Which strategy guides are worth to buy

[Soft paw]

Hello there!

I would like to fully (100%) complete some of the FF and since I'm pretty much convinced it's impossible without a strategy guide well I'm looking for some.
So I hunted those strategy guides, I read about the BradyGames strategy guides but the company turned out to be known as Prima Games as of today.

I went down on ebay to check the reviews from the people who bought the 2 box sets and the guides for the 13's they are selling (7,8,9 + 10,10-2,12 + 13,13-2,13-LR)
The vast majority of the ratings are between 1 and 2 out of 5 stars.
They all say it's trash and warn everyone to be careful not to buy those guides.
To sum-up some of the usual complaints:
- some of the pages are torn out of the box
- some are glued to each others and can't be opened without us to tear them down
- the prints are not visible sometimes
- the guides are pure copies of the originals and have the same flaws, mistakes and miss a large amount of secrets

But now I can't find any other company that is selling decent guides for this serie.
Do you have any idea ?

[Shauna]

Buying guides? Why not just use gamefaqs?

[Loony BoB]

I have the official guides for FFXIII and FFXIII-2, and I love them. Excellent, well worth the money. I've already pre-ordered FFXV's one because of how impressed I was. Can't say for any of the older games.

EDIT: The guides I have are made by Piggyback, in case you're wondering.

[Soft paw]

I have the official guides for FFXIII and FFXIII-2, and I love them. Excellent, well worth the money. I've already pre-ordered FFXV's one because of how impressed I was. Can't say for any of the older games.

EDIT: The guides I have are made by Piggyback, in case you're wondering.

Thanks!

I am checking piggyback's website right now, i searched "Final Fantasy" in the search box and got the list of guides going from VIII to Lightning Returns.
So I assume this is not the website you ordered the Strategy Guide for 15.

Where are you buying them from exactly ?
I would also love to find their guide for the 7, is it available ?


Buying guides? Why not just use gamefaqs?

Simply because I love the feeling of discovery through the search in a book, the smell of paper while doing it and the sound of switching pages.
The internet lacks emotion. You feel me ?
Probably a feeling anchored in my mind from the 90's, who knows.

[Sephiroth]

If you want to go for absolute 100% without any errors, then no one. If you want some decent guides, can accept errors but merely like the way the guides are presented, piggyback guides are okay - I have some but I don't use them the way they are intended to be used. Other than that, gamefaqs.

You will find errors and incomplete stuff everywhere though.

Piggyback has no FFVII Guide. FFVII has a Brady Games guide, a Full Color Edition Guide that is totally incomplete and full of errors (yet my favourite because of its looks) and such.

[Loony BoB]

I pre-ordered the FFXV guide on Amazon.

[Elly]

just about any Brady Games Guide is really good except for FFIX most of that guide is not included in the print version and the links given in the guide no longer work... Piggyback guides are good too but fall apart way too easily, both soft and hard cover versions of the the FFXIII & FFXIII-2 guides had chunks of pages just randomly fall out on me, and i keep my stuff in as close to mint as possible, but those guides for the FFXIII saga just fell clean apart...

[Bubba]

Yeah, I've got a few strategy guides. Some of the Brady Games ones are very good though they can contain a lot of errors. I only ever use a guide once I've completed the game once though. If it's a game I enjoyed I'll get the guide, replay it and get everything!

My FFVII Brady Games guide is annotated to all hell. Literally every page has something written, original text crossed out. It's like The Half-Blood Prince's copy of Advanced Potion Making :lol:

[Wolf Kanno]

Guides vary in quality and some of the best guides I know of are difficult to find anymore since they're out of print.

As most people have said, the IX guide is pretty terrible since it incorporated the defunct PlayOnline hint section that lasted maybe a year after IX's release before Square dropped it.

Most of the Brady game guides are really stellar in the PS2 generation games and my favorites tend to be the rare collectible guides for X-2, XII, and XIII, though only the X-2 guide really offers more than the standard guide, I just prefer the hardcovers. The Brady guide for VIII is also pretty good for it's time as are the ones for FFI, II, III, and IV and V Advance.

The best guide for FFVI is actually an out of print guide book called The Complete Final Fantasy III Forbidden Game Secrets guide. While it lacks the visual pizazz of the Brady guides, it's more thorough than most guides I've seen for the game (barring the Japanese guides) and even contains translated elements from the official Japanese FFVI guides like timelines and some world background info. It's hard to find and you'll have to deal with the original Woosely translation of the game, but if you do find it, it's often super cheap.

My favorite VII Guide still alludes me. I have yet to pick it up since I own the normal Brady book, but I highly recommend the Versus Books version of FFVII guide, not only does it contain more official artwork from the game than the boring Brady guide, it's just visually more appealing looking. My favorite part was the character sections where the guide would list the weapons the character can use with close up in-game screenshots of the character holding them. Red XIII got shafted but seeing over a dozen pictures of Cloud brandishing all of the cool swords in the game is pretty neat. They do something similar with summons. The guide itself is more informal than other professional ones but it possess more passion. Sadly, it's rare and overpriced in most places I've seen it.

The hardest guide to find will be the Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lion guide, which is probably the most thorough guide in terms of mechanics you'll find on the game outside of some noteworthy fan guides online. Sadly the guide had a limited print run and tends to be overpriced when found online but maybe you can find that rare deal.

If all else fails, go for the Game Informer Special Edition Final Fantasy Companion. It contains a walk-through for FFV, VI, VII, and VIII. The one for VII is pretty basic but the ones for the other games, especially FFVIII are actually much more thorough than you would think for such a tiny guide.

[Galuf]

Any guide that doesnt say "to find out how to do this. Go to playonline"


the piggyback one for 12 was pretty good. Good 'nuff for me

[Sephiroth]

Basically when the back cover says "We have covered 100% everything" you can be sure it is a lie.

[Rocket Edge]

I have the hardback guide for FF12. It's awesome! I really recommend the guidebooks for future FF's.