Customer Reviews

FINAL FANTASY Tactics: The War of the Lions Official Strategy Guide (Official Strategy Guides (Bradygames))

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As an owner of the Prima Final Fantasy Tactics Guide, I had very high expectations for the new guide. The Prima guide was excellent, and everything a guide should be; well put together, offering pages and pages of useful tables, great battle maps, and useful strategies ... all without giving plot away (well, as much so as possible). Luckily, hit & miss BradyGames has created an excellent guide for FFT: War of the Lions that is just as good as its predecessor.

Pros:
* Very pretty to look at
* Very well organized, clean, and easy to read
* Useful and easy to read tables
* Great looking battle maps, with treasure grids and deployment locations.
* Useful battle strategies - it will help you win if you're new to the game or struggling, and will make sure you don't miss anything if you're a veteran and are breezing through.
* Many great hints and strategies for getting the most out of your party, many great optimization strategies
* The Job Overview section is very well laid out, and has a recommended skill set section for each job. Very handy for new players, and might offer new and exciting combos for veterans.

Cons:
* Several minor typographical errors. My favorite is: "Female [X Zodiac Sign] has the best chance of stealing [Y's] equpiment and everything he has is really worth taking. Try not to deploy" ... what a great place to cut off. :p Luckily, the really important information was stated
* I have 1 quibble with the layout of the guide. They chose to do a walk-through section, followed by a section of secret stuff/sidequests, followed by a section of the multiplayer stuff. However, the earlier multiplayer rendezvous are in the walkthrough section; only the later ones get their own section. I feel that all of the multiplayer material should have been grouped in one section, or scattered through the walkthrough as it becomes available; not a combination. Also, the secret material should definitely have been put in the walkthrough section when it becomes available, so you don't miss it.
* The Prima guide has a very useful star system for ranking all of the job abilities. This guide just has a paragraph for each section telling you strategies and such about the jobs. While I like the strategy paragraphs, I wish the star system was there if you just want to quickly see which abilities are worth learning/using.

Overall:
This was a GREAT guide whos pros definitely overweighed the very minor cons. I highly recommend it for new players and veterans alike, as its jam-packed with useful information, full-color and easy to understand maps, and is very easy to flip through and find what you need. Sure you may be able to find all of this info online, but you can't really get the easy to read maps online; those alone (for the hidden treasure) make the guide worth it. 5 stars!

*update*
A few additional thoughts/problems:
1) Meliadoul's attacks now affect any unit, not just units wearing armor. The guide says the exact opposite, and discusses strategy based on that premise.
2) You can no longer steal from elmdore. The guide doesn't mention this, and seems to suggest the opposite.
3) Some of the errand rewards on the errand table are wrong. However the needed factor and suggested classes are correct, so its not a big deal.

None of these problems are enough to detract from my score, however.

This guide is very useful for the average gamer and the hardcore ones. The job chart in the guide shows you how to unlock each job and I found myself referring to it on a constant basis. It helped me plan on which characters were going to do specific jobs like Dancer (female only) and Bard (male only). The guide also has great deployment recommendations before going into battle without revealing the storyline or cut scenes. It also shows you how to see hidden cut scenes and obtain rare weapons and armor for Dark Knight! If you are a true FF fan and plan on beating the game and unlocking everything, then this guide is for you!

Well it covers everything you need in the game, and not just the basic walkthrough of each mission. It gives some really good tips on jobs and skills, some combinations I haven't used before that are really good.
Also it covers all the secret missions and how to beat them and also how to get all the secret characters, and it's no big secret Balthier from FF XII is one of the guys you get.

The book gives an in depth chart on all the missions, all the maps, all the items/weapons/armour you can get. And also guide for the Deep Dungeon (one for the hardcore with time to spare) to tackle.

Aside from it being a great guide... you will be happy to know the artwork is great too. Not like some guidebooks that are so fnctional I may as well read it from gamefaqs.com... this one is lovely. As you can see from the cover, you get a few bits of eye candy. And on a small note, the pages aren't fragile thin as they are plastic coated/filmed.

You need the book to make good characters on the game . It's frustrating to try , & do it without the book for help .

I bought this to help me get into the game. Mostly I have used the character building section to whet my appetite. I haven't used it for "reading ahead" to see what the next story battle is, but I have gone back to see what I could have done better. Early on, before I got the book, I was getting frustrated but learning some of what the authors believe to be good skillsets has been very useful. Sure, you can find the information on the Internet, but stats are so much easier to see in a table format.

Recommended if this is one of your first SRPGs.

I played this game quite a while ago, and when it came out again on PSP, I decided to grab this strategy guide for the second time around. With in-depth how-to and covering all the side quests and jobs, I clocked in 70+ hours of game play, as compared to my original 40 hours when I played without the game. This guide gives out no spoilers, but shows you how to get the most out of FFT. This really helped me get all side characters & showed how to get my characters up to speed with "job placement". Bradygames never lets me down, and in this instance it really improved the game. I'm passing this on to my other gamer friends and would recommend these strategy guides to any Final Fantasy fan.

I recently purchased FFT: the war of the lions for my PSP, and decided to get the guide to have the set.

The guide has everything you need to get going, and keeps it up to the end, even helping you out on the new Ad Hoc additions to the game. I'd like to point out that i do own the original PS1 version, and it's guide, also, and there is no doubt the SE and Bradygames have decided to keep up the top notch work for this title and guide.

The ONLY glaring difference is the PS1 guide had a star method of suggesting the best job abilities. The PSP guide only suggest what works best for each job. Not a big difference, imho, because after playing a while, you should be able to discern which abilities help the most.

All in all, an enjoyable guide to have if you need a nudge in the right direction.

I really like this book, because it contains all of the details, of course, not only the walkthrough. But, more importantly, it also tells us the invisible factors in the calculation of achieving something, for example, to achieve rare item after the melee mode. Other than that, it's standard; details walkthrough, nice printed, easily-to-look format, and great paper quality (if this counts,lol).

Only one thing is bad, after my great great experiences purchasing items at Amazon, I received this book in a defective condition. It's torn (I don't want to return it since i couldn't wait to receive and use this book right away, yet another book). I don't know if it's because UPS or from Amazon. But, it's no big deal. The shipment is a very lightning fast shipment (This is what i like from Amazon). Anyway, great book.

It has everything from pictures to guidelines. Everything a "strategy guide" needs. Well organized and easy to follow.

If you've picked up Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions and you're interested in all the extras, then this is the perfect guide. If you've got the original Prima Games guide to the original Final Fantasy Tactics, you're not getting a whole lot of info for what has been added to (and changed) from the original Final Fantasy Tactics. In short, even if you have the Prima Guide to the original game, the Bradygames guide is a far better investment.

The guide begins with a long introduction. It's nothing special, but quite interesting to read if you're a little interested in the history of Final Fantasy Tactics.

The guide then goes into the basics. Despite being ten years old, Final Fantasy Tactics is still a fairly complicated game in many respects. If you're familiar with the original version, then the game basics section isn't meant for you. However, there are still some valuable tips and good information here that's good for those who are unfamiliar with the game and those who need to be reacquainted with it. It does a far better job of explaining the game than the instruction manual. There's also a great deal of information here that isn't present in the manual. If you're having trouble understanding the way Final Fantasy Tactics works, the strategy guide is a far better resource than the manual. The basics section is huge, spawning over twenty pages filled with tons of information. By the time newcomers are finished here they should be able to breathe Final Fantasy Tactics.

When we're done with the basics we move into the job system portion of the guide. Once again, you'll find some helpful tips and you'll also find a job flow chart that will show you what job levels your characters need to be to access new jobs. The guide doesn't explain how to use the flowchart, but it's pretty self explanatory. Afterwards there is one page dedicated to every job on the list. They'll tell you the requirements to get the job and what jobs require it. For example, it shows that there are no requirements to get the chemist job class, but it is required to use Chemist in order to access White Mage, Black Mage, Onion Knight and Mime. There is also a job overview as well as suggested tips to help you fight well with the jobs. There is also a full list of abilities. This is actually one of the most helpful sections of the guide, especially because they've got some really good tips to raise job classes to their full potential.

The guide also gives full detail on the characters. It's actually a lot like looking at the job class section of the guide. But once again, very useful information can be found here. Especially for those who are struggling with the difficulty Final Fantasy Tactics presents to new players. It'll also give you the lowdown on finding hidden characters like Cloud and Balthier.

The walkthrough is where some may not find the guide as useful as others. Final Fantasy Tactics is, afterall, a tactical strategy RPG. Unlike other RPGs your enemies attacks and movements are completely unpredictable. Hence, the guide doesn't go into a lot of detail on the encounters. Just the same, it doesn't have to. It does offer suggestions, such as what job classes to assign in the battle. But don't expect it to tell you where to move along the field. It just gives you the low down on what jobs to send in and who to eliminate first. So while some of the strategies are pretty vague, you're actually getting more help than you think. It helps you figure out what to do in battle, but lets it up to you to decide how to do it.

Aside from some tactics, what the guide really helps with when it comes to encounters is how it manages to point out most everything. Where the enemy units start and where to find hidden goodies on the maps. For those experiencing Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time, Bradygames has crafted a spoiler free walkthrough. But it doesn't leave you out in the dust either. Along the way there are also some crystal clear screenshots with captions there for you.

There are tons of secrets in Final Fantasy Tactics and the PSP version has a plethora of new things to find provided you don't mind linking up with someone. The guide will go into all the Rendezvous and special missions as well providing some advanced tactics like how to raise units faster or how to learn spells without JP. There are a few keepers here in terms of secrets. You'll also, of course, learn about how to obtain the hidden characters. Everything about Melee mode and the helpful secrets of Rendezvous mode are revealed. You're definitely getting your money's worth with this guide.

Finally there's a poaching guide and errands run down. Needless to say these portions of the guide are also excellently detailed. Last but not least, there's the appendices that list all the weapons, armor, items etc., which is pretty standard fare for an RPG guide.

If you need help with Final Fantasy Tactics The War of the Lions, this is the guide for you. It's full of just about everything you need. Don't just win the battle. Win the war.