Customer Reviews

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Version (Prima Authorized Game Guide)

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

Despite its slick layout and pretty pictures, this book is almost useless when it comes to helping you solve the game.

The writers were extremely lazy when putting this together. They must have figured, "Since we will have screen captures of the action, we don't need to bother being specific about instructions." Unfortunately, the screen captures are the size of a postage stamp, so you don't get much useful information from them. And the instructions are awful. For instance, it is extremely typical for the book to say something like, "Find [important object or person] in this area," but without actually telling you where it is. When you're dealing with enormous tracts of land, it's just obvious that you should include more specific instructions like, "Find [important object or person] in the northwest corner of this vast wasteland."

In fact, there is almost no use of COMPASS DIRECTIONS in this entire book. Umm, hello? Compass directions are the most easily understandable directions to follow, especially considering that the game almost always provides you with an on-screen map. And the maps in this book are so non-specific that you're better off consulting the game's on-screen maps. And if you're consulting the game instead of the book, what do you need the book for? That's right, nothing.

Instead of useful information, the book gives you a plethora of completely useless filler, like artists' renderings of objects, and illustrated character biographies. You would think that a book that gave you a lot of useless information would also have a lot of useful information in turn, but sadly, that is not the case for this book. And learning that a minor character is "polite" does not help me solve the game.

This book is useless. You're much better off using the all-text free walkthroughs available on the internet. Ironically, I got this book from a friend who bought it to solve Zelda. When I asked him why the book was in such pristine condition, he told me, "Well, I bought it, and then realized that the walkthroughs on the internet were much better."

I'm disappointed that this massive guide is printed on yellow/green paper making it difficult to read. None of the pictures or maps are very clear. In, fact, some of the legends are almost too small and unclear to see. I'm not a kid but I'm not that ancient, either. What happened to clear printing on white glossy paper--at least white paper? I wish I'd known all this before I bought this book. It's not useless, but I'm looking for a new guide.

This guide made it a lot easier to get through the game. The hints helped a lot, they were very specific. It gives ideas how to defeat the boss, and where to find the pieces to the heart containers.

I purchased this guide for my son....The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess (Wii Version) (Prima Authorized Game Guide)
He was very happy with the guide...he said it was even better than he expected.

This was purchased in error, but kept it anyway. I had already played the game about 10 times by the time I got the book. I had printed cheat's off the internet and had the game down pat. The book is harder to understand so I didn't even use it.

I have been a fan of this video game and having this guide helps me get all the info as possible it could be, good job prima.

This is an excellent guide. Without it I would have gotten lost several times, and missed half of the chests and other items. It is easy to follow and was worth the money. Great way to understand story line too.

I am very happy with the book I purchased. My dog chewed the original one and I had to replace it.

Let me start out by saying that this guide is beautifully done. The order of the tasks and how they are integrated into the plot, as well as dividing the book into chapters (since the game is like one extremely long story) were both done very well. The book accurately describes where all chests, poes, bugs, heart pieces, items, and anything else you make think of are located. It even has a checklist in the back for all of these things (not that I'd ever write in this book). It outlines all of the dungeons and what you'll need to complete them, as well as the best ways of dealing with those bosses, the mini-bosses, and just regular enemies. There really isn't much to complain about here. That being said, there are a few small things that are a bit troublesome. First, one of the empty bottle locations is NOT listed in the book. The book tells you to fill up your lantern oil from Coro, but it does not tell you that you can buy a bottle from him. I found that out online. Another issue that I had with this book is the heart piece at the Ordon Ranch. The book does NOT tell you that you must herd all 20 goats in under 3 minutes. On my first run, I played casually and it took me about 3 minutes and 12 seconds. I did not recieve the piece of heart as the book described, so I went online and found out that there was indeed a time limit that the book neglected to mention. These were basically my only two major problems with the guide. There are a couple of small things, of which I don't even remember because they were just little details. Overall this guide is wonderful. I would definitely recommend it to anybody who wants to play Twilight Princess for the first time (as I just did). The only other thing to be aware of is that the guide is 430 pages long, but don't get discouraged, this book has A LOT of filler. I didn't really mind, but some of the information is a bit unnecessary (character backgrounds, author's notes, etc.). Just be aware of the fact that while this game is extremely long (it took me almost 50 hours to complete it 100%), it goes fast because of how much in the book is skimmable or skippable. Overall, this is a great book, and it definitely does this wonderful game justice.