Star Wars The Old Republic Explorer's Guide [Anglais] [Broché]

While most of the reviews so far have complained at the lack of information in this book, that's not the issue that brings my review down to a rather sad and lonely single star.

Indeed, while you have to read the detailed product information to find out that it's only an Atlas, the info is there, so it's hard to blame Prima too much on that front.

Unfortunately, the Atlas itself is the problem. To start, the book is not physically large, limiting the quality and usefulness of any maps included. What do you expect from a good atlas? Large, clear images, with plenty of room for detailed notation. This book has neither the large images or the detailed notation. The maps inside are the same monochrome blue maps from in game, and indeed, judging by the blurriness of "larger" images, appear to simply enlarged screenshots, at that.

Each map includes -very basic- notation; Speeder routes, quest givers, trainers, and vendors. Things that are not included (or, are included so rarely and randomly as to be comical) include the locations of Vaults, Respec "trainers", crafting trainers, Lore objects, guaranteed loot chests, etc. These are -sometimes- included as "Objects of special interest." Far more often than not, they are not included at all. In short, the atlas manages to actually reveal -less- than your in-game map does, and in smaller, harder to read images.

The atlas also inexplicably omits entire zones. The maps for Alderaan, for example, include only the primary overview map of the planet (a massive landmass zoomed out so far as to be pointless, used only to demarcate the individual zones), the detail map of the first zone, and the detail map of select interior locations. The detail maps of the subsequent Alderaan zones? Nope. Not there. On the other hand, the maps for Balmorra are repeated, twice each. Quite a few planets lack full detailed maps of every zone, which, for a dedicated Atlas, is inexcusable.

There are only two reasons I can see to purchase this book. First, it -does- list the location of every Datacron, in a general way. It won't tell you precisely how to get to them, but it will mark the area of the map where you should be looking. If you just can't wait for this info to inevitably turn up online, and with more detail, this book will help. Second, if you are simply a huge Star Wars or Old Republic fan, it's a fairly good looking piece to sit with the rest of your collection, for the low price. Just as long as you only open it for the small concept art section at the back of the book.

No, I don't want spoilers, but I do want an extensive description of class abilities and powers and notes on strategies for each. Also, an explanation of how crafting works, and what companion skills go best with each would have been very useful. This book has none of this, which is what "PRIMA Game Guide" usually means to me.

Having played prior to the official start date, the main problem I encountered with the game was having to play it with almost no information about how the UI works, how the class system works, how the skills work, and so on. On one level, this is fun, and I like exploring this way, but it eventually wears thin. I wanted the game guide to flesh out my otherwise sketchy knowledge of the UI, the class system, and the rest, and it mostly fails.

EDIT: a brief point of clarification. Yes, the book advertises itself as an atlas. All the prima guides have huge atlases of all the cities/dungeons/etc. But they are never ONLY atlases. E.g., the Skyrim and Oblivion guides explain all the skills, all the spells, even to the point of listing every alchemy ingredient. This item is advertised as "Learn about every basic class and pick one that is right for you". It is true, it has that information. The point of my review is that THIS part of the guide is very sketchy, with only some vague strategies when starting out, such as whether a class is known for DPS or tanking or healing, and so on.

I picked this up at Gamestop, where they were pushing it as a "strategy guide". It is not. This is an atlas, for those of you who want to review the maps for various areas on your leisure time. It will show you where on the various maps the Datacrons are located, but in most cases this information is near useless since the key to obtaining them involves finding difficult and secretive paths that the book offers you absolutely no hints or tips on finding. It gives you some VERY basic starter information on the classes that you could probably learn by reading the tips during load times, and that's about it. There's a few nice pictures in here, but if you've already bought the game I'm sure you've got more than enough content to satisfy your desire for aesthetics. Save your money.