Rating: 
Summary: Wish it was better
Review: Like many other gamers I buy a strategy guide to have all my hints in one place. This book barely gives you what you need and sends you to their website for the rest. You are basicaly at the mercy of how long they feel like keeping the site running or how much you are willing to print out to add to an already pricey book. There isn't a page in this book that doesn't have some sort of callout box suggesting you go the website to learn an even BETTER way to defeat a monster, or learn where this or that magic item is hidden. It gets frustrating and really takes away from the gameplay. Oh and as another reader pointed out you can't just go to the site you have to have a special game code for EACH hint.
Overall, the book's redeeming qualities are its artwork and the fact you couldn't really find some of the items and answer questions in a timely manner without it.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible
Review: This guide is TERRIBLE! Do not buy it! The PlayOnline makes part is needed to do ANYTHING! The problem is, the playonline site doesn't even work anymore!
Rating:
Summary: Worthless
Review: By far this is the worst guide Ive seen for any video game. It calims to have a detailed walkthrough unfortunately, the entire guide is not detailed. It skips over everything and gives you a username to use at playonline.com when it should go into greater detail. Go to gamefaqs.com and print out a text guide you will be doing yourself a much bigger favor.
Rating:
Summary: Honestly.....
Review: The guides to the past final fantasy's were a great help and provided much useful information. However, with this guide and the 'playonline' addition, the user gets almost NO information without having to go "online" to get more. Simply [bad] to be quite honest. Boss battle strategies are kept short and offer more "playonline" help to the user if he finds that the HP count of the boss is simply not enough to work with. This guide flat out [horrible]
Rating: 
Summary: THE WORST FINAL FANTASY GUIDE I HAVE SEEN!
Review: Let me start by saying that I own 1 of each of the Official US Final Fantasy guides available for the Playstation. So I speak from experience. This guide will help you considerably on your journey through the vast lands of Final Fantasy 9. HOWEVER! EVERY other Final Fantasy Guide is done far better. In this guide they give vauge discriptions of what to do and then they tell you to go to there web site for More detailed information.
Talk about bogus! All the other guides F.F.7,8,10,Anthology,Chronicals,&Origins All give far more detail on what to do. If you want to beat this game and find all the secrets this guide is needed. So is Internet access HOWEVER! If you need help buy this guide but be for warned it is not as good as the rest of the F.F. guides. This is proven by the fact that this was the only 1 in the series to be made this way! Over all I was dissapointed with this guide but it is better than nothing. BARELY!
Rating:
Summary: It's a bad guide but it isn't the author's fault...
Review: Yes, this guide is terrible and quite possibly the worst strategy guide ever made before and without a doubt is the cheapest way for BradyGAMES to make lots of money for their company. Lots of people want to blame the author, Dan Birlew and they keep saying "Had David Cassady stayed none of this would've happened." Well, in an honest appeal, David Cassady works for Prima now and Dan Birlew took his place. This was the first guide he wrote for Final Fantasy and I'm sure he didn't want it to be like this. After all, he's only doing his job to write it. The lay out and such is done by a different staff and if you read in your Final Fantasy IX instruction booklet, the whole "Play Online" idea belonged COMPLETELY to SQUARE! Therefore it isn't Dan Birlew you should be blaming, but Squaresoft for the reason you got this....Granted, there are a few (well, lots) of things in this guide that are missing. First of all, the biggest one as you can see is the "Play Online" issue. But there are also other problems than that such as the fact that there are no maps for an are and the screenshots aren't clear. But to be much more detailed about the "Playonline" thing. The website itself is terrible and runs very slow. Register is free but if you don't visit the site pretty much everyday then they erase your account. This guide could've been so much better. For every secret they send you to playonline to get the full secret. For every boss they send you to play online. Even the bestiary [drags] a lot because of playonline. All the maps that SHOULD'VE been in the guide? Playonline. BradyGAMES claims that they went through with this idea to advertise playonline because they were tired of people complaining about plot spoilers and I guess they got fed up with it. Though somebody out there HAS to like this guide because it still doesn't have 1 star. Listen, it seems that BradyGAMES has forgotten what a guide should do with this one. Who cares if a guide has plot spoilers? The whole basis of a guide is to do just that, "guide" you. I never cared about plot spoiler before (I only get mad when the ending is spoiled), and usually BradyGAMES guides have more quality to them. ...This isn't a "strategy" guide its an advertisement brochure for playonline, but remember, Dan Birlew isn't the one to blame for this. I admit, I collect strategy guides, but that doesn't mean I don't look at them. I look for the good ones, and this certainly isn't a good one. Look someplace else for Final Fantasy IX information. One last note: The game Final Fantasy IX is actually so easy to find everything that you don't need a Strategy Guide in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: This is horrible!
Review: This book is a piece of garbage. Probably the only sentences in this book are "for more info on so and so please go to Playonline.com". Don't waste your money on this thing. Just go to gamefaqs.com and download the walkthrough. This is worth nothing.
Rating:
Summary: Without a doubt the worst strategy guide I have ever seen
Review: If you're anything like me, the reason you spend money to buy a guide for a game is because you do not want to deal with going online and looking for a walkthrough if you get stuck or want boss strategies. You want to have maps and item lists and combat strategies right at your fingertips, and the guide should be able to provide that. Whoever said that this guide was suitable to print should have lost his or her job. Anything you might want to use a guide for they tell you to go to his website and type in this code. It's a PSX game, not a computer game. Not all Playstation owners have internet access, or even a computer for that matter. Or in my case it's just a huge annoyance to leave my basement in the middle of game, go up to the 2nd floor and deal with Square's horridly designed website on a 28.8 modem. Regardless of how relevant these complaints are, there is still the basic principle that you paid for a guide to provide you with this certain information. Don't waste your money this guide, if you get stuck there are plenty of free online walkthroughs that are more useful. If anyone who works for either Square or Bradygames reads this, you owe me a refund cheque.
Rating:
Summary: dan birlew must be stopped
Review: presumably it's unfair to blame dan birlew for this travesty. i'm sure he wanted to write a really, really great guide filled with useful information, and square and brady instead forced him to take out all the bits that you actually look for in a guide -- you know, like INFORMATION -- and instead insert a lot of plugs for their website... But that's really neither here nor there. Some [not nice] person, or collection of people, is responsible for this travesty, and all you and I can do is see that they don't profit from it. Fight the power! Don't buy this guide!
Rating:
Summary: you call this a guide?
Review: Whats the point of buying a guide if the guide tells you to go online to find out what u need to know...Just goto playonline.com and print the whole guide out!! Don't waste ur money on this useless book.
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