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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Decent character reference and maps. Bad strategy.,
By
This review is from: Guild Wars (Prima Official Game Guide) (Paperback)
Prima's Guild Wars guide is yet another example of why Prima should simply not be publishing for online games as the rapid change of content in them makes it extremely difficult to create something that's not dated upon publication. In sum, this guide helps somewhat with understanding characters and has decent maps, but as a strategy guide it's useless. Given much of Guild Wars is an instanced, static environment it is a better guide than most of their MMORPG work, but I do take 2 stars off as the errors are annoying and any help with strategy lacking throughout.
First, the positives. This is actually not a bad character reference for both PvE and PvP especially if you're unfamiliar with classes besides your own. That is, while some of the information on skills has been sadly inaccurate since even before launch (so that if you're actually going to use a skill because you're playing a class you're better off finding out what it does from your favorite fansite forum), it does serve as a good primer for what your teammates in PvE and opponents in PvP can in fact do for and to you if you haven't spent the time playing the class yourself. Second, the maps are actually quite good. While you can certainly download more basic ones through the web, these are a step ahead. PvE maps do have mob and quest locations distinctly labeled with numbers in their actual location, which will save you time your first or second run through. Content updates are already starting to shred locations a bit, but its otherwise ok. Finally, several references aren't bad. The drop guide is actually quite good, as is, surprisingly, the mob guide. Where this gets two stars knocked off is on incompleteness of the reference materials and strategy section. Probably the most glaring issue is that the quest guide has already become badly dated; you will do better simply looking on any fansite, although it will save you buying several skills available through quests early on. But my real beef with guide is that as a strategy piece its awful. (Perhaps that's why Prima renamed the entire series to "Game Guides" rather than "Strategy Guides".) Such useless tips as "Necromancer is among the strongest anti-Warrior" class litter the book, and it makes almost no dent in exploring the rock-paper-scissors way the classes are set up. Finally, you don't get in-depth explanation of spell mechanics, something most other Prima guides actually do a good job of. Disappointing. Still, its better than the average Prima guide if only because it serves as a good quick reference to your opponents skills. Those who have reached level 20 in PvE and played PvP for a while likely already know more than this guide, but for newer players probably worth picking it up.
28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't be afraid to tell the truth... we love the game, but the book has got to go!,
This review is from: Guild Wars (Prima Official Game Guide) (Paperback)
Guild Wars is massive multiplayer game which is regular updated and changed by the game designers. It's a wonderful game that has many aspects of strategy gaming, role playing, and player versus player combat. While creating a guide for such an in-depth game seems to a logical course of action, Prima Games fails miserably in delivering gamers a reliable, interesting resource.
The guide is beautifully constructed with a map (in the print version only) and colorful artwork. The problem has to do with the guide's content - it isn't to be taken lightly when it's mentioned that the game is updated frequently: almost all of the material found within the guide is out dated. This is noticeable in that many of the spells that are mentioned in the guide. The spells mentioned have very different stats in the game than they do in the book. Make no mistake... you cannot use this book as a "starting point" for figuring out new strategies to implement in the game. Being "out dated" for a book detailing strategies for a massive multiplayer game means it is useless and in many cases amusing. One terribly frustrating thing with being out dated is the large sections pointing at places in the game where skills can be bought or captured. All of the locations mentioned in the book are wrong (not just some of them, all of them). With all due respect to the book's author and Prima Games, even more frustrating is that the strategies in the book (had they been based on accurate skills and spells) are horrible as are the characters builds that are mentioned. One can easily find better builds past and present by searching the net. Recently an online version of the game guide has become available... a digital version which promises to be as up to date in the future as it can be. Be warned that this is the exact same version of the book simply digitized and in PDF format (the online version is also missing the game world's map... the very thing I believe warrants the 1 star noted on this review). Furthermore Prima Games states on their website that it will charge customers for future updates to the book but informs them via email that the first update will be free of charge (finally some good news). Prima Games never should have agreed to make a guide for this game in the first place. Strongly disliking the book for reasons which are hopefully obvious (at least to those who have played the game for more than a few minutes), I think that this book is a waste of money and anyone who buys it can only be disappointed. I realize that many people might be purchasing this book for a friend as a gift in addition with a copy of guild wars and might not care whether or not the information is up to date, however, once more I urge the intelligent shopper to simply search the internet for better material. With Prima Games releasing poor guides as of late (as seen with their newly released Official Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Guide which received horrible reviews), I certainly hope the game publishing giant revises its ranks and provides the gaming industry with quality products in the future.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A PVE review: Great for maps, but inadequate elsewhere,
By John C "a student of Buddhism" (Cary, NC USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Guild Wars (Prima Official Game Guide) (Paperback)
This review is only for the PVE (player vs. environment) portions. I have not read the PVP (player vs. player) portions.
The maps are awesome because they clearly show the walkable routes, as opposed to the freely available maps online that are simply screenshots of fully explored maps (from which it's impossible to discern routes). So you can easily glance at the maps in this book and know where the dead ends are and how best to get from A to B. Not only that, but many of the mission objectives and bonuses are correctly labeled on the maps. There are a few typos, but nothing major. The listings of skills derived from quests are woefully inadequate. First of all, the table formatting is messed up, and the majority of skills are listed in the wrong columns. But even if you have the patience to look up the professions of all the skills yourself, the listing is still incomplete. It only covers about the first 1/2 of the game, and the listing inexplicably stops there. And finally, the guide of course cannot accomodate dynamic game updates, and several new skill-granting quests have already been added since this guide was published. I found the descriptions of the six character professions to be at best naive, and at worst downright misleading. They encourage some skill combinations that simply don't make sense and miss some combinations that I have found to be the most fun and useful in the game. For example, they suggest that a warrior/necromancer use the blood magic line. But that line is more advantageous for a spell-casting profession that need not be in the heat of melee battle. The curses line is much more useful for a warrior, due to skills like Mark of Pain. Please do yourself a favor and avoid reading the silly profession discussions. Try things out in the game yourself and figure out a playstyle that you enjoy most. It's not rocket science, and it's the kind of thing best learned by experience. The maps alone make this book well worth the price. Just use the other content with a grain of salt.
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