Customer Reviews

Tales Of Symphonia(TM) Official Strategy Guide

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There are times when people want to buy a strategy guide to get a leg up. Afterall, unlike most online guides they have maps and screenshots for us visual learners who can't learn by text alone. Unfortunately, the problem with being a visual learner with strategy guides, is when those guides are missing a lot of stuff. If this were a guide for an action/adventure game, it would be perfect. But RPG guides are supposed to be better than this.

To begin, let us first understand what a strategy guide is. It is NOT meant to be a "How-to" book. It's meant to be just what it is: A guide. Some things the guide really shouldn't have to point out to you (does the guide really have to say which direction is North on the worldmap? It's on display in the game for cryin' out loud!). Unfortunately, while this guide is helpful, it seems far from being complete.

The walkthrough is basic. It's written to where you should only refer to it if you're stuck. It's a quick easy to use walkthrough. I didn't have any troube understanding puzzle solutions (if the writing is confusing, just look at the screenshot, easy as that). I also didn't have any trouble being guided in the next direction. It seems like it's done it's job right? Afterall, all the EX skills and Techs are in the guide, and they're covered pretty well in an easy to use table. Items list, weapons charts, all the neat misc. stuff is here.

But there are problems.

The writing, as the others have pointed out, is confusing sometimes. Some paragraphs really DO end abruptly. And there are instances of them being none finished, but here's the trick to that. When a paragraph isn't finished, it means the next few words are the title of the next section. A technique BradyGAMES must've picked up from Versus Books along the road. It doesn't work though, as you can clearly see by the other reviewers who didn't seem to spot this sooner.

The walkthrough has more problems. An RPG guide NEEDS MAPS! I'll shout it from the roof-tops until the day I die! Without maps, an RPG guide is damn near useless. Where are the treasures? I don't know because the guide doesn't have maps! You'll have to rely on directions, and they don't even lead you to all the items. The good news is there IS an items list for each area.

Also, what's with the bestiary? I understand that it goes by the monster list in the game, but if it were alphabetical, it would've been easier to use. If you encounter an enemy for the first time, you'll have to flip through endless pages to find the enemy you want. More importantly, why aren't monster stats called out in the walkthrough? They are for bosses, but not regular enemies.

And let's talk about boss strategies for a moment. I've never seen a guide with such horrendous strategies before. Here's a boss strategy from one of the late bosses in the game. I can put it right here!

"Use ice, water, or fire attacks to defeat the monster, in combination with physical attacks and techs."

Now, what did you learn? Weakness? Yeah. But what about what the boss attacks with? What about what YOUR characters need to defend against? Does the boss cast status effects? Nobody knows!

Finally, there's no affections list. One of the most crucial parts of the story and character development, and the guide doesn't help you with it. What choices do I make for my characters to like me? Hell, I don't know.

I liked the side-quest sectin. Very detailed, but I wish they'd call them out in the walkthrough. I had a case of page-flipping after damn near every completed area just to see if a side-quest was availible. I'd waste precious game time (and some life) just seeing if a quest was availible.

Seriously though, this isn't the worst guide in the world. If you need help with the main quest, it WILL help you. You just have to make really good use of those screenshots and tips. The tips DO work, and you will find all the titles, EX Skills and obtain all the techs using this guide. You won't master the game with the guide, but you'll come close in more ways than you think. The only MAJOR problem with the guide is the Character affection and lack of maps. Other than that, you should be just fine with this guide.

I honestly cannot believe they published this guide with so many mistakes. There are parts of it where the writing stops, and, when you expect it to turn up in the next column, it's got a new heading and talking about something completely different. Dan Birlew does a decent job explaining the dungeons and everything, but there is no map, and there are times where he gives you just a vague command. The best of the entire guide is the subquest listing. Especially since there are a lot of guides online that don't mention subquests, but just stick to the general storyline. Otherwise, I'd urge you to not spend the money and just find a good game guide site (gamefaqs.com is one I can think of off the top of my head).

The book does help by giving details on what needs to be done but I am left to figure out what the guide is telling me. There is a writing and content issue here. The paragraphs end abruptly or they don't make any sense at all. The step by step guide that concerns dungeon puzzles are often more confusing then they should be because of the wording.

Weapons list, armor lists, EX skills and titles list are a plus. I wish the subquest missions are integrated into the book instead of written as an appendix at the back of the book since I have missed a couple of things to do and I've had to hurriedly flip to the back to see what I can backtrack on.

The affection scale is not listed on this guide. That's an integral part of the story and for it not to be included in a plus or minus list format is disappointing.

Overall it's a decent guide for quick reference. Bad writing and and a sense of incompleteness hold it back from being a great guide.

Because I got this item for free, I like having it, but if I had paid $15 for it, I'd feel a little ripped off.

It's handy for EX-Skills and sidequests, but there are too many things it doesn't do a good job of explaining. The walkthrough it gives you is perfectly linear even when the game isn't, so you have to follow it exactly or you may end up in a situation where its info doesn't help you. It doesn't cover character affection and how it changes the plot, except for one little vague, misleading, and useless paragraph.

It really needed to be proofread too. There are places where text just cuts off in the middle of a paragraph and doesn't continue anywhere, or places where extra fragments of text appear out of place.

Once again Dan leaves us hanging. There is a lot of information that could be here(need I say maps?). Also a lot of poor paragraphs and directions leave you studying the pictures to find out whats next, not the text.

These guides are normally great, but this guy left some loose ends that forced me to go online for help to progress the story. Events and items he claimed were in a certain area were not. In short the guy was a little too brief for a game as long as this on is.

Pros:
- Detailed Walkthrough
- Info on all characters including titles, techs, Ex skills and more.
- Data on every single item, shop and enemy
- coverage on all the side quest

Cons:
- No maps
- some story spoilers

Good, in-depth strategy guide. The only real issue with this guide is there are no tips in between the location walkthroughs that tell you what sub-plots are becoming active or are able to be continued. That makes it very difficult to manage a single (or even double) playthrough and get all the sub plots completed.

This strategy guide contains a vast amount of information needed to find all the goodies and sidequests in the game. There are some problems with the writing, in which some paragraphs abruptly end. It also lacks dungeon maps, leaving you to find chests using tedious step-by-step instructions rather than visually spotting where each is on a map.

If you buy the game, definitely get the guide. It's the only one available on the market so its your only choice. If I had the choice of a competing guide however, I would certainly go for that one instead.

I remember liking this guide as I used it to beat this game, but at the same time it occasionally left with me unanswered questions. Perhaps there was an occasional error as well. Still, overall good buy to get all the little bits you're missing.