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Rating: 
Summary: 90% of the info you need
Review: Although perhaps the price is a bit high for a book which needs serious work in terms of layout, the Prima guide to Startopia has all of the basic information inside it that a person would need to get going towards victory in Startopia: what plants grow in what soils on the biodeck, and what do they produce; what do the different races prefer for food/entertainment/biodeck environment; what are good strategies for the missions... etc.It is clear that the book was put together to match the release of Startopia, but they probably should have put off things until the game was closer to completion. Nothing is different in the guide than in the game, of course, but it seems as though the writers did not spend too much time playing with different possibilities themselves (a few simple strategies for dealing with emergencies, for example, are not covered, even though a person would figure it out rather quickly). One other problem is that the tech tree is not to be found in completion in the book. It appears in the game, and the evolution of your technologies is pretty obvious, so probably it wasn't neccisary anyway, but having it in the book would have given it a sense of completion. All in all, this book is really only a "must" if you don't want to go through and discover everything yourself, which only takes time (there is nothing in the book a person cannot find out themselves). However, having everything in one place and in print is still very convenient, which may be enough of a reason to buy it.
Rating: 
Summary: If you are looking for specific statistics do not get this.
Review: First, let me start off by saying that I own and have read this book throughly. This Official Stratagy Guide presents a walk-through for each of the game's 10 levels, and has several chapers covering:
1 . basic buildings and their uses
2 . research and their relative times to complete
3 . what pisses aliens off, what makes them happy
4 . agriculture bio-deck, and what plant produces what items The down side of this, is that 90% of what is in this book, you will have discovered by playing the game. What I was looking for in this stratagy guide were specific statistics. I wanted to know exactly how the Z-Ray scanner Item effects Sick Bay performance. The book does not even mention the Z-Ray scanner. There are other specifics, such as "just how useless are those Image Views, Bio-Lamps, and Chronometers"?
I wanted to know what quantifiable effect they would have on the alien populace. But guess what? This book sheds no light on any of those items at all. As a matter of fact, if you were to just read this book and not play the game, you would never know that those items even existed. Want to know how well the bench effects happines? Too bad, its not in here. Want to know the optimal placement for the garbage cans? Nope, it's not in here either. (I've found that putting garbage cans around the Dine-o-Matt and in front of the stores cuts down on about 90% of all garbage. The residents seem to drop garbage after leaving the Stores, or after using the dine-o-matt. They seem to be less inclined to drop garbage elsewhere, but you won't find that in the stratagy guide... Though, I may be wrong because I have no numbers to back me up, just my own personal experience playing with the game.... It would have been nice if the stratagy guide actually presented some real stratagy, so we could have a definite answer.) In conclusion, this book is very vague on specifics, and is basically just a walk-through. I find the walk-through included in this book totaly and utterly useless. Often they present stratagies that I found were not the best over-all stratagy. One should expect that an Official Stratagy Guide present the most optimal and efficent stratagy and to provide detailed information on how all the game mechanics work. Unfortunately, this book provides neither.
Rating: 
Summary: simply a great game!
Review: I believe that the title says it all. I mean, wow!
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