The second edition of the Free League Alien RPG was always going to have a lot to live up to, as the first edition (which earned almost full marks in our Alien: The Roleplaying Game review) still ranks, in my view, as one of the greatest TTRPGs ever made. It's a focused, intelligent and wonderfully atmospheric system, and Free League successfully spun dark, eldritch magic out of the franchise that ultimately ended up surpassing much of it. And after the tabletop community as a whole came out to celebrate Alien, a second edition was practically inevitable (at least from a business perspective).
Hence what we get now: a reinvention of the rules sold as their "Evolved" form, but which for me can't help but beg the furtive question: how does Free League now go about fixing what ain't broke? After all, the previous version was - and still is - one of the best tabletop RPGs around.
