Reading FX, I have a few questions about Anwyn:

The gods brought the 9 playable Kin to Anwyn - but what about the peoples from the bestiary like giants, goblins, redcaps, ogres and similar intelligent creatures? Have they been brought along? Or are they native to Anwyn (or have been brought there previously)?

It's the year 130 CE - does that mean that all the playable kin have been brought to Anwyn only 130 years ago? Or is the calendar based on some other event? 130 years seems really short, there shout be a lot of the long-living kins who lived the greater part of their lifes on the old world. Maybe something like 300 years would be better, also to have more "past" for the playable kin to explore? (I know that there's the past of other kin, but the characters are pretty much by definition disconnected from it.)

How Kitchen Sink is the cosmology? The gods aren't named, and there's talk of demons and devils (who seem to be separate categories of demons) - is it "all in", or is there a bigger picture about what, e.g., demons and devils actually are and how they relate (or not) to the gods?

By the way, the cosmology of the drifting continent that is linked to other worlds through portals that actually stabilize its protection bubble is kind of cool - it's very easy to picture and yet something I haven't seen done before quite like this.

Thanks for the explanation, that's understandable.
These days, I often just roll a die when designing NPC without a clear idea of whether they should be male or female ... I do think it's still relevant occassionally breaking up a stereotype or two, and that having more or less equal representation in RPGs can help; and I do think it's better if players who don't happen to be male don't get the wrong message that them wanting to play someone of their sex (or male players wanting to play female characters) are a "special case".

Maybe if you don't feel coomfortable designing female PC, you could ask some of your players.

And when I'm finally ready to get into the nitty-gritty of the rules with my reading, I'll make sure to join the Beta playtest group!

I'll chime in with my initial impressions as well (better than to start a new thread, I think).
I'm coming from MERP here (with MERP leading me to HARP and VdD, which are both games that I enjoyed reading, but never actually played). I tend to prefer rules-lite games these days (at the moment I'm writing scenarios for Troika! and Cloud Empress, which are pretty much at the opposite end of the scale from the Rolemaster family); but I also like games where details like armor, weapon effects and how and where you are wounded actually matter, I just don't get around to playing them anymore. So take whatever I have to say with a grain of salt, because all of this is from theory, not from practice with the rules of FE.

First of all, as others have stated, I really like the combination of RM's exploding dice and critical success levels with a 2-dice-bell-curve. Swingyness is nice, but FE feels like it gives the system a more solid foundation when it comes to what can be expected of a roll.

I like that there are individual spells (like in HARP), not spell lists, though I still have to dive into the magic system.

I love that the heroic path from VdD is in, it is a really great implementation of "fate points" mechanics!

I skimmed the combat chapter, and the most obvious change is the lack of hit/crit tables. The latter being replaced by a "build your own crit with success levels" system makes a lot of sense. I'm not quite sure if it's a simplification, though; the upside of MERP/VsD is that you just roll your dice and then can look up what happened; the downside is the lack of control (and wherever systems from the RM family try to work around that by providing rules for called shots, disarming opponents or stuff like that, it always feels like, well, a workaround, and not really organic to the system). I know the "count your success levels and go shopping for special effects" from two other RPGs, the BRP-based Mythras and Green Ronin's FantasyAge. Both are systems I like, but I must confess that I don't run them any more, in part because of the analysis paralysis inherent in the "shopping" part - and there's a lot to shop for ... sure, players who don't care can always just choose the special damage from the table on the top, but the problem is that some players WILL (over-)analyze their options.

Still, I must say that it looks like the overall effects of the criticals have been abstracted quite well form traditional crit tables to create a more abstract and flexible system; that alone is a really great achievement. I'm not sure that I'll play it, but on paper, I like it.

From what I've read by now, FE could certainly rival Mythras as a crunchy, grounded fantasy system, and if I ever get the opportunity to run it, I'll certainly give it a try.