|
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Gosh its so...bad...one of VS. worse..., July 19, 2003
By A Customer
The only reason I gave this guide two stars was because it had a walkthrough. Remember the good ol days? When Versus Books released all the good guides? You could never go wrong when you went with Versus Books. I remember their FF7 guide...it was the greatest RPG guide ever made! Then came their Resident Evil 2 guide which is arguably their best (competing with their FF7 and MGS guide for that title), next was MGS and then Zelda 64 and they went on and on. Is this guide another "homerun" like their Wild Arms 2 guide was? No...in fact its one of their worse guides. Versus Books has obviously started to fall where they once succeeded. Ever since their Grandia II guide on PS2 (never saw the Dreamcast one but I've heard its the exact same) their guides have only grown worse. First of all, the guide has a nice walkthrough but unlike past guides they don't have "Basic Training" section. They don't even have character bios. What ever happened to Versus Books going beyond your average strategy guide? Now they're BELOW your average strategy guide. The guide goes directly into the walkthrough from the get go. No introductions or telling you how to use the books or anything. They don't tell you stats for overworld monsters and the walkthorugh is full of typos. There was a key point in the game where I was supposed to return to Little Rock. The guide said I had to return to little twister, and while it was easy to differentiate it took a moment because the game didn't say where to go next at that point. The item appensix isn't detailed but they did cover the Millenium Puzzles. Also, while they didn't take the fun out of te game the walkthrough was very bland and unintersting to read. It was as if a robot was talking to me in my mind. What's worse? Not enough screenshots. They showed ONE measly screenshot for each task to do when you may need a few more. Also, this guide has no bestiary and that isn't a problem but they also do not tell you overworld monster stats. Also, should an enemy reappear in another dungeon, the guide forces you to flip back several pages (much like their Grandia II guide did). My biggest gripe...well not so big gripe, was that they gave no tips on how to raise your ARMS which I could've used some suggestions. Another small gripe that I had was that they didn't detail personal skills or arcana very well. I would've like if they had an Arcana table in the back or something but they coudln't even do that! It's all in the walkthrough which is an endless amount of pages! The only reason to get this guide would be for the EX File Keys and puzzle solutions. Everything else is pretty much useless, no good boss strategies that only tell you to attack and heal. They don't tell you what to expect from a boss like they did in past guides. Maps are also very undetailed with minor flaws but they're difficult to navigate. Lastly, the world map isn't drawn to scale and they're missing some locations! Not only that but they don't give good directions in the walkthrough to get to those areas. Now for those red hot juicy secrets that Versus Books is really good at collecting. Wait...umm...there are no cheap tricks anymore! They cover basic secrets already mentioned in the game. They don't help you defeat secret bosses (no overall strategy like they did in WA2 guide.). They give you EX-File keys and they explain the secrets of "Finest Arts" but they don't cover the cheap tricks you can do (There IS an infinite money trick for this game!) and they don't tell you what you can steal from enemies either! Overall, there is no reason to waste money on this guide. The last good RPG guide I saw from Versus books was Grandia Xtreme. Now that was a good versus books guide, but eversince WA2 and their Pokemon guides, I haven't seen any good RPG guide (or very many good guides period) from Versus Books. Whatever happened to going BEYOND the game? Leave this on the shelf and go to GameFAQs.com for game info.
|
by Kaizen Media Group
by Prima Games
