Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide [Paperback]

Dan Birlew (Author)

Book Description

Series: Bradygames Take Your Games Further | Publication Date: November 10, 2000

BradyGames Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide features a detailed walkthrough, support and action abilities, equipment lists and statistics, comprehensive weapons list, bestiary data and side quests. Using this printed guide along with Squaresoft's online guide at PlayOnline.com will enable players to access additional resources for this epic adventure.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

BradyGames Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide features a detailed walkthrough, support and action abilities, equipment lists and statistics, comprehensive weapons list, bestiary data and side quests. Using this printed guide along with Squaresoft's online guide at PlayOnline will enable players to access additional resources for this epic adventure.

Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Brady Games; 1 edition (November 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0744000416
• ISBN-13: 978-0744000412
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 1.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (231 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #370,795 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

111 of 117 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars New Web link makes this half a book, November 16, 2000

By 

Vinnie Bartilucci "freelance pontificator" (Whitehall, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)

To push registrations to their new website, Playonline.com, Square and Bradygames have made this hint book link to "additional" hints on the playonline website. Now that'd fine and dandy if it wasn't for certain things:

1) When I buy a hint book, it's expressly so I DON'T have to go to websites to collect up all the hints and tidbits to complete a game. There's not a page that goes by in this guide that doesn't have a callout box suggesting you go the website and learn an even BETTER way to defeat this monster, or where the last of the umpty-umpth Magic Thingy is hidden. I bought the book to learn these things;

2) as of the moment (either from overload or over-fancy design, I can't tell yet) the website you're supposed to link to is DEAD slow. And there's no easy way to collect all the hints at once; yu have to enter these search codes listed in the book, resulting in a LONG visit to the site, racking up lots and lots of hits for Square to crow about.

Now, what's IN the book is choice as always. The walkthru is easy to follow, and doesn't ruin the twists of the plot any more than a walkthru has to. The monster and item guides are well laid out, if a bit incomplete (see above) There's a nice selection of original concept art peppered throughout the book, the kind of stuff you only see in the imported Japanese art books at a premium price. So it's still worth getting but...

I feel like when you used to look at the pictures of all the things you could build with Legos, and once you got the set, the small print said "items on box require more than one set to build". Yeah, I can play with what I got, but I was expecting a more complete experience that wouldn't require more of my time.

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where's the Beef?, November 7, 2003

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)

The strategy guide business is one of being partly an aid and partly a souvenir. It's not often that a guide manages to fail on both counts. Especially when the underlying game is one as complex and varied an RPG as Final Fantasy IX. I'm not sure what was going on at Squaresoft's planning tables when they thought this out (other than a desire to save pages) but the guide is missing many of the key elements that should make a player willing to but it.

Rather than provide a detailed walkthru, the information is split between the book and an online web site. All the real details, advice, and solutions require stopping the game, going online to find something out and then returning to the game. Since my Playstation is in one room, and the computer is in another, I wound up using the guide for high level order of play information and figuring everything else for myself. Since the game isn't particularly hard to follow through without a guide using it to amplify the playing experience is a futile exercise.

In addition, in several places the guide has an irritating habit of telling you to do one thing and then telling you several pages later to do something else. I generally don't read guides through from cover to cover while taking notes. Instead I use the guide when I run into an problem or to make sure I haven't missed a side quest. One thing a guide should never do is cause a mistake that means I have to replay 10 hours work in order to correct a tiny omission.

The supplied charts are acceptible, but uninspired in the amount of detail provided. And there are no maps worth mentioning. Even the amount and quality of imagery and graphic design are mediocre. Couple this with the fact that the website is generally accessible (all the manual does is provide special search keywords that really aren't needed) and I honestly can't encourage players to buy this guide.

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars playonline site is horrible, November 17, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)

Well this is a fine mess, you pay for the book and then it refers you to an online address that you must register for and doesn't work. I suggest you save you money and use the great sites like gamefacs.com and rpgamers.com.