Customer Reviews

Grandia (Prima's Official Strategy Guide)

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

 

 

The habit of most software stores of shrinkwrapping their books is infuriating sometimes, since it's tough to figure out from the cover whether a guide is likely to be helpful. The fact that this is the official guide might lead some to believe that it's of high quality; nothing could be further from the truth.

Ideally, RPG guides should spoil little of the plot while revealing most of the secrets and winning strategies. This book does the opposite: it reveals virtually every turn of the plot, and discusses little of the gameplay. There aren't any maps of the tough dungeons (the "go north, then go east" directions are impossible to follow), tips for defeating bosses, lists of the treasure to be found in any particular place, listings of base character statistics... generally, anything that can be found in a guidebook worth its salt. It's particularly lax about any kind of overall strategy, like which characters might make best or worst use of weapon/armor upgrades or Mana eggs at particular times.

Most astonishing: it doesn't even *attempt* to cover the bonus dungeons. Isn't this what we buy these books for, to ferret out the secrets hidden within them? One wonders just what you have to do to get someone to let you write one of these; this author clearly wasn't up to the task, even by Prima's usual less-than-exacting standards.

For a game with as many hidden secrets and difficult dungeons as Grandia, one would expect to find a strategy guide full of hidden items, maps and strategies. After all, that's the reason gamers buy them. This guide fails to deliver any of the above. The only item that the guide will help you find are Mana Eggs, so finding anything else, including hidden weapons, is up to you. Basically, this guide is a color walk-through stuffed with tiny screenshots which were not necessary. Just a distraction from the boring, and uninspired "Go west, now turn south...", walk-through I suppose. There are weapon, item and magic lists at the beginning of the guide which are okay at best, but they still fail to tell you where to find these items. As far as the secret dungeons go, thank goodness I found them myself because the book says hardly a word about them. Not a single map or strategy for these areas which are very difficult and time-consuming. After I finished the game, I realized that I could easily have beaten it without this guide because I did all the exploring myself to find hidden items/weapons. If you need a good walk-through, visit Gamefaqs, heck even a message board is better than this book. Also, the guide suffered a very bad printing mishap that is very obvious at the end of the guide. The last 5-10 pages or so have the wrong text under their screenshots and a good portion of the walk-through for the Final dungeon was cut off, including any info on the final boss. As if we would have gotten help beating it anyway!

Overall: 1 star for being in color and having a few pretty pictures.

If you wanted the "ultimate guide" for Grandia...then keep looking...this isn't! The format of the book was disappointing...I wanted something more like David Cassady done in his FF8 guide...but this guide only covers the game without covering the bonus dungeons and secrets. I also thought that this guide was going to include maps for every dungeon, like the ones found in the instruction booklet, but there aren't any. I know thar Grandia is a linear RPG...but please! they can make a good guide...take Final Fantasy Tactics guide for example... So...please...DON'T BUY THIS GUIDE!

To say the least, this is a terrible book. It offers no maps, nothing about the secret dungeons, no boss stratagies. Nothing. It is not worth anything you pay for it, except maybe 5 cents.

If you need a Walkthrough for this wonderful game, GameFAQs has much better ones, for free!

A stategy guide. What comes to mind? Maps, enemy weaknesses, hidden specials, what weapon to use where, what magic to use where, places to up your character levels quickly, etc. This book has none of that information. Buy it and agree.

This, with out a doubt, is the most horrid excuse for a strategy guide I have ever seen. It contains no maps, no item locations, and no secrets. All it has is a collection of screenshots from the game, which are cryptic at best. There is a list of skills for each character but not what they do. I would say this is a good book for someone who doesnt want to play the game at all, but rather just see a bunch of screenshots from it.

If you own the Sega Saturn version of Grandia (which is in Japanese) then this book is quite useful, as it retells some of the story as you are going along. Doubtless this will annoy people who have the english version (hence the low scores).As a guide it is quite poor - It does'nt tell you where all the Mana eggs are, and there are no details of the secret areas...but it is a small price to pay for a story synopsis. Get this book if you love the game or if you have the Saturn version - which is the best one ;0)

I have seen many reviews for this guide and most of them were negative. I pretty much disagree, I think this guide is actually pretty good! In my opinion I think the book gives some pretty useful information that should guide you through the game in a step by step process which should be pretty easy to understand. The only problems I have with this guide is that it does not cover the bonus dungeons of the game and also spoils some of the games plot. This guide may not be the right choice for everyone but personally, I don't think its that bad. I give this guide a 7 out of 10.