| Final Fantasy XIII: The Complete Official Guide |  | Creator: Piggyback
Brand: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $16.49
as of 7/30/2010 07:49 CDT details
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Seller: Amazon.com
Rating:  68 reviews
Sales Rank: 2,387
Platform: Not Machine Specific
Media: Paperback
Pages: 255
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 10.6 x 8.1 x 0.7
MPN: 9780307468376
ISBN: 0307468372
Dewey Decimal Number: 794
EAN: 9780307468376
Publication Date: March 9, 2010
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Product Description
Every secret, every side-quest, every mini-game, every bonus, every Achievement and every Trophy revealed and explained in a dedicated Extras chapter.
Dedicated walkthrough charts the most rewarding path through this epic adventure.
Strategy & Analysis chapter exposes hidden mechanics, advanced battle tactics and techniques for obtaining optimal rewards.
All-encompassing Inventory and Bestiary chapters feature exhaustive lists and tables covering all enemies, weapons and shops.
Bears all the hallmarks of a Piggyback guide, including annotated maps, hi-res screenshots and a wealth of exclusive, official artwork.
Carefully designed to avoid unnecessary story spoilers.
Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 68
 The FFXIII Encyclopedia (PS3 and Xbox 360) March 10, 2010
A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
44 out of 49 found this review helpful
This is the first and apparently complete guide on Final Fantasy XIII. For your money, you get over 270 glossy, 8.5x11", full color, beautifully illustrated pages that, as far as I can tell cover EVERYTHING that you'd ever want to know about the game except for most of spoilers - the assumption is that you do NOT want to see spoilers.
The book is divided into six main section and an Index:
- QUICKSTART - things you need to know as you start the game and for the first few hours of play.
- WALKTHROUGH - the bulk of the book (over 120 pages). It has all the maps, all the scripted encounters - and much of FFXIII is tightly scripted. It's a good thing to have whenever you get stuck and discouraged. The authors promise that spoilers were kept to a minimum.
- STRATEGY AND ANALYSIS - here you get hints on tactics and strategy, hidden games mechanics are covered, everything there is to know about the Crystarium and Paradigm features. It's page after page after page of illustrated data that help you get insights on how to develop your character and how your team is likely to perform under various paradigms. I can't say that I understand all the graphs and charts at this time but I expect to visit the chapter more and more as I advance deeper into the story.
- INVENTORY - every item you equip affects the outcome of the battle and this chapter has it all, complete with tips and with the mind-boggling charts where dozens if not hundreds of items are analyzed and evaluated. In addition, each character's weapons are analyzed separately.
- BESTIARY - If you didn't know, it turns out that there are 240 monsters you are likely to meet and here you can see exactly what they look like and what their strengths and vulnerabilities are.
- EXTRAS - it's a checklist of side and optional quests. There are also a few pages on trophies but, most interestingly you get the actual story of the 13 FFXIII days, all followed by a few more pages dedicated to 'analysis and speculation'. And, if you are someone who bothers to actually read 'the signs', you get a Cocoon-to-English alphabet decoder.
I am VERY pleased with this book. It's unlikely that I will ever read everything but I will definitely read the first and last chapters, refer to the Walkthrough section when in trouble, read 'strategy and analysis' maybe minus most of the stats, check the monster listings and and the inventory section when curious about enemies or items.
The most well-written guide I've ever seen. April 6, 2010
Rixiden (Georgia, USA)
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I've seen a lot of different guides for games and this company Piggyback is the best I've seen so far. Nothing is missing from this guide. It's got everything you need, like an encyclopedia for FFXIII. The words are intelligent and descriptive and they think of anything you may need to know at any given point in the game. They even have spoiler warnings and an index, as well as an intermission mid-story to get you prepped for the rest of the game. It has an excellent strategy and analysis section that teaches you everything about the way the game functions, as well as tables for every weapon, accessory, component, dismantles, EVERYTHING.
A+ best I've seen in about 18 years of hardcore gaming.
Informative guide, mostly well presented March 24, 2010
Nona (CA United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
(This is a review for the hardcover collector's edition, which is sold out on amazon.com right now. The differences between the hardcover and paperback version are fairly minimal, though.)
I don't normally buy strategy guides for video or computer games, and this is the first guide I've purchased in at least a decade. Nowadays, comprehensive game information and walkthroughs can usually be found on the Internet for free, so it's not really the information inside the guide that I was interested in buying. Rather, it was the appeal of a professionally written, well-designed book which was both pleasant to look at and easy to read. That it turned out to have lots of good information in it was a welcome side-effect!
The guide is quite comprehensive, with a section devoted to a walkthrough of the story portion of the game. It has the mandatory maps and treasure charts, but also provides useful strategic information on how to overcome powerful bosses and monsters. Unlike some previous Final Fantasy games, FF13 has its fair share of difficult (or at least nontrivial) battles, so for certain tricky encounters the walkthrough might come in handy. Nevertheless, it isn't overwhelmingly difficult to finish the game without using a guide. The optional mark sidequests can be much more difficult than any encounters in the main story, and the guide provides detailed suggestions on strategy for defeating these monsters.
Where this book really shines is in its detailed explanation of some of the mechanics of the game which are not so immediately obvious. For example, it provides precise numerical information on how the weapon and accessory upgrading system works, which is given a rather vague explanation in the game. You'll also learn how battle ratings are calculated and how they impact the items you receive, and there are complete charts of all the weapons and accessories in the game. There is also considerable analysis of this information, which explains effective general strategies that will optimize the battle performance of your party. There's a fairly in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the six main characters of FF13, and a lot of discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of each paradigm.
The book is also pleasant to look at and read. The writing is high quality - certainly higher quality than free guides written by non-professionals on the Internet - and the included images from the game are well-chosen. As a matter of fact, half of the appeal of this guide to me was as a sort of art book. There are a few images which are of unusually low-resolution, but these are definitely in the minority. The hardcover version has an "extras" section which I believe is not in the paperback version; it has some interesting trivia (like an actual translation of the Pulse and Cocoon writing systems) and a nice synopsis of the story of the game.
One last note - if you are playing the game through for the first time, you might want to be careful to not read ahead of where you are in the game. While the authors did their best to minimize spoilers both in the walkthrough section of the guide as well as in the more statistics oriented sections, there's only so much they can do. If you're only interested in the information in this guide, you can probably get most of that for free on the Internet, but the design and writing in this guide certainly makes it worth the price.
Finally They Get A Guide Right March 12, 2010
J. Christiansen (Minnesota)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
It seems Piggyback knows how to create a guide (review of the hardcover), a sleek cover (not overly cluttered like most FF American graphics), high quality paper, in-depth coverage of everything, high quality images. Everything about this screams perfection. The hardcover was 100% worth it. We need more guides like this one.
Very well put together March 10, 2010
S. Johnson (Denver, CO)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
In a nutshell this is one of the classiest and well-thought out strategy guides I have seen. I was disappointed there wasn't a collector's edition of the game itself but after seeing this guide in person, I am no longer disappointed.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 68
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