Customer Reviews

Bushido Blade 2 : Prima's Official Strategy Guide

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The Bushido Blade 2 strategy guide is not up to the high standard of Squaresoft's excellent game. Moves are not always attributed to the proper characters, the biographies of the characters are mostly badly written filler that you'd get from a quick run through of the game,the screenshots are too dark and too small to be of any real use, and the few character renders that are included are often overlaid with other graphics or charts that don't add much to your knowledge of the game itself. Minimal information, no bios and no pictures aside from more useless screenshots are included of the final boss characters despite the fact that this information would help clarify the game's storyline. This strategy guide is the only one available for Bushido Blade 2 but interested games should approach it with caution.

When I see a new guidebook for a fighting game of any sort, my heart fills with dread. Fighting games are as much of an art as the martial arts themselves, and guidebooks for such shuld be, nay, OUGHT to be perfect. Every combination for every move must be entered correctly, and if any moves are pictured, the frames must be clean, understandable, and large.

The guidebook for Bushido Blade has none of these qualities. The offered material is of the kind most often found in the game's own instructional booklet, frequently misquoted at that. The moves are sometimes entered for the incorrect characters ( I imagine that numerous gamers will go mad while trying to perform a move that doesn't exist). Picture frames are often misplaced and smudged, defeating the entire purpose of their existense. For a game of such finesse as Bushido Blade II, Prima's guide does little to fill in the fine points of combat. Strategies that are given are often basic enough to be guessed. The information about the storyline, character background info and statistics, and other interesting and quirky data is contradictory and mostly useless.

I can freely say that it is easier to master the game WITHOUT this guide, rather than with it.

I authored this guide and I agree with the other reviews here, the guide is not very good...

I was originally working on a guide for Thrill Kill but then Electronic Arts bought Virgin Interactive and decided to can Thrill Kill. EA thought Thrill Kill too violent for them to release. At the last minute Prima moved me over to Bushido Blade 2 (I really wanted to do Virtua Fighter 2 as I was already really good at that game, but someone had already signed off on that one). I was never able to play the game long enough to write in-depth strategies and struggled just getting the screenshots, art, and moves list down in the very short deadline I had. Needless to say, its not much more than a glorified instruction manual.

I apologize to anyone who bought it. It was the last video game strategy guide I wrote. Working for the smaller companies was a joy. My work on Popful Mail: The Official Strategy Guide was fulfilling, but my last experiences with the bigger companies were not. Unfortunately the smaller publishers were forced out of the business due to Prima and Brady signing exclusive agreements with the gaming companies.