I'm just curious...

<font face="Verdana" size="3" color="#00FF00">I do like big manuals with lots of background information. But if they are not very organized I prefer them short and sweet. All basic controls to play the game should be in the first 2 or 3 pages and not scattered throughout. I would read the rest whenever I need to take a dump. </font> :D

[ 05-03-2004, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: pritchke ]

I like manuals such as the baldurs gate ones, they give you a nice lot of background info etc. which you can read time and time again and never get bored of (ok Im said I know :D ) I also must have my manuals, I hate manuals which are in PDF format, they just piss me off.

ROFL pritchke, I do the same thing. I must've been in the bathroom for three hours going over the BG II manual.

I like the paper large manuals [img]smile.gif[/img] Got a manual on Emire Earth 225 pages, and on Europa universalis which is large as well, both with background and game controls. Everything I could possibly want to know needs to be in there.

Also I don't like those manuals on CDs. Recently I bought BG and BGII (SoA again was in a bundle and they didn't have tob loose) and I got a full CD with manuals. Didn;t look in them. Also it was pretty stupid cause on the same CD were manuals for like 10 other games as well.

I never really look at manuals. I just figure out the buttons myself. This is easier ona console than on PC, so I may just glance periodically at PC game manuals. The one manual I do read, though, is the BG2 manual - packed with useful information and character backgrounds. ROFL, pritchke :D ! I know what you mean ;)

Yes, I HATE non-paper manuals, just like I hate reading journal articles online or newspaper articles online. And I can't edit my written work unless I print it out and get a red pen :D . The worst manual I experienced was for Europa Universalis (probably why it remains so unpenetrable to this day ;) ) - it had no contents and no index. Rather hard to get into you might imagine ;) . I like a lot of examples and things explained simply. I thought the wizardry 8 manual was an excellent one for instance.

I like big manuals with lots of background info. Like Wizardry 8 or BG2. Me neither I don't like manuals on the CD. Never read one of those before.

The manuals need to be paper so you can look at them while your playing the game.

How stupid is it to have it on CD when your in the middle of a game and you have to exit the game, take out the Game CD, put in the manual CD and look something up.

Both the BG2 and NWN manuals were great!

I never read any manuals. just throw them away. they make my headhurts. though I do keep maps that come with it. I can memorize maps very easily.

I guess we're a bunch of bathroom readers! Lol
[img]smile.gif[/img]

When I was first playing BG2, I used to read the manual in bed after a big session and get sleepy pondering over all of the spells and kits I'd never used before. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I like dense manuals, they help immerse one further into the game you're playing. Two come to mind immediately that I've enjoyed reading over and over through the years - Ultima VII and Ultima Underworld. There is such a great flair and sense of history about the manuals and maps of these games that enriches the experience of playing them so well. [img]smile.gif[/img]

On the other side of the coin, you get the less impresive ones aswell. I think one of the worst manuals I own would be the one to Ruins of Myth Drannor (I don't see it as the official sequel [img]tongue.gif[/img] ) so many details missing from the 3rd ed rules and also some horrid attempts to cover up bad programming.

I remember in one part, it tries to rationalise not being able to take single characters too far away from the party (as you can in the BG series) as being a 'safety precaution' or some nonsense. :D I should find the quote, as its hilarious.

For the money I spend on a game, I want the best detailed manual they can provide. Let it be up to me if I want to spoil myself or not. ;)

Uhm... I prefer my games so complex that I need a large manual, to look up rules'n stuff in. If there's gonna be lots'a background stuff as well, which is fine, it better be paper (if I'm just gonna look up what a feat in NWN does, a .pdf is just fine... no search function in them paper manuals ;) ). Certain games are better off with no background info tho :/

OoOOooO - I am so glad this topic came about. If there is one thing I love about CRPG's, it's their rich intense manuals that come with them! Screw the gold edition maps, soundtracts, and collector's gifts. I love to read through my manuals, formulating plans for my next character, reading the backgrounds of the gameworld, current story, NPC's, weapons available, the list goes on. Intended of course to just be nothing more than an instruction book, I sometimes even consider them full pledged works of literature, but some of them i've found to be faulty and contain miss information (::cough:: Bioware).

To keep things short, give them to me big, full of pages, and long! - Gotta love skimming through a freshly new manual. But, I have to say, I usually read them after ive initially started the game and am well into it. (or when I rip it open the box and read it untill I get home from the trip to the software store)

I very seldom use the manuals, to me, other than learning the controls, it is more fun to learn the world on your own

i need my manuals. the bigger, the better.
i keep all the great ones on my bookshelf next to my 'puter. i can see 3 huge ringbound manuals from here: BG, BG2, Fallout 2. [img]smile.gif[/img] and the rest are about paperback size. [img]smile.gif[/img]

besides, how can i tell someone to RTFM if there isn't one?

V***V

Before I played BG2 I never read manuals but since then I've changed my mind: long and detailed manuals can be good. Here's another member of the bathroom readers club :D

Sometimes I read the manual sometimes I don't, it depends if I know what the game is like already.

I like the big manuals, since they usually contain more useful information than just the basics. In the Civ3 manual, there's a chapter discussing just about everything.

I also like the Outpost strategy guide. There's about three pages actually about the game, and about 200 about the technology people use in the game, theories, how the technology could be possible in a long time, and kinda random stuff too. Like the chapter quotes. For the chapter about cheating, the quote was:

"I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove I did it." -Bart Simpson, The Simpsons

I probably typed the quote incorrectly, or misspelled Simpsons, but it's correct in the strategy guide.