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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Extremely Disappointing, May 12, 2006
This review is from: City of Heroes Binder (Prima Official Game Guide) (Ring-bound)
I owned the original Prima Guide for City of Heroes. Given the generally bad reputation it had, I hoped that the errors made in it would be corrected. Jack Emmert posted several times about his working on these guides, so I had hoped his efforts would result in more relevant and complete information being included. I was sorely disappointed.
First, the guides are similar in format, and each contain the following sections: Introduction, Basics, Archetypes, Group Dynamics, Zones Villains, PvP, and Bases. The Hero guide also has some appendices, one of which is a complete badge listing.
The Introduction and Basics could be supplanted by a quick glance at the "introduction" guides found in the Players Guide section of the forums. The Archtype listing includes the ATs, their powers, and some statistics not included in the manual, but a great deal of information is still missing. Power numbers such as damage dealt by a power, or a percentage of resistance or defense provided are just missing, as are critical facts like range. Other numbers, like endurance cost, are included. As a whole, woefully incomplete and not much of an improvement over the manual.
Likewise, the Zone listings are thorough but inferior. The Vidiotmaps site provides better maps, which can also be installed in a package directly into the game to replace the default maps.
The PvP guides generally only cover the "objectives" of the PvP zones, and don't offer any insightful or useful advice on actually competing in PvP. Even some of the critical basics, like a discussion of perception vs stealth, is completely absent. The base building section is a useful primer, but totally lacks numbers, lists, or the effect of various defenses you can buy, which makes it useless for anyone other than a complete novice.
All in all, the information in the guide falls into two categories: That which you can get from reading the manual; and incomplete or useless information that is inferior to what you can get from the Player Guides section of the forums, or from the statistics included with one of the popular "Hero Planner" pieces of software.
Absolutely not worth buying, regardless of your experience level or enthusiasm for the game.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Generally agree with other reviewers, June 2, 2006
This review is from: City of Heroes Binder (Prima Official Game Guide) (Ring-bound)
I did not initially purchase this guide, based largely upon the reviews I read on this site and others.
That said, I thought that the Prima "eGuide", at only $19.95, might be worth the money, since I have the capacity to print large-volume print jobs at no cost through various means. So, I went ahead and paid for the eGuide... what a mistake.
The errors that occur in the printed version are bad enough, including innumerable typos, grammatical errors, factual errors (there are no Cone enhancements any more, and haven't been for some time, yet they're listed in the Enhancements section of this guide), and graphical layout problems consistent with the skill of a publishing intern's first task.
The eGuide is worse. The program written for using this (an inhouse application designed, presumably, by Prima) has an unbelievable memory leak, causing it to utilize every last bit of your computer's memory, thereby making the application (and everything else) run abysmally slow. I was able to print pages (finally), but only ten at a time (anything more and the eGuide crashed). Even the printed pages were worthless, as there were so many graphical inconsistencies (background boxes overlaying all the text around them, graphics not displayed at all, etc) that it made actually reading the guide virtually impossible.
I demanded a refund, and received the offer to ship me the complete print guide at no additional charge. I jumped at the chance, given the quality of the eGuide.
Let me tell you, everything these reviewers have said is accurate. 1 page on Group tactics; 3 on Supergroup base design, raids, and tactics - but no listing of salvage items or recipes, no sample layouts, or descriptions of best layout plans; again, more graphical / layout problems then you could shake a stick at; typos and grammatical errors and... and... well, you get the idea.
There are a few good ideas, such as the customizable section layout (page #'s within each section would've been a better idea) but they're just not followed through. This binder is a halfway decent early start... but not worth the hefty price tag.
And the binder it comes with? I could have made a better binder out of the leftover bits from Christmas gifts - the cardboard would have been sturdier, that's for sure. It has the quality of a Chinese knock-off of a Taiwanese knockoff - it's THAT bad.
In short, don't pay $40 for this. Go online, and find the information you need. There are plenty of sites. Or see if you can find a copy for $5 at Half-Price Books... that's the most I'd pay for it.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Save your money and don't bother...see why..., August 8, 2006
This review is from: City of Heroes Binder (Prima Official Game Guide) (Ring-bound)
"When major updates or new Issues are released, Prima will release new, punched Update Packs for your binder." Or so says the product description above...not going to happen.
Prima has made it clear that they will NOT be printing the updates for purchase - they will only be available for download (at no cost) from their site. Which is all fine and dandy, but to print that "free" download on your own and at your own expense in full color would be so cost prohibitive that it makes the whole binder system obsolete. (In fact, one person on the City of Heroes forums burned the file to CD and took it to their local major copy shop, who promptly quoted them a price over $200.00 to print in color.)
So, it was a great dream while it lasted...and the cries of woe from disgruntled customers have fallen on Prima's deaf ears...
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