My Collector's Edition Wind Waker guide arrived via FedEx yesterday! ...to the local post office! But, the mailman brought it today!
These Collector's Edition guides are really, really nice and I highly recommend them for collectors or just anyone that likes to have a guide handy. The Skyward Sword guide was...um...terribly written, but still beautifully put together and laid out very well. The revamped edition coming out in the box set of Collector's Editions is redone and expanded by 100 pages, since there was so much incorrect info (or bad strategies) or missing information. I would certainly pick that up, even if like me you have the original and had to resort to something like this:
Like, seriously. The girl didn't even list some of the crystals, then put an extra one on the map. So I drew my own map and made my own list. Because I have a problem. Particularly with being obsessed with Skyward Sword. ...Great, now I wanna play Skyward Sword. But that's not the point here! And besides, this is like the only time I've done something like that...
Oh...this? This is just my chart for Phantom Hourglass ship parts....I thought I said we were moving on?
So pretty! It's packaged just like all the previous guides are. It's a lovely color for the game. I always save the back insert, but I wasn't expecting to find this on the reverse side of it:
Awesome! I didn't know that came with it! I haven't done it just yet, but I will. To be honest, I may not use it since I like to have my book by me; makes me feel more legit, like I'm really adventuring along with little Toon Link and using a guide...I already admitted I had problems, let's not retread. This is an awesome option for (I assume) your smartphone or tablet if that's what you prefer to use, or if you just want to look up a particular thing, or if you don't want to risk messing up your guide. I actually may use it for the piece of heart search tool, since that is primarly what I use a guide for (before I go into an area, I scout my map for how many heart pieces I need to look for, and, in Skyward Sword's case, Goddess Cubes; I just like knowing how many are there, not necessarily how to find them).
The map! I love getting these cloth maps. They just seem so legit. And now I've used "legit" twice, and I apologize. It's quite a bit smaller than the Skyward Sword map, and considerably smaller than the Twilight Princess map, but it is nonetheless fabulous and I think it's size fits the game and Toon Link. All three of the cloth maps mimick the ones in the game, and this one is no exception. It's perfect.
The layout of the guide is really, really good. For all its faults, I like the layout of the Skyward Sword guide (I found Twilight Princess informative, but busy and hard to read); this one seems to be pretty similar to Skyward Sword's layout.That being said, it dwarfs the Skyward Sword guide. The introductory section is enormous, and there is a huge reference part in the back. You can see on the edge of the second picture that this guide, unlike the Skyward Sword guide, has no pretty backing on the hardback, but it is at least the same color as the outside, unlike the others' plain white.
Here's a comparison of the varying shades of blue of (from L to R) Phantom Hourglass, Wind Waker, and Skyward Sword. If you're interested. I hope someone is interested, because of the simple fact it occurred to me to compare them this way. Aaand we're back to me having a problem.
And here it is, in its home between Historia and Phantom Hourglass. It looked to me at first to be closest in size to the Twilight Princess guide. Though Wind Waker is the second largest guide, it's more in line with Phantom Hourglass. Here are the page counts for comparison: Twilight Princess 448, Wind Waker 352, Phantom Hourglass 336, Spirit Tracks 320, Skyward Sword 272 (who hired the girl that wrote that guide, srsly).
Hm? That sexy poster of Link in my shelve on the bottom? Oh, that's nothing, just my sexy poster of Link.
And I feel like we're getting back into "I have a problem" territory, so I'll end this.