Giant Robot, Activate! Starfinder: Mechageddon! Reviewed

Title: Starfinder – Mechageddon!

Publisher: Paizo Inc

Authors: Jenny Jarzabski with Rigby Bendele, Joseph Blomquist, Dennis Muldoon, Kate Baker, Anthony Dolinger, K. Fox, Mikko Kallio, Diego Valdez, Christopher Wasko, and Nicholas Wasko

Artists: Mirco Paganessi, Alex Arscott, Sol Devia, Ioannis Fiore, Arturo Gutierrez, Josh Ketchen, Denis Medri, Sophie Medvedeva, Guilherme Olivieri, Sam Perin, Miguel Regodón Harkness, Riccardo Rullo, and Pixoloid Studios (Mark Molnar, David Metzger, Gaspar Gombos, Zsolt “Mike” Szabados, Janos Gardos, Laszlo Hackl, Peter Lerner, and Orsolya Villanyi)

Year: 2024

Genre: Standalone anime mecha and kaiju inspired Starfinder adventure

Pages: 184 pages

MSRP: Hardcover $59.99 or $39.99 in PDF

Mechageddon! is incredibly well-designed and quite obviously a passion project for all involved. Jenny Jarzabski and team spared nothing in constructing a story and world which could easily give any of the media from which they drew inspiration a run for its money.

This is in no small part thanks to a rigorous understanding of what lies at the heart of all of these stories. While the mech versus monster smackdowns are what tend to draw people in, it is the relationships that develop in the shadow of these conflicts that gets them to stick around. The writers recognize this and weave in a companion team to the player characters, while leaving space for the nature of the relationship to be defined.

Relationships, in gaming as in life, take time and work to develop. While some of the tension is removed via the magic of out-of-game communication, players still need to consciously commit to earn their payoff. This necessitates a certain maturity in roleplaying and in GMing as experience alone won’t cut it. While the development team has done a wonderful job building in inter-team encounters, it will be up to GMs and player to make those bonds count.

Mechageddon! understands the need for breathing room in the story and the team has, as a result, structured each individual adventure into multi-stage chapters designed to be played over multiple sessions, and has included guidance for creating custom content, as well as four optional “Side Job” missions. The campaign feels less like three interconnected adventures and more like a playable, interactive twenty-two episode television series, penned with a laser focus. Nothing here is rushed and the experience is all the better for it.

The big determining factor in whether Mechageddon! is right for your table comes down to whether or not everyone wants to commit to an epic in which giant robotic combat against monsters with complex evolving team and, potentially, inter-team dynamics have roughly equal importance in shaping the narrative feel and direction. Sure, it’s possible to run the path without delving into those relationships, but there would be something substantial lost in choosing to do so. Along those same lines, while not every encounter is designed for mech combat, mech combat does play a major part in action scenes in every act; players should make sure that they really enjoy this playstyle prior to undertaking Mechageddon! in order to avoid frustration.

It’s important to note these limitations are not flaws. They speak to a clarity of and fidelity to vision that will resonate with fans of the genre. Mechageddon! may not have as broad of an appeal as other, less genre-tied Adventure Paths, but then again, not everyone wants to deliver their own version of Idris Elba’s “canceling the apocalypse” speech from Pacific Rim – and that’s okay!

Mechageddon! is an epic primed to find the people who will love and appreciate it. Powered by a creative team with an unwavering dedication to their craft, the result is an opportunity for incredible roleplay mixed with battles that would rightly be called cinematic.