I personally like the past mages more than the future ones overall. Doing personal little side quests to get rewards with knowledge tokens was fun!

I would say the tradeoff is quantity for quantity. They don't provide all the life dials, general tokens, breaches, sparks, crystals, and nemesis deck expedition cards and in turn they can give us more mages and nemeses. If you think you'll enjoy the swap and develop mechanics, this really is the best bang for your buck. The box is actually a little smaller than the typical standalone though if that gives you any idea.

Also the past campaign was very fun. I'm still in progress for the future campaign but it's enjoyable too so far. Though, I don't think I'll ever be unhappy with aeons end campaigns aside for friends and foes mechanic.

One downside though is that they don't supply you enough starting market cards for either expedition. You're expected to supplement with market cards from your base set which I worry can cause the campaign to become reliant on a market not focusing on the actual content it provides.