The shipping was fast and the product arrived in lovely condition. However the book itself was poorly written, and if you're buying this I STRONGLY recommend reading the mini games section first as the only way to see the entire ending of the game is if you complete some of these things, a fact which is not mentioned until well AFTER you're 1/4 of the way through the book itself. I was very satisfied with the purchase, but as most of you know FF isn't a short wham-bam game and it was horribly disappointing that after getting 15-16 hours in we realized we'd be watching the end of the game on youtube anyways =p Also, there were still parts that were explained in such uncertain terms we ended up using the internet to find the answers anyways. A die hard FF fan....I was extremely disappointed in Dan Birlew's product this time.

Nearly all the way through the game and a 100% completion in one run. Without a guide like this I don't see how anyone could get 100% even after several times through the game.

My purchasing experience was excellent and my daughter was very impressed with this item as a gift. It was received timely and in excellent condition.

This strategy Guide is very very resourceful full of information and its awesome! Tells you where everything is and how to get there. If you wanna complete the game with 100% this strategy guide book is here for you!

Cody Collum

I was very pleased with the speed in which my game guides came in. They were perfect when they arrived and I was very excited to start using them.

I have read the other reviews, and have agreed with many of them. The thing i am getting pissed off about is the blitzball section. It is incredibly vague and i figured it would tell me exactly what to do in the beginning to form a great team, nor did they even think to say "formation 2,3,2 is the best strategy to score a goal, they leave alot of it out.

It is best to have it, as a refrence. But gotta say, the people who play it, IE the kids and teens across the world can form one helluva a better strategy guide then an 40 year old man EVER could. [...].

Another beautiful strategy guide, in the vein of the Final Fantasy XII guide. Big, pretty, and full of stuff. This guide spells out exactly how to get 100% completion after the walkthrough - I'm not ambitious enough for that, but I can see useful it is. The information in the walkthrough is a bit jumbled, and the superfluous charts and tables dilute the walkthrough itself, but in a way that's a consequence of the non-linear gameplay. I like the outlines of the dresspheres, which would have otherwise been difficult to get used to, and the bestiary, which includes Oversoul statistics.

What I don't like is the presentation itself. It's very easy on the eyes, but it seems like they were making the guide to be big rather than using a big guide to the fullest extent. I wasn't crazy about the game, but I'm trying to keep that from affecting my rating of the guide, because I find the book form to be quite satisfying.

I tell you, I LOVE this game, but the guide is not that well organized. It provides TOO much info, without giving readers easy and clear access to the info they are really looking for. I've also found few "errors" in the guide that I have not seen in any other Bradygames guides. I own quite a few, and the guide to FFX and Kingdom Hearts were quite exceptional. Now, I understand that the game is a nonlinear game, but they could've at least put in an index or table of contents to make finding info about a particular subject easy to find. I also found a few spelling errors. It almost seems they rushed the guide. Great images and some easy to follow maps, but otherwise, you can find better walkthroughs for free on the internet.

I found the guide to be very useful but there were some omissions that I found to be annoying.

The Goods:

1) Complete skill list for each dresssphere and garment grid. Great info and very well-done!
2) Breakdown of quests by chapter
3) Mini-game section. Especially useful for multi-chapter games.
4) There is an index-thingy printed on each page so you know which chapter you are reading about at all times.

The Bads:

1) Accessory list doesn't mention where the accessories can be found. You have to page through the entire walkthrough to find a specific item.

2) You can do things in the game that make it so you can't get an item without being warned. For example, it isn't made clear that you must talk to one certain person in each chapter to get the "Invincible" accessory until you get to chapter 5 and realize you are out of luck...Start over or go without it.

3) Towards the end chapters the authors get lazy and stop including complete maps, so you have to go to previous chapters to find your way...sloppy.

Overall a great guide and I would give it a 4.75 if I could.

I found the guide to be very useful but there were some omissions that I found to be annoying.

The Goods:

1) Complete skill list for each dresssphere and garment grid. Great info and very well-done!
2) Breakdown of quests by chapter
3) Mini-game section. Especially useful for multi-chapter games.
4) There is an index-thingy printed on each page so you know which chapter you are reading about at all times.

The Bads:

1) Accessory list doesn't mention where the accessories can be found. You have to page through the entire walkthrough to find a specific item.

2) You can do things in the game that make it so you can't get an item without being warned. For example, it isn't made clear that you must talk to one certain person in each chapter to get the "Invincible" accessory until you get to chapter 5 and realize you are out of luck...Start over or go without it.

3) Towards the end chapters the authors get lazy and stop including complete maps, so you have to go to previous chapters to find your way...sloppy.

Overall a great guide and I would give it a 4.75 if I could.

This was just as How I had expected it to be but even better. I was a bit worried thinking that the quality of my item was not going to be the same. I even thought that it was just a replica a copy of the original in a black and white form. But all of those doubts went away when I saw that this magazine was exactly I was hoping it would and more.

i thought it was excellent and i use it often and its great for any final fantasy x-2 fan

I've been an avid RPG player for years and don't have the time to go rooting around for secrets. I use guides as a time saver to get me through. It is plainly unacceptable that the FREE on-line guides provide greater depth and attention to detail than this commercially published guide; particularly when FFX-2 has strict unforgiving conditions required to achieve the 100% best ending. The content of the guide is disorganized, misleading, and often incorrect. Furthermore, the guide also omits crucial game completing information, information on items, and does not include specific details and strategies for important dungeons, monsters, and bosses.

My biggest complaint is that for a commercial guide, Dan Birlew's Final Fantasy X-2 Official Strategy Guide is simply not easy to use. The walkthrough section of the guide is inconsistent with the section on chapter completion often leaving out crucial interactions required to winning the game with 100% on the first go. Since the guide requires constant page flipping across whole sections of the entire book, it is very easy to miss relevant information. Furthermore, the language of the walkthrough is by and large sparse on specifics often making the walkthrough itself a guessing game as to what to do or where to go. Using the guide should be intuitive and fun. It should not be like trying to study for the California Bar.

My second greatest complaint is that this Brady Games publication also lacks completeness. For example, this guide fails to mention how to obtain certain items like the "End Game" garment grid. The guide omits the consequences of completing certain chapter 5 events out of order. The guide also excludes any relevant strategies and maps to the Chocobo Dungeon and the 100 levels of the Via Infinito.
For the Chocobo Dungeon, this commercial product merely graces the reader with a paragraph stating generally that useful items are somewhere in the dungeon. This is in stark contrast to the FREE online guides that put forth the effort to create a map of the Chocobo Dungeon (one even made a map out of ascii) complete with item locations and combat strategies.
The publisher's work on the Via Infinito leaves even more to be desired. It is true that this dungeon randomly generates dungeon levels. However, given the limited number of permutations the game comes up with, it would not have been impossible to generate all the maps the player will come across. This might have actually been helpful in preventing a player from getting lost in the Via Infinito. The strategy guide is also silent on combat strategies for any of the bosses or monsters throughout the entire dungeon preferring to surprise the player rather than generate any useful hints at all. With two of the most difficult bosses in the game back to back in this dungeon, the publisher should be ashamed to have the user of its product completely unprepared for the Via Infinito denizens and the final encounter.

What happens to a gamer with a guide that is disorganized, misleading, often incorrect and frequently omits cruial information? That gamer gets lost. A lot. That gamer dies a lot and does not win the game with 100% completion. Frustrated, the gamer also curses Brady Games and Dan Birlew for publishing an untested low quality guide that is a waste of time, paper and money.

I've been an avid RPG player for years and don't have the time to go rooting around for secrets. I use guides as a time saver to get me through. It is plainly unacceptable that the FREE on-line guides provide greater depth and attention to detail than this commercially published guide; particularly when FFX-2 has strict unforgiving conditions required to achieve the 100% best ending. The content of the guide is disorganized, misleading, and often incorrect. Furthermore, the guide also omits crucial game completing information, information on items, and does not include specific details and strategies for important dungeons, monsters, and bosses.

My biggest complaint is that for a commercial guide, Dan Birlew's Final Fantasy X-2 Official Strategy Guide is simply not easy to use. The walkthrough section of the guide is inconsistent with the section on chapter completion often leaving out crucial interactions required to winning the game with 100% on the first go. Since the guide requires constant page flipping across whole sections of the entire book, it is very easy to miss relevant information. Furthermore, the language of the walkthrough is by and large sparse on specifics often making the walkthrough itself a guessing game as to what to do or where to go. Using the guide should be intuitive and fun. It should not be like trying to study for the California Bar.

My second greatest complaint is that this Brady Games publication also lacks completeness. For example, this guide fails to mention how to obtain certain items like the "End Game" garment grid. The guide omits the consequences of completing certain chapter 5 events out of order. The guide also excludes any relevant strategies and maps to the Chocobo Dungeon and the 100 levels of the Via Infinito.
For the Chocobo Dungeon, this commercial product merely graces the reader with a paragraph stating generally that useful items are somewhere in the dungeon. This is in stark contrast to the FREE online guides that put forth the effort to create a map of the Chocobo Dungeon (one even made a map out of ascii) complete with item locations and combat strategies.
The publisher's work on the Via Infinito leaves even more to be desired. It is true that this dungeon randomly generates dungeon levels. However, given the limited number of permutations the game comes up with, it would not have been impossible to generate all the maps the player will come across. This might have actually been helpful in preventing a player from getting lost in the Via Infinito. The strategy guide is also silent on combat strategies for any of the bosses or monsters throughout the entire dungeon preferring to surprise the player rather than generate any useful hints at all. With two of the most difficult bosses in the game back to back in this dungeon, the publisher should be ashamed to have the user of its product completely unprepared for the Via Infinito denizens and the final encounter.

What happens to a gamer with a guide that is disorganized, misleading, often incorrect and frequently omits cruial information? That gamer gets lost. A lot. That gamer dies a lot and does not win the game with 100% completion. Frustrated, the gamer also curses Brady Games and Dan Birlew for publishing an untested low quality guide that is a waste of time, paper and money.

I would recommend this strategy guide for anyone who owns this game because it's difficult to achieve 100% completion without it. I found the guide to be very deep but easy to follow and helpful at getting through missions, collecting treasure, and defeating foes.

Many pretty pictures too.

My husband is just wonderful! He got me the game and the strategy guide for my birthday, and I adore them both. Usually I finish the game once w/o a stategy guide, then pick one up to see how much stuff I missed. Since RPGs are getting far more extensive in their storylines and muliplots, you NEED to have a guide from the git-go. This was no exception. It guided me through from beginning to end with all the side quests in tow. The artwork is superb, too!

I didn't start playing the game, because I'm still finishing FF X, but, from what I already read in the Guide it is the same as the Guide from FF X. Very helpful, with all details needed to complete the game 100%. The guide is well organized, being very easy to find what you need, not only just putting the page that the subject is in, but each section has a color, what helps a lot.

This book was just great. I am the type of person who will play these games over and over. The first time it is always on my own and after that I get a guide. The info in this book is awesome. I love the whole book, the grid guide is one of my favorite parts. It is fun when you find a secret by chance when you have it all right in front of you it allows for so much more. You do have to jump around a little from page-to-page sometimes but you still get it all in one book so I believe that this book is a must, especially when it comes down to Final Fantasty games.

NOT ONLY THE GAME SUCKS! THIS STRATGEY GUIDE SUCKS! ok let me tell ya why...later in the game you cant go back and finish what you want to gain the 100% done...well this guide SCREWS YOU OVER later in the game that they should have mention earlier to complete...horrible! NO STAR IF I COULD

I got this because FFx-2 is such a huge game that I needed some help getting through it. Although the strategy guide does help, it's a little disorganized. For example, I used the guide from the moment I started the game to get those small, special things that I might otherwise miss.. I get near the end of the game and the strategy guide points out that if I had done something in every chapter from the beginning of the game that I would have been able to get a hidden prize. That would have been great if they had told me at the beginning of the book instead of at the end when it was far, FAR beyond too late.

Other than that, the guide helped me out a lot to get through the basics of the game.

I felt this guide was rushed and incomplete. The final fantays x guide was great but this was far from good. The font was hard to reead and I had to squint. Mini game coverage was bad. It was no help at all. Boss stradegy was short, and on the back of the book it said '' simple walkthroughs but effective!! '' Yeah right. Some boos walkthroughs were only five lines, and they were very hard bosses too. There was tons of Dressphere coverage, but.. it was hard ot figure out. This guide was really rushed and it should be re written. Do not get this, but go online. The only plus, was adding this to your collection, get a great poster, and the beautiful pictures.

Songstress Lenne

I'm just going to give it straight --- the Final Fantasy X-2 Official Strategy Guide has a few major flaws and omissions, but overall it's really quite helpful and useful and kind of a fun read too.

The guide is divided into several sections. It starts with a basic introduction of the game and three major characters --- Yuna, Rikku and Paine. It then goes with complete information about dresspheres and Garment Grids, followed by basic strategy information and then a listing of items and accessories. After that is a detailed section-by-section guide to all of the chapters of the game. Throughout these are detailed instructions, pictures for references and (mostly) useful boss strategies. You'll also find tip boxes on things to watch out for, special scenes to play and secret items to grab. At the end of this section is a quick reference to getting 100% completion in one playthrough (something I *never ever* recommend trying). Next up are sections devoted to the games many sidequests and mini-games. Finally, there's a complete listing of all of the fiends and bosses. Also included is a nice pullout posting featuring YRP in their Mascot outfits, with charts for the Lady Luck and Alchemist dressphers on the flip side.

All of this stuff is absolutely great. I still use it fairly often and it's a very convenient reference. The pictures are really the icing on the cake --- this is very difficult when viewing any online reference.

The only problem is that if you rely on this guide alone, your sunk. This guide contains several major errors that probably could have been caught if they had been a bit more careful in their testing in proofreading. One of the most major errors is it saying that you need to get Episode Complete in every area except Bevelle in Chapter 5 in order to get Mascot. This is patently wrong --- you must get Episode Complete in *every* area including Bevelle in order to get Mascot. Then, later it says that if you ally with New Yevon, you'll get Episode Complete for Bevelle in Chapter 5, but if you allied with the Youth League, you won't. Again, this is patently false --- Bevelle Episode Complete is *not* tied to which group you ally with, but rather whether or not you talk with Isaaru on the CommSphere in Chapter 4 and inform him of Bevelle's situation. Other problems include charts with omissions, misspellings, or other minor inaccuracies. The guide also only gives an at-a-glance look at the game's toughest dungeon.

So is this worth your money? Definitely! But if you're at all uncertain of something, make sure you double-check online to make sure you're not being misled by one of the guide's inaccuracies.

Great book, lots of extras. A must have for the serious gamer.

With over 300 pages, this Final Fantasy X-2 guide is the biggest guide ever made. It comes with a 2-sided poster with expanded coverage for the Alchemist, Lady Luck, and Gun Mage Dresspheres. It has all the coverage for every single sidequest and mini-game. It's a very useful guide with maps, pictures, detailed walkthrough, item lists, and dressphere and garment grid lists. The only problem with this guide is for the Via Infinito 101 cloisters, they don't have any maps but it would make the guide really like over 1000 pages because the floor plan isn't always the same for the cloisters, each time you enter the 101 Cloisters, the floor plan has changed so I can understand why they didn't put it in the guide. I use the guide every time I play through the game and it's very useful.

This guide will get you through the entire main game and get 100% for the perfect ending! In the Dressphere section, it lists all the different abilities each Dressphere will have and how much AP is required to learn the ability.

With over 300 pages, this Final Fantasy X-2 guide is the biggest guide ever made. It comes with a 2-sided poster with expanded coverage for the Alchemist, Lady Luck, and Gun Mage Dresspheres. It has all the coverage for every single sidequest and mini-game. It's a very useful guide with maps, pictures, detailed walkthrough, item lists, and dressphere and garment grid lists. The only problem with this guide is for the Via Infinito 101 cloisters, they don't have any maps but it would make the guide really like over 1000 pages because the floor plan isn't always the same for the cloisters so I can understand why they didn't put it. I use the guide every time I play through the game and it's very useful.