Can I just say holy shit? This Ultimania is easily the nicest one I own, and I have a shit-ton of them.
First off, I had no idea how beautiful it would be. I knew it was going to be a hardback, but I didn't know it was going to be the size of an encyclopedia. Most Ultimanias are small -- approximately the size of a standard novel. This book is a coffee table book, and it is stuffed with a
fuck-ton of illustrations.
I am seeing so much artwork in here that I have never seen before. We have sketches of tons of characters and monsters from FFVII, VIII and IX, including Shera, Ifalna, Cloud's mom, Tifa's dad, Shiva (FFVII), Bahamut Zero, Sapphire Weapon, Arthur (from Knights of the Round), Kiros, Ward, Cid Kramer, Edea (as Matron), Ultimecia, Raine, Ellione, Julia, General Caraway, Dr. Odine, NORG, Shumi Tribe villagers, the T-Rexaur, the Grendel, the X-ATM092, the Iguions, the Ruby Dragon, Abadon, the Propagators, Adel, the Time Compression witches, Trauma, Tri-Point, Griever, Ultimecia's combined form with Griever (and her final form), all the Guardian Forces, Squall on a chocobo, the dancers from the Deling City parade, the Black Waltzes, Mikoto, the Tantarian, the Four Chaoses (both their shrine guardian designs and their enhanced forms from Memoria), Hades (FFIX), Deathguise, all the Eidolons (the Ark's code name during development was "Blassty"), Death (from FFIX's magic spell), and a lot more (e.g. tons of incidental NPCs).
The main character images in their profiles are ginormous and gorgeous, and several profiles feature early alternate designs -- e.g. the image we saw in previews of Cloud with a Buster Sword that has a pronounced hand guard;
Irvine with goggles and Sephiroth bangs instead of a cowboy hat;
Dagger in different outfits and with different hair;
there's even a design of Sephiroth I don't think I've ever seen before, in which he's wearing an outfit with significant differences from his final design (note the different pauldrons, and that he's wearing a normal SOLDIER shirt under his trench coat).
There is also a lot of art from the games' various locations, including some artwork of the inside of the Mt. Nibel mako reactor that blew my mind. It seriously looked like Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" work. There's even a close-up look at the angel construct in Jenova's chamber, with a lot of writing beside it that probably describes what the damn thing is supposed to do.
FFVIII's field map designs are another striking sight, as it looks like they straight up copied most of them right into the game from the background designers' illustrations. Many of these images are exactly as they ended up appearing in the final game.
With the quality of the pages and the art on them, I have to retract my earlier statement that another Ultimania with art from FFX/X-2 would have nothing to offer me. It would probably be well worth it to get even Vol. 3 of this series, and I encourage anyone with a love of Final Fantasy artwork to get at least one of these books. If the other two are comparable to this one, it will be a purchase well made.
For those curious about the same things I was, by the way:
-There's really nothing new about Ultimecia in terms of backstory, but it's nice to have this artwork of her
-There's diddly dick about Necron other than the comment that "When Kuja's havoc comes to an end, his despair draws an unknown 'darkness' near" (クジャの暴走が止まるとき、彼の絶望が未知なる「闇」を引き寄せる; pg. 315)
-As for the LTD of FFVII, well,
this stuff right here is probably going to make a few people shit a brick
