One guide book, that'll be $30.00 please

[PlatinumDude]

If the guide is nearby after I buy the game, I get that as well. There are times when I got the guide by itself, though.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

My brother buys them. I haven't since Platinum, since we have the internet. The "two volume" guides are an especially big waste of money, and the quality of these guides has been going down... on my brother's recent Pokemon guides the ink easily smears and the B/W Pokedex guide didn't even have the old 493 Pokemon listed!

 

[PickupTeam]

My parents bought the Yellow guide for me when I was 11. Even so, I still used the internet, because that's where I learned about all the devious hidden values.

Naturally, I don't have any guides. I've spent larger amounts of money on stupid things, but never a guide.

 

[Kip]

Since I've played the game for 12 years or so, I'm pretty sure the strategy guide wouldn't tell me anything I didn't already know or be able to work out. Anything small like stats or whatever I can get from the Internet, or even special passwords (I swear that C-Gear code hit the net within 5 seconds of publication). There's also that thing of the guide and walk-through spoiling the story as well, and also kinda takes the challenge out of the game.

So no, I don't think it's worth the £20 for the strategy guide.

 

[rocky505]

Why buy the guidebooks when there is this site?
https://www.serebii.net/index2.shtml
{angel singing}

Because of the following reasons
1.Power could be out
2.Internet down
3.THe owner of a guidebook doesn't have internet
4.Doesn't know about that sie.

 

[SmashBrony]

Because of the following reasons
1.Power could be out
2.Internet down
3.THe owner of a guidebook doesn't have internet
4.Doesn't know about that sie.

5. Doesn't have mobile web, which would make the guidebook more helpful, since Pokemon games are portable.

 

[alphabetsoup102062]

I buy most of them, but normally just the ones with the Pokédex in, since I like to look at the moves from a book..but I also look at them for the maps and other things too :P

 

[Atomic Pirate]

I bought the Platinum guide when I got platinum because gamestop was offering a ridiculously good bargain and I didn't have the Diamond/Pearl guide. And I have the funny FR/LG guide where it states in thr pokedex in the back that Pidgey's rarity is "Only One"

 

[Lucifer]

I used to buy them; I have the ones for Red and Blue, Crystal and Ruby and Sapphire. I still have them except the one for Ruby and Sapphire it went missing. I might have tossed it a while ago by accident. Not that I need any of them anymore.

When I got Sinnoh and Unova games I used online guides.
This one for my Pearl: https://pokedream.com/games/diamondpearl/walkthrough/01-twinleaf.php

And this one for my Black:
https://pokemon.marriland.com/black_white/walkthrough/triobadge/striaton_gym

I wanted to continue using Pokedream(the first site) when I bought Black but they still to this day do not have a Black/White walkthrough. Merriland's was good though.

 

[Cherrim]

The only guides I buy are the National Dexes and even then, I haven't bothered since Platinum, I think. :x I mostly buy them to be able to look at the pictures if I need a drawing reference. Otherwise it's way easier to look something up on Bulbapedia.

 

[koji8123]

Why buy the guidebooks when there is this site?
https://www.serebii.net/index2.shtml
{angel singing}

Because sometimes your internet screws up and you're left offline.

 

[cbd98]

if there's a promotion, i'd buy it. otherwise, i just flip through to find items i haven't gotten yet. so no, i don't buy them.

 

[ElectricScyther]

Yeah, I usually do, except HG/SS. Then B/W came out and I discovered this lovely thing called the "Internet".
Unfortunately then my computer came down with a virus and after it got fixed there has been a lot of restriction of sites I can use. Bulbapedia and Serebii turned out to be some of the "blocked" sites, so I think I'll just go ahead and get the B/W strategy guide.

 

[Sevrah]

I purchased the B/W Guide book since I am not always near a computer, and I travel sometimes. Also, I got it 'cause the information is all at once place, and that I had a GameStop discount card for it.

-Sevrah

 

[okjoek]

I have an ancient r/b/y guide that's lost a bunch of pages. I never got any gen 1 on 2 games anyway because I didn't get into pokemon until generation 3.

I do have a guide for my emerald version. From time to time I even find small errors in things from information to spelling. It's missing a few pages in the front and back. Nothing I can't just look up online though.

I also have a D/P book which I still use for things like which natures help which stats. It still has all it's pages but the cover is begining to peel in the corners a bit.

 

[Lucifer]

I mostly buy them to be able to look at the pictures if I need a drawing reference.

Ah yes,
quite a few times in the Merriland guide I used while playing through my black, instructions were not worded well or specified enough for me and it would take me a few minutes to figure how what the blood hell they were trying to say.

For example, Calistia City, the instructions to get through the Gym puzzle:
"*Walk through the honey, but don't press the switch in front of you unless you want to fight a Harlequin with a Sewaddle L20 and an Dwebble L20 (which is a new hermit crab sort of Pokemon). Despite Dwebble's looks, it is a Bug/Rock-type Pokemon, so Water-type attacks are effective against it.
*Hit the switch to the northeast of the gate you just went through."

You probably won't understand my confusion given you don't know where I had been standing while reading this underlined step. But I had a hell of a time figuring out what the hell that was telling me to do. The particular angle I was at didn't make Northeast an easy direction to see.

So things like this in the Merriland walkthrough made me long for the beautiful full length screenshots of an entire given area that my Crystal guidebook provided.

I also once gave the Pokedream link(the first link in my last post) to my bestie to locate the regis in her Ruby and she told me she had a hard time with it because it was not specific and seemed to be written by someone with poor English. Although that confused me as that had never occurred to me and I got through my pearl quite well with it, I never had trouble understanding it like I did Merriland.

So poor writers or English speakers and lack of maps are two drawbacks of internet guides. They however don't usually provide an obsticle for me. Merriland still got me through Unova fine despite some of the difficulties such as the one I described above. But overall I would not approve of this writer, I was not especially impressed with their work.

 

[Vrai]

Nope! All the information I could ever need is presently neatly (and without the cost of buying a guidebook) to me through the internet. :)