Customer Reviews

The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess (GameCube Version) (Prima Authorized Game Guide)

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This review is particularly long. If you want, you can look down at the bottom where I've listed the pros and cons.

When you pick up a guide and its 432 pages the first thing that instantly comes to mind is that this is a huge guide therefore it must have all the information. The thing that usually escapes our mind is where all the information is. This is a really good guide, and there's a ton of information there, but like many incredibly thick guides, the information is all over the place. However, with this guide, the information isn't all over the place in a highly disorganized fashion.

The guide begins with several of the game basics. If there's anything about the gameplay you don't understand this guide can help. After that we get into all the weapons and equipment you'll be using, the characters you'll meet and the enemies you'll encounter. For the enemies they've got what's called a "threat meter" to tell you just how hard the enemy is, and they've also got tactics on taking them down. Very useful stuff.

Afterwards we get into the walkthrough, and this is where the guide hits a high point as well as a low point. The walkthrough is huge. Over 300 pages of this guide are from the walkthrough alone. Is it good? You better believe its good. There's a ton of detail here. Each chapter begins with an overview of the area you're in and displays a map that looks like it was taken straight from the game. It also list the items to obtain, as well as showing you what your character should have when you get to a certain point. Along the bottom the guide details the tasks you should be doing, similar to some of BradyGames RPG guide books, only this one seems to be done a little better.

How the task objectives work in this guide is simple. At the beginning of each section if you look at the bottom of the page you'll see a set of eight tasks. Usually no more and no less. For task one it might say, "Enter Ordan Villiage." Now in the main text of the walkthrough itself you'll want to find the section that says, "Enter Ordan Village." That explains the task in better detail. It's easy to use. The walkthrough also has character bios for new characters as you meet them.

There's more to the walkthrough. Each section of the walkthrough has what's called "missing links" which detail optional things you can do in an area.

The guide also calls out new enemies as you encounter them and there's a threat meter displayed for you as well. Also, each time you come across an item, be it for the first time or tenth, they have a description of it. Every time you get your first small key in a dungeon, the guide gives you the same explanation the game does. In addition there are call outs to new weapons, abilities, etc. It's all here.

The maps look as though they're pulled straight from the game, and are only displayed at the beginning of each chapter. This is one of the guides few low points. When reading in sections it might tell you to go back to chamber five or something like that. Well, if you're a little lost, you'll have to flip all the way back to the map at the beginning of each section in order to figure out just what they're talking about when it comes to Chamber 5. This wouldn't be so bad if some of the sections for each dungeon weren't 40-50 pages. However, the good news is, the maps do indeed have a legend each and every time you come across it. The legend tells you all the rooms, all the items in the dungeon and where you'll encounter the characters.

Boss strategies are pretty helpful. They tell you how to down your foes, but they also give you some handy tips for dodging some of their attacks.

The walkthrough also points out the location of heart pieces as you go through the game. Up in the corner of each page is a heart meter that shows you how many hearts you're suppoed to have by the time you get to a certain point in the game. So you'll know if you missed any pieces of heart. By the time you get to the Goron Mines, for example you should have five hearts. If you don't, you know you obviously missed something.

The location of the golden bugs is also revealed, as well as the Poe Souls. They each have their own specific call outs.

Is there more to the walkthrough? Well, there are indeed, spoilers. If spoilers bother you, this guide has a few. Also, throughout the walkthrough there are author notes that don't really serve any purpose other than to describe the turmoil the authors went through on some of the puzzles. Some are funny, but many of them are a complete and utter waste of time. The walkthrough is definitely one you need to use as you play through the game. If you put it down for a while and go about the tasks on your own and then suddenly need it, it's a hassle to find just where you are. Especially if you do some of the tasks out of the order described. Again, these sections are LONG, so you'll be doing a bit more reading than playing. This is the huge downside to the guide. There's so much of it that it's sometimes overwhelming. If you miss something (say a heart piece or golden bug) then you'll spend of a lot of time flipping and reading through the walkthrough to find it.

The walkthrough may be well done, but it's extremely exhaustive, slow going and long. A lot of the information doesn't have to be there. It probably would've been better had they organized it the way Nintendo Power organized their guide. The Nintendo Power guide is much more user friendly... but Nintendo Power is designed for the Wii version, not the Gamecube. All the information is there, but like many guides that are incredibly thick, it's all over the place. The difference here is that Prima did a much better job organizing it. It doesn't separate from the fact that there's a lot of page flipping, however. I'm not one to be bothered by page flipping, but in this guide it actually did become annoying.

The legendary checklist at the back didn't detail the location of Poe Souls or Golden Bugs, which could've helped in many cases. The heart checlist is pretty good, though, telling you where to find them. The checklist also details on finding equipment and items. So it's not so bad.

This is a very well done guide for Twilight Princess, it's just very big with a lot of infomration to swallow, and a lot of page flipping. It's a good guide, and helpful to anyone, but there's so much to swallow, and you'll spend of lot of time doing it.

Pros

+Incredibly detailed walkthrough! Tons of information to be found within these pages. Heart pieces, golden bugs, poe souls, items, puzzles solutions... it's all here!
+Helpful boss strategies
+Useful maps
+Great strategies for taking down enemies

Cons

-While all the infomration is in the walkthrough its all over the place. Organized, but it still calls for a lot of page flipping to find everything. You'll more than likely be spending far more time reading the walkthrough than playing the game. There are also some spoilers found within the guide

I really don't get the previous reviewer who says the Nintendo guide has more detail. I'm glad I only played for a couple of days before getting this guide because I had to backtrack to do a bunch of stuff the Nintendo guide didn't even mention. I kept flipping back and forth and rereading sections thinking I had missed things, but they just aren't there. A lot of things that are there are very vague. This Prima guide is comprehensive, and now I feel like I'm playing the whole game rather than wondering what I'm missing.

In theory, this guide is fantastic. It contains the full detail and intricacy you'd expect for such an immersive and immense game... but unfortunately detail is not everything.

Apparently the editors that approved this product saw no need to waste paper on the invaluable appendeces that are essentially necessary in any platformer that requires collection of items, as they are nonexistant. Poe soul, golden bug, and heart piece locations are scattered chronologically throughout the guide, and while there is no problem with making sure the player doesn't miss something valuable, the direct walkthrough itself is the ONLY place to obtain the information.

Many people purchase guides for this sort of game not for the direct walkthrough, but for help and information on enemies, allies, locations of collectibles, etc, and the bare-bones layout is incredibly tedious and frustrating.

I recommend against purchasing this guide unless you are an avid collector.

if you were able to get your hands on the gamecube version then get this guide!!! it is off the chains!!!! its a really nice guide and it has good info and plenty of it. well organized, it even has a checklist of all the items this is a great guide, a billion times better then the nintendo one, i should know brcuz I wasted 15 bucks on the nintendo one. neways' get this guide and you willbe happy. its worth much more than its price, one click order it now and be happy !god bless!!!!

I will agree that this guide is very comprehensive. What is frustrating to me is the sequence of events. For example "...free the fourth monkey, and retrace your steps out of the room." Then the next step says "Before you leave the chamber..."

This happens a lot.

This guide has a lot going for it, just beware of what you are getting.

It a good guide if you want a straight walk-through. If your the type of person who wants a guide mostly for collecting poe souls, insects, and pieces of heart then this can be a hassle. It tells you how to collect the items as you work your way through the game, where I find it better to have separate sections for this information. It is a good guide with a lot of information I just think it could have had a much better layout. This game is HUGE so I can see how it would be difficult to make a perfect guide.

This is the best guide I have EVER seen Prima do!! I usually do not like their guides but they have outdone themselves this time.It also has the Nintendo Seal on the front cover.There are 432 pages.At the top of each the hearts you should have are filled in in red for a quick review.Each area has a map at the beginning of that chapter. The walkthrough is so complete that you should NOT miss anything.There are also strategies for enemies in each section and the items to be found therein.Important things to be had are emphasized in square blocks on each page.This is a VERY comprehensive guide with so many positive things that I do not have the room to mention each one.I am not disappointed and you will not be either :) Definitely A GREAT help for the Gamecube version!!

This guide does spent a lot of time on worthless detail, like counting how many Rupees of what color you get from which pots, bomb rocks, or dig spots. Being a Zelda completist, I respect the thoroughness. However, this guide conversely skips by with minimal info on the more challenging aspects of the game like Rollgoal or the river archery mini-game. But they'll waste time telling you that a character who's obviously a teenager is between ten and 20 years old. 9_9

The authors frequently have notes about how taxing their experience was with the game. On page 54 they note: "...we spent literally a half-hour rampaging through this cell trying everything to escape, except (of course) the spin or normal attack to shatter the crates." REALLY?! There's one button that operates 80% of the game, and you didn't try it for "literally" a half-hour?! What kind of idiots are you? One of the authors, Hodgson, seems to have never played a Zelda game before in his life. His other guides are for games like Metal Gear Solid and Half-Life 2. The other author, Stratton, wrote a Wind Waker guide, but I'm not impressed.

They frequently have the wrong screengrab listed with the walkthrough paragraphs, usually it's a duplication with the next section. The GameCube version is a full-screen 4:3 aspect ratio while the Wii version is 16:9. The screengrabs in this guide are cropped to make them appear 16:9, and they add a decorative border around the graphic, often cutting off the HUD map and making it hard to follow the guide when it says, "Go to this spot."

HERE'S THE BIGGIE: The guide is frequently wrong. I just spent a half-hour (literally) trying to find some vines on the Bridge of Eldin that lead to a chest with 100 rupees (page 273). Come to find out they meant the bridge over Lake Hylia. Kind of a big damn difference there, guys. Earlier in the book they mentioned I should have three bottles by now, and I wasted a lot of time confirming that they never mentioned how to get the third bottle. You're better off getting your info from Zelda gamers on any of the internet sites where people have written better walkthroughs.

If you are the kind of gamer who likes to do things on their own and simply look at a guide for occasional hints, be wary of buying this guide. The writers take paragraphs to describe a course of action that can be summed up in two sentences, which gets very frustrating and honestly, annoying. The biggest downside to this guide is that it doesn't have charts on where to locate certain items such as heart pieces, golden bugs, and poes. So, if you miss something, good luck trying to find it again somewhere in the 432ish pages of fury.

Despite my criticism of this guide, I am actually glad I bought it. The battle tactics are effective and the maps are great. It really isnt a bad guide all in all, it is just too long.

I bought this book only because it was for the game cube version of the game as I do not have a WII system. I wish I would have researched it further because it is not the book I wanted. I was hoping for the players guide written by the people who made the game. Instead I got a book written by a couple of dudes who just played the game themselves and wrote a book about it....the bad part about the book is that it tells you to go through a door and then the next paragragh says,"but before you do....do this other stuff....it happens a lot in the book...so sometimes you end up somewhere you dont want to be yet but the writers have neglected to let people know in time NOT to go into certain areas. The reason the book received a 3 from me is that they are very detailed in their descriptions of areas to explore and where to find things. The enclosed map is cool and shows where to find all the pieces of hearts, rupees, etc. I would only recommend this book if someone was unable to find the players guide made by Nintendo itself.