Diablo III Signature Series Guide (Brady Games) [Tapa blanda]

Let me be clear in that this is a 443 full-color book that is simply beautiful. The feel of the cover and pages could not have been done better.

Having said that, if I have to look up something online then this book has ultimately failed in its purpose.

The strategy guide does the monsters perfectly, and it is where the 2 stars come from, but everything else has flaws...

The storyline section does not tell you where to get the books for the achievements, despite being set up in a way that would have made it simple to do. Some books only appear for the duration of one quest, so it would have been nice to have that information in the pages rather than having to look it up online.

The character information is done better on a website that I have seen. They give a good description for each skill and tell the levels for everything, but there is no summary page. Not having a simple page that goes from 1 to 60 telling what skills and runes are unlocked on every level makes the guide useless. The game itself does a better job of making the information readily available than this book.

The items section is another area that is great, but ultimately meaningless. The auction house has the functions that enable you to set the parameters of your search, meaning that you don't have to know that the grim affix gives 41-50% bonus damage. The information is all presented perfectly, but the game itself makes it useless to have in print form.

The tradeskill section is great, but they are out of date. The levels on crafted items are all off by a few levels and some of the requirements to level are wrong. I like this section because it does get all of the item types correct, but everything should have been correct. They were wrong at launch. They detail every unique item and set piece, and from what I've seen, it is all correct.

The achievements section is great but I've never found myself wanting to use it. I just press Y in game and look through them there.

The intro section that tells new players about the game is actually one of the best intros I've ever seen. The game's tips are not as good as this guide's starter section, but I would guess that most people won't use either system.

Oh, and it doesn't give any information at all on the cow level. None.

All in all, the guide is a good collection of information, and the monster section is definitely good to have, but it is hard to justify 22 dollars for this. All of the information you would seek in this book is already uploaded to a diablofans thread anyways. The book is good, but as with any printed media it will become out of date as the game gets updated. Send bradygames an email saying you want the epub version asap and that you want it updated regularly. Buy that version, for kindle (^_^) when they make it available and as always, have fun!

I'm not sure if my expectations on what a game guide should be are too high, and I realize that Diablo III has a lot of random dungeons and stuff, but when I'm looking for something in the guide, and then end up googling it later, because I can't find it...well, I really can't give something like that 5 stars, can I? (dock one star)
Best example would be when I was looking into how to beat Faud with a wizard. I had beaten him pretty easily with a monk, but just wasn't able to put him down with the wizard. So, after dying once and running away several times, I finally gave up and went to the guide. And I agree with the other reviewer that there should be some sort of a glossary, so I could at least know that they didn't have what I needed in the first place (spent 5-10 min trying to find it). So yeah, ended up going online and looking for it, and found it within 2 minutes. Went back, and BAM!!! Faud was no more!!!
Also, if you are currently playing the game, you will know that they have gone through several updates so far (some I totally do not understand the point of). That being said, I know a friend of mine said that another patch, to be released soon, will change more of the game elements, so in essence, the guide is already partially obsolete. A year from now (and who knows how many more patchs), how much of this guide will still be useful??? (dock another star)
I can understand wanting to fix bugs and make the game more enjoyable, but after looking through the guide, I can say that about 10% of it should have been included with the game itself in the manual, and the other 90%, while useful, is not complete, and will be mostly obsolete.
Nice illustrations, general walk-thru, item and monster overview, but again, I expected more. I can't really recommend it for someone who is actually looking for something to help them through tough spots in some of the random side quest dungeons. If you want just a guide to walk you through the main quest, this will suffice.
Oh, and if anyone reading this already has the guide, can you tell me if I'm missing something, or does the section on achievements seem a little too general? And what I mean by that, is it seems that a lot of the achievelment descriptions just say that you have to complete all of a set of requirements, but then leaves out what those requirements actually are (do the following, only it does not actually LIST the following). It could have been better.

Side note: After not really finding that much use for it myself, I ended up giving the guide to a friend of mine, who is new to the world of Diablo. I haven't heard back from him on whether or not it has been of any use, but I think it should help him with some things he hasn't gotten the hang of yet. If it has helped him, add a half star. I do have one other question for those of you who still may have the guide, and that is whether or not it has any references to Whimsyshire? I do not recall seeing anything in there about it at all (ie: What items you need to collect and where, and also how to create the staff and where to use it). If there is nothing in there, deduct that half star added above. Please correct me if I am wrong.
For the most part, I still think 3 stars is fair.

I downloaded the strategy guide to my Kindle app and no matter what I tried the text was so small I couldn't read it without a magnifier. There was some useful information but not much more than I could already get for free on the web.