Rating: 
Summary: To spoil or not to spoil...
Review: Well, there is a lot to say, but I begin with this: buy this book, but know that you are buying a badly written book with a lot of flaws and bad aspects. In the end, it is always the question of spoiling the fun of discovery if you give too much detailed information, and that is precisely the problem with this book. In an atempt to not spoil the fun of discovery the authors gave half-way informations that in my opinion ends up spoiling the fun of discovery anyway. If you stop to think about it: what is the purpose of a strategy guide? Well, the original concept was to offer every single nook and cranny of every corner of the game in full color and detail. However you should organize the material in a way that it could be acessed without making the reader see unecessary information. This book does neither, once it omits a lot of the subplots but at the same time say that they are there. Example: they mention a plot with Montaron and Xzar but do not say when and how. Come on! If I didn't want to SPOIL my fun I wouldn't have bought the damn book in the first place! If I bought it is because I want to spoil it or I already played the game but now want to explore all areas previosly missed. So frankly, buy but be prepared for disapointment. I suggest the good old Internet, they have sites much more complete that this book. PS: Don't even get me started with the romance version of the walkthrough! What the hell is that? You want to write a romance version of the game plot, cool, that's a very good concept, but have the decency to write it in an atractive way, wich is definetly NOT the case of the adventure of the infamous Diana Nightflame.
Rating: 
Summary: Very incomplete
Review: This book doesn't even come close to giving away all the Baldur's Gate secrets. It seems as though it tries to help guide you without giving away too much. To me that defeats the purpose of a strategy guide. In my opinion, a strategy guide should list ALL the treasures, ALL the traps, ALL the hidden items, ALL the subplots, etc. This book doesn't, and I felt it was a waste of money. I found better strategy guides on the web.
Rating:
Summary: This book is okay... If you lost your game manual.
Review: This book is incredibly bad. Its mostly just the manual reprinted. Under the character section I didn't find how to make a good character, I found the exact same descriptions used in the game. People say this book is good because it doesn't hold your hand. This book just pretends your inept. The "walkthrough" was mostly the exaact same stuff that your journal gives you, with the other being the decisions that the person who played the game made.
It just tells you some of what you need to know to beat teh game, and the rest it jsut hints at. The guide just names the side-quests, it doens't help with any of them, also everything is piled around so that you don't have a cohesive, chapter by game chapter guide, rather parts of the chapter all over the book. For crying out-loud, they made two seperate walkthroughs, neither of which is very helpful.Save your money, because this book is just an expensive manual.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that shows you what to do but doesn't hold your hand.
Review: I don't know what people are moaning about. A strategy guide should and does show you what to do. This does just that. Just because it doesn't hold your hand and point you through everthing, doesn't mean its a bad guide. There is a long walkthrough at the beginning that is not that helpful, because it's in a story format. After that it tells you a path to follow and a brief description of most of the sub plots. A list and description of mage spells, and a section for secrets. There is a list of how to create a perect character for each class, and at the very end a list of monsters and their hit points and thier level. What more do you want, it is a guide that relys on the fact that the person playing the game might be able to make thier on decisions.
Rating: 
Summary: As much or as little as you want to know about the game.
Review: I bought "Baldur's Gate: Official Strategy Guide" BEFORE I read any of the reviews. I was disappointed to see so many that informed potential buyers to save their money. After reading the reviews - and prior to the arrival of the book - I was sorry I had spent the money but decided to give it a chance. After reading the guide, I felt compelled to write a review supporting it. I feel the strategy guide gives the player as much or as little information as she or he wants to know. I found it very helpful. The only negative criticism I agree with is that it could have used a table of contents. In spite of the fact that it does warn you before you read each chapter as to how much it will give away, it would have been much better if I could have turned to exactly what I was looking for without having to go searching for it. All in all, I highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Extremely worthless...
Review: This "guide" if it qualifies to be called that, has all but no content, it's cryptic, obscure, gives no direct information, and free text/graphic guides from fan sites or gamefaqs on the internet provide infinitely more information for no cost. Avoid this, it's a waste of good money, and all too many trees.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Worthless
Review: Some people apparently liked this book because it didn't give away too much of the plot.... why were these people reading a guidebook? The Icewind Dale guidebook was amazing. It had a complete walkthrough that took you through all of the little nooks and crannies of the game and separate sections for every item type and creature you can find/encounter. The main section of this book is vague journal entries that are intended to take you throught the major plot moments. This was an awful idea as a typical entry reads something like "We hurried through the cavern encountering countless skeletons, spiders, and mercenaries". That will get you nowhere! If you're reading the guide you wanna know what corridors you will walk down and exactly who you will encounter. The main narrative ignores almost all of the little subquests in the game. If you don't take on a good number of these quests your characters aren't going to have the experience you will need to beat the game. The section on subquests is nearly indecipherable. The most inexcusable sin committed by this guide is it's horrible maps. The maps are not no help at all. The map of the sewers in Baldur's gate will not tell you what you will find in any given room or corridor. I usually buy the guidebook for any rpg i play just to make life a little simpler, this book was no help at all. the game's non-linear setup would be challlenging for any writer but they coudl have at least labelled the maps!
Rating:
Summary: lacks info for beginners
Review: I was very disapointed in the book. One of the main pieces of information I was looking for was how the ratings of weapons and armor work, ie is a 2D4 sword better or worse than a 1D10 sword or how about a 1D10+1 sword. The book does have a list of the weapons and armor but no ranking. Also the quests and subquests lack enough info. The maps are unreadable. Overall I was extremely disapointed.
Rating:
Summary: I agree with John Ciko
Review: I use stategy guides to answer specific questions about games, items, and quests. This book is almost worthless. The maps and diagrams are too small to read and have no labels on any of the streets, buildings, or points of interest. At least one of the diagrams is of the wrong part of town. Many of the subquests are omitted and the ones that are included consist of one descriptive sentence. The book has no logical organization for finding anything. I have spent hours looking for some information on some aspect of the game without success or with very limited success. This is probably the most frustrating "Strategy Guide" that I own. I agree with John Ciko's review that much better information is available on the Internet.
Rating:
Summary: Allows you to "cheat" as much, or as little, as you want!
Review: This is an excellent guide! It has basically three different levels of "aid" that you can utilize as you play BG. You can get a general feel for the game and how it should go with the walk-through, you can learn about some of the less obvious missions that you might otherwise miss in the second section, and the third section reveals answers to riddles and how to kill various monsters. But there is still a ton of stuff the guide doesn't mention that you can discover on your own. I found this extremely helpful, and didn't think that it ruined the game at all.
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