What was the last strategy guide you bought?

[FPLOON]

Kingdom Hearts 1.5 HD ReMIX

All this guide is is a [poorly] copy-paste version of the original Kingdom Hearts guide[footnote]To the point that it refers to one of the difficulty settings as "Expert", to point out a "minor" copy-paste example...[/footnote] with a novel-written "guide" of Re:Chain of Memories included... Definitely one of the worse guides I've ever bought so far to a game I really liked in general... The only "good" thing that came out of this purchase was a game logo sticker I have placed on my laptop... and I'm pretty sure the sticker was not suppose to be taken off the wrapping in the first place...

 

[GundamSentinel]

The last guide I bought was for Assassin's Creed II. Not because I needed it (it has been years since I even played it), but it was 2 Euros and it has some great art work.

I love actual physical guides and have bought them for some more recent Final Fantasy games, the Metal Gear Solid games, some Bethesda games and some of my old PS2 favorites.

The last one I remember buying was the FFXII guide, back in 2006. It had some... issues...

pretty sure it was the guide to FFXII I bought with FFXII when it came out. I was pissed because although it was very detailed, it left out at least one of the dungeons, which I had to map out myself. If I'm playing $15-20 for a strategy guide, it better have everything.

I remember that guide. They fucked up one of the hunt locations in that guide. Basically they switch the name of two of them and got the location of the second one wrong. Luckily i found it by accident without trying.

I really got to play that again, i really liked that one.

I remember a couple mistakes, but what really pissed me off about my copy was the binding fell apart within a year. I babied it, too, yet one third of the pages just started falling out. That's the only guide I've ever seen fall apart like that, and my Dark Cloud 2 and other Zelda guides are beat up but their spines are intact.

I got it at the midnight Gamestop launch and was offered the "collector's edition" that cost around twice as much. I don't know if the binding would have been better on the CE, but I'm glad I didn't risk it.

Out of curiosity, which FFXII guide was it, the Brady Games one or the Piggyback Guide? The Piggyback Guide is as far as I know absolutely spot-on (frankly, all the Piggyback guides I have are), but I have had some bad experiences with Brady Games. They're usually filled with stupid mistakes, are damn ugly and have nowhere near the quality of Piggyback.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

Out of curiosity, which FFXII guide was it, the Brady Games one or the Piggyback Guide? The Piggyback Guide is as far as I know absolutely spot-on (frankly, all the Piggyback guides I have are), but I have had some bad experiences with Brady Games. They're usually filled with stupid mistakes, are damn ugly and have nowhere near the quality of Piggyback.

It definitely was a Brady Games. It was probably the only one I've ever owned. I knew they had mistakes, but never dreamed they would be that cheap in build quality. (Even my Nintendo Power Wind Waker Guide has some simple mistakes, like swapped information in the side-quests. They're the easy to miss kind that almost require someone double checking by replaying the game via the guide.)

I've never heard of Piggyback Guides, but I'll look for them if I ever buy a guide again. Thanks.

 

[beastro]

Finaly Fnatasy VIII.

I'd have loved a FFIX paper guide, but they pushed the online one which pissed me off when I wanted to play in the livingroom, but needed to get up every so often to get on the computer and find out what next to do.

After that I dropped consoles, went fully into computer games and I was pleased for gamefaqs to kill my desire for them.

As for guides, I always like Prima over Brady. Brady seemed to have too much missing and too much fluffy crap for information. The FFVII Prima guide was awesome and the only really thing it lacked was that you needed to card the one monster in the sub base to get the item that stopped Emerald Weapons timer.

Was fun when friends would bring their Brady's and we'd compare them to my Prima and pick out what was missing from the former.

The one guide I despised was some weird one I got for FFIII because they weren't selling Brady or anything where I lived. Was a massive tomb that contained almost no valuable information, just random filler including two walkthroughs of the game, one a normal, if bare bones one with a lot of inaccurate information, the other a "guide" of plot details through the game. Definitely not a guide that aimed to avoid spoilers!

I wound up using the liberal blank spaces of white on it to write in my own information I learned playing the game myself.

 

[Twinrehz]

When I purchased World of Warcraft Battle Chest, I got two strategy guides with it, one for the first 60 levels, and the other one for most of TBC launch content.

The last strategy guide I deliberately bought was for Wind Waker on GC, and that was the second guide I ever bought, the first one being for Donkey Kong 64.

 

[Fractral]

Probably the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl master guide (contain all the Pokedex up til D/P, EV, egg move etc).

I still look at it from time to time especially when I having some D/C problem! Even then it was alot handy for me having the type/ egg group page then to manually look it up online!

As I metnion, it only contain all the Pokemon since Diamond and Pearl so all of the X and Y and the Sapphire/ Ruby updated Pokemon I still have to look it up online.

I remember getting that one, and the previous one that ran through the story. To think of it, I also bought them for Black and White, too. Man, they were so great- tonnes of information on game mechanics and Pokemon that simply wasn't available in game.

I think the B/W one might be the most recent strategy guide I've bought, since I've played through all of the games since blind, to make it more interesting. Still, the Ghetsis fight caught me seriously off guard- I hadn't turned over the page from the N battle, and was on messenger with a friend who started going 'DENNIS, DENNIS' randomly to me. I can still remember replying 'wtf you on about' and then hearing the battle theme and realizing.
Plus you can get all of the information on Serebii and Bulbapedia nowadays. I wouldn't bother with a strategy guide for any other game, either.

 

[fenrizz]

That would be the strategy guide for Pokemon Red/Blue, which was actually rather helpfull.
Even if I ended up grinding for hours for a Pikachu in the first forrest area.
Worth it though.

When I purchased World of Warcraft Battle Chest, I got two strategy guides with it, one for the first 60 levels, and the other one for most of TBC launch content.

I also have these for the same reason.

 

[chadachada123]

I'm pretty sure that the last one I actually got was Twilight Princess, though I can't remember when I bought the Diablo BattleChest (for the second time, heh). Either way, it's definitely been well over five years, probably tilting on seven or eight.

 

[GundamSentinel]

Out of curiosity, which FFXII guide was it, the Brady Games one or the Piggyback Guide? The Piggyback Guide is as far as I know absolutely spot-on (frankly, all the Piggyback guides I have are), but I have had some bad experiences with Brady Games. They're usually filled with stupid mistakes, are damn ugly and have nowhere near the quality of Piggyback.

It definitely was a Brady Games. It was probably the only one I've ever owned. I knew they had mistakes, but never dreamed they would be that cheap in build quality. (Even my Nintendo Power Wind Waker Guide has some simple mistakes, like swapped information in the side-quests. They're the easy to miss kind that almost require someone double checking by replaying the game via the guide.)

I've never heard of Piggyback Guides, but I'll look for them if I ever buy a guide again. Thanks.

Piggyback isn't as widespread in America as it is in Europe, I believe. But if you have the choice between Piggyback and Brady Games/Prima Guides, always get the Piggyback one. They're just better in every way.

For instance, I have both the Brady Games and the Piggyback guide to FFX. The Piggyback guide has a way higher information density, is more complete, is ordered more logically, has much higher paper quality and doesn't look as cheap as the Brady Games one (and has the original game cover, rather than the awful North American one ).