Rating: 
Summary: YEA!
Review: This book is great. It has everything you need to start off. Great info,Comes with a big map, very nice prestige classes,ect. WELL WROTH YOUR MONEY!!! MUST BUY FOR DM'S
Rating: 
Summary: Best Forgotten Realms resource to date.
Review: I highly recommend this book for players and DM's in the Forgotten Realms setting. I have DMed in FR for several years, and I have bought previous TSR works, including the 1st edition boxed set and the 2nd edition book. This book manages to include the pertinent information from those sources, while providing new information required for 3rd Edition play, such as Prestige classes and Feats.All the material included adds color and depth to your campaign, instead of the meaningless fluff that characterizes the class handbooks (i.e. Sword & Fist). The artwork is attractive, the pages are in color like the core rulebooks, and the material is well organized. As in the 2nd Edition FR Campaign Setting, the human deities get all of the attention, while the non-human gods are minimized. At least in this work they have entries in a table, instead of almost completely being ignored as they were in 2E. Also, the in-book maps are somewhat lacking in detail, so you will have to get them elsewhere. Worth every penny.
Rating:
Summary: Wow...
Review: This is the most intensely beautiful and amazingly comprehensive role-playing book I have ever seen. The people at WOTC have shown good judgement and taste in re-aligning the setting with the basic rules, and re-releasing it in such spectacular form. It is so dense and drool-inducing, I lack the words to describe my joy at its existence. Despite my rating, however, there has been a little sloppiness to contend with in the first printing... Mis-prints are disturbingly common (at least one every couple of pages), and few "famous faces" or places of Faerun (sic.) are treated with the breadth of information that they deserve. However, since looking at just this book is the equivalent of looking at a unified basic made up of the 3rd edition PHB, DMG, and Monster Manual (whoops! Did I just say that out loud?), I tend toward forgiveness.
Rating:
Summary: Huge encyclopedia, but lacking real detail
Review: Forgotten Realms is the most popular DnD campaign setting, and this hardback should contain all the information you'll need to create characters and adventures in this setting. The presentation is beautiful - full color throughout with plenty of illustrations to add flavour. The breadth of material is huge, covering races, classes, geography, trading, gods, important characters, spells etc.
The one problem I felt was that nothing is really covered in detail, making it difficult to find something that you can use "out of the box". Any campaign or adventure that you base in Forgotten Realms will require a fair bit of work on your part before you can get going. The "geography" area is particularly weak in this respect, with pages and pages of 2-line descriptions of villages that are really not helpful. Even major towns don't escape this treatment, and lack much in the way of gossip, local characters etc. that are so useful in building adventures. Major characters don't get much of a mention either. Elminster and Drizzt, two of the most popular characters in the setting get less than half a page each.
However, the flip side of this treatment and the main strength of Forgotten Realms is in the amount of background material that can be used to create detailed characters. You can create adventurers with a real feel of history and beliefs, pick one of those villages as your "home town", pick one of the various pantheon as your "patron god" etc. This is great - it just seems a pity that some areas such as characters and geography are lacking detail.
Rating:
Summary: The Gold Standard for setting books
Review: I do have to say that I don't particularly care for the Forgotten Realms. The setting is implausible and silly, and gets more attention than I think it really deserves. It loses a star for this. However, I can belatedly understand *why* it gets all the attention it does...or at least why it would now. This is as complete and detailed a setting book as I've ever seen, yet it leaves so much open for the DM to play with. Thumbnails of countries and organizations paint good pictures while leaving room for improvisation. Classes and prestige classes and feats and spells are useful for almost anybody, as are the massive lists of deities and domains (including the orcish, dwarven, elvish, gnomish, halfling, and drow pantheons, left out of the main game aside from their head) and creature descriptions in the back. You also have detailed write-ups of many major characters from the Realms, from Elminster to Drizzt Do'Urden to Szass Tam. Unlike previous supplements, these conform almost entirely with published rules, save that the Epic-Level Handbook is nowhere on the horizon (used for many of the very high-level characters, and for which we can glean a little bit from a snippet here and there). This is the model for what a setting book should be. If it were attached to a setting I liked more (such as Birthright), it'd be perfect.
Rating:
Summary: Great detail and info...yuuuk to the artwork!!!
Review: Well, although I like the forgotten Realms, I am not a fan of this book. For one the cover of the book bites - nothing like the covers to the other core books- its very DRY and flat, if that means anything. The artwork in the book itself also lacks in a big way. Granted, some of the drawings are good but most rot. It does little to convey the FEEL of Forgotten Realms (I also do not like the 'Punk' feel to some of the character drawings). I also feel that more artwork (and more color artwork) could have been placed in this book - there is not enough of it!!! Outside of this I must say that the book really covers alot of detail, and I think this is the true reason to get this book. This book has alot of MEAT for both DM's and players alike. Get it for that reason. Die-hard FR players will love this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for the traveler of the Realms
Review: There's no doubt that the Forgotten Realms is one of the most developed campaign settings there is, and this book is one of the reasons it's that way. All the colorful characters that appear in the multitude of novels that take place on Faerun- the likes of Icewind Dale, the Elminster series, Cleric Quintet, and Dark Elf Trilogy titles- are described in these pages. The length of this book is deceptive- it is very densely formatted so there actually is a lot more in there than an equivalent size book (say, the Player's Handbook). It is very well illustrated and includes extensive maps of the continent that will surely help you figure out what is where. Even if you're not planning on using the material to actually play the game, if you enjoyed the FR novels and want to know more about the Realms and the characters -like, perhaps, exactly how much damage Drizzt can take- this is a really neat book to look into. For the DM that wishes to travel the length and breadth of Faerun, this has all you need. The entirety of the lore of the Realms is present, with exhaustive descriptions of locations and culture, peoples and legends. You will no doubt see a lot of things you didn't know from just reading novels, and much of it can be used to add an interesting touch to your campaigns. Bottom line is, this is one of the best sourcebooks there is, and definitely the most in-depth out of all of them. If you want to hang around the Realms, you should definitely get a copy.
Rating:
Summary: Everything it should be
Review: This book is so packed full of information! A great many pages are devoted to the various countires and regions of Faerun with quick descriptions of the place and it's people as well as important locations and cities. They all give little tidbits for plot hooks to develop. Some new spells and the addition of regional feats that your character can take when you create them that pertain to where they're from. My one beef (albeit a small one) is that the signature chraacter stats should have been in their own chapter compiled together rather than scattered throughout the book.
Rating:
Summary: Packed full of info.
Review: The more times I read the book, the more information I find. Races, huge info on geography, history, people and races, ideas, religion and more prestige races are all in the book.
It can be a heavy read at times though. Most GM's will not use all the information in the book. But if you are looking for a campaign setting then this would not be a bad buy.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Campaign Setting Ever!
Review: The best campaign from the best role-playing game is here from Wizards of the Coast! Geography, art, history, dieties, magic, everyday life of the people: it is all here. I couldn't have asked for a better presentation of Forgotten Realms. The only improvement I could ask for is more maps.
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