Customer Reviews

Xenosaga Official Strategy Guide

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have remarked elsewhere that Zenosaga is a game where the devil is in the details - all the myriad details. The plot marches cheerfully onward from (lengthy) cut scene to (even longer) cut scenes. But the action is complicated by countless possibilities for character development and weapons/equipment strategies. Not to mention puzzles, special quests and side quests. It is simply too much to keep in your mind if you hope to touch most of the games bases.

Take characters, for instance. You can build basic traits (strength, etc.), spell casting, technical attacks, and personal skills. You can don mechs, upgrade weapons, and tune your engines. To, while maps are important to finding everything, the real test of a guide is how well it brings all the rest of the confusion together.

I have to hand it to Birlew and Parkinson for managing to present all this material in a manner that makes good, usable sense. This is a 224-page guide, and you will wind up reading most of it. For the most part it is clearly written, well illustrated, and contains only a few glaring errors. None of the latter are disastrous, just irritating when you are trying to figure something out.

I have no qualms about using guides. Especially in a case like Xenosaga, where the designers obviously were planning an all out war with the players. Games like this scream out for maps and lists and charts, and here they are. One of my measures of the quality of a walk-thru if it extends enjoyable game play, and this effort meets that criterion head on. Well worth the cost.

As far as strategy guides go, I'm more concerned with how its going to get me through the game, and also if it can get me through the game with ease. That's the MAIN point of a guide is to get you through the game. The Xenosaga Official Strategy Guide does this with ease. There are a couple of gripes present but otherwise very nice.

The first thing I noticed about the guide were the first about 60 pages of the guide are dedicated to a few of the miscellaneous things. The game basics and such. This may not seem like much but the guide explains the basics of the game a lot more clearly than the instruction booklet does.

Character profiles are great. They tell you when characters learn techs in an easy to use chart and they also give a small bio for them without spoiling what their main role is in the quest!

An weapon/armor/item list is availible. Easy to use table that tells you what you should buy and what you probably shouldn't. We all know that in Xenosaga you could spend quite a bit of money and you don't get much. This guide will help you save your money.

A.G.W.S data for them all. This also suggest what you should and shouldn't buy for them, as well as who should pilot them and what attacks you should focus on using.

The walkthrough was perhaps the most helpful part of this guide. This is where a couple of my small gripes come in but believe me they're very small. The walkthrough is easy to use and here's a nice thing to do in using this guide, while a movie scene from the game is playing take the time to read the guide. You'll notice that a lot of the info is extremely helpful.

Most noticeable are the boss strategies. These are VERY helpful strategies but this is where my first gripe with the guide comes in. The boss strategies are extremely helpful on offense. It's great to know what you can do to the boss but it would also be nice if they told me what the boss could do to me in return. Other than that these strategies are unbeatable.

Before you begin each section you'll see a list of enemies, maps with a very handy key, and a step-by-step objective and items list. VERY helpful walkthrough.

My second gripe is minor depending on how you use the guide. The screenshots aren't always clear. Some are rather fuzzy (the smaller ones). It's also nice that with each new area you come to there are mini-bios for the characters who you'll meet there. So the guide is very imformative. The best part? The guide has NO spoilers to the amazing story that unfolds!

Now for those mini-games, side-quests and secrets. The guide will help you to understand the mini-games and play them to success. If you're like me you don't play mini-games much. The guide also covers just about every secret and sidequests there is, again it doesn't spoil the plot.

Clearly this is an extremely helpful guide. You'll love the guide. It's great to use for the game. Just remember that you won't know what to expect from EVERY boss (there's one that can kill you in one hit and the guide WON'T point it out).

Ok,I love this game,and if you love this game too I reccomend you get the this.It tells you everything about the characters,their ether,their weapons,their tech attacks,and the A.W.G.S.It will tell you all the enenmies you'll fight,where they appear,how much hp they have,and their weakness'.This guide will also tell you some secrets of the characters and if they have special things you can find for them too.This book will also tell you how to play the mini games and what you need to play them.They have made maps that make sense and help you find your way around easily.This book pretty much covers everything you would want to know.Keep in mind that some times the guide will tell you how to fight.Everything is pretty much upgraded and a lot of times things don't work out.If something like this happens then do it your own way that makes in easier for you to win.I give this guide 4 stars because the pics in the book aren't that great and are blurred,and they didn't explain how many things worked.But I do reccomend this guide for the xenosaga game to get a better understanding of how it works.

I am glad to say that this time round, Bradygames didn't screw up this guide.

The maps layout of enemy positions and item locations are right on the spot. Also the item charts, skills extractable tables and ethers are accurate. All sidequests, from Great Joe/Mintia and Meld/Din Gareth bosses are highlighted, as well as a great walkthrough.

XenoSaga can be considered an easy RPG, but purists looking to find every item, complete every sidequest would have a much easier time using this guide-for nearly everything in here is written in a clear, concise manner. I had no problems completing the game my first walkthrough as this guide told me of the creatures' weakness, what skills/techs to equip and where to find the less obvious items on the maps.

There are a couple of things I would like to see if they ever are going to reprint this guide:

1. The Casino section. Poker can only help you to a small extent with G. Slots is truly the way to being a millionaire. Check out gamefaqs for more information.

2. The tech levels are there, but the effects (how much damage does it do per level?) are not shown. I would like to see not just the T pts requirement for upgrading one level but also the statstical improvements-by how many points (Ether Attack /Physical Attack) does upgrading a tech helps?

Other than these minor concerns I have, a perfect guide. Keep up the good work!

This book is a major help! Already played the game once through eithout the book, now replaying with book and am having ALOT less trouble mainly in the Cash, A.G.W.S., and other quests. Well writen and has practicly no spoilers.

I recommend this strategy guide to those who plan on playing the game. It is true that you can beat the game without a guide. However, the game has plenty of side quests and important (but optional) items to collect that the chances of you finding them all is very unlikely without some sort of guide.

Also, the characters in the game are highly customizable. Meaning, you can manipulate their attributes to your preference. The problem is that the process for doing that is not readily obvious. And there are many ways to go about doing so. Some "bonus" items will be impossible to obtain accidentally, and some require that you make certain decisions, in the right order, in the right place, at the proper time. This strategy guide will help you get the most out of the game.

My only minor complaint is that the quality of the paper used in the cover could have been better. And that criticism also apply to most of the newer game guides out there. I prefer the covers to be made of heavier weight material, for example. I am picky, perhaps, because I collect these guides.

Very good guide with little flaws! The only thing that the guide missed was that it did not inform you to protect yourself from "instant KO" from the Demon enemy inside Proto Merkabah! Other than that it was great. Good boss strategies, good pictures/ illustrations and directions if you get lost on where to go. very accurate and complete lists of all items/abilities/accessories. This guide explains the basics of the game very thoroughly also so it is useful in that sense and if you bought the game used like I did or if you rent games, in which my copy did not have the instruction manual, you can get all the necessary info from this guide! So, I definitely recommend this guide to anyone who wants to get the most from this great game! Also, guide gives good explanation and rewards from the games side quests and games.

This item is very good. All info in this guide is almost 100% on the dot. There are some things that are not correct but still that stuff will not effect your game at all.

This guide covers everything that you would want a game guide to cover. It gives Ether trees and tech lists for all the characters and really helps in explaining how to use techs effectively (which can be very confusing). The walkthroughs were good and include maps for all the levels. They give pretty good strategies for handling bosses and some of the more annoying regular enemies. The guide also covers the secret encounters and the Robot sidequest at the end of the book. Finally, it does a good job of not revealing spoilers. I have no complaints!

This guide was basically required for this ridiculously hard game. There's spots you have to stand in (where there's no one there) just to receive e-mails. And if you reply to some of these e-mails wrong, you block yourself from getting the ultimate weapons/spells. Game design flaws aside, this strategy guide really helped me get through what I needed to do to get everything.