What was the last strategy guide you bought?

[Lufia Erim]

With gamefaqs and the internet making stategy guide quazi-obsolete ,i'm curious to know what was the last strategy guide you actually paid money to acquire. Strategy guides are still being release for AAA games so i'm guessing that people still buy them.

Some strategy guides are more usefull than others. Like a fighting game strategy guide ( like SF4) would be more usefull to (competititve) players because of the inclusion of frame data, which tends to be usefull ( when they aren't wrong) than say a strategy guide for Call of duty , which has become pretty much a hair shy of a railroad shooter.

My last strategy guide was for diablo 3. Mainly because it was on special and the game tends to not tell you much about the skills you are usuing. To be honest it wasn't the most usefull strategy guides, but i did help my gf, with whom i played co-op, understand the game a tad but more.

So escapists, what was the last strategy guide you bought with money?

 

[ultrabiome]

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.

 

[Seishisha]

The last guide i bought was for command & conquer: renegade.

Not an overly complex game but it did have a fair amount of hidden power ups and so forth, a few of levels were a little maze like aswell so at the time i figured it'd be worth the purchase.

I actualy still own the book aswell and on occasion install renegade from my CnC first decade box, which i actualy bought to get working copies of the earlier games, i already owned the first CnC but it was an old playstation copy not PC, my versions of red alert 1&2 wouldnt install on anything more advanced than windows xp for some reason, never could work out why. Thats not what you asked though so i dont know why i mentioned it.

 

[BillTheConqueror]

My last one was Dark Souls 2, mainly because I liked the look of the hardcover and figured I wouldn't mind have some info out of a book if I didn't have my tablet nearby.

*first post* tada!

 

[Username Redacted]

I have strategy guides for Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Dead or Alive 5, Dead or Alive 5: Ultimate and Ultra Street Fighter IV sitting on my bookshelf at the moment. I think the last strategy guide I actually paid for that wasn't for a fighting game was probably Final Fantasy VII. It's been a while.

 

[Lufia Erim]

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.

 

[aozgolo]

Physical Strategy Guides have a certain charm and appeal to them that I've never seen a GameFAQs guide reproduce. The last strategy guide I bought I believe was for Dragon Quest IX, and it feels like a collector's item in a way, beyond the value of the guide itself, the way it's crafted and set up speaks of a professional touch that you simply won't find on text guides that usually have at best an ascii map of each area.

One of the cool things about Dragon Quest Strategy Guides is that they are chock full of art you simply won't find anywhere else. Every town, every major character, every single item is actually shown as full artwork, not just simple screenshots or digital mock-ups (though there's plenty of those too) but a really high quality presentation that all feels useful.

I do plan on buying The Witcher 3 and Pillars of Eternity Strategy Guide as well due to the high quality I expect from both (both are over 500 pages long).

Owning physical guides really is a nice touch for collectors, and while I will say there have been some guides that are pretty worthless (I don't recall ever using my Burning Crusade guide I bought for WoW much) many are invaluable assets that also are a lot of fun to just look through leisurely.

 

[SoreWristed]

I bought the strategy guide for WoW : Cataclysm along with the game on release date, seeing as I just came out of a WoW break. I thought I would have to relearn my classes. Turned out to be not as invasive of an overhaul as I had thought (and looked more like a slight tweak compared to the pruning they did in Warlords of Draenor)

The guide was good and I had some fair use out of it, but it could have been more detailed for me.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

I bought the strategy guide for "all" (first five) God of War games. Even though I'd already played them and learned them like the back of my hand. I just like having some gaming literature around the house. Plus it was really cheap.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

The Mortal Kombat Deception Strategy guide. I don't know why because I mean there isn't really much to take away from guides for fighting games. I think I was just hoping for cool artwork and bios ect but sadly, this book was baaaaad. Like really bad. Little to no effort was put into it. They didn't even bother putting in all the standard combo inputs.

 

[L. Declis]

I bought it for FFXIII-3.

I'm glad I did, because the game is utterly unplayable without it.

It's Majora's Mask done completely wrong. And if you don't plan it right, you can't go back. No, you have to replay the entire 40 hour game.

And the game sucked.

 

[Javetts Eall Raksha]

Ni-No-Kuni wrath of the white witch... what? it came with a golden burely.

 

[Hairless Mammoth]

I haven't bought one is a long time. They were great to have by your side, instead of running to the PC for Gamefaqs, and I liked the artwork in many of them. But, I got a decent laptop to keep with me (and now tablets can make that easier), and most of the artwork, along with even neater fan art, can also be found online.

The last one I bought just to collect for the art work was the Prima LoZ: Twilight Princess (The "Premier Edition" *sarcastic ooh*). I just got it because I saw it for cheap at one of the Blockbusters[footnote]This was months before the official announcement that BB was going under, so maybe late 2009.[/footnote] that was closing. (It's not even a good guide. The entire thing reads out like a streamlined 100% guide. There are no separate sections for side-quests, pieces of heart, etc, just one big, confusing if you're not into side-questing at the time, walkthrough. Because of that, I've never used it, and it remains in pristine condition.)

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.

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

The Prima Resident Evil and Resident Evil 0 for GameCube guides. They were on sale at Barnes & Noble, and I wanted the posters that came with them. So reeeeally I spent the money on posters.

 

[thoughtwrangler]

The Disgaea 2 strategy guide came as a pre-order bonus. But since I paid full price for the game (you're welcome, NIS America) I still count it.

It's a great guide if you want stats and statistics. The team who made it really dug deep, and there's some nice artwork here and there. It was rather light on entertainment value though. It didn't have many of the quips and "character" pieces that you find in some other guides.

Captcha: I think I can!
You know what, Captcha, you're right. I'm gonna pick that game back up. Thanks.

 

[Scarim Coral]

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.

 

[busterkeatonrules]

South Park: The Stick of Truth.

Haven't read a word of it yet, because I want to stumble across as much random, funny crap as possible on my own first. But with a game like that, there's bound to be hilarious stuff hidden away in the most bizarre places - so eventually, I will have to go over it with the guide just to make sure I've seen everything it has to offer at least once!

 

[Recusant]

The newest would be Master of Orion 3 (cut me some slack, I didn't know; I bought it with the game); the most recent would be Planescape: Torment; I wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything. See, the people who write FAQs and walkthroughs and post them online only know what they've found (or been told about). They miss a lot. Strategy guide writers are (usually, anyway) working directly with the developers; they're a lot less likely to miss something. I suppose this is less of an issue with the fewer hidden elements and secrets games tend to have these days, however.

One thing, though: GameFAQs.com launched in 1995. That was twenty years ago. The Web started up in 1991; the Internet (by even the loosest definitions) 1974 at the latest. As someone who was looking up video game information on BBSes back in 1988, I'm kind of baffled why so many people think this is a recent development.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The last one I bought was for Final Fantasy: Lightning Returns. Because all three of those games are so complicated in terms of trophies, or even just plot, that I needed a guide. Plus, I enjoy having the guides for the Final Fantasy games. I have VII, VIII, X, and X-2 guides, so I needed to get the three for the XIII games too.

The last one I got was Dragon Age: Inquisition. It came free with the game.

 

[laggyteabag]

Technically it would be the WoW Vanilla and Burning Crusade strategy guide, and the former is now outdated. Though, I never actually went out and purchased them myself, as they were bundled with the WoW Battle Chest that I bought to play the game in the first place.

Strategy Guides are pretty pointless now, all things considered. The internet is such a broad place that pretty much anything that you need to know about anything is as little as a google away. Why they keep on making these guides, I don't know.