Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I hate to say it, but this is one of the most disappointing "limited edition" guides that I have ever bought in my life. In many ways, you can tell that Bungie had a hand in this. In the book, it clearly states that Bungie/Activision wouldn't let Brady Games have much access to Destiny itself in advance of release beyond letting them visit Bungie studios for a few days to get tips from the developers. Bungie's characteristically stubborn refusal to reveal ANY substantial info about Destiny before release has hurt the quality of the guide I'm afraid. There are many examples of this. I'll try to be clear in discussing them. I also want to make clear before I say anything else that I am a HUGE fan of Destiny. I've sunk countless hours into it already, as all three classes, and I have to say, I haven't enjoyed a game or been hooked by one like this in a LONG time. So take that fact into consideration as I rip this guide a new one. You can tell something is off the moment you see the book: it's much too thin for a game as huge in scope and concept as Destiny. Quite simply, there's tons of stuff that SHOULD be in the guide, but is glaringly absent. There's no section that details the many different armor permutations you can attain or their stats, upgrades, or even just images of them. You want to know how in-depth they go about Armor? They have two paragraphs telling you what anyone with half a brain would know anyway. Same with weapons. In many ways, this guide feels like a glorified instruction manual. You want to know what their "armor gallery" section consists of? Each class (Titan, Hunter, Warlock) gets their own two page spread with four pictures of guardians outfitted at level 1, 5, 10, and 20. That's it, and no labeling system to tell you what each armor piece is. There IS a huge armory section with is filled with charts that tell you in abstract mathematical terms what each modification does to any given armor/weapon it may apply to (again, no specifics), but they're absolutely confusing and meaningless to look at. Not helpful at all, or even interesting. I don't know about you, but I buy guides like this primarily to know where well-hidden collectibles are, and if you bought this guide for that, well I'm afraid you're s*** out of luck. There are many dead ghosts dispersed throughout the worlds of Destiny. You want to know what they put in this guide to help you find them? Three word hints from Bungie. Want to find that ghost in the dig site at Venus? "Rinse. Wash. Repeat." is the only help you get, sorry (I ACCIDENTALLY found this one in a sink in a back-corner, out-of-the-way labratory in a building complex. Hilariously, I was trying to find a different ghost based on one of the other hints in the book). Absolutely worthless. There are also five golden chests in each location in Destiny, and while each one is detailed in this book, the descriptions of where to find them are terrible. Seriously, "find the water falling in front of the cave" in a section filled with waterfalls and caves is not helpful in the least. Most locations don't get pictures either, not that the ones that ARE there are at ALL helpful anyway... There is quite a bit of space in the guide devoted to the different story missions and strikes, but many of them are bare-bones and you can tell that the writers weren't given enough time to really become acquainted with them. Anyone who has played the game knows that the story-missions are just the tutorial of the game anyway. Most of Destiny's meat-and-bones is in its end-game content, including the Strikes, and this guide barely passes in that regard. The only Strike that gets truly substantial coverage, is the first Strike on Earth, the only one that was available during the beta. Again, it's obvious the writers weren't given enough time with the game. Some of the biggest, most important end-game stuff, like the dreaded "Vault of Glass" literally gets a paragraph advertising how great it will be. The "hardest challenge" Bungie has ever crafted and probably the biggest thing needing a strategy guide gets a PR statement. Gee, thanks for that. Perhaps worse of all is that Destiny already has BIG DLC expansions planned for the game that will obviously not be covered in any way, shape, or form in this guide. Just like Destiny is incomplete now compared to what it will be in a year, so is this guide, and let's face it, this guide is incomplete anyway. Seeing how this is supposed to be a special "limited edition" guide, I had some other expectations going in. Most of the LE guides I've bought over the years almost always include nice little bonuses like an art section or some sort of documentary style interviews with the developers... SOMETHING interesting. Again, there's nothing like that here (two high-quality lithographs, as nice as they may be, are not enough. Sorry BG). This is especially disheartening because Destiny is such a gorgeous game, both conceptually and graphically. It would have been great to see more of the art that went into it, but alas. One thing the guide does WELL is that its format is pleasing to the eye. Much like the interface of the game itself, this guide is presented in a simple, clean style that is pleasant. Bravo on that. The printing quality is nice and so is the cover and dust jacket, although the paper quality is not the best. Many pages in my book are wrinkled and wavy, which annoys me. The writing quality itself is decent for the most part, although there are several typos and some egregious examples of poor writing here and there that makes me wonder if Brady Games has an editor OR if they rushed this thing because of time constraints. My vote is on the latter. Honestly, I cannot in good conscience recommend this guide to anybody, not even to those who, like myself, consider themselves massive fans of Destiny itself. This guide utterly fails in almost every regard that I buy game guides for. I don't get it. The Halo: Reach LE guide was fantastic, and the Halo 4 Collector's Edition Guide was 100X the quality of this. What went wrong? Personally, I think it may have to do with the nature of Destiny itself, seeing as how no one could play it until the 8th due to its always-online nature. There's also the fact that Bungie was particularly, frustratingly cryptic when it came to revealing ANYTHING substantial about the game before launch, instead slinking back and relying on fancy, eloquent PR speech. It's obvious that hurt this guide as well. Unfortunately friends, I cannot find much in this book to recommend to anybody. I feel like I wasted my money buying it, and I regret. So I'd skip on this one and hope that Destiny 2, whenever that comes out, gets a better treatment. Thanks for reading my review. I hope it was helpful. Toodles