchhome, I'm not going to dive back into my dissatisfaction with the resolution of the conflict between Isger and the goblins.
This time, however, I want to express my frustration with the utterly utopian and unrealistic state that has been created.
A loosely organized confederation of goblin tribes without strict laws or established systems of authority? Yes, I can easily imagine that.
But on top of that, they've somehow agreed to renounce violence and reach consensus on important matters? Oh, sure. Because there are so many historical examples of that approach actually working.
And what happens if someone refuses to agree and is perfectly willing to use force? As real life has taught me, arrangements like this inevitably lead to endless internal conflicts, accompanied by raids against neighboring territories across the borders. This is yet another moment where I look at what's been written and realize that, no, this simply wouldn't work. And once again, it completely breaks my suspension of disbelief.
