Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Most Useless Guidebook I've Ever Seen,
By
This review is from: Wild Arms: The Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
No maps of anything (overworld, dungeon, towns). No monster list, no trickster list, no list of items available in a given town or dungeon, no real strategies against defeating certain enemies. At one point, when you are in the final dungeon, the guide suddenly shifts to completing various side quests in Filgaia without ever telling you. If the reader is following the guide, they would have gotten lost. This guide looks to have been designed by an amateur who has never played a role playing game before, ever read a strategy guide, and has never written anything of value. Online guides, which come without cost, are much more informative than this.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely Terrible,
This review is from: Wild Arms: The Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
When it comes to the RPG genre, a strategy guide has high expectations. You want tons of maps and screenshots. You want several appendices to show you everything. You want every secret revealed. You want to make sure you have all the info you need to get through the good, the bad and the ugly in the game. Wild Arms is a unique game in and of itself. It's a shame, then, that the guide for Wild Arms is so... lifeless. There aren't very many ways to describe it aside from that. If one needs help with the game, the info is here (for the most part) but the guide really doesn't offer much of anything. The guide begins with a quick introduction before jumping into things. It starts withe character bios. Talking about our three main heroes, their tools and their forces. If these opening pages are to help us with anything, it is only to show the guide to be disorganized. The first few pages already give us a sense of this. But even then, what becomes apparent isn't actually the layout, but just how much info you expect the guide to lack as a whole. The basic strategies section is not going to be too particularly helpful either. It talks about leveling up, special items, saving and towns but it at no point in time really talks about the system of Wild Arms. Or going into any depth to the mechanics of the game. True, a guide doesn't necessarily NEED to do those things, but with a section called "Basic Strategies," it's an odd thing to see there are strangely no strategies whatsoever to be found. Instead we get a brief description on what towns are. The guide does, however, provide a nice item index as well as a magic index in the front. This isn't so bad and has every item and spell listed, but the strengths of the guide more or less end there. The weapons and armor section is just a list. Nothing about stats or any kind of special properties. Just a list of everyone's different equips. Not particularly helpful in the slightest. Once we get beyond that all the introduction stuff is over with and we get to the walkthrough. In any RPG guide the walkthrough is usually the meat and bones of the guide. It is, after all, the place where most players will spend their time (aside from the secrets section perhaps). It is unusually odd to find that the walkthrough is incredibly bland. And that's saying a lot given that what preceeded it didn't offer much either. Every portion of the walkthrough is done by showing a screenshot with a caption. The walkthrough might help you out with some tips, but this is hardly enough to really satisfy anyone playing any JRPG really. The Screenshot with a large caption under it has never been a very sufficient way to produce and RPG guide. Put more simply, it's easier to talk about what the guide lacks rather than what it actually has. The first big thing is simple: There are no maps. To produce a strategy guide for an RPG, even in the late 90's without any maps whatsoever is a bit of a disappointment. Without the maps there is no ways to tell what items there are to find in a dungeon. There is also no way of telling just where to go should you (somehow) get lost. And the directions provided in the walkthrough are not really enough. Especially because most of the captions are quick one sentence moments that is mostly just there to provide commentary on what you are seeing rather than to tell you what you should be doing. There are spoilers afoot. The problem isn't that there are spoilers, however, it's that the guide simply spends a lot more time explaining to us what we're already seeing rather than helping to get from point A to point B. Along with the lack of maps there is no list of items you'll find in a dungeon and there is no list of enemies you'll find in the dungeon either. Again, these are two things an RPG guide book ought to have without question. Some way of knowing what items to find in a dungeon would've been nice. And even more nice might've been if we knew what enemies to expect and what some of their stats (like HP) might look like. The latter is especially daunting when facing bosses. You'll soon find the guide provides no boss strategies whatsoever and instead just provides commentary and jokes. I can take a good joke from a strategy guide, it just seems odd that there are so many jokes and pop culture references in places where there should be strategy! During the final boss, for instance, the only real strategy it says is: "Engage in the battle and fight with great vengeance and furious anger." Ah, a Pulp Fiction reference in a video game strategy guide that tells me absolutely nothing about how to proceed with the battle. Even worse, you'll never know what to expect from the boss. And with no HP listings or weakness to tell you about, it's a wonder why you'd bother with the guide in any capacity at all. It's a quick way to learn virtually nothing about the game. The layout of the guide itself isn't even that good either. The guide doesn't really call out new areas, it just expects you to keep up with it. This makes for a heavily disorganized guide. If you close the book without marking a page, it's near impossible to find where you are because it never calls out the different areas to begin with. The walkthrough just keeps moving along. It's just not user friendly this way. The guide is also just barren on the whole. It's bad enough we have no maps and no items list or even any data on enemies and no boss strategies whatsoever, but we also really just don't get a lot of guidance. In part because, as mention earlier, the guide preoccupies itself with jokes and commentary more so than actual strategy. About the only time the guide provides a lot of substance is when it detailing puzzle solutions. Aside from that it more or less lets you go without telling you much. And while I can appreciate that the guide doesn't wish to hold the player's hand, it doesn't mean much when the alternative is no strategy at all. There's no world map or anything like that either. And the guide isn't willing to really point you in the direction you need to go most times. As I said, it's not like the guide sections off its walkthrough very well into different areas anyway. The inability to section off specific areas in the walkthrough most certainly causes problems when attempting to unearth secrets as well. The optional bosses and areas and secrets are certainly here... they're just mixed into the walkthrough. And thanks to how disorganized the walkthrough is, you simply won't be able to find all that stuff easily when you're actually ready for it. Because the walkthrough just doesn't call attention to it. It's just there. Aside from the items and such at the beginning of the guide, there are no further appendices. It's bad enough the enemies aren't called out in the walkthrough, but there's no adequate enemies list either. In the end there really isn't much the Wild Arms guide can really offer other than sentimental value for those who already have the game. As far as strategy guides go--especially for the genre the game it is designed for is in--you're just not getting a lot out of it. Some of the basic fundamentals of even just a run of the mill strategy guide aren't here. No maps. No info on enemies. No organization to the walkthrough. No item call outs or anything and no actual boss strategies makes one wonder why in the world you would ever consider such a guide. There's so much it simply doesn't have that a guide simply NEEDS.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not a bad guide,
By Dr.Rockter (Knoxville,Tenn.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Wild Arms: The Official Strategy Guide (Paperback)
When I bought this,you had a choice between this one and the 'unauthorized' one. I grabbed this one because the illustrations were really good. Plus,it helped me through the stuck spots. Sure,there's no bestiary list or over world map but this is from a time before game guides were the size of a Sears catalog. Remember when those were huge? If you just want a good guide to help through stuck points,get this one.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
