Stratagey guides, or no?

xlcatchmyfall

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so i was just wondering what everyone did, do you guys use strat guides or no? i dont have one for ffII but i do for 3, and idk what i like better, having one or not. what do you guys think?
 
I always do. Reason is because I use to get frustrated if I found out I had missed anything. Plus I want to do EVERYTHING in the game to get my moneys worth.
 
hahah true. yeah i have it for 3 and it makes it sooo much eaiser but sometimes im like ehh its kinda cheating but then again in II i dont have it and i put it down bc idk where to go now it is super frustrating not having one.
 
Nope, don't have the cheat-book, and I haven't looked up cheats or anything. ^_^

I'm trying to beat that game right now, who knows what I'll try an look up later if I get stuck, though.
 
I'm pretty adamant about not using a guide book... but for these early games I really can't object. Busta bought the guide but it's not like I'm not using it. lol Without it I'd probably have just wondered off somewhere and died, gotten frustrated, and tried to improve my long toss by hurling the controller down the dorm hallways.
 
Yeah when I play through it here this summer I'll definitely give it a go just so I know where I'm heading. I know in many games that are earlier releases, navigation can be a pain in the ass, as well as trying to locate important spells, items, and such.
 
How anyone in the world could find those invisible walls to those super-powerful items without a strategy guide is beyond me. However, I still think that there is a certain amount of enjoyment that you can get out of a game that you can't feel if you're using a strategy guide- most of the time, I only use them when I have no idea what to do next in a game or want a 100% completion rate.
 
I use startery guides with all my FFs (except 8, i couldn't find a guide for that and still cant >.<) and i dont think they ruin the enjoyment of the game. Except if you read ahead that is...
 
They don't ruin the game... but you do lose some of that sense of completion. Kinda like how when you own something that you earned the money to buy, instead of just being handed the money. It makes it "special".
 
I love strategy guides, mostly as a sort of collectible. For XII I found that at times I had to use it, simply because my Japanese wasn't good enough to understand what was going on all of the time. Asides from that I tend to reserve guides for completion and side-quests, I'll do my utmost to finish the main game without them.
 
If you like the game and want to get 100% out of it. I think that you should play the game through without the guide first. After that go through the game again with it.
 
see that sounds like it would be a great idea, but sometimes you jsut want to start a new game like another FF or another rpg game thats really long and stuff, and going through it 2xs isnt totally an option. but if you have the time, that makes sense.
 
I'm with Cloud 2007 here completely. I always play the game the first time through without a strategy guide. After I beat it, and only after, will I use any sort of strategy guide, be it official or otherwise.

It just takes the fun out of the game (for me anyways) to know what to do next. I once made the mistake of using the strategy guide before beating the game with Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, and I found that instead of being engulfed by the storyline, I was instead taken over by the side quests and obtaining everything you could.

I think that, in a good game, if you try to get everything the first time around, then you're going to miss a lot of the storyline. For instance, in FFVII, you could easily beat the game in under, or at least around, 40 hours. However, in order to get everything (Beat all the weapons, breed a gold chocobo, get Aeris' final limit break before the end of the first disk, etc) you're bound to run into at least 100 hours with tons of grinding, lots of chocobo catching, constant resetting materia configurations, and then some more grinding.

I just can't get as emotionally involved with the story as I'd like to when I'm constantly being interrupted to grind for hours just so I can get a certain item before a certain point in the game when it would otherwise become no longer available.
 
^ You really love long posts, don't ya OmniscientOnus.
I love reading your posts though.

Poster above me said:
I just can't get as emotionally involved with the story as I'd like to when I'm constantly being interrupted to grind for hours just so I can get a certain item before a certain point in the game when it would otherwise become no longer available.
I know exactly what you mean. It gets really frustrating when that happens, losing your edge in following the storyline and going on with sidequests.
Problem with me is I don't like to play a game again once I'm done with it, unless it's between a span of a long time. AND I want my game completed, no loose ends and all that.

So I have to go "yeah" with guides.
 
i have one for all my games and they help me prepare for what is going to happen so that helps me. and it helps me look for the stuff i might hav missed
 
I usually don't buy strategy guides unless I absolutely have to, I prefer to play through a game the first time without getting everything and instead just going through the story and finishing it. Then I go through it a second time to get everything I possibly can, even if it takes 300 hours.
 
i used one During FFX and FFX-2 but that was mainly so i could get the celestial weapons in X and all the dressphere's and Sphere's on X-2
 
I don't like guides. I used to use them all the time but looking back I realised I was never getting full enjoyment just by being told where to go. Final Fantasy is a game of discovery and exploration and we should respect that. FFXII was the first one I did completly without a guide and enjoyed it more than I would have following the big guide my brother bought.

Saying that, I see no problem in looking up on the internet to find info on things you missed out, because most you'll never find just casualy.
 
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