Final Fantasy Boxed SET ( FFVII, FFVIII,FFIX) Strategy guides

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Shadowmoses12

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I didn't see a topic on this
http://www.amazon.com/FINAL-FANTASY-FFVII-FFVIII-FFIX/dp/1101898046/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407382752&sr=1-1&keywords=final+fantasy+box+set
$123.49

http://www.gamestop.com/strategy-guides/final-fantasy-box-set-ffvii-ffviii-ffix/116349
$129.99


i'll probably pick this up if the price is right, since i heard the guide for FFIX sucked.


Includes:
• The Final Fantasy Box Set is a must have for fans of this beloved series.

• The set includes hardcover versions of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX,each comes with a ribbon bookmark and deluxe cover treatment.

• Each guide has been redesigned from scratch and updated with new high resolution screen shots. In
addition, the set comes with three iconic game images printed for first time as holographic lithographs.
• The three holographic prints are secured in a beautiful slipcase with magnetic closure.

 
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IronChariot said:
If the FFIX guide is drastically improved I might be interested. Waiting for a lower price for now, though. Bought the Amano art collection right away, and we all saw how cheap that got.
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Sure, the version with only the three books got cheap... but not the version with the signature and other extras.
 
Does anyone remember if this set had Release Date Delivery for preorders? My order only just shipped and won't get here until tomorrow despite my being Prime.

 
Vigilante said:
Does anyone remember if this set had Release Date Delivery for preorders? My order only just shipped and won't get here until tomorrow despite my being Prime.
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I got my notice on Sunday I believe that it'd be here today, so I think there WAS release date delivery, though that date was changed a bunch of times, so not sure.

 
Sending mine back to Amazon.  Why do I bother ordering stuff like this on Amazon.. often mishandled and always poorly packaged for shipping.  Front of the box is pretty beat up, looks like it was dragged across concrete or something.  Doubt I will re-order, not sure its worth the money.

 
aem said:
Sending mine back to Amazon. Why do I bother ordering stuff like this on Amazon.. often mishandled and always poorly packaged for shipping. Front of the box is pretty beat up, looks like it was dragged across concrete or something. Doubt I will re-order, not sure its worth the money.
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blame your UPS or USPS workers not amazon

 
http://www.amazon.com/review/R6E8PXSCPUDML/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1101898046&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283155&store=books

This guy put up about 11 pictures of his set if anyone else is interested. Been browsing reddit and other reviews, trying to make up my mind. Hard confirmation that a lot of text and info are straight up copied from the original PS1 guides. Screenshots and the layout of pages have changed. FF IX had the biggest overhaul due to omitting the PlayOnline tags and replacing it with actual information. 

I'll buy the set. I'm not the biggest stickler for "having absolutely 100% perfection in this guide"; long as mostly everything is covered I'm savy. I'm a big fan of the slipcase and I never bought any Square guides prior to X so this seems as good a time as any. 

 
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Shadowmoses12 said:
blame your UPS or USPS workers not Amazon
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Actually you CAN blame Amazon. As a courier for FedEx, I can say that Amazon has gotten extremely lax in their packaging. For example, they think that putting a 75 lbs item in a flimsy box with two pieces of tape is sufficient. I think that they are shipping so much stuff now, that their packaging department has really gone downhill.
 
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Yes they are standard game guides.  You either want them for your hardcover collection or you don't. 

 
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snatcher33 said:
Actually you CAN blame Amazon. As a courier for FedEx, I can say that Amazon has gotten extremely lax in their packaging. For example, they think that putting a 75 lbs item in a flimsy box with two pieces of tape is sufficient. I think that they are shipping so much stuff now, that their packaging department has really gone downhill.
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but you can also get black listed on amazon too. can you not

 
Damn. Really disappointed to hear that the books are largely copied from the original guides, especially after the Prima rep at E3 specifically told the person who runs Strategy Guide Reviews that they were completely overhauled. Tempted to return them when they arrive and get my $75 in credit back.

 
Shadowmoses12 said:
blame your UPS or USPS workers not amazon
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No this is all Amazon. I think some of the damage was likely there prior to packaging it for shipping as some of it does not appear to be something that would have easily occurred inside the box. The packaging Amazon did was poor though so maybe I am wrong and all happened during shipping. The package I received was bulging considerably at the top because the box was not tall enough for this and the air pillows. Amazon never uses enough air pillows too though and in this case the area on the sides of the FF Box was hardly protected. They also cheap out on their shipping boxes, especially the medium to large sizes which are too thin and won't hold up to much weight. Amazon's packaging has always been awful to insanely stupid for at least has been for as long as I can remember (7+ years).

 
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aem said:
No this is all Amazon. I think some of the damage was likely there prior to packaging it for shipping as some of it does not appear to be something that would have easily occurred inside the box. The packaging Amazon did was poor though so maybe I am wrong and all happened during shipping. The package I received was bulging considerably at the top because the box was not tall enough for this and the air pillows. Amazon never uses enough air pillows too though and in this case the area on the sides of the FF Box was hardly protected. They also cheap out on their shipping boxes, especially the medium to large sizes which are too thin and won't hold up to much weight. Amazon's packaging has always been awful to insanely stupid for at least has been for as long as I can remember (7+ years).
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I had a seller on ebay TRY to blame a damaged Disney Infinity 2.0 starter set I bought recently on USPS, even though they simply just wrapped it in brown paper. That was total BS IMO. Yes, USPS, FedEx, UPS can treat packages like crap, but sellers (big and small) should expect this and package items properly. Now...if a seller packages something well but it is tossed around, run over, etc etc then that is not on the seller. You can't protect against things like that, but to say "well...it's someone else's fault even though we didn't do our job properly" is a bunch of BS.

 
Gotta love that one of the first things you see in the set is "Thanks for spending up to $130.  Get ready to do it again for 'remastered' FFX, X-2 & XII Guides".

 
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Hahahah I called this so long ago. I'm glad I cancelled my preorder after they kept missing dates and there was some article on kotaku that put a lot of doubt on these. What a fucking joke, 130$. This isn't even worth the 77$ I had it ordered for.

But with Prima what do you expect from those cheap and lazy people?

Their X/X-2 guide was terrible. As were the new KH guides. How god damn lazy can you get when FANS write better guides than you for free!

 
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Not sure on the Lost family quest though it was my first thought too, but it does look like they re-used a lot of the data from previous guides.  This is somewhat to be expected though if its not for a new game -- the game hasn't changed, the quests and stories haven't either, but it seems like they also kept some of the typos and errors in some places too... really? There's been YEARS of threads and posts and people complaining about these - why would they not fix them? I haven't dug my old ones out yet though to confirm if its a straight one-for-one copy, so maybe they DID overhaul some of it. 

Either way, those old guides weren't hardcover and pages fell out all the time, so I'll definitely be keeping mine.  Don't care much about the X/X-2/XII possibility (though I might get those just because again, hardcover), but what I REALLY WANT TO SEE is a hardcover Final Fantasy Tactics guide! Please make this happen, that guide got more use than any other guide I've ever owned - they just need to fix the mistakes and update some of the tables (see on GameFAQs or something if they need to!) but I'd pay $50 for a Hardcover FFT guide with a NICE litho of the character art in a second!

 
You guys are bumming me out. I thought it looked nice. Probably not worth the high price but I'd regret not buying them if they get sold out. 

Hmmmm it's still in my cart. 

 
Shadowmoses12 said:
Christ it was going for 82.99 last couple of days then it dropped down to 79.99 now its at 77.99
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~$65 new from 3rd party sellers. All the canceled preorders combined with the low ratings are probably driving the price down. Go down some more! Or maybe Amazon will release a book coupon for Prime Day.

Disappointing news that most of the info is copy and paste, and they make mistakes like incorrect bios.

 
Amazon Reviews are pretty accurate:

Absolutely horrible. Redesigned and updated is an outright lie. The text in these is identical to the original guide releases back when these came out so many years ago, errors and all! Sure they have a new font but the content itself has not changed. Heck, even the picture of Odin in the bestiary section of the FF8 guide is still as wrong as it was 16 years ago! The FF9 guide just has some of the stuff from the old PlayOnline site now in text bubbles instead of the dippy links it had before. But not all of the PlayOnline info is included either. Only some of it was.
 
Make no mistake, these are not new guides at all. Prima just got the old Brady guides, cleaned them up with a new font, and slapped a hardcover on them. No graphic or factual text errors were corrected at all. Very sloppy work.
 
As the other reviewers have said, these books are just a re-release of the old crappy bradygame guides. They didn't even bother fixing any errors, like this one.
 
The cover, box, and the pictures are the only things worth keeping.
 
RGSPro said:
Amazon Reviews are pretty accurate:

Absolutely horrible. Redesigned and updated is an outright lie. The text in these is identical to the original guide releases back when these came out so many years ago, errors and all! Sure they have a new font but the content itself has not changed. Heck, even the picture of Odin in the bestiary section of the FF8 guide is still as wrong as it was 16 years ago! The FF9 guide just has some of the stuff from the old PlayOnline site now in text bubbles instead of the dippy links it had before. But not all of the PlayOnline info is included either. Only some of it was.

Make no mistake, these are not new guides at all. Prima just got the old Brady guides, cleaned them up with a new font, and slapped a hardcover on them. No graphic or factual text errors were corrected at all. Very sloppy work.

As the other reviewers have said, these books are just a re-release of the old crappy bradygame guides. They didn't even bother fixing any errors, like this one.

The cover, box, and the pictures are the only things worth keeping.
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I'd say the FFIX guide is also worth keeping since it's the one that was actually redesigned. It's really annoying that Prima thinks they can get away with this (and they probably will).

 
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Shadowmoses12 said:
Christ it was going for 82.99 last couple of days then it dropped down to 79.99 now its at 77.99
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I think 77.99 is the lowest it had been at minus any BF coupons. I locked my pre-order in at that price last year before cancelling it over the holiday because they hadn't shown any of the interiors of the guides. Looks like I made the correct choice.

 
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LOL So glad I didn't get these now... sucks for those of you that did. Hopefully you can return it. 

Maybe with enough returns, Amazon will do something. 

 
Vinny said:
LOL So glad I didn't get these now... sucks for those of you that did. Hopefully you can return it.

Maybe with enough returns, Amazon will do something.
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Unfortunately, unless your box set arrives damaged, Amazon will deduct a restocking fee from your refund if it isn't their fault you're returning it.

 
Vigilante said:
Unfortunately, unless your box set arrives damaged, Amazon will deduct a restocking fee from your refund if it isn't their fault you're returning it.
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Actually the Amazon rep told me that he would send me a prepaid return label if I wanted because the item description is a lie, but he also refunded me the difference between the price they have now and what I pre-ordered it for, too.

 
Vigilante said:
Unfortunately, unless your box set arrives damaged, Amazon will deduct a restocking fee from your refund if it isn't their fault you're returning it.
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Is this something new? I've returned stuff that I changed my mind on and they've never charged me a restocking fee, though I had to pay the shipping costs.

And I meant people returning these on the basis of an item being not as as described. I can understand these being the same basic guides but for them not not even fix simple mistakes is just BS.

 
So from what I'm gathering, this item will definitely not sell out due to all the returns and it'll eventually lower in price even more. 

I can wait. 

 
Vinny said:
Is this something new? I've returned stuff that I changed my mind on and they've never charged me a restocking fee, though I had to pay the shipping costs.

And I meant people returning these on the basis of an item being not as as described. I can understand these being the same basic guides but for them not not even fix simple mistakes is just BS.
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That's a fair point. I might end up returning mine because, after thinking about it, I could probably buy better things with that $78.

 
RGSPro said:
Actually the Amazon rep told me that he would send me a prepaid return label if I wanted because the item description is a lie, but he also refunded me the difference between the price they have now and what I pre-ordered it for, too.
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what was your conversation with the amazon rep, cause im gonna return this

 
I dunno if I should hold onto mine for a little while and wait for Prima to maybe offer up some kind of rebate or coupon to people dissatisfied with the set, or whether I should send it back right away.

 
Mike Gundy just got this box set in the mail today, let's see what he has to say about it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofEhOQop5Xw

 
Vogyn said:
So from what I'm gathering, this item will definitely not sell out due to all the returns and it'll eventually lower in price even more.

I can wait.
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From what I've read the FF7 guide is even worse than the original. They managed to correct none of the previous errors and add even more... " There are pieces of text that have been miscopied that weren't goofs in the original guide, I found one pretty quickly just glancing through the ff7 guide, you see red xiii's bio where vincent's should be."

 
RySenkari said:
I dunno if I should hold onto mine for a little while and wait for Prima to maybe offer up some kind of rebate or coupon to people dissatisfied with the set, or whether I should send it back right away.
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They're not going to offer you guys shit. You guys need to mass email Amazon and tell them they sold you a PoS item that wasn't what it was advertised to be.

 
Errors like this make it clear that 0 attempt was made to "remaster" these guides. Too bad really because it could have been a nice set and if it was done well I would have bought the FFX ones ... Now I'll just be waiting for a drop or the inevitable true remaster that comes out with the PS4 re-release

http://i.imgur.com/wxjLWPX.jpg
 
Its a shame because Prima usually does such a good job with their CE guides in terms of quality.  These really should have had the royal treatment they deserve and QC apparently failed miserably. 

The design is nice, but the content is sadly lacking. I'll definitely be keeping mine, but it is a black-mark in their book for sure.

 
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