Even though I am a jaded gamer, I was rather impressed with this particular book despite its small size. The book looked like a joke when I found it on the store shelf, it is small and thin compared to your usual videogame cheat books from Prima and the usual suspects. But never judge a book by its cover... and its size.
The book is printed in full-color on glossy pages. Besides the architect's map of the rooms, you also get the gamer's view of each room - they had to combine several screen shots because the game camera never shows you the whole room, some hard work was definitely done here. All doorways or interactive objects are clearly designated with numbers and a full chart explains in detail what can be done or where the door leads to. These visual aids really help, especially if you've been frustrated with the text-based FAQs/walkthrus floating around the Internet.
For those impatient to read through the details, you can jump ahead towards the end of the book for a cut-to-the-chase walkthru. The walkthru tells you exactly what to do without skipping any steps or throwing in red herrings that you don't need. I managed to finish the First Chapter in about 30 minutes using the walkthru. The writing was concise, clear, and easy to understand.
The walkthru gives you the best of the multiple possible endings, and the book also tells you what conditions NOT to meet in order to get the other "bad" endings. Unlike game books for the major releases (such as the Resident Evil games) with the pressure of deadlines, this book is, as far as I can tell, free of errors or clues based on the Japanese original that have become unreliable due to American version changes.
It is clear that this book was being created by people who knows what they are doing and love their job, too. In the intro pages of the book, they tell you the game's origins on the Super Famicom and how one of the PlayStation releases was never ported for the U.S. market. You even get a bonus walkthru for the first Clock Tower game, now that's what I call getting more bang for your buck!
The backcover of the book has a bio for the authors, here's an interesting bit that might help you decide to buy this book if you have either the first or second game: "Mark wants to buy a truck, so please help him by purchasing this book." :)
I read this book and it helped me to play the game. I like to play games because they are fun to play. I have not played clock tower 2 yet but I think that I will like it just as much as Tomba because Tomaba was a fun game, almost as fun as that game I made. That game I made was really fun because I read the clock tower 2 book and that helped me make my game. If your looking to make your own game I would strongly recomend you buy this book! Sometimes when I am reading this book I get really scared and I put the book down and start to cry. I dont like to cry because then my dad makes fun of me and I dont like it when he makes fun of me because it is not fun. And that is my review of Tomba aka the greatest game ever made THE END