[General Discussion] Won’t you walk this way, walk this through.

Just within the past 2 weeks I picked up the Okami and Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth walkthrough guides. These two guides are the first walkthroughs that I have bought which I actually intend to use as I’m playing my game. The very first walkthrough guide was for Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear which I bought solely because it was selling at 99 cents, and I was curious of how a tactical FPS was like.I haven’t really gone through much of either guide yet, but even if I don’t really intend to use these guides, I’m glad that I have that extra “supplement” of games that I really do like.

For this thread, list (and also expound with detail) the walkthrough guides you have and how much you refer to them to help you along. Do you find that these guides are any useful to you? Do you prefer to have something “official” that accompanies games you love or do you find fan created walkthrough guides from gamefaqs just as, if not more adequate and also more economical for you?

Well for starters:

I picked up the Okami guide since after reading that this game takes A LONG time to complete and has many mini side quests along the way, I thought it'd be nice to pick up the guide book along with it, plus it has great illustrations of Ameratsu and the rest of the crew.

As for the Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth guide, I picked that up since I wanted to have a concise yet proper guide to make sure I get all the necessary steps to get the A ending for the PSX version of the game (which I could just as easily gotten off gamefaqs, but c'mon it's Valkyrie FREAKING Profile!).

The guides I intend to get are the VP: Silmeria guide (which is hard as fuck to find), and the Final Fantasy XII LE guide, which is supposedly coming out a full week prior to the game's release, about Oct 20.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

GameFAQs is better than buying guides for the most part, simply because it's free. And you can get a second opinion.

Also, it's good for constantly updating games so you get all the content covered, not just what's at release.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I also prefer the sexy free option of GameFAQs if I ever get stuck so much I want to cry and write poems. Those official guides are simply far too expensive to bother about here (I guess shipping costs jack them up by eight hundred thousand percent!)

I do own some though! I bought a stack of unofficial bumper guide things for SNES games a thousand years ago when a book store was going bust. They have walkthroughs for games nobody would ever need them for, like Crash Dummies and Yoshi's Cookie. HOW DO I PLAY THIS PUZZLE GAME? I also have a Mystic Quest Legend one, it came with the game. This also reveals that I owned that game once upon a time.

How ya doing, buddy?

I've been using GameFAQs since... wow, since the fifth grade, my Internet didn't even display images, so I was all for the ASCII (that right?) walkthroughs. That aside, I still buy the occasional walkthrough, they're cool if you're going through an RPG with a friend, the two of you can alternate navigator and pilot positions.

GameFAQs is almost always more informative, though, because the guides are written by people who are passionate about the game they're writing for, rather than people who're being paid to put print on paper.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Quote:

you're going through an RPG with a friend, the two of you can alternate navigator and pilot positions.

That's so cool and nerdy and the same time, it's AMAZING!

I was speaking idiomatically.

I only ever use guides if I'm stuck on a particular puzzle so buying an entire guide seems like a huge waste of money. I've never seen what the point is of spending money on a game and then spending more money to have all the fun of playing it taken away by being led through by a guide.

Call me old fashioned but I like to work things out for myself once in a while.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

That's true, however, I find there are certain things in side quests you'd have NO CLUE how to do or how to figure out, especially in RPGs, like the "how the hell was I supposed to know that?". This goes with either gamefaqs or an actual guide.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Spatula

That's true, however, I find there are certain things in side quests you'd have NO CLUE how to do or how to figure out, especially in RPGs, like the "how the hell was I supposed to know that?". This goes with either gamefaqs or an actual guide.

Haha, see: A ending in Lenneth, right? It's understandable, and I use guides quite often when I'm seeking a 2nd opinion (as mentioned earlier).

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I like to purchase official guides sort of as an extension to the game. Since they often times are presented nicely with artwork and useful information not so much just the walkthrough bits. I also prefer properly written guides to GameFAQs because 97% of the FAQs on that website are written in such a way that I need to run twelve different English-English translators to understand WTF the author is attempting to say. Nothing on this planet is more frustrating than trying to get a bit of help for a game and being stuck reading a poorly written guide where you have to spend 15 minutes trying to decifer what's being said. GameFAQs is the most useless useful website there is.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

For me it depends on how much I like the game as to if I want something official or not. The one guide I really really wanted was the one for Star Ocean the Second Story, for getting those extra things that I had no idea about the first time I played. I miraculously managed to find it, and bought it in a heartbeat.

There's one guide I bought mostly for the artwork. Another that a friend gave to me, and one I seem to have permanently borrowed, as I borrowed it from a friend's boyfriend, they broke up, and... he never did ask for it back (it's a long story really, not going into it).

Besides that I have no issues looking up walkthroughs online, especially if it's a game that has no official guide or the guide isn't easy to find. Or maybe I'm just cheap. I did help "navigate" from an online walkthrough for a friend when she was playing Wind Waker. That was fun!

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'm in a boat that I know a lot of other people aren't. I buy guides. A fair number of them. But I rarely ever read them, and haven't used one to actually get me through a game since, well, probably the PS1 days and Chrono Cross.

I own, as of this posting, 75 strategy guides. Almost all of them I haven't read through, and the ones I have tend to be after I'm done the game in question.

I don't really know why I buy them, to be honest. I like having them though. Sort of a secondary collection of game stuff or something, I don't really know.

You're going to have to excuse these shitty phone cam pics. it's the best I could do.





I've got nothing compared to SailorDaravon though, who told me he had 193 or so guides at last count. Which is nuts.

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Well Skills, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. I salute you.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I got guides for Final Fantasy 8 and Chrono Cross after beating the games, just to get all the stuff I missed and fully complete the games. I also bought a guide for Lunar: Eternal Blue because the guide was nice and hardcover and included jokes that were funny to read.

When I was a kid, I used to read through those half-guides Nintendo Power and other magazines would include in their magazines for games I didn't own yet. I remember actually referring to one of those for Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and finding out about the warp whistles in Mario 3 before I played.

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Most of the time I just stick to GameFaqs, and try not to look unless I'm really stuck. The only guides I've bought in recent memory were Final Fantasy Tactics (for the job system) and Radiata Stories (for all the friends). Normally I'm not a completionist, but in those games there was so much that could be missed without a guide, I think it was worth it.

I also bought an unofficial guide for FFVI when I was much younger and lacked the internet, but that guide sucked.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Probably the only guides I ever recall getting at all are Pokemon: R/B/Y, Pokemon Gold and Silver adventure guide, and Evolution (Dreamcast). I didn't even purchase Evolution myself... I got it as a gift... But my question is, what good is a guide with a game that has a random dungeon system attached to it?

Since GameFAQs, I haven't really considered buying one... I'd rather spend the $15 on something else. Maybe another game or something... Used just to save me money.

FELIPE NO

You didn't mention that you used a guide for ICO, Spat.

As for me I've only purchased and used a few guides in my entire life. The one for Ocarina of Time, because I was stuck on the forsaken Water Temple. Then there was the Tekken 3 guide because I planned on "mastering" the game. The result of that was a 11 hit combo with Julia before I put it down.

I also have the guide to Chrono Trigger, and yes, the first time I played Chrono Trigger was with a guide. It was an awesome guide, and totally worth the money. I don't think these new guides are worth it though, unless it's for Disgaea 1/2 or other highly complicated games.

Okami seems really easy. I think the only real use an Okami guide would get would be finding the extra Glass Beads hidden throughout the world. Aside from that I can't see it getting much use.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I used one for gamefaqs for Ico. Elixir, if I were to mention every single game that I consulted on, it'd be probably close to 25-30 games.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I got about four guides (DQVIII, RE4, DMC3 and Castlevania: COD). Simply enough, my reasons for getting the guides is that not only I get pretty pictures, I also can refer to them ANYTIME whenever I'm off the PC (because someone is using it).

The common problem is some of the shit in games is normally updated and/or got their stats replaced so I think first whenever I buy a guide.

Except the Silmeria guide, which I'll eventually get.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Yes I buy guides for as many of my games as I can but then, I do only play RPG's and it's so easy to miss things in those games. The reason I started buying them was when I was trying to make the 'ultimate sword' in a game (possibly Breath of Fire 3 or 4?) and found that I needed the rusty sword I'd started the game with. The guide on gamefaqs had in capitals 'UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SELL THIS SWORD' Unfortunately, I didn't look at gamefaqs until I was about halfway through - aw shit! Since then I buy guides whenever they're available for the games I buy, it's the main reason I joined ebay and what most of my purchaes are as we don't get many guides here in NZ.

And yes, I use them constantly. Although I like to do an area first then and then refer to the guide to see what, if anything, I've missed. I also find the side quest sections invaluable as so many would be easy to miss. To date, I've probably got about 30 guides.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Another for GameFAQs, although I actually have:

SNK Vs. Capcom: Chaos
- usage = 0% (I bought it for the neat character pics in each section, because it was $4.99, and the cabinet was taken out of our arcade for some inane reason)

Pokemon Emerald
- usage = 99% (Totally pretty pics, and I used it obsessively to see what moves each pokemon learn to see whether a pokemon was worthy to slug through levelling up with, as well as if they evolve or not. With way over a 100 pokemon, I don't have time for guesswork and wasted effort.)

Final Fantasy IX and X
- usage = 60% (I'm always fooled by nice-looking pictures. I only really used it to clear all the sidequests and not miss any items. The normal in-game paths are pretty easy and I never had trouble finding out where to go. I did want to prepare myself for some nasty bosses though.)

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I really hate using any type of walkthrough guide in general (official strategy guides or GameFAQs), mainly because I feel it drags down the gameplay exprerience when you have to stop and read something every so often. I'll use GameFAQs if I get really stuck (as in I can't progress in the game), or after I finish a game to find secrets I missed, but in general I never use them while playing the main game.

Nonetheless, I have owned a few during my time. I have the Official DKC3 Player's Guide, which me and my sister used while playing the game together. Honestly, we didn't need it (we beat the first two games perfectly fine without one), but since we somehow got our mom to actually buy it along with the game, we gladly used it while we played the game.

The stupidest purchase of a guide from me was the Tomb Raider III Strategy Guide. As if my purchase of the games alone wasn't stupid enough, I bought this guide that I never used along with one of them. Why was it stupid? Because I never actually played any of these games, I just used codes to beat them. I basically bought them just to see the cutscenes, which now seems like a total waste of money. Of course, buying a strategy guide to a game I never actually played is an even bigger waste.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I use both storebought guides and gameFAQs. One, the official guides are simply just pretty. Two, that's pretty much it. Three, nope, still nothing else coming to mind in terms of reasoning as to why or why not.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I've used a guide for basically every game I own. Not because I suck at gaming, but simply because I don't want to miss anything the first time through. Lately, with all the games I wanna play being released at the same time (and most of them are 40+ hour games -- I'm still on a year-long backlog ), I want to make sure I get everything done on the first playthrough, if that's possible.

Also, guides are becoming somewhat of a collector's item these days. For some games like VP Lenneth and Silmeria, Okami, and Disgaea 2, publishers don't put out 16,000 guides like they did for Smackdown vs. Raw and MK: Armageddon. So it's a collector thing, too. I mean, how many people do you know have the Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG guides from way back? I do. Oh yeah, I do.

FELIPE NO

Quote:

For some games like VP Lenneth and Silmeria

I will agree with you with not being able to find a guide for Valkyrie Profile 2, as I am still waiting for my preorder, which has since long past due. As well, I have seen the Okami walkthrough guide on sale at Best Buy, however on the same token, I haven't come across any of the Valkyrie Profile 2 guides elsewhere.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by SouthJag

I've used a guide for basically every game I own. Not because I suck at gaming, but simply because I don't want to miss anything the first time through. Lately, with all the games I wanna play being released at the same time (and most of them are 40+ hour games -- I'm still on a year-long backlog ), I want to make sure I get everything done on the first playthrough, if that's possible.

Also, guides are becoming somewhat of a collector's item these days. For some games like VP Lenneth and Silmeria, Okami, and Disgaea 2, publishers don't put out 16,000 guides like they did for Smackdown vs. Raw and MK: Armageddon. So it's a collector thing, too. I mean, how many people do you know have the Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG guides from way back? I do. Oh yeah, I do.

You know, I had the Super Mario RPG guide and I loaned it to a friend who took off with it to Chicago. Fucking munter. I, much like Skills, collect walkthroughs. I think they're a great little item to have, not only to 100% games, but for the art and the way they look on a shelf.

Jam it back in, in the dark.