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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Hits the important points, April 10, 2006
This review is from: Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse Official Strategy Guide (Signature) (Paperback)
If you're like me, you don't always get the time to really sit and explore an RPG to it's fullest. Despite my best attempts at playing a game straight through without help, I always find information that proves that there was A LOT I missed out on.
The game guide for Xenosaga II is a big help. The game has a huge back story, and sometimes it's easy to get caught up in it and forget that you have a battle system to master and a strategy to work out. This is a good guide to walking you through some of the basics of using the battle system, which is completely different from the first game.
What I liked best about this guide is that you usually get a really good solid strategy for boss fights. Although whoever wrote this guide must have not had the struggle I had with a few bosses. A lot of the main enemies you fight are pretty tough, and it's really easy for your party to suffer some serious losses, and the guide doesn't offer much advice for survival.
If you're not sure what an area is going to be like, this guide may give you a few pointers as to who would be best for the party based on their general skills. There are also a few pointers on the best way to customize your characters, although I found that they didn't recommend a few abilities for some characters that I felt were very important.
One frustrating thing is that there are 3 hidden bosses in the game, and the book only mentions them and gives NO INFORMATION on their stats, only where to find them. These bosses are the hardest that you'll fight in the game, and it's a real pain to have to restart over and over again when you get beaten to a pulp in less than a minute. You'll have to go online and search yourself for the most useful information on these bosses.
The book does offer a good, detailed walkthrough for the Robot Academy Scenario. There is also information on the Segment Addresses, the G.S. campaign, and a list and description of abilities, items and Ethers. Their side quest information is good and the best source for those who want to complete EVERYTHING in a game.
Overall, it's a good game guide. Not the best, but still a good item to have if you're playing the game and getting frustrated.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not one of the best but gets you through, August 30, 2006
This review is from: Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse Official Strategy Guide (Signature) (Paperback)
I'm not a big fan of stradegy guides. But I sure know what's a good one. This book has alot of tips and good boss stradegies, such as enemy data and HP, type weakness, break zones, etc. However, I feel uncomfortable with the layout of the maps and how the key works. It's a bit confusing. Especially with the location of the items and sometimes I wonder why the GS quests couldn't have been put at the end of each section instead of making me flip all the way back to the book. It's a hassle there because most, if not all new proceedings in the next stage, a couple of new GS campaigns are avalible and it's very annoying to always flip to the back of the book and wondering which GS route you have to do.
Also, there are confusing instructions making it almost impossible to find out what they're trying to make you do. Those are just one of the two major things that irks me. (It's not that bad but it's still confusing if you skip the key.) All in all, it gets you through the game, has amazingly good heads-up on notes you should keep in mind, and it has a lovely fold out poster. But I think you can get through the game just fine without it, it's just that it gets you through puzzles quicker. I'm one of those people who really hates game puzzles.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Essential to playing the game; leaves out a couple things though..., August 24, 2005
This review is from: Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse Official Strategy Guide (Signature) (Paperback)
While the Xenosaga pt 2 guide does most of it's job at covering the game in it's full entireity, it also does this without doing too much to spoil the storyline. It still does manage to at times divulge a little too much information (such as spilling the beans on who the final boss is; it could have easily not revealed the said boss' identity.) The guide also does a good job at making up for the instruction manual's lack of acting like a regular RPG instruction manual (I.E. giving a basic idea of the story.) And a final plus is that the guide has some decent artwork and screen shots throughout it, as well as a poster for Xenosaga nuts to hang up.
The only flaws that the guide has though is that it leaves out the mention of the 3 hardest optional bosses in the game. It only has them in the monstary listed as "Extra Boss 1, Extra Boss 2, ect". It gives the gamer no strategy to fall back on for tackling these thrills, nor does it even mention how one gets to them (besides giving the general area they are found in.) This is a rather large dissapointment, and something that is rather common amongst Brady Game guides. They didn't do as bad a job as they did in the past (FFX-2's 100 floor dungeon comes to mind), but they still could have easily stuck a few more pages in to tell the gamer how to tackle the hidden challanges in the game.
The guide does deliver on almost all counts other wise, and it is highly recomended for anyone wishing to finish the game in a sane amount of time (~34 hours).
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