11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Generally Useful, With Problems, November 30, 2006
This review is from: Official Nintendo Power FINAL FANTASY V ADVANCE Player's Guide (Paperback)
This guide contains a wealth of information for the game, as well as a handful of larger versions of the original Amano artwork. All of the jobs have their abilities laid out in easy-to-use charts, there are full and useful maps in the back, and it's certainly much kinder on the eyes than a FAQ. These few things, however, are its only strong points.
It unfortunately falls into the trend of strategy guides that only present bare minimum information for a topic. For example, one of the last pages has a chart listing all of the Blue Magic spells available, but only lists a single creature for each spell. This despite the fact that sometimes three or four enemies have the capability to cast a spell, and the one presented in the chart is not always the first that will allow a character access to the spell. There are charts for every spell in the game, though the chart lacks the level of each spell, making planning job ability swaps a bit difficult.
The layout isn't always especially great, with information that would seem rather important(such as the jobs unlocked at a certain point) being hidden in a tiny list or piece of a larger paragraph in most cases. Jobs and spells are listed with page numbers, though in my experience most of the pages referred to have nothing at all to do with the sourced material. Also, for some reason the screenshots for most pages must have been placed with the wrong resolution, as most are muddled and distorted.
As a personal preference, which I can't exactly hold against the book, I would have preferred to have a bit of variety in the boss/enemy tactics. About halfway through all of the boss tactics basically degenerate to "Use your strongest summon and the Samurai's Zeninage ability." Thanks? Even the hidden bosses list that same tactic. It would have been nice to have more than two short sentences of advice for a battle that the guide describes as the hardest enemy in the game, or to have tactics for more than one of the game's multitude of job abilities. Even a section with interesting suggestions for job/ability combinations could have helped liven it up a bit.
All-in-all, this is a decent guide if you really desire a lot of nice visual aids and the most basic information on the game. Outside of that, it is a book marred with problems that simply should not exist in a finished professional product.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
I have seen better guides, December 16, 2006
This review is from: Official Nintendo Power FINAL FANTASY V ADVANCE Player's Guide (Paperback)
but if you do not want to print out an entire book, from an online site, then this would be helpful.I found myself having to visit forums and print some important, strategic information that was lacking in the guide. Annoying. Never did find some of the information ANYWHERE. One would think that it should be in an OFFICIAL guide.I agree with Falchieyan's review.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
good, not great, January 11, 2007
This review is from: Official Nintendo Power FINAL FANTASY V ADVANCE Player's Guide (Paperback)
The guide is good, with nice screenshots and helpful hints for getting items. I couldn't have gotten through the game and collected the things I did without it. But, it is short on detail, and for a novice player--like me--it can be very frustrating.
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