Since this product is pretty small, 21 pages counting the credits, introduction and cover, I can look at each class rather than my impression of the book as a whole.
The first class is the Aether Blade. Like a true martial it gains Full BAB and a d10 hit die. It also has good fort and will saves and 2+Int skills per level. The Aether Blade conjures it's own melee weapon and eventually can cannibalize magic weapons in order to get bonuses. Another important ability is an aura that it can use by the round (It scales similarly to Rage or Bardic Performance) which grants a scaling bonus to various things based on what kind of aura you want to apply. As it levels the Aether Blade can use the power of staves, rods, or wands for increasingly more powerful effects. Most of the rest of the abilities for the most part just give it numbers except from one class feature that basically gives it spells which I felt kind of put off by. It kind of feels like the ability makes it a 4/9 level caster but diminished when really we didnt' need to bring spells into the mix to begin with. Heck I would have rather seen another Arcane Paladin than a pseudo non-caster caster. The mechanical negatives are fairly minimal. There are points like the Aether Blade's enhancement bonus redistribution not having limits on what weapon properties can apply or having the usual rules language that govern similar abilities that make me nervous and there are questions I have whenever pseudocasting comes up in regards to spell completion effects, but that's about it. From a Flavor perspective I'm not particularly excited. It looks like it functions as a class but nothing gives me a reason to desire to play it over anything else with a similar gimmick that I could be playing. At best it's auras make it a unique gish-like class in that it can directly support casters when normally gishes are far from support classes.
Then there is the Shadow Blade. Another full BAB beef stick. The theme I've seen done to death but That can't be held against it. One of it's important abilities is it's Beshadowed Blade which grants a bonus to feint checks, which is important to activate it's strictly worse sneak attack-like bonus damage that activates when the targets is denied it's dex bonus. This ability gets some fuel from some talent-like options that start arriving at level 7. Beshadowed Blade comes at level 3 but it feels like just for the sake of making a centralized flavor and make it feel more diverse that could have come at level 1 and the talents could have come earlier and in place of the pseudo sneak attack. Since you do kind of want that damage on there it feels like the class want's you to be on the feint path of fighting which is kind of okay because I have some third party material that makes that work out okay but I'm not actually sure that it's really an effective thing to do with the core rules. The Shadow Blade does offer some options to make feint work without a million feats but since those are hard to come by you're a bit locked into some options since you have a lot of feint-based class features that you can't pick and choose from. The other really important ability is the ability to teleport through shadows. You only have a certain amount of feet per day to work with but if you go the Two Weapon Feint route it's a bit more doable, although situational. As far as I can tell this class mechanically works and nowhere am I stumbling to understand what to do.
The third class is the Verdant Blade. It has a retractable plant weapon that as passable wording governing it but some things make me wary about the rules language although part of it is for flavor concerns. for example; it takes root in the wielder's hand or wrist which makes me question how this affects the wrist or hands magic item slots. Other than that it's my favorite class out of the bunch. It has talents and 4 levels of druid casting but also has a cavalcade of interesting abilities like just macguyvering items together and planting seeds into creatures. It feels like what I would have imagined a Ranger would be if it were more of a magic nature warrior than a specific quarry hunter. Its also less of a damage dealer and more of a defensive debuffer with many of it's abilities either defending the Verdant Blade or obstructing an opponent without any real combat direction or damage boosts that most martials get.
The last class is the Vital Blade. Like two of the others it conjures a weapon but this one is made of blood. They also get a short pool of Blood Points that can be refilled with killing blows with the blood weapon or critical hits. I'm sure this will lead to bags of rats but the point pool is so small that there's no point so I won't see it as that big of a deal. It gains a list of talents it can take and on killing blows or by spending blood points it can get enhancement bonuses or weapon abilities (again no limit). The bonus gained is limited to the target's hit dice to avoid bag of rats tricks. Its probably the most concise out of the four, mechanics-wise but I've never been too keen on blood themes so its a net plus.
Following the classes we get archetypes for the classes. They all are pretty much mechanically sound and change their playstyles so they feel pretty necessary. This is followed by new feats, one seems like a no brainer that should have been printed in the core rules by now, two are specific to class features of the classes in the product and two feel like they'll do way more to help arcane casters than these classes. In fact two of the feats are pretty strong when used for Bloodragers and Bards. I'll have to see them in actual play before I can call them broken but they seem really really good. One gives you 1/2 your caster level plus casting modifier as temporary hit points as a swift action effectively making a Bloodrager way better at tanking than a Barbarian by having an HP buffer each round. Its almost like having an Invulnerable Rager DR in one feat. The other one gives you some extra land speed as a swift action based on caster level so another feat nets the bloodrager some fast movement too. Sure these feats eat up your swift action but that never stopped anyone from using Arcane Strike.
Lastly we get favored class bonuses covering the core races
Overall there's nothing mechanically wrong with these classes other than what I've mentioned and for it's price tag the product is offering quite a bit, but other than the Verdant Blade I just have this continous feeling that these classes aren't exactly necessary, in the sense that I don't feel very compelled to use them to drive a theme or play with mechanics. That's not to say that I wouldn't be able to have fun with them as none of them are overtly weak or unfun in some way but Verdant Blade is the only thing I'm really clamoring for that I feel couldn't be portrayed with the base game and when third party material is involved it gets much worse because I see their mechanics and themes all over the place as archetypes or classes that have more to offer.
If you don't have a lot of third party material or you don't have the money for other material this is a pretty good deal and I feel that these Full BAB classes are mechanically more interesting to play than Fighters, Paladins, Rangers and Barbarians. But they do offer a rather narrow focus to the point where I think the product could have condensed the concepts into two classes and I'd be more enthused with it. Right now I want more of the Verdant Blade and the rest just don't appeal to me over other options I have, even just with the base rules, to appeal to the same character concepts. I'll give it 3 out of 5 stars with a note that it's a very strong 3 stars.
You can find this over on Paizo.com here.
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