Strategy Guide Reviews

A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides

What I Look for in a Good Strategy Guide, Part 1

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A good strategy guide has more than a detailed walkthrough, although this is one of the most important pieces to the work. I’ll get to what the walkthrough needs in another post.

The first and foremost items of a good guide are the maps. Every area should include a map as well as a map of the Overworld (if there is one) either at the front of the guide or in the very back. The only exception I can think of for this rule is the Kingdom Hearts games, because the KH Overworld does not allow for pillaging for items or exploration for new areas, enemies, etc. The area maps should clearly designate the rooms, items to be found, save points (if any), and hidden areas (if any).

The next most important elements are the appendices of enemies, items, accessories, enemies, bosses, spells (if any), and equipment. One guide that went above and beyond the call of duty for this was the Lost Odyssey guide which also provided appendices of hidden items already plotted out on area maps. If I could meet these writers, I’d give them freshly baked cookies just for that.

Sure, you need the walkthroughs and boss tactics, but that’s just the meat of a good guide. These are the bread and cheese, and these are usually the things that seasoned players use a guide for, if they use a guide at all.

However, this doesn’t mean I can forgive a guide for a terrible walkthrough just because the bread is fresh and the cheese is tasty. It just means that I won’t stamp an “F” on the front cover and burn it in effigy.

Lost Odyssey Strategy Guide Review

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I had a real hard time reviewing this guide. For starters, I didn’t really use it much in the beginning except when I remembered that I’m supposed to be reviewing it. But when I did use it, it was very helpful during the main quest. For some reason, the guide really fizzled out near the end, especially for the sidequests. I’ve never worked with a guide so divided before, so I will do my best.

The Good

The guide has a lot of good points. In the main quest, every section of the world has very detailed maps that plot out all treasure chests, quest items, houses, etc. Even if an area has different levels (meaning that the levels have stairs or ladders to reach whole new areas), the guide has a map for each level.

The walkthroughs do more than point out where players need to send Kaim next; they also point out where Kaim can find all of his 1000 years of dreams. This fact alone makes the guide 100% recommendable. I am not sure I could have found all of them without it. Some dreams were found in some weird places that I may never have gone to, and some were found after leaving and immediately reentering a place. I know I never would have thought of that.

I admit I never looked at the boss tactics for fighting the bosses. However, I ritually read the boss prep sections. If you do the prep, you really won’t need to read their tactics suggestions. The prep lists the skills that at least the immortals should have, and it also suggests the party’s average level before attempting the boss fight. The latter was probably my favorite part of the whole guide. I loved to know whether I needed to spend extra time leveling up or not. It’s inevitable that in any RPG you’ll be doing mindless leveling up at some point, but it’s nice to know when you should do before facing a certain boss, getting your party wiped out, and losing about an hour of your life.

The appendices are also one of the guide’s strongest points. They list all of the equipment, magic spells, rings, ring components, enemies, and everything you need to know about the Backyard tournaments, including the bonus material. The appendices also detail where to find all of Tolten’s Royal Seals, the invisible chests, treasure seeking items, and Cubic Music Scores even though the walkthroughs and maps already point them out.

The Bad

But this guide is far from perfect. A few of the maps left off a few items, such as the quest for the nineteen crystal fragments in hidden temple. Count them as many times as you want on the maps, but you’ll only count eighteen.

My biggest beef with the guide was the lack of an overworld map. You spend a good amount of time sailing on the Nautilus, and many items are found at the bottom of the sea. An overworld map, just for these items, would have been helpful.

The seeds were also grossly overlooked. The guide says that there are 99 seeds available to give to the Pipots, but it doesn’t tell where all 99 are. I think it goes up to 80ish. There is also a brief mention of the seed trading with the Pipots, but it doesn’t go into detail about how to complete it.

The sidequest sections were so incomplete, I really wonder if the writers just got sick of working on the guide. Maps are offered for only a couple of quests. A few quests don’t have that detailed of a layout, but the Temple of Enlightenment really, really needed maps. And speaking of the Temple of Enlightenment, don’t rely on the guide to give you too much of a heads up on how to defeat the common enemies. No information other than their stats is given.

Final Rating

This was the hardest part for me. The good points heavily outweigh the bad, but some of the bad points were really, really bad. So, I have to divide the guide up into main quest and sidequest.

Main Quest – 5/5
Sidequests – 3/5

Kingdom Hearts 2 Strategy Guide Review

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The strategy guide for Kingdom Hearts 2 will unfortunately sit and gather dust for most of the time while playing the game, and it’s both the guide’s fault and not the guide’s fault.

It’s not the guide’s fault in that the game is rather straight forward and easy to play. The worlds are far more linear than the first game, and there are no insane jumping puzzles to solve. It’s not hard to find any of the treasure chests or to figure out how to fight any of the bosses, since all of the bosses are beaten using a series of annoying quick-time events (or as the game calls them, reaction commands). So players may use the guide for the maps to hunt down that one wayward chest or the appendices for item synthesis, but the game is simple enough to not demand a further need.

However, one of the facets of the game is to complete Jiminy’s Journal, which asks players to complete everything possible in the game, from meeting all the characters to synthesizing every item in the recipe list to performing all of the mini-games with Jiminy’s requirements. I pretty much called it his S&M list throughout as I hate mini-games with a passion.

But that’s not the point. The point is that this is where the guide could have proved its usefulness. It could have offered tips to completing the mini-games and even the Underdrome tournaments instead of just summarizing the task at hand. I don’t need a summary; I can see just fine what the task is. Granted, for some of the mini-games, it’s difficult to offer tips because you either collect all of Pooh’s honeypots or you don’t. But to not even offer advice on the Underdrome tournaments? Surely the writers can suggest something, such as summoning Stitch to absorb more orbs or casting magic to speed through rounds. SOMETHING.

This is one guide I don’t recommend to anyone, no matter how dire your gameplaying skills are. You don’t need a written guide to tell you to follow the reaction commands, and it won’t help you through Jiminy’s Journal.

Final Rating: 2/5

More Difficulties with Lost Odyssey Strategy Guide

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I get the feeling that by the end of writing the Lost Odyssey strategy guide that the writers got bored of writing. Like most guides, the writers placed the guide information for all of the sidequests at the end of the guide, but before the appendices. (However, they placed the Achievement appendix before the sidequests, which makes no sense to me, but whatever.) Most of the sidequests are not that long, but they feel hastily written. A few lack maps, and while it makes sense for a couple of areas not to include maps — one area is like the Lost Woods from the original Legend of Zelda — the largest sidequest that has many floors does not contain any maps. Maybe they found it difficult to construct a map since you can alter the floor with a press of a button and utilize many elevator pads to go from one floor to another. However, it doesn’t mean constructing the maps is flat out impossible. The writers did include a detailed walkthrough, but without maps as a reference guide, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and lost. Might have better luck forging ahead on your own.

The walkthroughs also do not contain any information about the enemies you encounter other than the typical picture list of the enemy and its stats. It really would have been nice to know that if you physically attack one enemy, he will counterattack with a severe beatdown. It’s not that you can’t recover from said beatdown, and if you die, well, you regroup, develop a new strategy and try again, as you’re supposed to do with turn-based games. But if you do that, then what is the point of having the guide?

Most of the guide section for the Temple of Enlightenment sidequest makes you wonder why you have the guide in the first place. For areas like these, you’re using the guide to help you get from point A to point B as quickly as possible or to help you find all of the treasures (and no, it doesn’t do that at all). You aren’t using it to wander all over the place and get lost or stuck. You could do that on your own. But the guide can’t really help you in the desired manner if there are no maps, and it offers walkthrough instructions such as, “The best way to navigate this section is to remember what route you took starting from the save location; it’s a good centrally located landmark to help you keep your bearings.”

This is really the first time I’ve even counted on the guide, because this dungeon features elements I personally hate with a passion. I wanted to skip through them quickly. Looks like it’s the old fashioned way for me. At least I’ll level up a ton in the process.

Advice for Strategy Guide Writers

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A piece of advice to all writers of strategy guides: always include a map of the Overworld, if there is one. They may not seem as necessary as maps for individual levels, but they are as needed as appendices of items and accessories. My current example of this omission is the Lost Odyssey guide. I have a feeling that the developers did not include one because players do not utilize the Overworld like they would in say a Final Fantasy game. The Overworld is presented similarly to the space-like Overworld of Kingdom Hearts, except that it is not as connect-the-dots as Kingdom Hearts.

Let me try to clarify that. The Overworld in Kingdom Hearts depicts each world that Sora and crew can visit, but each world is connected by a line of travel. In addition, there is nothing else surrounding the world, as each world exists in space. Neverland is most obviously its own entity as is Hollow Bastion. Therefore, when the guide suggests to visit Hollow Bastion, there is no doubt where Hollow Bastion is. It’s not the world on the coast or near the mountains. It’s out there on its own.

Lost Odyssey’s Overworld attempts to implement this same style of Overworld, except that the areas to visit are one continental map, like Final Fantasy. So Kaim and Company can’t roam all over the countryside like Final Fantasy partymembers would, but players can select each area to visit like they would in Kingdom Hearts.

However, if players haven’t found the area before, they must roam the seas and attempt to find the next region of play. It’s at these moments that an Overworld map would be greatly appreciated in a guide, especially when the guide says to find the inner lake just north of Ipsilon. While it’s true you can bring up the Overworld  map listing all the found areas during voyages, an Overworld map in a guide would just be a nice extra addition for ease. Isn’t that pretty much one of the main purposes of having a guide? Ease?

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