Why did reviewers recommend the unauthorized Final Fantasy VII guide?

The BradyGames book was the biggest of the three at 224 pages, with maps, detailed area sections, and plenty of Square's own artwork. Its drawback, in GameSpot's words, was story spoilers: flip to the wrong page and a reader could be tipped off to a big story element that would have been a heightened emotional experience in the game. You do not even have to play the game with this book, the review said. You can just read about what happens. For a story driven game in its first weeks, that was a defect aimed at the exact readers most likely to buy a guide on day one.

The Versus Books guide was the smallest of the three at 141 pages, and GameSpot called it the most useful and the best organized. Its introduction, by Casey Loe, formerly of Game Fan magazine, explained the author's hatred for books that give away important parts of a game's story. The book then delivered a complete walkthrough without giving away the elements of the story that make the game good, and added a poster and artwork of its own. It was also the cheapest book in the comparison by five dollars. The trade it offered was explicit: no licensed Square artwork, since like Sandwich Islands it could use only screens from the game itself, in exchange for help that did not consume the game it was helping with.

Read closely, the 1997 comparison separates two things buyers still confuse. Official meant a license, and the license visibly bought one thing: Square's artwork throughout the book. It did not guarantee the most careful, most usable, or most respectful guide. Unauthorized meant no artwork deal and no permission, and the two unauthorized books compensated with organization, indexing, and, in Versus' case, a stated editorial policy about spoilers. The word on the cover described a contract. It never described the writing.

What became of Versus Books as a company is not documented in the sources opened for this page, and the Library does not invent an ending for it. What is documented, in a review written while all three books were new, is the moment its approach beat the official book in open comparison. That moment is the page.