Customer Reviews

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames))

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

This strategy guide is strange. It offers maps, details locations of some (key word being "some") treasures, has a listing of the monsters, weapons, and abilities. It has a section dedicated to side-quests, one dedicated to the characters and their progression through the game, and a tutorial chapter that's standard in all strategy guides. The strange part, though, comes when you get to the walk-through. It describes very little, and has little hints like "items appear after certain events," yet doesn't tell you what event that is. It even leaves out boss fight sections, a norm in every RPG strategy guide. I was stunned when the first boss battle appeared and found it wasn't in the guide. Some would say this is good as it doesn't spoil the surprises, but I disagree. A book can be detailed and still leave out all those spoiling elements.

Now, I'm a lover of strategy guides for one reason. I don't have a lot of time to play video games and strategy guides get me from point A to point Z without missing much along the way. Replay value means nothing to me, yet it bugs me when I know I haven't achieved everything the game has to offer. This strategy guide, however, seems to want you to play through the game again, to discover everything without its help. It's sort of a mentor; it shows you the many right ways but doesn't say which is best.

Despite all of that, though, the guide does help in one aspect. It has maps, and for anyone who knows Dragon Quest, maps are very important. It's easy to get lost in the Dragon Quest games, and a nice little map to guide us away from confusion helps immensely. Another great section is the item section, which details how to make every weapon or piece of armor in the Alchemy Pot.

Instead of recommendations, I've compiled a list of pros and cons so that you can decide if the positives out-way the negatives:

+Detailed character section to help guide your characters progression through the game

+Appendixes of weapons, armors, items, and abilities, as well as monster lists and and "Infamous Monster" section

+Maps of the world and dungeons

+A section for side-quests

-A tutorial section of game basics that can be found in the handbook provided with the game

-Vaguely detailed in the walk-through

-Doesn't always provide item locations

(ADDED)-Doesn't provide any info for the last section of the game, including leading up to the final boss fight and the extra quest

"An atlas is a bound collection of maps supplementary illustrations and analysis," remarks the Brady Games staff in the introduction to this guide. This is, if you couldn't guess, an experiment. And while I'm giving this three stars (for reasons I'll explain) I must agree one-hundred percent with those who gave it one or two stars. If you're picking up this guide to actually help you get through the game, you're looking in the wrong place. If however, you're interested in all the extras, you may actually get a use out of this guide.

Let's start with the good. Everything outside the "atlas" section of this guide (which is the walkthrough) is good. Excellent explanation of characters, sidequests and very detailed items list.

The game basics section, which is basically an instruction manual, is good. It helps you clearly understand the gameplay components. If something is confusing you in the instruction booklet, it'll be here. Fine and dandy, no doubt.

The characters section is also very well done. Each character has a profile and then a complete list of all their spells, skills, beginning stats etc. If you're looking for the best way to use your skill points, this guide can help.

Likewise, the items and abilities list is also very detailed. So is the weapon and armor lists. Aside from those little things, the monster arena is explained very well, and the bestiary is very good too. Even the sidequests have great explanations.

Now why didn't those explanations find their place in the walkthrough? Because Brady Games decided to make what should've been the walkthrough an "atlas". Meaning, it's got virtually nothing but maps. This, they claim, is to keep from spoiling all the suspense and plot elements of the game. I don't know about you, but lately I haven't had a problem with BradyGAMES spoiling anything in their guides. After the disaster of their FFIX guide, they seem to be doing a good job in concealing plot twist and leading us through the game in a respectable fashion. Basically, they're trying too hard NOT to spoil the plot that the solution seems to be... don't give people a walkthrough at all! These maps are gorgeous, and they even point out things you should do in dungeons, the problem is they don't EXPLAIN anything!

There's more crimes to this. You don't know what to do in the town at all. They constantly tell you to listen to what it says in the game. Yes, that's fine and dandy and all... and Dragon Quest VIII is by no means a hard game, but the reason I grabbed the guide in the first place was to get a leg up on the main quest without constantly having to talk to characters over and over. So that when I got stuck, I could know what to do. You will not get that kind of help from this guide. Are you lost? The maps will help, but what about if you're just not sure of your objective? Or you forget. The guide doesn't help there.

The next crime, where are the boss strategies? They don't exist in the atlas. Not even a boss guide in the back. Trust me, if I'd known the walkthrough was that terrible, I would have certainly been willing to flip to the back for a boss guide.

Somehow, however, I let the guide slide with three stars. And as I said, I'd explain. The walkthrough/atlas is terrible, but everything outside of it is beautiful. The sidequests are explained in depth, the monster arena section is gorgeous and the maps are beautiful. Basically, as I stated before, everything outside this walkthrough is beautiful. And for that, the guide hits high, and gets some of my respect.

The problem is, the part that the guide is supposed to... you know, GUIDE you on, is too vague. Gorgeous maps don't explain what to do at certain parts.

A strategy guide is supposed to include strategy. This is by far the worst BradyGAMES guide since the dreadful Final Fantasy IX guide. At least we're not referred to a website, but this guide could've certainly been better. This is not what I like to see from BradyGAMES. Not at all.

The Good
+Pretty much everything outside walkthrough

The Bad
-Because of how bad the walkthrough is, I can't honestly recommend anyone actually buy this guide. It's helpful for all those extras but in actually completing the main quest, the walkthrough is terrible and doesn't deserve your money. Hold on to your money, and save it for something else.

An actual strategy guide, perhaps.

When is a strategy guide not a strategy guide? When it becomes a souvenir. This isn't the first time I've bought a thick, well printed guide and found that, for all the pretty pictures and catalogs of monsters, it really wasn't all that helpful. Perhaps this is because 80% of my rating for any guide is quality of walkthrough and extent and utility of maps. The remaining 20% is readability, and this guide suffers in all three categories.

The book is erratic. Sometimes there are good place maps and sometimes there aren't. The big foldout maps don't always follow the in-game maps, which means that things aren't always where you expect them to be. And putting all the foldout maps on one large foldout is an invitation to torn pages. And yet, there are a lot of maps. Sometimes with annotation and sometimes not.

For some reason, the Bradygames team opted to take a walkthrough, edit anything out that is more than a vague hint, and then present the bits of information left in as out of order a fashion as possible. Fortunately Dragon Quest VIII is a kind game. It's hard to mess up the game by doing something out of order, but I find it frustrating when something that should be straightforward doesn't make sense for hours.

Most of this is really about why you buy a guide in the first place. At almost half the price of the game, I expect my guide to provide answers when I need them, although I appreciate the publisher's reluctance to put spoilers in plain sight, they should be there somewhere. And for all the infinite variety of monsters in DQ8 this isn't a game where you need an extensive bestiary. Especially when there is nary a hint of how to fight major battles.

Hence my three-star rating. This is OK as a reference tool, but if you want a real guide you are better off with the on-line walkthroughs. Especially if you are trying to fight some of the less obvious boss battles. This is a shame, because Bradygames' guides represent a huge amount of publication effort.

For anyone that doesn't have enough time to play through a massive game like this without a guide to help them through, go it alone anyway. This is the worst excuse for a startegy guide since the Final Fantasy 9 guide.

Here are the highlights:

No story walkthrough, no boss coverage, massive monster lists that you'll never read or look at, confusing alchemy pot recipes and layout, dual names for every one of the 260 monsters (got real tired of seeing the a.k.a. letters), lousy chest maps (you don't get to know what's in a particular chest - you have to go to it, open it and compare it to the list of chest contents on the area map), no help at all for finding some of the game's most important items (sage orbs) and only hints at what you need to do in an area to move the story along.

Basically if you want to shell out money for a guide that doesn't help you, then this is what you need.

This guide needs to be rounded up and burned and all the money should be refunded to anyone stupid enough to buy it (myself included).

Good grief! I certainly learned my lesson after buying a copy of this book at the same time that I bought a copy of DRAGON QUEST VIII for myself. The strange thing is, everything I heard about the game itself was true -- it's a *fantastic* game that I would recommend to any and all RPG players. The sad thing is that this book, meant to accompany this outstanding game, is complete rubbish. Don't be fooled by looks, folks -- BradyGames published this 225+ page monster with sleek graphics and pretty pictures, but the content is just NOT there.

Imagine how irate I was when I sat down to start playing and decided to consult the guide to see what the recommended strategy for the first boss fight in the game was. Not only is the boss not mentioned (save one terse entry at the very end of the book), but neither are any of the events leading up to that encounter! I quickly thumbed through the book (which I should have done before I bought it, silly me!) and realized that it was all pictures and no words -- no helpful hints, no real suggestions, none of that silly thing I expected -- the walkthrough. In fact, I was amazed when I actually saw real alchemy recipes in the book -- I'm surprised they didn't leave those out, too.

In short, this book flaunts all the pictures and maps you could dream of, but fails to deliver on what the guide is intended for -- to provide a WALKTHROUGH. People don't pay $15-20 or more to get a blurb -- one or two per city! -- letting them know that (surprise!) there are things to be done in this town or in this area of the world.

Shame, shame, shame on you, BradyGames. Even if you don't want to "spoil the story" or "ruin" things for all players, the least you could do would be the publish the minimum necessary to be considered a walkthrough. The sections in this book consist almost entirely of pictures, with so few words that it basically looks like a digital photo album. Publish the maps and text in different chapters, put maps in the front and walkthrough in the back, do ANYTHING you want to avoid spoiling the story, but at least include the information somewhere in the guide!

Don't waste your time or money on this piece of junk, folks. Trust me -- there are *real* walkthroughs (and FREE ones, at that!) all over the Web. Let's just hope that BradyGames doesn't publish a similar book for FFXII this fall -- that would be a tremendous disappointment, indeed.

There is no help in this strategy guide. How does a strategy guide drop hints at you? It's a CHEAT book...you shouldn't have to figure ANYTHING out. It was a waste of my $17.99. I wish Prima had made a strategy guide for this game. I don't think I'll be purchasing an more Brady strategy guides again.

Like pretty much everyone else who's used this guide, I was quite surprised to open it up and find that it was very lacking in the strategy department. This guide has detailed maps of every area, detailed information about all the characters, info about side quests, and info about all the normal enemies. What it doesn't have is a step-by-step guide on how to play DragonQuest VIII. Unlike most people, however, I discovered that I actually enjoy this layout. When I play video games, especially RPGs, I like to take my dear sweet time getting from one place to another, and it drives me crazy to find out that I've missed something, a treasure or a monster or something. This guide helps me make sure that I don't miss anything like that. But when playing games, I also tend to skip over a goodly amount of information written in strategy games because I enjoy the challenge of trying to figure out some things for myself. I don't like guides that spell out the entire story line for you or that tell you where to go when and exactly what you have to do there. This guide gives you hints, which are helpful if you're a bit stuck, but it never outright tells you where to go. I actually like it this way. This guide told me everything I needed to know to make sure that I didn't miss anything, and it helped me out when I got stuck in a few places, but most of the game was a surprise and I had to spend a lot of time thinking for myself on what to do next. Besides, what fun is it to play video games if your only intention is to beat it as quickly as possible? Take the time to enjoy the game and let yourself get sucked into it!

About the only thing that I would change about this guide is that I wish it did include a list of all the boss monsters. It does have a list of "selected bosses" in the back, and while I like the fact that the list is there if I need it, I wish it were complete. Other than that, though, this is probably one of the best strategy guides I've ever used. I enjoyed the style, but I understand that it's certainly not for everyone.

This is the worst walkthrough I have ever purchased. Whereas past Bradygames walkthroughs had detailed maps, directions, instructions, and facts related to the game, the Dragon Quest 8 walkthrough just lays out a very, very sparse overview of each area and character without going into any other detail. For instance, the maps tell you what items you may find around town---but it doesn't tell you WHERE they are! It doesn't even tell you where you'll be attacked by a boss, or even the boss stats. Also, in the "Infamous Monsters" section, the names of the enemies in the index do not match with corresponding area pictures. So, in Farebury, you'll encounter an Axoraptor, but in the index it's called a different name. Very confusing. And the maps themselves are so small they're practically useless. There is very little text on the pages, so don't expect to be pointed in the right direction. Most likely all you'll find is the author suggesting that you talk to all the townspeople to find out what to do next. Forget it! Just save your money and play the old-fashioned way. You're not missing out on anything by buying this walkthrough.

I understand that many strategy guides prefer to tread the "anti-spoiler road," and let you figure some things out on your own. But what some authors fail to understand is that many folks who buy these guides WANT to be walked through the game. And that's precisely what's MISSING in this guide.

The authors were so careful in not revealing "too much" that they inevitably left too much, out. It does give exhaustive information on usual things you might expect such as, item locations, extras, mini games, side missions, boss and enemy locations, maps, etc.

Bottom line, if you're the kind of gamer that prefers to be kept in the dark, then buy this guide. But if you're looking for a guide that will actually guide you on "what to do next," then look elsewhere. For Shame, Brady Games ... for shame...

This book has very detailed sections about all of the Abilities, Spells, Monsters, Infamous Monsters, Alchemy Combines, Items, weapon, and armor lists, and Nice Maps.

However, if offers nothing in the way of Strategy or walk-through advice. Also, the town maps while nice looking and colorful, do not show where the hidden items are within the towns (but it does tell you what all is in the town, just not where). Many of the boss monsters are not even mentioned in the guide or appendix.

And after "beating" the game there is still substantially more content which the guide offers absolutely nothing on. No maps, story, or even mention that there is more after the game. In the parts where it should make reference to this post-win content like where to get a particular item it describes it as "Location: Unknown...".

Over-all while there is a lot of help this book provides, there is still a lot more it should have had.