Alundra 2 Official Strategy Guide (Official Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Check out an online FAQ instead...
Review: At first glance, it looks like a fairly comprehensive guide. But once you sit down and try to play through the game with it, it's flaws (and there are many) really begin to show. As Alundra 2 is a fairly linear title, there was a concentrated effort on providing a walkthrough of all the game's dungeons, rather than fill up pages with diagrams of towns and plot spoilers. This is a strong point of any strategy guide, this one in particular. However, being that a majority of the game is puzzle solving, a text based approach is simply not effective most of the time. The book mentions the puzzles to you, and merely says "solve the puzzle and the door will open" (or something to that effect) 50% of the time. This doesn't help players who can't figure out how to do this on their own (that's why they purchased the guide!). The few screenshots that accompany the generously margined pages are quite blurry, and thus do not help the player achieve any sense of orientation. And more often than not, these "screen shots" are placed 4 or 5 paragraphs after the solution (if there is one) is mentioned! Sometimes I had to flip back a page just to see what the caption was talking about. All of the major areas (and some of the minor ones) are mapped out in the back of the guide, but in such a small scale that it's impossible to make out anything from them, save where one room leads in to another. Every aspect of one game area was locked onto one or two pages (i.e., the first town, which has 2 areas, takes up one page, while one of the larger dungeons, with over 25 areas, also takes up one page--get the picture?). These maps are additonally incompletely labeled; you'll find no mention or pointing out of the powerful items, or half of the game's secrets for that matter. Mini-games are mentioned, but not in any bit of detail save where to find them. And forget about finding the puzzle pieces, special rings, and trading items. The only ones mentioned in the walkthrough are things I guarantee this author found; no effort was made to make this part of the book complete, and that was quite frustrating. The only other thing I consider a strong point to this book would be the enemy compendium and boss guide. Not that any of the game's creatures were that challenging, but an effort was made here to give the player as much information about the enemies as possible--this is as should be. But having this one piece doesn't make the guide outstanding. You're better off with an online FAQ to get you through the tougher puzzles and to help you locate the game's secrets.

Rating:
Summary: Check out an online FAQ instead...
Review: At first glance, it looks like a fairly comprehensive guide. But once you sit down and try to play through the game with it, it's flaws (and there are many) really begin to show. As Alundra 2 is a fairly linear title, there was a concentrated effort on providing a walkthrough of all the game's dungeons, rather than fill up pages with diagrams of towns and plot spoilers. This is a strong point of any strategy guide, this one in particular. However, being that a majority of the game is puzzle solving, a text based approach is simply not effective most of the time. The book mentions the puzzles to you, and merely says "solve the puzzle and the door will open" (or something to that effect) 50% of the time. This doesn't help players who can't figure out how to do this on their own (that's why they purchased the guide!). The few screenshots that accompany the generously margined pages are quite blurry, and thus do not help the player achieve any sense of orientation. And more often than not, these "screen shots" are placed 4 or 5 paragraphs after the solution (if there is one) is mentioned! Sometimes I had to flip back a page just to see what the caption was talking about. All of the major areas (and some of the minor ones) are mapped out in the back of the guide, but in such a small scale that it's impossible to make out anything from them, save where one room leads in to another. Every aspect of one game area was locked onto one or two pages (i.e., the first town, which has 2 areas, takes up one page, while one of the larger dungeons, with over 25 areas, also takes up one page--get the picture?). These maps are additonally incompletely labeled; you'll find no mention or pointing out of the powerful items, or half of the game's secrets for that matter. Mini-games are mentioned, but not in any bit of detail save where to find them. And forget about finding the puzzle pieces, special rings, and trading items. The only ones mentioned in the walkthrough are things I guarantee this author found; no effort was made to make this part of the book complete, and that was quite frustrating. The only other thing I consider a strong point to this book would be the enemy compendium and boss guide. Not that any of the game's creatures were that challenging, but an effort was made here to give the player as much information about the enemies as possible--this is as should be. But having this one piece doesn't make the guide outstanding. You're better off with an online FAQ to get you through the tougher puzzles and to help you locate the game's secrets.