Fire Emblem (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) [Paperback]

Prima Games (Author)

Book Description

Series: Prima's Official Strategy Guide | Publication Date: November 11, 2003

Battle Your Way to the Throne!
·Step-by-step walkthroughs for both the tutorial and main story portions of the game
·Complete bios for each character in the game, detailing their history and purpose
·Information on choosing weapons classes, magic, spells, and more
·Where to find every hidden special weapon and important item

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Battle Your Way to the Throne!
·Step-by-step walkthroughs for both the tutorial and main story portions of the game
·Complete bios for each character in the game, detailing their history and purpose
·Information on choosing weapons classes, magic, spells, and more
·Where to find every hidden special weapon and important item

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Prima Games (November 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0761544887
• ISBN-13: 978-0761544883
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.4 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,421,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Dan Birlew is an author and video game expert who has been writing official, published video game strategy guides since 1999. His original career goals included acting and directing. Video games always excited Dan since he was seven years old, but at the age of twenty-six he began honing his playing skills with the goal of becoming an expert gamer. He enjoyed publishing online documents regarding games, known as "FAQs". Dan inadvertently created an online persona for himself when he wrote and self-published on the Internet a plot analysis of the highly popular survival horror video game, Silent Hill. "The game's story was somewhat vague, and demanded that someone try to explain it," says Birlew.

Upon receiving an overwhelming number of positive responses from other Silent Hill fans, and after some gentle nudging from his wife, Birlew decided to set aside his acting and directing activities to establish a career as a video game strategy guide author. He sent writing samples to several publishing companies. Based on the merits of his very first submission, he was hired by a major publisher within 24 hours. Birlew says, "It was as though I had won the lottery."

Birlew has authored over sixty published video game strategy guides and seeks other methods of publication, such as review columns, articles, and other non-fiction video game-related books. Birlew says of his passion for games, "I love exploring video games, the industry, the culture, the fans -- and there is so much of it about which I can analyze and write." He also bears a strong desire to publish fiction, and is currently working on a novel concerning the paranormal.

Dan Birlew is a native of St. Louis, Missouri, and has lived in Pennsylvania, Texas, and California. He now resides in Las Vegas with his wife of seventeen years. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993. Besides video games, Birlew also enjoys Japanese films and dining with his family and friends in the restaurants and clubs of Las Vegas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Once Again, Prima Fails To Deliver, November 24, 2007

By 

Miranda Bogardus (Springfield, VT United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii): Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides) (Paperback)

I strongly discourage the purchase of this guide. Prima demonstrates in this guide that, yet again, if you can't play the game their way, you can't play it at all. The guide is set up in a step-by-step format, telling you specifically what characters to be used, and when they are to be used, turn-by-turn. Because of Fire Emblem's chanciness, the advice offered by this guide is just short of absolutely useless. Utter garbage. Its sole saving grace is the art featured throughout the book.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A noble effort, yet fails., May 28, 2009

By 

Tiffany Delligatti (Fairmont, WV USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii): Prima Official Game Guide (Prima Official Game Guides) (Paperback)

I'm a Fire Emblem veteran, so I usually don't go for guides, but my siblings wanted to play, and I thought this would help them. I was wrong, apparently

Just to note, do not confuse this review with a review of the game. Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn is an excellent game, and well worth playing. Back to the review of the guide:

The guide is basically a diary of the author's playthrough. Each chapter chronicles what HE did on HIS game, with no variation or differing choices. It would have been nice to see different strategies for the different teams a player might like to use. For example, I like to use a party that consists of mages, with a few melee units to back them up. The author of the guide actually advises against mages, while recommending units that are so overpowered, they feel cheap to use. Yeah, they'll win the game for you, but where's the challenge? The game is balanced enough that you can win using anyone, but according to the author, the cheap way out is the only way.

There is also a lot of missing information. There are special conversations, hidden scenes, and a secret ending that are all absent from the guide. I had to find out online about one of the game's biggest spoilers that you can unlock. But is it in the guide? NO! Of course not!

In conclusion, I can't recommend this book. If you want a diary of a guy playing a game, this is it. However, there are better guides for free online. While the artwork is good, it is also available for free.

18 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I like... the artwork., July 9, 2004

By 

danielle (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fire Emblem (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) (Paperback)

I was flipping through my friend's Fire Emblem Strategy Guide, and I almost died laughing wondering why he even bought the book. I don't think it was worth $14.99 (or $10.49 for Amazon :P), except for the artwork.

The strategies weren't that fabulous. Actually, a player could have done better on his (or her, in my case) own without the book. The game is not that hard, although at times rather long and frustrating (but beatable). However, I did have trouble in one stage, and I read the guide, and I thought it wasn't worth it. Well, the guide did point out some hard-to-find secrets, though, but that's about it.

Side note: There are some grammatical errors and whatnot - in books like these, there shouldn't be errors like that. Where was its editor?

One thing I do like is the official (anime) artwork. It's beautifully drawn, and there's lots of it, too. A decent buy for people who like anime gaming artwork.

If you're looking for help on the game, I suggest you look somewhere else. Anime artwork, you might want to consider this.