Customer Reviews

Final Fantasy IX Official Strategy Guide

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(50)
1 star:		(146)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

...for people who spend half there lives online trying to figure out the game they just bought instead of playing it and enjoying it. I bought this guide because I couldn't even get on the website. Imagine my dismay when every page has a link to the site so you can find information that should have been in the book in the first place. If Bradygames is going to continue with this "new" style of strategy guides in the future, then they've lost me as a customer.

I want to give this guide a one star review but it is just so perfect for correcting off balance chairs and tables that I can't possibly do that.

People get paid for this!? If Square had given me two weeks, a pen, and lots of paper, I could make, all by myself, a strategy guide MUCH better than this for those in need of one. As the world's biggest Final Fantasy IX fan (believe it), I had to check this out and see if A. there were any extras in here worth buying it for and B. there was anything I missed, so that way I could get all that I could out of this epic masterpiece. Here's the problem: There are no extras for this guide. There's lame biographies for the characters, and you basically get the same drawings you'd find in your instruction booklet. No exclusive anything. It gets worst, too. If I did miss anything in the game (I didn't, sadly), it wouldn't have mattered anyway--as it only tells you to log onto PlayOnline.com (which is pretty lame itself, not to mention a pain). So if you want help on finding all the treasures with your chocobo, forget it, you won't get any help at all. The second ending? Nope. Finding out Garnet's real name? Sorry. The black jack code? I didn't see it in this guide. Even if it didn't include extras in here, I wouldn't have given it two stars. But to NOT include all the extras is a complete rip-off. There are lots of extras in this game for every gamer to enjoy--so why not put some more space in this guide on how to get them all? Put it this way--did you buy Final Fantasy IX only to play three of the four disks? Not likely. So why buy a guide that only walks you through the main sections of the game? Also, some of the battle strategies are laughably bad. Just check out the strategy for the last boss. Helpful? Uh, no. However, there is a few reasons why I didn't give this one star, one of them is the layouts. They're not the best I've ever seen, but they are pretty good. This guide also, for the most part, manages to walk you through the main sections of the without spoilers--something that should be in all guides. My advice is this--if you wanted extras like I did, just pick up the latest issue of Gamefan (a real magazine for real gamers, I might add) with Vivi on the cover--they have a great layout section for the game and a little history about the series for those that weren't there when it happened. But if you're looking for a great walkthrough...I'm sorry, it isn't here. I haven't seen an unofficial strategy guide yet, but one will surely pop up soon enough, so definitely wait for it instead of picking this up. If you can't wait though, don't do what this advertisement of a book tells you, as I've said earlier, PlayOnline.com is a pain to deal with. Instead, check out GameFAQS.com--they usually have tons of very in-depth walkthroughs for the latest games. Even if I had this when I first went through the game, it wouldn't have helped much, if at all. I can see certain parts were gamers might have trouble with this game and the guide doesn't help--and that is the sole reason this got a two star rating. I wanted this to have since I'm trying to get my grubby little hands on anything and everything FFIX related...but after looking at this, I put it back on the shelf (perhaps I'll get it down the road, just to have, since I love FFIX so much). Unless you desperately (very desperately) need a guide to this game, then you might want this. But check it out before you buy it--it isn't very helpful. Disappointing, kupo.

This is the absolute worst strategy guide I have ever seen. The strategy guide for FF VII was great, the one for FF VIII was not as good, but still extremely helpful. This is without a shadow of a doubt a TOTAL RIPOFF. I am only partially through the first disc, and so far, this book has given me no information I could not figure out myself. It doesn't even give a full list of the character abilities, just a handful of the abilities for each character and a code to get the "full list" from the website. In the event that you do go to the website (which means you can't just grab the book and check it quickly while you're playing the game) and put in this keyword, the information is presented in a strip that is maybe one and a half inches high and the print is extremely small. I honestly think if you used this site much you would go blind. Save your money for something better, like paying someone to hit you in the head with a hammer.

This is the biggest waste of money possible. Every two sentences, it tells you to go to PlayOnline if you need more help and doesn't give any helpful information in the actual book. Save your money, there are a lot of good free walkthroughs on the web already and even the one on PlayOnline is free, or wait for an unofficial strategy guide, it will be worth more than this.

If you are looking to pass the game this book is probably for you. But if you have played RPG games before, like to explore, and want to get the guide for the extras that is impossible to find without reading it from somewhere then this aren't it. The strategy goes on telling you what to do but when it comes to getting secret it has a side note telling you to go look online at the squaresoft page....

Although the book has all the bestiary and items, it gives weak walkthroughs. What I mean is, it lightly goes over some events and plugs its website, playonline.com. What I mean is, it will briefly go over an event, then say: "For more information on ------ go to playonline." This happens about four or five times every two pages, so if you're stuck, you have to go online & print out these hints. The worst part about this is that that site is always down from all the people trying to get the rest of the info. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but if you have to print out game hints, what's the use of buying the guide? However, I gave it 3 stars because of the other information that goes along with the game (excluding the walkthrough.)