Customer Reviews

Final Fantasy XIII: The Complete Official Guide

5 star:		(79)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the first and apparently complete guide on Final Fantasy XIII. For your money, you get over 270 glossy, 8.5x11", full color, beautifully illustrated pages that, as far as I can tell cover EVERYTHING that you'd ever want to know about the game except for most of spoilers - the assumption is that you do NOT want to see spoilers.

The book is divided into six main section and an Index:

- QUICKSTART - things you need to know as you start the game and for the first few hours of play.

- WALKTHROUGH - the bulk of the book (over 120 pages). It has all the maps, all the scripted encounters - and much of FFXIII is tightly scripted. It's a good thing to have whenever you get stuck and discouraged. The authors promise that spoilers were kept to a minimum.

- STRATEGY AND ANALYSIS - here you get hints on tactics and strategy, hidden games mechanics are covered, everything there is to know about the Crystarium and Paradigm features. It's page after page after page of illustrated data that help you get insights on how to develop your character and how your team is likely to perform under various paradigms. I can't say that I understand all the graphs and charts at this time but I expect to visit the chapter more and more as I advance deeper into the story.

- INVENTORY - every item you equip affects the outcome of the battle and this chapter has it all, complete with tips and with the mind-boggling charts where dozens if not hundreds of items are analyzed and evaluated. In addition, each character's weapons are analyzed separately.

- BESTIARY - If you didn't know, it turns out that there are 240 monsters you are likely to meet and here you can see exactly what they look like and what their strengths and vulnerabilities are.

- EXTRAS - it's a checklist of side and optional quests. There are also a few pages on trophies but, most interestingly you get the actual story of the 13 FFXIII days, all followed by a few more pages dedicated to 'analysis and speculation'. And, if you are someone who bothers to actually read 'the signs', you get a Cocoon-to-English alphabet decoder.

I am VERY pleased with this book. It's unlikely that I will ever read everything but I will definitely read the first and last chapters, refer to the Walkthrough section when in trouble, read 'strategy and analysis' maybe minus most of the stats, check the monster listings and and the inventory section when curious about enemies or items.

I've seen a lot of different guides for games and this company Piggyback is the best I've seen so far. Nothing is missing from this guide. It's got everything you need, like an encyclopedia for FFXIII. The words are intelligent and descriptive and they think of anything you may need to know at any given point in the game. They even have spoiler warnings and an index, as well as an intermission mid-story to get you prepped for the rest of the game. It has an excellent strategy and analysis section that teaches you everything about the way the game functions, as well as tables for every weapon, accessory, component, dismantles, EVERYTHING.

A+ best I've seen in about 18 years of hardcore gaming.

The Piggyback Complete Official Guide for Final Fantasy XIII covers all the bases the Brady guides for Final Fantasy XII did and goes one step further. If you're familiar with these guides, you'll be happy to know that Piggyback seems to have looked at all the complaints of the Brady guide and addressed them well. Spoilers are avoided as much as possible. Instructions are clear to follow, with the occasional sidebar to underscore the point. I haven't beaten Final Fantasy XIII yet, but so far the advice appears to be very useful. Better still, a concept isn't dumped on you all at once, interrupting the flow of reading: instead, you're given the information you need to know at the point in which you need to know it, with a promise that more will be given to you at the appropriate time. There are a lot of passages in the walkthrough like, "You don't need to worry about the rest of that for now - we'll come back to it later when the time comes that you need it", or "We'll go into detail about this later on--in the meantime if you still need more, see page x."

That said, this guide still carries forward all the things that were good about the Brady guide: there is beautifully-printed artwork, thorough documentation, well-organized sections with easy-to-find page tabs, and an emphasis on teaching you without talking down to you. The only thing I find lacking is that some features might be more useful as tear-out references (or fold-out maps, as the skill table in FFXII was managed in the Brady guide) If you want a companion to your gaming experience, I recommend the Piggyback guide: they got it right.

Length:: 2:29 Mins

When it comes to Limited Edition Collector's Guides, it's very helpful to actually see with your eyes what you're getting before shelling out your hard-earned money. Check out this video review to see this beautiful guide with your own eyes.

This is a guide for Final Fantasy XIII

I was one of those lucky ones who got this complete guide for only 20 bucks! wow! The book has everything you need to know. Monster status, character weapon developments, magic skills, everything! it gives you a lot of detailed information about the story at the back of the book with colour pictures to support it! The title 'Final Fantasy XIII' and the logo at the front shines and is very cool, the back of the book says "The complete official guide" in Coccon alphabet! The papers are HQ as described and I know this is limited so if anyone wants this be quick because only 210,000 has been made! the complete guide is numbered from a number to 210,000. I use this book occassionally when I want to find out more about weapons, an item, a magic skill etc. Very helpful and don't regret buying!

(This is a review for the hardcover collector's edition, which is sold out on amazon.com right now. The differences between the hardcover and paperback version are fairly minimal, though.)

I don't normally buy strategy guides for video or computer games, and this is the first guide I've purchased in at least a decade. Nowadays, comprehensive game information and walkthroughs can usually be found on the Internet for free, so it's not really the information inside the guide that I was interested in buying. Rather, it was the appeal of a professionally written, well-designed book which was both pleasant to look at and easy to read. That it turned out to have lots of good information in it was a welcome side-effect!

The guide is quite comprehensive, with a section devoted to a walkthrough of the story portion of the game. It has the mandatory maps and treasure charts, but also provides useful strategic information on how to overcome powerful bosses and monsters. Unlike some previous Final Fantasy games, FF13 has its fair share of difficult (or at least nontrivial) battles, so for certain tricky encounters the walkthrough might come in handy. Nevertheless, it isn't overwhelmingly difficult to finish the game without using a guide. The optional mark sidequests can be much more difficult than any encounters in the main story, and the guide provides detailed suggestions on strategy for defeating these monsters.

Where this book really shines is in its detailed explanation of some of the mechanics of the game which are not so immediately obvious. For example, it provides precise numerical information on how the weapon and accessory upgrading system works, which is given a rather vague explanation in the game. You'll also learn how battle ratings are calculated and how they impact the items you receive, and there are complete charts of all the weapons and accessories in the game. There is also considerable analysis of this information, which explains effective general strategies that will optimize the battle performance of your party. There's a fairly in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the six main characters of FF13, and a lot of discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of each paradigm.

The book is also pleasant to look at and read. The writing is high quality - certainly higher quality than free guides written by non-professionals on the Internet - and the included images from the game are well-chosen. As a matter of fact, half of the appeal of this guide to me was as a sort of art book. There are a few images which are of unusually low-resolution, but these are definitely in the minority. The hardcover version has an "extras" section which I believe is not in the paperback version; it has some interesting trivia (like an actual translation of the Pulse and Cocoon writing systems) and a nice synopsis of the story of the game.

One last note - if you are playing the game through for the first time, you might want to be careful to not read ahead of where you are in the game. While the authors did their best to minimize spoilers both in the walkthrough section of the guide as well as in the more statistics oriented sections, there's only so much they can do. If you're only interested in the information in this guide, you can probably get most of that for free on the Internet, but the design and writing in this guide certainly makes it worth the price.

It seems Piggyback knows how to create a guide (review of the hardcover), a sleek cover (not overly cluttered like most FF American graphics), high quality paper, in-depth coverage of everything, high quality images. Everything about this screams perfection. The hardcover was 100% worth it. We need more guides like this one.

The game itself is another issue (although I am very much enjoying it).

The guide is beautifully designed, with pictures and graphics that make reading it more enjoyable. For the most part the information is well presented with charts, pictures, and hints that can be used to varying degrees. One of the best parts of this guide is that it can be used without spoiling the game. In fact, it has a chart showing how each section of the guide addresses spoilers (so if that is an issue you can avoid those sections). You can read through some helpful parts of the guide without giving away too much of the story.

The main thing I am using the guide for is clarity of some of the more complicated aspects of the game. While the game itself contains tutorial that are a good thing to pay attention to, there are some details that are not quite clear.

The one fault I have with the guide is that the maps in the walkthrough are not linked, and so it is not 100% clear which map leads to which map. The game at the beginning, however, is pretty linear, so that is not really an issue. Using the maps to find the treasures is what I am doing. This doesn't completely spoil things because, again, the game is linear, and the map alone doesn't give away a lot of information.

So, overall the game guide is good, well laid out. I would have liked a bit more chronology to some of the information, but that is not a major issue at all. A separate map would be nice as well (although I guess considering the linear nature of the game, that would be superfluous - but then again, maybe later the game changes, I didn't look in the guide to find out and the guide didn't ruin that information for me).

I haven't gotten much use out of it yet (as I'd like to beat the game before I refer to the guide), however, there have been a few times I felt necessary to reference it and it definitely does avoid unnecessary spoilers. All the information you'd want is where you'd expect it to be and organized in a logical fashion. So I beleive the content to be quite well put together, although, as I said, I haven't used it much yet. But the thing I'd like to comment on the most about this guide is the quality of it. This thing is nicer than my college textbooks. It feels sturdy and looks great! There's lots of attention to details and a few nice touches. Its fun to explore the book itself.

In a nutshell this is one of the classiest and well-thought out strategy guides I have seen. I was disappointed there wasn't a collector's edition of the game itself but after seeing this guide in person, I am no longer disappointed.