I confess: I like lists of things, and when it comes to character encyclopedias, I love them. I have character encyclopedias for the Marvel and DC universe, as well as specialized ones for various superhero teams. I have character encyclopedias for Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Outlaws of the Marsh, and they're great, because there are so many names in each of those works.
So now, I also have Capcom's character encyclopedia. First, it seems that Capcom had one of these published 5 years back for its 25th anniversary. If you have that, I don't know that I would purchase this one. While there are new entries, they're pretty weak overall (I particularly like the entries for "Arisen" and "Dragon" from Dragon's Dogma - both of those characters have less personality than, say, Black Tiger).
So, first, a few things about the specifics of the book. The book itself has a nice textbook-type hardcover, and around 200 full-color pages, each with a name of a character, some specifics, a graphic image, and a box summarizing his or her place in the Capcom universe. The pages are also glossy. The entire book cost me around ten buck on Amazon (with free shipping from Prime). Put that way, you are getting a fully-illustrated hardcover book for roughly five cents per page. That's pretty darn good value.
The write-ups are not bad at all. At times, they are actually pretty funny. I have no doubt that a google search would yield much of the information, but it's still nice to see the alternative names. Sometimes there is some subtle commentary on the games in question (I particularly like the mention of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, which I utterly loathed as a game). The character selection is vast - I had not even heard of many of the characters appearing in the encyclopedia.
If I had one small gripe, some of the artwork is lacking. I was particularly disappointed in the image of Morrigan used for the book (and the Darkstalkers characters in general were somewhat lacking overall). Many of the images are pretty stock, but some are pretty unique, so it's really a matter of taste. But for the cost, it's hard to go wrong.
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Reviews with images
A well written, fantastically illustrated piece of gaming history
This is a beautiful book that pays tribute to one of my favorite game developer/publishers. 200+ characters spanning their entire catalog of games.It's more than just an art book, though as each page has a nice bio on the character(and sometimes full cast!) including any other alias they go by and much more! This is definitely a great hard cover table top book to glance through and also a fantastic point of reference for my work as well!Recommended!
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on October 18, 2013
Reviewed in the United States on January 27, 2014
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2013
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2015
Top reviews from other countries
Jorge Garcia
El Lore de los personajes más representativos de Capcom
Reviewed in Mexico on October 14, 2016Amazon Customer
A wonderful little book with a fair bit of effort put ...
Reviewed in Canada on May 13, 2016
