Poppy Playtime: Orientation Guidebook (In-World Guide)

As a long time determined Poppy Playtime fan and an even more enthusiastic lore-ist fanatic, I of course just had to get my hands on this book to check if it would have any content that would aid me (and possibly others!) in putting the lore together. I´d been waiting day and night for this one, so I will be dividing my review in 2 parts, as I did take a break in reading this at some point. (1-hour read until page 112.) Yes, I did read a majority of the book in an hour, and that´s why despite my eagerness to read this I really wanted to put this review together because.. well, if you´re someone who´s played Chapter 1 and 2 and gave the tiniest bit of interest towards the lore and layout of the place, this book will tell you short of nothing. First few pages are fun and quite interesting, putting together dates and experiment numbers that no doubt clear the timeline up, but then the less P.W has to say, the less thrilling reading this becomes. Lots of (in my opinion) useless explanations about how to solve puzzles you should´ve only had to worry about in-game, documented areas that have incredibly bare-bones info, pages filled with re-used art (like, seriously, if you´re gonna make a book, at least maybe make some original content for it! I´ve seen most of these posters half a million times!), and just overall a not very enticing experience. So, in short, up until this point it´s just felt like a glorified descriptive version of a playthrough of Chapter 1 and 2...Which could´ve been fine, just label it as such! I´m sure some people (me included!) would´ve loved to hear what the player was thinking as they threaded through the factory, but as the Orientation Book puts it down, it just turns into a boring experience I had to unfortunately take a break from. (Final pages.) After writing the first part of this review, I decided to sit down to finish the book since it looked the most interesting from this point forwards. While that is true, it´s still disappointing that the most lore you can get out of this WHOLE book comes from the ending calendar. Everything else is available online through Mob Entertainment´s RESTRICTED playlist, in-game, or through the ARG, the latter of which is the only one I can understand the documentation of the most. Despite all the cons of my review however, this was still a little delightful book to read! It is written well with no jarring grammar mistakes, gives the reader a jog on their memory of older Poppy Playtime content, and relays little tidbits of new info, which specially make sense with Chapter 4´s newest discoveries. I recommend buying the book if you´re an avid Poppy Playtime fan and mayhaps wish to complete your collection of games with official literature, but I´d recommend Mob to write something less official next time. Like aforementioned in my review, something from the Player´s POV could be nice once we learn of our identity; now THAT´S something I wouldn´t mind reading a retelling of the games for!