World of Darkness 2nd Edition

I bought this mostly because I adore oWoD and wanted to take a look at the "new" one (it is five years old now, so not that new anymore). Plus, I was curious how the separation of "general" rules from "setting" rules thing worked out.

On the good side - some nice tweaks to the mechanics (getting rid of some abilities), the manual is generally high quality and some of the art and stories are teriffic. It serves as a pretty good source of inspiration for adventures for mortal characters. You can get an X-Files kind of feel, or toy around and create any modern horror.

The bad things - the art quality is rather uneven and it differs a lot in style, some of which completely misses the point. The rules are most important though, and here one could also find a few things to rant about.
First of all, I hate the new Virtues and Vices system. I think the old one, with Nature and Demeanor was waaaay better. Also, adding "Size" as a statistic smells of rotten D&D. I had the feel that a lot of the rulebook could have been taken out - it provides rules for very specific stuff, and I feel that WoD is the kind of mechanic that allows the Storyteller to figure it out himself, without saying "Throw these many dice for damage".

Generally, I've got mixed feelings about this product. It's design and quality is great, but I think it fails at delivering well planned out rules. If they cut them a bit, maybe added some more stuff about the setting, it would be a lot better. Good it's pretty cheap, and you don't feel tricked after buying it. It provides the bare bones stuff, but to be honest, if you tend to storytell more than roll dice and you know the WoD mechanic, you could well do without this and stick to the specific setting books. It's definately not a "must-buy" in my opinion.