Star Wars Galaxies: An Empire Divided - Console (Prima's Official Strategy Guide) (Paperback)

The Strategy Guide itself is beautiful for the most part. Instead of grayscale pictures on regular stock paper, SWG Guide contains hundreds of gorgeous full color pictures on nice glossy paper. That's right, the 1st 386 out of the total 494 pages are in color. There is screenshots galore, highlighted tips, and tons of original and conceptual art. The back of the book is in black and white, but it's just the index, stat's and tables, and appendences (no reason for color here).

Also included is a large pull out poster with art of the 8 beginning species a player can play.

Now the meat of the guide itself: For the beginner MMORPG user or 'newbie' to Star Wars Galaxies itself, this guide really does a great job getting over the concepts of gameplay and actually does provide strategy tips and hints on how to acclimate yourself to this game. It describes in detail many aspects of the various menu's, choice's, do's and do not's a player can do much better that the 100 page manual included with the game.

However, there are a few sections I noticed (though sparse) that were more or less direct copies of in-game play text from dialogue boxes just reprinted here. That's not necessarily bad, as many gamer's skip these factoids while in game play, but ends up being very useful information offline.

The guide is pretty logically divided into various sections:

1) New Player Introduction: Well done, and offers a nice background to the SW Universe as well as player etiquette and online terms that you'll need to get familiar with.

2) Character creation: Very in-depth, but straightforward and self-explanatory.

3) Interaction in Star Wars Galaxies: Discussion's on groups, parties, chatting, chat channels, e-mail, character commands, etc.

4) City Life: Discussion on what to expect and what one can do and find in cities overall.

5) Combat: Discussion of PvP, Player vs. NPC's, missions, factions, guilds, joining the Imperials, joining the Rebel Alliance, etc. Choice of weapons either thrown, ranged, melee, hand to hand and concepts on what constitutes a hit versus a miss, how fighting affects your online character, etc. Well done.

6) Economy: SWG is a player driven economy and can be confusing to the new player. While this chapter is not the longest or most in depth, it does a lot of explaining concepts of why certain players will do the things they do, and how earning money id different for all players and their respective professions.

7) Crafting: Certain players (depending on their profession) actually make objects in the game. Whether it's weapons, food, clothing, tools, home's, etc...this is the chapter to read.

8) Professions: Easily the largest section in the guide well over 150 pages. An in-depth look at the paths of destiny a player can create for themselves, what goals to shoot for, and what they can do when they gain a level per-se. Can be a bit boring and all most of this information can be found in game. But there are some strategies that are worth taking note at.

9) Planets: An overview of the 1st 9 planets in the game. Background on their histories, topographies, geographies, etc. A few points of interest, and maps of main (but not all cities).

10) PvP, Appendices, other tables, reference materials.

Okay, with all that said on how rich this guide is, there are a few drawbacks:

1) The game is written primarily for new users. Once you get the hang of the game, you may only use this guide for some weapon tables, maybe a few maps, and a few shortcuts on setting up your in game interface.

2) Some information is incorrect as of printing. I already noticed that the game itself has made a few command changes, whether adding new ones, or deleting some that the guide fails to mention.

3) The nature of MMORPG's is that they always change. SWG's has already announced that in the future new items will become available, new planets, new cities, etc...Because a game like this always evolves, sooner or later, many aspects of this guide may become obsolete.

Hope my review help, the guide did help me!

On one hand, the descriptions of some of the professions in the game are handy, but some of them are already wrong, due to changes already in place. The maps are handy to have in front of you, but the in-game map system does the same job. The descriptions of the various weapons and armor are nice, but omit higher-level items, which has become somewhat of a trademark of Prima's authorized guides.

All in all, the layout is nice, and this is one of Prima's few full color guides. But the information contained within should be verified with a more up to date source before you rely on it. And, if anyone from Prima is reading this, please, PLEASE hire a more effective proofreader. Some of the grammatical and written errors in this book are almost comical. Almost.

All in all, it's a handy book to have around, but I won't be relying on it as a guide. It's more effective as a supplement to the game manual, if you remember to check the information with more current sources.

This book did not contain any useful strategies or suggestions for being successful at the game. I wonder if those that wrote it have actually even played the game?

I found FAR more valuable strategies and tips for free on-line. Many experienced and successful players have written articles about how to get started, how to use the rules to your advantage, real pros/cons of choices, and how to advance your character the fastest. These are the things I expect a strategy guide to do, and at that, this book failed miserably.

For example, this book provides little information to help you choose a starting profession. All they do is dump out all the various charts and expect you to digest them all and make some sense of them. It had no firm opinions on anything.

This is a huge and complex game, with a massive amount of options and choices. I read the entire book, and it helped me little in making the proper decisions. After reading a few on-line articles (that were free) from experienced players, I scraped my existing character and started over. By following the advice of people that actually played the game, I was able to advance my character much more quickly, and I had a lot more fun doing it.