A Strategy Guide for your Strategy Guides
Remember the first boxed set of the Final Fantasy strategy guides? Yeah, those were met with mixed results. They’ve released a second boxed set that includes strategy guides from Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy XII. How does this second set match up to the first? Better? The same? What can we expect for this large sum of cash?
Well, here’s your Final Fantasy Strategy Guide Boxed Set 2 in all of its unboxing glory.
Halo 5: Guardians released this past Tuesday and so did the strategy guide! Like yesterday’s Assassin’s Creed Syndicate strategy guide, there are two versions of the Halo 5 strategy guide—a standard paperback and a hardcover collector’s edition. So why spend the extra dough on the CE for this one, especially since it’s a multiplayer-heavy game? We comb through it and find out.
Piggyback Interactive has really stepped up their game since I was first introduced to their strategy guides, and upon first glance, their strategy guide for Assassin’s Creed IIIlooks to be on par with their Assassin’s Creed BrotherhoodandFinal Fantasy XIII-2strategy guides.
The strategy guide is organized much like itsAssassin’s Creedpredecessors, and that includes one of my favorite traditions of Piggyback Interactive: their table of contents in the sidebar. It is so easy to quickly look up anything with the ToC laid out neatly on the outside of the right page. Since Piggyback usually separates the side quests from the main campaign–and in anAssassin’s Creedgame, this is most wise–the table of contents in this manner makes it incredibly easy to flip back and forth between the main storyline and the side missions without losing your place.
The next thing I searched for were the maps for the collectibles.Assassin’s Creedgames have always had a ridiculous number of collectibles, and I’ve never been able to find half of them without the help of the maps. Oh sure, I could spent countless hours running around the dungeons and overworld hunting each collectible down, but I have zero patience and I’m lazy, remember? Thankfully, the strategy guide includes detailed maps of each region Connor explores, complete with screenshots depicting each location for the wayward collectible. I can already feel the Trophies unlocking.
Each mission in the main walkthrough is set up similarly to how it’s been done in the past. Each DNA sequence (or present day sequence) begins with an overview, includes a map of the mission (if necessary), and is broken up into paragraphs of walkthrough text accompanied by screenshots to help the player know where to go, hide, or what to look for. The side quests are set up similarly as well. The screenshots appear to be very clear and just large enough to fully depict what the player should be doing.
I can only hope that the content is as helpful as it appears, and the screenshots are both clear and useful. Obviously, I won’t know until I play, but at the outset, the prognosis is cheery.
All this guide is doing is making me want to play, both just to do so and to see how great this strategy guide really is. The UPS man needs to hurry up and get here, and then I need to find a way to blow off work for the rest of the day.
Dishonored has been high on my anticipation list ever since E3. This year has been full of sequels, so it’s great to see a new IP, especially since the new IP looks to be so promising. Critically, the game appears to be just as great as it seems. I’d be excited about it even if it did bad critically, because what I played at QuakeCon made me happy, critics be damned. However, when I did play Dishonored at QuakeCon, I was under massive panic because I realized that this was the first time I’ve ever played a stealth game without a guide. I’m so horrible at stealth it isn’t funny, and it doesn’t help that I don’t have much patience for it either. So yes, imagine my delight when BradyGames confirmed that yes, there will be a Dishonored strategy guide from their house. I obtained a copy of the guide today, and I spent a little time flipping through it.
When I saw Dishonored at E3 this year, I said that the game is a steampunk Deus Ex: Human Revolution. When I played a sample of it at QuakeCon, it only enhanced my initial feelings. This is in no way a bad thing; it’s a fantastic thing, especially if you liked DXHR. As such, as soon as I got the strategy guide, the first thing I looked for in the walkthroughs was to see if it indeed was set up like DXHR. One thing DXHR and Dishonored both have pushed is that the game allows players to play how they want: with stealth or with mass murder. Therefore, the strategy guide needs to provide strategies for both methods of gameplay, and to my delight, it does.
 stealth |
 mass murder |
One other thing I found that made me immensely happy was the fact that all of the collectibles listed in the back were accompanied with screenshots where to find them. However, it is unfortunate that the walkthroughs themselves do not point out where to find collectibles. The collectibles are in the maps in the beginning of every mission, but they’re not in the written walkthroughs, which will require lots of flipping back and forth for completionists. I’m glad that there are no call-out boxes for the collectibles, because the guide pages are a bit cluttered up with call-out boxes anyway with side notes, side missions, and Achievement notes. That said, the collectibles could still be mentioned, perhaps in bold, within the walkthrough itself with page references to the appendix. This wouldn’t alleviate any page flipping, but it would at least help prevent missing any wayward items.
appendix-only
At first glance, the Dishonored strategy guide looks like it would have everything a user could want from the guide, at least it does content-wise. We shall see what the final review unveils in time.
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.