Strategy Guide Reviews

A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides

Final Fantasy III Strategy Guide review by BradyGames

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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:

BradyGames’ Final Fantasy III Strategy Guide reminds me quite a bit of their strategy guide for Final Fantasy VII: short, sweet, and to the point. There is no fluff. There are no spoilers. There is no messing around. As a result, the guide feels a bit like an afterthought for the game, which makes it not geared toward the end of the gaming spectrum that needs a little hand-holding.

Now it has everything a decent guide for a JRPG needs. It has detailed information in the beginning about the characters (in this instance, the jobs), fabulous maps, in-depth item information, and information on sidequests. And if you want a bare bones guide with pretty much just this information, then this guide is definitely for you. This is not to say that it has terrible walkthroughs; it’s just that the walkthroughs are scant and provide very little detail other than where to walk next. There is only one tip in the entire guide for a suggested level before entering an area. That’s it. The rest you’ll have to deduce on your own.

That’s pretty much the theme of the guide: here’s some information, now go figure it out a bit on your own. For example, there is no other advice about job selection aside from what is found in the beginning of the guide. This section is useful in that it offers advice on the usability of a job near the end of the game, but it would be nice to have at least some job tips about bosses throughout the game. It offers job suggestions for a couple of bosses, but that’s about it. At least it mentions what weaknesses each boss has, if any.

However, with this hands-off approach, the guide really lets the player experience the game how he or she wants to. Since the jobs are so diverse, players can find which jobs personally fit their playing style the best and go from there. Since this guide makes very few job suggestions, it boosts this unique feature of the game.

Another aspect that was slightly annoying was the placement of the sidequest walkthroughs. All of these “extra” walkthroughs are placed in the back of the guide, and there are no mentions of when any of these sidequests become available. If you’re interested in sidequests, you’ll have to flip back to find out when the quests open up and where and then forth again to return to the story. It’s true that not everyone wants to do the sidequests, but if they’re all going to be stuck in the back, at least make a mention of when a sidequest is available when it opens in the story.

And that’s pretty much all the guide has. There are no extras at all in terms of artwork, gameplay advice, or even the Mognet outside of the sidequests. It’s quite possibly one of the most simplistic guides I’ve ever found (in the current generation of consoles, anyway), but at least it does everything it set out to do well. It’s for this reason that it earns a 4/5.

Will be reviewing Nier…and look, it has a guide!

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I’ve been asked to review yet another RPG for Kombo—another Square RPG called Nier—and what do you know…it also has a guide! So it looks like I’ll be making an unscheduled detour in my current schedule for Nier, which is okay as I’ve become more and more curious about this game the more I hear about it. (I really need to stop listening to podcasts and subscribing to gaming magazines.)

At least, I hope I’ll be able to review this guide as well. After what happened with Bayonetta, I don’t assume anything anymore. BradyGames is handling this one, and they’ve rarely canceled a guide, so I have hope. And a preorder. And the satisfaction of knowing that Amazon will not charge me until they ship the guide. The latter is possibly the most important.

And I believe that Doug Walsh is the primary author for this guide. I can’t say for certain, but I swear I remember reading or hearing somewhere that he was working on it. So I suppose, if the game absolutely sucks, at least the guide will be well done.

So no, I will not be playing Splinter Cell: Conviction or reviewing the guide, but if any of you out there would like to do so and submit a guest review, please feel free to do so!

White Knight Chronicles Strategy Guide Review

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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:

The strategy guide for White Knight Chronicles is about as mixed as the game. The game is a weird hybrid of a single-player RPG campaign and a MMO, and the guide tries to fill both shoes, but ends up really slighting one over the other. Fortunately for me, someone who has no interest in multiplayer games, the guide did a better job with the campaign than the online quests.

The guide did a lot of things well, especially in terms of preparation advice. The game requires an extraordinary amount of prep—one of its biggest downfalls—and the guide really does a good job at simplifying the amount of prep work you have to do, such as making suggestions for the type of combos you should create, what magic you should teach specific characters, which pieces of armor you should save up for and buy, and which items you should purchase for your hometown in the Georama (a town you can build for your avatar online). The prep can easily take hours after each boss fight (I wish I was kidding), especially if you don’t have a specific plan for each character. It was nice to have this amount of guidance for my partymembers.

In addition, the strategies for each boss fight were very sound. I was never caught off guard, and I was able to defeat most of the bosses with relative ease. Most of the boss fights required the same tactic: turn in to the White Knight and set one other member for healing while the other hacks away. However, there are a few situations where it’s best to save the White Knight transformation for a later time, and the guide was kind enough to point these instances out. It saved me from more than one potential disaster.

One thing though that I found really odd was that for some reason, my party was always a level or two ahead of the suggested levels for boss fights, but for some reason, I NEVER had as much money as the guide seemed to think I would have for buying weapons, armor, and things for my town in the Georama. One would think that if my levels were that high, I would therefore have enough cash, but for some reason, the two never worked out. I continued to have high levels and be poor at the same time. It never made sense.

Another aspect that didn’t really make sense was the maps. The guide had maps at the beginning of each new locale as well as each online sidequest, but the maps only showed the shops and save points. I could have gotten the exact same information from the map in-game, and at least that map also pointed out where to go. The guide maps would have been far more useful if they included the locations of chests and harvest points.

In addition, the walkthroughs provided for the online sidequests really felt like an afterthought to the game. They never gave any advice for performing the sidequests alone, which I suppose should not be too surprising, but it also begs to ask the question of why use a guide for a multiplayer game? Also, the guide never says when any of these sidequests unlock. There’s a space for this information at the start of each chapter in the main quest walkthrough, but it’s oddly blank. For more oddities, most of the large screenshots used to illustrate the sidequest pages are from the main quest itself, which is quite distracting as well as confusing.

Final Word
Aside from never having as much money as it seemed I should have, the main quest portion of the White Knight Chronicles Strategy Guide is solid with well written strategies and designed in a format that makes it easy to find any necessary information. The same cannot be said for the sidequest portion, but if you’re going to be playing those online with other friends, it’s doubtful you’ll think of using a guide in the first place.

White Knight Chronicles Strategy Guide gets a 4/5.

Joe Epstein blog post on Facebook

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Joe Epstein, the very same one who I am trying to track down to no avail, has posted a really nice blog on BradyGames’ Facebook page. For those who are not on Facebook or don’t care to friend BradyGames, here is the post:

Video gaming is now looking at three decades of traction-gaining in the popular culture. With the medium maturing past its long adolescence, the established, well-worn paths of each gaming genre have hewn so deep that the differences between fully-featured, HD-generation titles is blurred and often academic. The straight-up action titles of yesterday now have sweeping stories and elements of RPG micro-management, while RPGs once built around turn-based, menu-driven combat now feature shooting as robust as Gears of War or combat as evolved as God of War. (One can only assume less prestigious titles will reach their zenith once they append of War to their titles.) Some games, like the Grand Theft Auto series, do so many different things simultaneously that they are genres unto themselves, while massively-multiplayer games like World of Warcraft offer unsurpassed persistence and a social aspect inconceivable in eras past.

So, into this generation of genre reboots, remixes, and mash-ups comes Nier, a Cavia-developed adventure being published by Square-Enix in the United States and Japan at the end of April. The pedigree of Nier and recent gaming trends may lead you to make some accurate assumptions, sight unseen, about the game’s content: a sweeping story that spans generations with a large cast of characters; exciting voice-acted cutscenes; an ever-deepening combat system involving various attacks, types of magic, and upgradeable weapons; myriad quests tangent to the main story; and finally, some form of crafting.

All of these would-be assumptions are correct. After a brief prologue set in 2049, Nier begins in earnest over 1300 years in the far future, long after some unimaginable calamity plunged civilization into a dark age so deep that nearly all vestige of our current world is erased. Nier, the title character and protagonist, is the gruff-but-humble father of Yonah, a young girl suffering from a mysterious disease known as the Black Scrawl. Nier’s attempts to restore his daughter to good health lead to a grand adventure that sheds direct light on the world’s undoing. So, story? Check. Cutscenes? Check. Real-time combat that blends elements of RPGs and action titles? You bet. Sidequests, fishing, cultivating a farm? Check, check, and check.

Nier also surprises in combat variety. My favorite games are fighters, so a fun, fluid combat engine is vital to me if an adventure or RPG opts to go with real-time combat. Here, Nier delivers. Nier the man is initially schooled only in one-handed swords, but quickly allies himself with Grimoire Weiss. This ancient tome casts powerful magic alongside Nier to supplement his swordplay. Nier eventually diversifies his arsenal by learning to wield beefier two-handed weapons. There are nearly three dozen different weapons, and each can be upgraded several times by collecting rare materials. There are eight magic spells, each with different effects. Any sword strike or spell can be “charged,” enhancing the effects. Meanwhile, incoming attacks from enemies can be evaded or blocked–evasive rolls around the enemy’s offense may leave Nier ready to strike at their flank or backside, while blocking an incoming strike at the last possible moment enables a devastating and unique counterattack.

But what you didn’t expect, or at least I sure didn’t, is that just as frequently as Nier plays like a modern adventure game, it delves into homage territory for all the great adventure titles that preceded it these last three decades. This is a serious but self-aware love letter to action and adventure games in general, which wears its influences proudly. Nier quotes far and wide. Obvious aesthetic influence is felt from Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, from the titanic size of some bosses to the ghostly nature of the main enemies, called Shades. Dungeon pacing and puzzles are reminiscent of Zelda and Okami. Fishing and farming are present, as in a Harvest Moon title or various MMOs. There are segments that play like rail shooters; or top-down brawlers; or 2-D sidescrolling action games; or 2-D platformers; or isometric dungeon crawls in the spirit of Diablo and Gauntlet; there’s even a manor that intentionally hearkens back to the original Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil, and “bullet hell” action sequences that wink at shooters like Ikaruga. What, that’s not enough? Ok, how about a sequence that plays out like an Infocom-style ‘80s text adventure? Do you want to go north, or east?

Don’t believe me? I barely believed Doug Walsh as he, a little bit further in the game than I, relayed each genre callback with smiling incredulity. He and I are currently elbow-deep in Nier’s unique potpourri, working on the BradyGAMES official guide. This is a title aimed squarely at all the kids who grew up on the NES, Sega Master System, and their immediate successors, all the kids who are now adults pushing 30 or beyond who still play games, who vividly remember all the different gameplay types and genres that are seemingly too simple to pass muster as full titles nowadays. Nier manages to be a modern, genre-blending game that just happens to have all the old genres represented with a wink, too. Check it out for a game that manages to somehow simultaneously be comforting and familiar, but unlike anything you’ve played before.

I am doing my best not to investigate Nier as my backlog is QUITE full.

Thanks to this blog post and indirectly to Doug Walsh, I think I stalked found Joe Epstein in Facebook and I sent him a direct message asking for an interview. I really hope it was him, or some other Joe Epstein is going to think I’m crazy.

Yes, I am reviewing 2 Final Fantasy III guides at once

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The review list in the column to the right isn’t a mistake. I am indeed reviewing two strategy guides for Final Fantasy III, one written by BradyGames and the other by Future Press. My husband bought me the BradyGames guide when he bought me the game last year, and my new friends at Future Press sent me a review copy of their guide. While I play FFIII, I have both guides open and surrounding me. I’m sure I look hilarious.

What’s fascinating to me is the sharp differences between the two guides in terms of both prep and tactics. The BradyGames guide takes a very aggressive approach to item usage, and equipment to buy but then tells the player to do whatever he wants for party formation and job selection. The Future Press guide, on the other hand, takes a conservative approach to using items and buying equipment. For example, it advises players to purchase armor over stronger weapons and encourages saving certain items for later in the game instead of using them early on. The Future Press guide is also more encouraging for treasure hunters and provides more in depth advice for party formation and job selection.

I can’t say one is better than the other yet, but each definitely speaks to a different type of player. It’s a fascinating study, and one I wish I could afford to do more often when I review guides. On the downside, it’s going to be hard to not compare them to one another when I do the final write-up.

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