I didn't really feel like this was a review. It was more of a "Look at what is in 5th edition, and you can easily start it!"

They tried to say that 5e was such a departure from the previous editions when it is more just a simplification of 3.5. That isn't to say it is a bad thing. There is some stuff 5e does great, and a lot that it does poorly because they wanted to distance themselves from 4e as much as possible.

Say what you will about 4e (I personally think it is the best edition) but WOTC completely ignored everything sensible that 4e. Encounter design was a breeze in 4e, the monster stat blocks were awesome. You knew all of a monsters abilities without having to flip through spell lists. You also didn't have to look at multiple tables to determine if an encounter is properly made.

Spells blocks also were a huge improvement over the paragraph of text that you had to read through to find every detail of the spell.

An attempt at equalizing the classes was also loved. Wizards were supreme powerful beings like in previous editions. Max level fighters and Wizards were at least on the same power level plane.

That said 4e did have its problems. The sidelining of exploration, and to a lesser extent social/skill encounters while focusing mostly on the combat definitely hurt the system. Having the scaling for players attack/defenses and monster attack/defense be off to a point where you needed 2 feats just to be at parity also hurt. As well as the original monster math that made each fight a war of attrition since enemies had so many hit points.

I don't have a whole ton of experience with 5e as of yet, but from the few sessions I've played the faster leveling arc is good. Lets players experience the whole level spectrum.