But.
The lead writer isn't very good. He has an unfortunate tendency towards presenting sweeping, unsupported, statements as fact, and has a lazy approach to research; if it's not part of his direct experience it's going to get dismissed, if it's acknowledged at all. It is very obvious if he hasn't played -- or just isn't interested in -- a game about which he's supposed to be writing, and it's not clear if he's fully aware that Europe exists.
(As this book has a team of writers, this is a trivial issue to resolve: just say "I don't feel like writing about Ax Battler; can someone else do it?" There you go. Wasn't difficult.)
I'm familiar with the writer from his website, and the same problems are apparent there too; if I'd realised he was the head writer for this book, I'm not sure I would have bought it.
The organisation is a bit odd too. It's not clear why games are ordered the way they are, and when other games are mentioned in an entry they are sometimes given a page reference, but most often not. Why? Who knows? If a game has multiple titles -- for example, English and Japanese titles -- they are listed only by one, and again it's not clear why that name is chosen. There is an index, but it's just an alphabetical list; again, if a game has alternate titles, they aren't indexed. Indexes by year and platform would have been useful too.
So it's a beautiful book, and there are plenty of surprises even for the most enthusiastic JRPG fan, but I would be very wary of treating it as any sort of authoritative, let alone scholarly, text. Ignore the title; it's not a "guide", it's more of an overview, albeit a fun and (very) pretty one.
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