Strategy Guide Reviews

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Wednesday’s Strategy Guide Cover of the Week: Bayonetta E-Guide

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While looking for a fantastic strategy guide cover to debut on Wednesday’s Cover of the Week, I stumbled upon a free E-guide for Bayonetta on BradyGames‘ site. I have no idea when this e-guide showed up, but it simply fascinates me.

Bayonetta E-Guide Cover

I’m not sure if anyone remembers, but BradyGames was supposed to put out a physical guide for Bayonetta. Not sure what happened (and it’s none of my business, really) but the publisher canceled the guide. So now there’s this e-guide (Bayonetta part one, Bayonetta part two) that looks like it’s exactly what their original, printed guide was supposed to be. I mean, have you ever seen an e-guide (aside from BradyGames’ and Prima Games’ e-guides) that looks like this? And for free??

I think I am going to have to do a comparison between this guide and FuturePress’ just to see 1) which is better (obviously) and 2) wonder at what we could have had in America.

Collector’s Edition Strategy Guide Analysis: Kingdom Hearts 2

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Kingdom Hearts 2 Collector's Edition Strategy GuideWhen Kingdom Hearts 2 released in 2005, the guides – both regular and Collector’s Editions – were a HOT commodity. The first guide was so fantastic that everyone naturally assumed this guide would be just as great. As seen from my Kingdom Hearts 2 Strategy Guide review, this was not the case. However, the Collector’s Edition of this guide was the biggest rip-off of the whole ordeal.

For starters, the Kingdom Hearts 2 Collector’s Edition Strategy Guide did not even sport a hardback cover that most CE guides feature. Don’t get me wrong; the artwork on the cover as shown on the right was downright beautiful, but it was on a thin board cover sleeve, similar to what you would see with some DVD sleeves. The reason for the sleeve was that it contained two books inside: the strategy guide and Jiminy’s Journal.

The strategy guide within the CE had four different covers, each displaying one of Sora’s Drive Forms. This was smart on BradyGames’ part, because fans CLAMORED to collect all four of these Collector’s Editions. (When in doubt, always tap into the collector mentality.) It’s just a shame, though, that the other bonus included with the CE was not as fun and wasn’t all that practical either.

The bonus book, Jiminy’s Journal, listed everything Sora has to complete in this sadistic journal, what Jiminy’s minimum requirements are, and space for the user to fill out his or her times/scores for the mini-games. The first two elements are already in the strategy guide, so all usefulness of the Journal has already been included in the cheaper version. Maybe some fans will like to record their scores in the book, but what’s the point when the game already records them for you? Now if the Journal offered tips for meeting Jiminy’s insane demands, then I would take back calling it useless.

But as it stands, this bonus is useless, which effectively renders the rest of the Collector’s Edition as nothing but a prettier version of the regular strategy guide. I pity all who fell for this trap, including myself.

Poll: Do you buy Collector’s Editions of strategy guides?

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Print vs. Online Strategy Guide poll resultsMy first poll from last week was a lovely success, thanks so much to you readers. (But hellooooo, MidWest voters, where are you?) The end result was pretty much what I expected, and now I’m ready to get started on my Print vs. Online comparisons. First up will be the inFamous Strategy Guide by FuturePress.

But for this Monday, I have a new question for all of you that will kick off my post for TUESDAY. Do you buy Collector’s Editions of strategy guides?

I have to admit, that if there is a Collector’s Edition out for a guide of a series I love, I’ll buy it in a heartbeat. If the Collector’s Edition contains an artbook, then I’ll buy it even if I’m not going to play the game. This is not to say that I like Collector’s Editions more than “regular” editions, or that CEs are better. In fact, I’ve been burned by one CE guide (the subject of tomorrow’s post) in the past that soured my notion of ever getting a CE again. But then the strategy guide for Phantom Hourglass released with its gorgeous hardback cover, leather bookmark, and giant sea chart maps. You can safely assume I got back on the wagon.

Arc Rise Fantasia needs a strategy guide

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Arc Rise FantasiaI honestly thought that Arc Rise Fantasia was supposed to have a guide, but either I dreamed it or it got cancelled. Either way, there is no guide. Normally this isn’t that big of a deal outside of the fact that this blog loses some fodder, but in this case, I really really need one.

I’m reviewing the game for another site, and I’m not enjoying the game at all. The combat is unique and fun, but the characters and plot are JRPG generic and the voice acting and script are flat out TERRIBLE. I whimper each time I turn on my Wii. As such, I just want to burn through this game as quickly as possible. Dabble in sidequests as needed for leveling and review purposes and get through all boss battles quickly.

Unfortunately for me, I need a guide for this. The game is rather unbalanced in that the enemies are ungodly easy and the boss battles are ungodly hard. Nothing really prepares you to be strategic or to endure lengthy battles. Since I’m not enjoying the game anyway, I would like to know the fastest way possible to defeat the bosses and tromp through the story.

So I’m stuck with some poorly spelled online guides  available on GameFAQs that occasionally don’t make complete sense as what to do. I only use them after the fourth or fifth boss fight failure, so the game is unfortunately taking me longer than I would like. Then again, even if I did have a guide, the game would probably take me longer than I’d like anyway. It’s one of the downsides to reviewing games. I was due to review a game I didn’t like. So far I’ve only reviewed games I wanted to, so hey my time was obviously up.

I still wish I had a guide to make this trek more bearable.

Poll: Print or Online Strategy Guides?

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I thought that the best way to announce a new feature I’ll be doing every week was with a poll that encapsulates the feature’s main question: print or online guides? (See the poll in the sidebar.)

There’s been several discussions over the past couple of years about print dying due to online publication. We’ve seen it with magazines and newspapers, and now, more recently, we’re seeing it with books. However, this debate between online and print guides has been around for several years, ever since the creation of GameFAQs. IGN also has a rather large guide section, and several other freelancing sites (such as Hubpages, Squidoo, and Suite 101) encourage users to supply their own guides, much like GameFAQs. While I see the appeal to online guides (especially their price tag), there are some things that print guides just do better. I’m not saying that online guides don’t offer anything better than print; in many ways, in addition to price, online guides have advantages over print.

Before I delve into this topic, I’m curious what the percentage of readers here prefer. Get your friends to vote too and pass this around Twitter and Facebook. The more votes, the more accurate the result will be!

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