Strategy Guide Reviews

A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides

Search Results for: future press

Stack Fresh from Future Press

By 2 Comments

I am constantly trying to get guide writer interviews, and I guess these creatures do not enjoy talking to strangers or my e-mails disappear in a void. But when I contacted Future Press about interviewing their writers for the inFamous Guide, I finally received a response. I was told that they are too busy at this time to conduct an interview, and I’m not disappointed about that, because hey at least I was written back. But then the media contact surprised me by reading my review and asking me to review what he considered far better guides. I gave him my address and thanked him, but I never really expected anything to come from it.

Then yesterday, a huge stack of guides arrived at my front door. I have been floored ever since. Future Press is a German publisher, so most of their guides are official from Europe, and a publisher in the States occasionally picks them up to adapt as their own. Like inFamous. In other words, all of these guides I received have US counterparts, so I’m intrigued to how they compare to some of the guides I already own.

The stack includes Final Fantasy III (DS), Tekken 5, God of War II, Killzone 2, and Bionic Commando. I cannot wait to review these and I cannot thank Future Press enough for this opportunity.

Final Fantasy III Strategy Guides: FuturePress v. BradyGames

By Leave a Comment

Final Fantasy III strategy guides - FuturePress vs. BradyGamesAs much as I would love to see two books actually fight, we’ll have to use our imaginations and carry the fight with my words. Why my words? Because I’m the one writing this.

Obviously, I scored one guide higher than the other, so it’s quite obvious which one wins this fight. *coughFUTUREPRESScough* But allow me to delve into why you should consider FuturePress’s guide over the BradyGames guide, even though the latter is very good.

Sidequests

Both guides include walkthroughs for the various sidequests, so that wasn’t the issue. However, the FP guide has all of the sidequests interspersed throughout the main quest walkthrough, so there’s no real chance of the player missing a sidequest. BG’s guide has all of the sidequests in the back, so not only is there a possibility of missing a quest, but there’s the added aggravation of constantly flipping back and forth between the main walkthroughs and the side walkthroughs. Since so many areas require additional leveling up outside of what you can achieve by burning through the main quest, it makes more sense to intermingle the sidequests so players can level grind with a sidequest instead of well, level grinding.

Job Guidance

As I said in my review, BG’s guide takes a very hands off approach in guiding the player, especially when it comes to job choices. The game is set up so players can customize their party to how they prefer to fight, so that’s all well and good, but there are rarely suggestions for what one should do with certain jobs when fighting bosses or navigating a dungeon. The FP guide lists every available job at the beginning of the area and suggestions for how to use that job to its fullest. The writers still didn’t tell you how to play, but they at least told you what you were dealing with and what abilities or items your character should have.

The Extras

In the back of FP’s guide, right before the bestiary and countless item lists, is a section dedicated to hints and tips. It provides damage calculations, how to cause 9999 damage at level 99 every time, and how to get the most out of the NPCs. It also contains walkthroughs for the Mognet sidequests, which are only available if you have a friend also playing the game on his or her DS. BG’s guide does touch on the Mognet, albeit not in great detail. It also does not offer additional tips outside of the end-game job information in the beginning.

In the end, it really all depends on what the user personally wants from a guide. If they want the bare essentials, then BradyGames has the guide for them. The completionists though, will be far happier with the guide from FuturePress.

Final Fantasy III Strategy Guide review by FuturePress

By Leave a Comment

Strategy Guide Review Policy:

My goal for these strategy guide reviews is not to discuss whether one needs the guide to complete the game. Every gamer has different strengths and skills, and one may need every bit of a guide, another may need to look up information for quick assistance once, and another may laugh at the idea of ever using a guide, even the online freebies. My goal is to determine whether the guide is 1) helpful in the first place, 2) does it encompass gamers who need hand-holding as well as those who need a quick reference and 3) how much information does it really have.

Review:

I had no idea what to expect with Final Fantasy III, as my first experience with a Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy X and then I’ve somewhat backtracked from there. I was not prepared for the overwhelming issue with jobs, leveling up the jobs, swapping out jobs, finding out which jobs fit for me as a player, yadda yadda yadda. This unusual set-up (unusual for me, please understand) made the game far more challenging as well as fun. My first thoughts were that the guide would try to mold the player into using a particular subset of jobs for each area, boss, etc. Thankfully, I was wrong.

The way FuturePress’ guide handles the jobs is its best feature. It doesn’t try to shoehorn the player into using a specific set of jobs at all. In the beginning of each section/region, the guide lists all of the available jobs and offers tips on using each one. There are also separate job hints for the boss strategies, something that I found particularly useful when fighting Garuda in Saronia. Also strewn throughout the book are full page spreads of powerful job combinations. The player obviously doesn’t have to use these, but they make for interesting suggestions.

For additional job advice, the guide has detailed information on every job and provides strategic tips in the back for managing MP with job switches, how to use a job effectively to max out physical damage, and how to use a job to max out a character’s HP.

Level grinding seems to come with every FF game, and this one is no exception. However, the strategy guide lets the player know for every area what level they should be around to successfully navigate the area. I would love it if every guide provided a suggested level so I could prevent unnecessary level grinding. Sure excessive level grinding virtually ensures that one becomes so powerful that the final bosses are not that difficult, but level grinding is NEVER that enjoyable. Cutting down the amount of time I’m wandering around looking for enemies to beat up on me is always a plus.

I was only able to find a few things wrong with FuturePress’ guide, and it all lied within typos. There was an occasional typo here and there, usually consisting of adding an extra zero to a boss’ HP. These typos though did not detract from the overall quality of the guide’s walkthroughs or game information. A few of the maps had items switched around, but all of the items were in the places it pointed out so it wasn’t that big of a deal. However, for those who don’t like to hoard every item, this could be a mild annoyance.

These typos don’t take away from the fact that I would highly recommend this guide for FF fans wanting to delve or re-delve into Final Fantasy III. It definitely deserves its 5/5.

Strategy Guide Reviews did receive a review copy from FuturePress, but this in no way affected our review or scoring of the book

Initial Impressions of the Dark Souls III Strategy Guide by Prima Games

By Leave a Comment

I finally got my grubby hands on the Dark Souls III strategy guide by Prima Games. As we’ve had some questions come in about this guide I figured I would make a small video covering unboxing, initial impressions, and should you buy it. The biggest question I start to tackle is how well does the Prima Games guide stack up to the rock solid guides that Future Press published on the earlier games in this series. Well, a small spoiler on that. It doesn’t hold up well. Yeah, I’m sad and I haven’t even finished the guide.

Initial Impressions of Final Fantasy XIII Strategy Guide

By 1 Comment

Final Fantasy XIII Strategy Guide When I was given this guide, I was told that I would like it better than the Assassin’s Creed 2 Strategy Guide. I was skeptical, but I wanted to keep an open mind. He was 100% right.

So far, this guide has been absolutely flawless. All of the strategies proffered have worked out beautifully, especially those for bosses. It has not derailed me or confused me once, which is light years ahead of the guide for AC2.

I especially love how it doesn’t waste your time. For example, when you gain the ability to upgrade your weapons, the guide advises that you save this for later when you actually have decent components and it will be worth your while to sit and upgrade. If it hadn’t said anything at all, I would have wasted hours by now upgrading instead of killing things, and it’s way more fun to kill things.

I also greatly appreciate that it’s spoiler free. It doesn’t discuss cut scenes or give hints about the future. The closest it gets is advising you to remove accessories because a character won’t be around for a few chapters.

If I had one complaint about it, it would be the wordiness. The pages are mostly filled with blocks of text, so it’s a little tricky to quickly find what you’re looking for upon a first glance. It has some design markers to help you quickly locate where you are in the game, but you’ll still have to do a considerable amount of reading. But if that’s my only complaint, I’m being too picky.

Unless this guide completely falls apart with the final bosses, I expect it to get a 5/5.

Top Posts & Pages