Note: Unless otherwise noted, all images in this article are scanned from my own sources.
Game Informer magazine gets a pretty bad rap these days. It's the house organ for GameStop stores, maintaining its presence not through solicited ad sales like a traditional magazine but through subscriptions which come with the store's Power Up Rewards discount card. It costs $15 to join, and for that you get either a digital or physical subscription to the magazine, discounts on used merchandise you purchase, and bonus credit on any merchandise you trade in yourself.
I can understand the negative connotation, since this business model has allowed the mag to sort of 'cheat' its way to success while other publications like EGM, GamePro, and even the almighty Nintendo Power have fallen by the wayside. Still, I like to see that even in today's Internet-heavy world of video games, there's room for physical magazines. But I'm not here to talk about Game Informer the publication. I'm here to look at The Final Fantasy Companion, a Game Informer Special Edition of the magazine, and subject it to the summary judgement I like to call...
To Guide or Not to Guide?
Published to coincide with the US release of Final Fantasy VIII in 1999, The Final Fantasy Companion goes out of its way to not explain to the would-be buyer what exactly it is. Most strategy guide publications feature a run-down on the back cover of just what they're all about. Not this one though. It's as quiet and mopey as the guy pictured on its front cover:
The most descriptive thing is the bar code. "Strat - Final Fant 8". Well, OK, it's a Final Fantasy VIII strategy guide then. Umm...didn't Brady do one of those already? They did -- it's 272 pages. The Companion is a mere 128; to whom exactly was this aimed, and why would someone buy it?
So glad you asked. It's for anybody interested not just in Final Fantasy, but Square themselves. Sandwiched between the covers are not just a history of the company along with a complete release date breakdown for every game they released across all systems in both the Japanese and US markets up to the point of publication, but walkthroughs for four separate PlayStation Final Fantasy releases.
Wait, four? That can't be right. There were only three Final Fantasy titles released on Sony's little gray box: 7, 8, and 9. And the ninth game wasn't out yet, even in Japan. What the literal hell...?
Well, you've already seen the back cover, so I'm sure you've figured it out by now. Final Fantasy VIII dropped in the US in September of 1999. One month later in October though, Square dropped The Final Fantasy Anthology, a two-disc compilation featuring a lightly remastered version of Final Fantasy VI based on the original Japanese SNES release with a tweaked/updated translation, and the first official American release of the previously-unavailable Final Fantasy V. Both games were given a touch of gloss, with some added FMV sequences, but otherwise the games are essentially emulations of the SNES editions. Thus, the idea with The Final Fantasy Companion was to offer a one-stop shop for the last three years of Final Fantasy madness in one convenient package.
The first question that comes to mind upon learning this, of course, is how the hell does one squeeze a good 120+ hours of RPG play across nine CDs into one book smaller than any single guide released for one of those games? The answer is: by stripping everything down to its bare bones.
You'll notice page one of the Final Fantasy VI walkthrough takes you from the caves of Narshe all the way to the point where the party splits into three separate stories. Unless you're speed-running, this is a couple hours of game time. There's no discussion of basic enemies, boss strategies, weapons, magic items, or even your characters' special abilities, just "go here, see this, talk to this person, go here, etc..." and a couple of screenshots. Lather, rinse, repeat, as the saying goes.
In fact, only 44 pages of the guide are used to walk the player through Final Fantasy V, VI, and VII. The bulk of the guide is reserved for VIII, with pages 51 - 128 devoted to that cause. But as noted before, that's still way fewer pages of content than you'd get with the official guide. Why would anyone want this?
Guide.
Nope, not joking. You read that right.
Upon first glance, this book seems...well, not exactly useless -- it will get you through four Final Fantasy titles, after all -- but fairly unimpressive at least considering the more complete information you could acquire somewhere else. But first glances don't always tell the full story, and such is the case with this book.
First of all, while it's only a scant five pages, the information and pictures the Game Informer staff assembled for the introductory history of Square are some damn good pages, well worth reading if you're at all into gaming history. The "Square Key Events" sidebar on page 3 is loaded with some awesome trivia:
October 1995: a day which shall live in infamy...
Second, while the walkthroughs themselves are bare-bones, a perhaps-unintended side effect of this is their relative lack of spoilers. They're not completely spoiler-free (while they don't mention a specific name, only a fool could fail to guess who's getting the business end of Sephiroth's blade at the conclusion of Final Fantasy VII's first disc based on the images used), but the guide writers are generally good about this. They may point out specific story elements in the text, but they generally won't spoil how your party reacts to them or the end results. That said, don't read too far ahead in the Final Fantasy VIII guide, as it's the worst offender.
If you've never played any of these games before, this is a big deal as the official guides will flat-out ruin the plot if you read through them. The alternative is something like this, which still allows a player to be surprised 95% of the time. I like this. It's not perfect, but there's very little available in print that does a better job on this front. Short of a trip to GameFAQs for a dedicated, spoiler-free walkthrough, this is the best you're going to see.
Third, the book's just gorgeous to flip through and enjoy.
Case in point.
Yoshitaki Amano's gorgeous character designs for the SNES entries and Tetsuya Nomura's more realistic renderings of the PlayStation titles feature heavily in the pages. The later two titles have more screenshots than the earlier games, but nobody's going to accuse the PS1 Final Fantasy entries of looking ugly, and they're a nice contrast to the text-heavy walkthroughs of V and VI.
The Final Fantasy Companion is truly exceptional for what it manages to cram into a book half the size of a traditional Final Fantasy guide. The biggest downside to adding it to your library is, like many of these older guides, the price. A second-hand copy will put you back around $25-$30. They don't pop up very often either, so it's not like you can just wait for the price to drop.
This thing is really more than the sum of its parts, and I wish Game Informer had gone back and done a second version which covered Final Fantasy IX as well as Final Fantasy Chronicles. Lord knows Final Fantasy IX deserves better than it got on the professional guide front.
That's a face-palm for a different article though, dear readers.