Versus Books Official Baldurs Gate II: Throne of Bhaal Perfect Guide

Rating:
Summary: Versus should stick to writing console game guides
Review: After being disappointed with the incredible failure of Versus' strategy guide for Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn(see my review for more specifics), I was holding my breath for something to improve for Throne of Bhaal.

It appears I was gravely mistaken.

This guide is essentially a couple of dozen pages of new material describing the critical walkthrough for Throne of Bhaal sandwiched between what is essentially a reprint of the same material as the Shadows of Amn guide on character creation(with a small addenum telling you to look in the manual for details on the Wild Mage) and the character listing, item list, enemy list, and cheat pages that are for the most part unchanged. The character listing, of the four sections in the back end of the guide is the most severely changed. Here the Versus staff give us a few words about the usefulness of the assorted NPC's that can join your party to help you complete the game. Of these character reviews, I found very little to be happy about. They essentially complain about the characters in a way that makes them appear utterly useless in completing the game. While there are a couple of positive statements, they complain about the limitations of the NPC's attributes to make most of them seem worthless and that there is only one special way to complete the game. The creature listing is actually quite good and I will say that I did like the details presented in it in the Shadows of Amn guide as well. The item list, however, has enough typos and mistakes to be a serious impediment to your understanding the items listed.

Finally, while I am playing Throne of Bhaal, I am playing Shadows of Amn from a fresh beginning to access some of the supposed "newly accessible" areas of the game available early on in SoA. The guide does not discuss them. Period. The failure of Versus to effectively describe side-quests is what makes this book and the previous guide a total failure in my opinion....

Rating:
Summary: More helpful than I would have imagined!!!!!
Review: I found this book to be more helpful than I would have imagined. Very pretty, many nice charts and well organized. Perhaps the writers could spare us with adolescent writing style that sacrifices substance for style. There are many online strategy guides that are much better in content, thought maybe not in quantity and beauty. I intend to use this book for a quick-review type guide when I will be playing the game for the first time and after beaten the game I will use it more often to see what I've lost in the game. The walkthrough section (which only covers the main quests) is very good and I liked have all the information about everything (spells, monsters, items etc.) in one place. One thing to keep in mind, if you haven't already played through the game and you plan to read this before beaten the game for the first time, you will most likely kill most of the fun of the game. A game without challenges grows boring fairly quickly.

Rating:
Summary: don' buy at all
Review: I've found this book to be ulest

Rating:
Summary: Buy It, But Know This . . .
Review: Okay, this book is graphically well done, like SoA Perfect Guide. It is informative, and very extensive items discription. It is actually the original SoA with editing done in some areas but the SoA game is not covered, ToB map is. Like the SoA Perfect Guide, this one can be a bit overbearing in terms of what you "should" and "shouldn't" do. It usually boils down to one choice. In the case of the warrior pool in the area of skills, you are told that you "Are wasting your time" with any of the skills, and that whirlwind is okay but don't use the others, I do not agree. Play the game first, what works for this author may not work for you and what doesn't work could work on your character. It is important to discribe skills and thier mechanics, not to tell players which ones to use, that is NOT okay. Saying a ranger with low-end racial hatred is "plain stupid" is no way to write a guide. However, thier is extensive discriptions on characters like the Cavalier's strength in the game, It is good to have an example of situations laided out to get an idea of the character but it is not good to tell a player he shouildn't play a character, like the Sorcerer. It is a hard one to play but not a waste of time. Yeah he's weak, he can only learn a limited # of spells, but in RPG terms he maybe right for you. I hate them myself but I also hate mage's in general, but that is an opinion and nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: a decent book but too much "you'll play it my way" attitude
Review: Okay, this book is graphically well done, like SoA Perfect Guide. It is informative, and very extensive items discription. It is actually the original SoA with editing done in some areas but the SoA game is not covered, ToB map is. Like the SoA Perfect Guide, this one can be a bit overbearing in terms of what you "should" and "shouldn't" do. It usually boils down to one choice. In the case of the warrior pool in the area of skills, you are told that you "Are wasting your time" with any of the skills, and that whirlwind is okay but don't use the others, I do not agree. Play the game first, what works for this author may not work for you and what doesn't work could work on your character. It is important to discribe skills and thier mechanics, not to tell players which ones to use, that is NOT okay. Saying a ranger with low-end racial hatred is "plain stupid" is no way to write a guide. However, thier is extensive discriptions on characters like the Cavalier's strength in the game, It is good to have an example of situations laided out to get an idea of the character but it is not good to tell a player he shouildn't play a character, like the Sorcerer. It is a hard one to play but not a waste of time. Yeah he's weak, he can only learn a limited # of spells, but in RPG terms he maybe right for you. I hate them myself but I also hate mage's in general, but that is an opinion and nothing more.

Rating:
Summary: Hints good for beginners, maps and lists good for experts.
Review: Pay heed to the earlier reviewers when they say the hints in this guide are often poorly considered. When they say that an NPC, spell, or item is useless, take it with a hefty grain of salt. In fact, the more vehemently they trash something, the more you should suspect that they are completely wrong. there are also mistakes and omissions. I know far more about BG2 than the authors of this book ever will. That said, I use this book frequently when I play BG2 because of the maps and list of item locations. I do not recommend using it this way as a beginner, but if you've played through the game more than 3 times and you want to know more about it, this is a good way to start. Internet newsgroup archives and web walkthroughs are usually far more thorough sources of information, however.

Rating:
Summary: don' buy at all
Review: The Throne of Bhaal Strategy Guide copies the handy class kit tables and information pages from their Shadows of Amn guide. There's also a useful item list and section on spells and effects. I just wish they had actually finished the guide before getting it published. A number of sections are incomplete, such as the final confrontation with Demogorgon in Watcher's Keep and details on Yaga Shura's Lair. In fact the section on the fire giant's lair had identical text repeated a number of times and blank boxes where pictures should have been. Awful spelling (on every page!) and poor grammar made the whole thing smack of a 1st grader's first attempt at writing. I found this book pretty much a waste of money and used a much better strategy guide by another publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Less than Perfect Guide
Review: The Throne of Bhaal Strategy Guide copies the handy class kit tables and information pages from their Shadows of Amn guide. There's also a useful item list and section on spells and effects. I just wish they had actually finished the guide before getting it published. A number of sections are incomplete, such as the final confrontation with Demogorgon in Watcher's Keep and details on Yaga Shura's Lair. In fact the section on the fire giant's lair had identical text repeated a number of times and blank boxes where pictures should have been. Awful spelling (on every page!) and poor grammar made the whole thing smack of a 1st grader's first attempt at writing. I found this book pretty much a waste of money and used a much better strategy guide by another publisher.

Rating:
Summary: Buy It, But Know This . . .
Review: This guide has a breakdown listing of the classes, joinable NPCs, abilities, spells, items, cheats and a walkthrough. It sure is hard to sift through all the opinionated BS Versus Books have included w/in, though (ex. They rate Keldorn the 2nd best NPC and Jan the worst - gee, that's not very helpful for people who don't like Keldorn and happen to like Jan). Why couldn't they instead give you tips on how to best utilize every NPC in a party? (Ex. Jan makes a fair backrow archer/mage but isn't a good combat thief so don't have him backstab.) Instead they include their irritating and unhelpful jokes: ("Jan, the little man, he likes ham and running turnip scams...sorry. We just can't think of anything nice to say about Jan," pg. 84). Wow, that's some strategy w/ real mileage. They give a low rating to the Storm of Vengeance spell based on its sparse damage, but I employ it all the time cuz the different types of damage it causes ea. round make it a great enemy-spellcasting disruptor, and I used it against Demogorgon and most dragons. They also criticize the Dragon's Breath spell even though it's commonly used; I routinely cast it to clear the field of, say, Drow. They don't like the Smite special ability cuz it pushes the opponent back quite a distance - um, that's the point, and why a lot of tough enemy fighting-types use it. A lot of opinions, no helpful alternatives or suggestions. I've found my own experience playing SoA and experimentation w/ the new ToB features more helpful than anything I read in this guide. The spell list has some omnissions and the item list has even more inaccuracies and omnissions - so I made my own item list. They even left out tips on the romances (unlike their SoA guide), still one of BG2's most obscure features. I thought this was supposed to be a STRATEGY guide, not a popularity yearbook. However, since this is the only widely-published ToB guide, you don't have a whole lot of choice in buying it if you need it . . .