I want a game guide not a souvenir
920050
Remember when you bought a game and an instruction book came with it if there was anything complicated about it?  Sim City had some great ones.  Then the in game guides gave less and less information so you had to pay extra for one that would actually help.  I was OK with this.  The guides for Sims1 and Sims2 were usually very helpful especially the ones for the base games.  That seems to have changed and if there were another guide to Sims3 I would buy it.  The editors seemed only to think of marketing the guide and not the use of the guide.  They decided that a guide the size of the game case would be cute and appealing.  It is. But, in the process they shrank the print to the point it is so small as to be unreadable.  The font used is as small as that used for the smallest towns in an atlas.  You need a magnifying glass.  The pictures suffer from the same miniaturization.  I'm sure they would be very nice if I could see them.

Have the author or her editor ever heard of the esoteric concepts of alphabetizing and indexing?  The information on the various buildings would be good if you could find it when you needed it.  It's as if Ms. Browne took all the pictures and threw them in the air then gathered them randomly and put them in her book as they came off the stack.  This is just one example of the author's inability to organize.  I noted the lack of indexes in the guides for later Sims2 expansion packs. I missed them but expansion packs aren't the same as the base game.  This is a guide for a base game and to put it out without an index is unacceptable.

I would suggest that the next time Prima chooses authors and editors for a game as popular as The Sims that they pick ones who actually knew and liked the earlier games. Ms. Browne appears to be a beginner and not very enthusiastic at that.  If the people at Prima followed the many fan sites for The Sims they would have had no trouble finding someone to give them a better product.

For now I'm watching the fan sites for better and more usable guides.  When the inevitable expansion pack for the Sims3 comes out, I will examine the equally inevitable Prima guide closely and not just grab it when I buy my game. I may find it's wiser to wait for the better fan guides that just happen to be free.
4593386
The guide itself is nice looking and well made.  It does good on talking about the items and general help info.  But the maps *the part you will DEFINITELY want to be good* aren't that great.  They show you where save points are and where you can enter/exit that area.  But they don't show you where you can harvest items.  They tell you in the paragraphs where it is located *example C3.  The map is set up like a grid* but not where in the square the item chest or harvest items are.  So you can be looking around for abou 5 minutes just combing through the grid square trying to find a patch of flowers the guide says is there.  I wouldn't really recommend this guide to most people.  There are a lot of dedicated guide writers online who will be a lot more help to you then this guid is when it comes to items.  If you are just interested in character bios and stats it's ok but nothing fancy.
3752156
well....being as they changed the game, the guide no longer applies AT ALL...if you still want to buy one, email me and i'll sell you mine as i sure as heck don't need it anymore...
1542426
Guide is very nice, thorough with a lot of pics, etc. If you have this game the guide is a MUST HAVE!!
4885364
First let me just say that I'm a bit of a guide collector. I enjoy getting guides for a lot of games and so I've read through my fair share of them. While this guide is serviceable when it comes to a walk-through for the game, that isn't what a lot of people tend to buy guides for. A lot of people, myself included, get guides for games like this to help with the collectibles.

Take GTA IV for instance. While some people are dedicated enough to find all 100 pigeons with a very meticulous search through the game, many are not. That's where a well written guide comes in handy. It shows you a map with the locations of the collectibles marked and a detailed explanation on how to reach said location. This guide is absolutely useless when it comes to the collectible section. They literally show you a screenshot of Shen standing next to the collectible and then they put a big icon on a little map to help you figure out where it is. Problem is, the icon is too big for the map, so you can't narrow down from it where exactly the circle is indicating, and the screenshot is all but useless in actually locating the collectable. That's it. No written explanation, nothing.

OK, to be fair, it does provide 15 minor Tips on the locations of lock boxes. The problem is, that's out of 100 lock boxes. The rest you have to rely on the unhelpful screenshot and the non-useful large icon on the small map. But there are places where the guide flat out lies. For instance, and I quote, "Certain shrines are well hidden, and will have special notes on how to reach them." Out of 50 shrines, guess how many have tips or notes? Absolutely zero.

Fortunately, for some of the collectibles, you earn methods in the game with which to locate them on your map. But that isn't the case for all the collectibles, which is where a decent guide would come in handy. This unfortunately is not a decent guide. So while this guide does provide some value, as far as helping you find collectibles it's all but worthless. No point in wasting the money on this one, at least in my opinion.
2925725
Good guide. The only reason it doesn't get 5 stars is because the book is missing a TABLE OF CONTENTS and that is pretty useful in a game guide...
3340499
Final Fantasy XII is not a self-guiding game. Even experienced gamers will miss things and make significant errors unless they have outside guidance that warns them what's ahead.

You need a guide - and this is a very good one.

Without spoiling  the main story, the guide provides detailed directions, maps, beast statistics, locations of treasure and other key landmarks. The illustrations are breathtakingly beautiful. Using this book was almost as fun as playing the game.

True, all this information is also available online. However, I have found much of that information scattered among numerous documents, many of which were humongous plain text files. For me, the online resources were much better used as a supplement for specific questions rather than as a primary means to take me through the whole game.

The guide is not without shortcomings. The guide does not include location information for the Rare Game. The Hunt Club is supposed to be missing one beast (Biding Mantis); however, I have not yet verified that to be true. There are supposed to be errors in the Quickening requirements (p. 59), but this has not affected my ability to play the game. The book also lacks information about two major optional areas in the game: Zertinan Caverns and Pharos Subterra.

The book is badly bound. I have owned three copies, and pages began to fall out after just a week's use.

I am giving this item five stars because the information in it has proven so valuable. Many hours of enjoyable gaming I owe to this book.

Highly recommended.
3762772
I purchased this strategy guide with the expectation of gaining new insights on playing Civ5. Previously to purchasing the strategy guide, I played a few games of Civ5 versus the AI. I didn't really learn anything new from the strategy guide that I didn't already figure out myself through just playing the game a few times. If anything, the guide provided a quick reference of the strengths and weaknesses of each civilization-- nothing more that a quick Internet search would have provided. I can't really recommend this strategy guide because you can find the same information within the game itself.
2249541
The guide is great and very detailed. My only issue I have with it is that I wish they had pictures of the different items, especially the rare items, so you know what they look like. Other then that its awesome and very helpful.
3635185
This hardbound book is the official Battlefield 3 game guide and includes a couple of extras to justify its higher cost versus its soft covered sibling. The extras include a photo tour through the DICE offices, interviews with DICE developers, the first chapter from an upcoming book based on the Battlefield series, and finally, access to Prima's O.C.O.T. soldier tracking system.

O.C.O.T. is basically a tracking tool to account for all your achievements in BF3, such as dog tags earned, weapons, unlocks and the like. I didn't find this tool especially useful since BF3's Battlelog does a better job, in my opinion, of tracking and updating everything automatically. With O.C.O.T., it's a pain because you have to manually enter all the information yourself.

I also didn't find the photo tour through the DICE offices to be especially riveting, basically offering the same old fare that you would get with any other "collector's edition" strategy guide. Once you peruse the photos and read the captions and content, you'll probably never have a need to go back and read it again. All in all, pretty lackluster and rather disappointing.

The DICE developer interviews are pretty good though. The interviews offer a different perspective on the creation, planning and release of BF3 from the eyes of those who put the sweat, blood and tears into making the game. I found the interviews to be a wealth of knowledge, especially for those that wish to become game developers themselves one day.

Extras aside, the actual meat of the game guide is extremely detailed and laid out well. The breakdown of each weapon and their associated unlocks is very useful as is the information and strategies to playing each class. I also liked the full-color, full page maps and the different types of games you could play on each, such as TDM, Conquest, etc. and strategies for each.

If I were to do it again, I would NOT buy this Collector's Edition game guide again. Unless you have a burning desire to own this or are a die-hard DICE or BF3 fan, the extra's really don't justify the extra cost. Save yourself the money and get the standard game guide since the pertinent information contained in that version is exactly the same in the collector's guide.
756690
Guide is pretty good for befriending yo-kai and questng. Very skimpy on details for the main story and some quests but the game is pretty straight forward so its not needed. Overall worth it.
4855050
Brady Games is notorious for putting together somewhat haphazard game guides, and the FF12 guide is no exception. What we have here is a colossal guide for FF12, featuring almost all of the information that any player needs to complete the game. It includes lists of all of the loot drops in the game, strategies on how to beat all of the optional bosses, and advice on how to build your party so that the license board does not completely perplex you. However, the guide has many inherent flaws, which make it a little less than lovable.

To begin, the guide is chock full of spoiler information. Nowhere in the guide can you go and get the quick and simple advice that you might be seeking for a part of the game. Instead, the writers have chosen to fill almost every part of the walk through up with unnecessary information on the storyline scenes and spoilers that which makes playing the game a little boring. The guide could easily have had 50+ pages taken out of it if the writers had avoided spoiling most of the game's storyline. Instead however, it seems that they have (with Square-Enix' blessing) filled every part of the walk through up with spoiler content in order to add weight to the guide when the weight is superfluous.

Another hindrance on the guide are it's strange typographical errors. Throughout the guide the reader will find instances where references to other pages are turned to question marks. For example, when going over a side quest, the guide says to look to page (???) for more information. This is rather troublesome and it leaves the reader wondering if that page is even in the guide.

The guide also suffers from bad organization. The maps of the dungeons are small and cumbersome, and while playing through an area, players will have to continuously flip back to the page with the map and squint their eyes to find out where the treasure chest they want is located. The guide also fails to mention where some of the "good treasure" drops are in each dungeon and the player will have to refer to the exhaustive bestiary section to find out where the monster they want is located and if they are capable of killing it.

Another lack of organization is the lack of an index. The guide is set up in such a way that in order to know everything, the player will have to start using it when they start the game. If they begin to read it during any other point, they will have to flip back and scrounge around before they might be able to find a piece of information that otherwise could have been found by using an index.

The final blow to the FF12 guide however is the complete lack of explanation of how the treasure chest system works. There are tables however, that break down the frequencies of finding an item, but it requires trial and error before the player will find out exactly how to use the table. A thorough explanation should have been in order to explain this critical aspect of the game.

Despite these numerous errors, the guide still offers much to players who are in need of help for completing the game. It offers great advice on how to defeat all of the bosses (and the previously mentioned optional bosses), it gives the location of every single item, and it has a very pretty presentation, chock full of screen shots and artwork. If a player is seeking this guide, the best advice would be to locate the limited edition version of it, as it comes in a hard cover case and has an extra "art book" that comes with it.

*Update* Another serious flaw with the guide that I didn't realize until I  got towards the end of the game was the lousy advise the game guide gives on one of the last dungeons. While this dungeon is indeed optional, it features a few of the best items in the game as well as some of the hardest fights, so boo on Brady Games for not taking the time to explain this dungeon in better detail.
1484630
I only give this one 4 stars because I hate the paperback guides because they are impossible to keep nice.  This is one of those games where the choices you make with each assasination or non-leathal takedown affects the outcome of the game and how you are treated by your peers.  With this type of game it can be nice to know which choices will lead to which outcome because not everyone wants to replay a game 15 times just so they can experience a desired ending or desired tools that they are restricted to.  I personally don't use the guides for the walkthroughs unless I am absolutely stuck I try and keep them as collectable items.  Which is why I would have liked to see a hardcover limited edition copy with maybe an art book built in because for such a beautiful game I have to think they have some type of art book in the works.
3929361
I thought I was buying a "Game Guide" as the title suggests.  I received some crappy C&C 3 "novel".

Lame
1471138
I have mixed feelings about this guide. It's pretty good as a video game guide. But it lacks the flavor and soul of the&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/The-Legend-of-Zelda-A-Link-to-the-Past-Nintendo-Player-s-Strategy-Guide/dp/B000AMPXNM/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past Nintendo Player's Strategy Guide</a>, which has great illustrations and is written more like a book of lore than a guide. This one is probably a better choice if you're a video game novice and need lots of help.
1482069
I love this game and I played it years ago without the guide. Back then I didn't use many guides but over the past 2 years I have been on a hunt for cheap guides to collect and buying this has made me play the game again. It has been very helpful and I believe that reading this has helped me find items in areas that I most likely missed 10 years ago. I am very happy with this purchase.
4553988
Love the game, but it game without a booklet. I know that's not the biggest deal, but if I'm paying 50 bucks for a game if like it to come with everything.