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Crisis Core Strategy Guide Review

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Crisis Core Strategy GuideA strategy guide’s quality hinges on the quality of its maps, walkthroughs and appendices, all of which are crucial for a complete and truly helpful guide. Some people will need a guide to hold their hands throughout the entire game, whereas others need a guide for simply looking up information quickly, such as where to obtain a certain ability. A guide of good quality must be able to do both to appease the wide range of gamers.

Crisis Core is an usual game in that it is divided up between Zack’s relatively short story and his 300 missions in SOLDIER. Players can play the missions whenever they like, and they have no bearing on the story whatsoever. The guide, written by Doug Walsh and published by BradyGames, is similarly arranged, with one section for the story and one section for the missions, but this review will not be divided up in a similar manner.

Maps:
Every guide should have as many area maps as this one. Each story chapter begins with a map of the area–with every item and e-mail Zack can obtain–and each mission has its own individual map with similar markings. While it is nice to be able to use the maps to quickly find the items, the best part of them is the markings of the mission bosses. Even though there are only about four or five mission regions, the bosses are never in the same place and are often not where one would expect them to be. This is essential for those who want to quickly get in and get out.

Walkthroughs:
Even though Zack’s story is only ten chapters, there are plenty of sidequests for him to partake in, such as joining fan clubs, unlocking missions, and uncovering the seven wonders of Nibelheim. The guide will make sure the player misses NONE of these things. I myself only missed one fan club joining–the Zack Fair fan club, no less–because I glossed over the tip to talk to the receptionist. Once you miss that window, it’s closed forever in typical Final Fantasy fashion.

For those wondering, yes it gives detailed strategy for all boss fights and alerts players ahead of time of all the enemies and their stats Zack will encounter.

The walkthroughs for the missions, are about as helpful. They offer good advice for the bosses, give a heads up on lurking enemies and warn players how to properly prepare Zack before undertaking a particular mission. If a mission has Magic Pots, it will alert players to their presence as well as what materia they require to be appeased.

However, after a certain point, it becomes very apparent that the writer had a certain affinity towards one materia (Costly Punch) and recommends it use throughout the rest of the missions. The problem with this is that at the point Costly Punch is first recommended, players can only obtain the materia through fusion and that’s only if a certain mission was completed. For those who do not obtain Costly Punch, you will have to create your own strategies throughout most of the missions, which negates the purpose of the guide a bit.

Appendices:
Here is another area where the guide really shines. It contains appendices of all materia, items, accessories, shops and enemies, which not only lists all of them but also details where to find them. Each appendix is colored differently and everything is categorized and listed alphabetically for easy look-up. Need to find exactly where to pick up the Brutal accessory? Want to know which missions the Magic Pots are lurking? The answer is a quick flip of the pages away.

It also includes a large, foldout chart to help with materia fusion, but I found it to be very confusing for the most part, and thankfully for me, I was not the only one. It does a decent job at explaining base materia for fusion, but it gets tricky when it delves into the materia ranks and classes. Occasionally I could use it to successfully fuse the materia I wished, but most of the time it was a case of trial and error. Of course, there is always the possibility that it’s a simple matter of not having the correct materia to fuse with. The more I think about it, the more I think that’s true.

Extras:
I never count on a guide to include extras, but it is oh so nice when they do. This guide includes a gorgeous art gallery of concept art for the game and Walsh’s “23 Wishes,” which are tips for successful gameplay as well as references to the original Final Fantasy VII game that can be found throughout Crisis Core.

Final Word:
Walsh’s love of the Costly Punch materia does not detract much from the overall high quality of the guide. It’s suitable for every type of gamer who may want a guide, and the maps and the extras definitely make it worth every penny.

It gets a 4/5 from me. Damn Costly Punch. (That’s a cool name for drink…)

Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World Strategy Guide Review

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This strategy guide for the Tales of Symphonia sequel was kind of set to fail from the beginning due to the style of the game. The game is overly repetitive and doesn’t need much guidance in terms of fighting enemies and bosses. Most of the strategies for bosses were relatively the same. Keep Marta safe and in the back for healing. Send Emil in for slashing and blocking. Look out for so-and-so attack. Be ready to pass out Apple Gels for healing and keep a few Life Bottles on hand. I hate to say it, but I could have figured that out on my own, because that’s how most hack ‘n slash games go. But thanks anyway.

I did find the guide useful with all of the puzzles in the dungeons. I’m not a fan of insane dungeon-puzzles, especially ones that aren’t that obvious what to do next. There were many puzzles that I figured out on my own. There were also just as many where I was scratching my head in confusion, and when I found out what to do next, I wasn’t sure if I should feel confused or stupid for not understanding it.

The big failure of the guide was the lack of maps. It included only one map, and it was a map of the overworld. However, you didn’t need an overworld map because you couldn’t freely roam the overworld. There was no way you were going to get lost or confused about where to head next. You just had to select where you wanted to go and bam, there you went.

But the places you can freely roam, like villages and dungeons, there are zero maps.

Sadly, this would have been the one feature that would have separated it from free online content. Sure, you probably can’t find as detailed appendices of all the in-game items online, but I never gave them a glance. I couldn’t find a need for any of them.

Simply put, save your money and do not buy this guide. It doesn’t offer anything you can’t already find online.

Final Rating: 1/5

Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World Initial Impressions

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So far, this guide does as many things right as it does wrong.

The dungeons all have about the same element – insane puzzle mazes – and the guide is wonderful at providing quick solutions to the puzzles that include collecting all of the treasure chests. I have saved myself at least a few hours of agonizing torture in completing these mazes. For those late to the party, I hate puzzle mazes. And I’m not talking about the Legend of Zelda style mazes. I think a more recent example of such a maze can be found in the Eastern tribe temples in Lost Odyssey. I shudder to think of those puzzles again.

While the guide includes a large overworld map, it contains no other maps. No maps of the dungeons, villages, nothing. This leaves a large black mark on the guide. Since you can’t do any overworld exploring, I’m not sure why the guide includes an overworld map at all.

Boss tactics are in great detail, although I admit I really haven’t looked at them since I haven’t found the bosses too difficult. On the flipside, there is no detail on the bosses themselves. No information on the HP or weaknesses. Sometimes it’s nice to know that a boss has over 14,000 points of HP when you’re slicing just ten points of damage a hit. Occasionally these facts are mentioned in the tactics paragraphs, but that’s just poor design. At the very least, the HP should be designated next to the boss name.

I can honestly say though that I wouldn’t be playing this game without the guide. I like the story and the dialogue cracks me up, but the dungeons drive me insane. Not particularly my idea of fun, so if I didn’t have the guide to soothe my frustration, Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World would be on my Amazon seller account.

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

The World Ends with You Guide Review

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BradyGames’ strategy guide for The World Ends with You is by far the WORDIEST guide I have ever come across. And I don’t mean that it’s wordy in a helpful way, in that it says, go here, go there, do this, pull that knob, blah blah blah. Instead, it details out entire cut-scenes. You almost don’t have to play the game. Want to know what happens in the game? Just pull out the guide and read it carefully. Trust me, you won’t miss a thing, not even conversations between NPCs.

Unless you’re a great skimmer, you may have difficulty picking up in the mass of words the one piece of info you’re looking for. Fortunately, this game isn’t that difficult to figure out where you need to go. On most Days, Neku is limited to which areas he can visit, and even if one is blocked, he merely needs to tap the guarding Reaper to find out what he needs to do to break the barrier. But if you like reading lots of words, um, twice (once in the game and once in the book) then the words may be more than welcome to you. You’re a strange, strange person.

But all of that is not even the guide’s largest flaw. For those having difficulty fighting the final boss, avoid mass frustration and look online for help. The guide fails to mention one major aspect of the boss (I won’t way what here), and if a gamer (like me) stumbles upon said feature, he or she will have no idea what to do based off of the guide. Switching to Easy mode won’t save you. I tried, and I’m so glad that I failed, because then I was able to beat the boss on hard mode in the end after I found some real help.

The guide is useful for the maps, item appendices, and helping the lazy get through Reaper Reviews, but that is it. If I wasn’t a collector of these things, I would sell this guide in a heartbeat.

Final Rating: 2/5

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