Trophy Bragging Rights

[Sharecrow]

Platinum number 50 is in! Got it in A Plague Tale. Awesome game.

[Claytone]

Platinum is Gaia's Guardian from Final Fantasy VII.

One of those solid platinums that represents a bar of having done most (but not all) of the stuff in the game. I think that's usually a pretty good sweet spot, especially in a game like this in which truly doing *everything* would maybe double the required effort. The game itself I think needs no introduction.

I will admit I cheesed a couple of the grindier trophies (level someone to 99, get 99mil gil) with the W-Item bug and the 3x speed cheat, but I'd imagine most people that have gotten them have done the same!

[Claytone]

Platinum is The Dream Traveler from Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series.

This was a pretty easy platinum that apparently only took me 9 hours. Basically all you gotta do is beat the two constituent games while collecting all the star collectibles in each stage and beating a couple challenging bonus stages. I found these games fairly inessential, but I've satisfied my desire to try the series and got a platinum trophy for my trouble. Not too bad.

[Sharecrow]

Platinum 51 is logged. Shadow of the Beast. Great game - far better than what it’s based on.

[Kong Wen]

Platinum trophy #59: One Night Stand (PS4 on PS5)

This was a pretty cute choose-your-own-adventure / puzzle / visual novel. There are multiple endings depending on your choices, and eventually you're able to piece together what happened. To top things off, when you get the plat, there's a little surprise ending that sheds even more light on the story. I think it was only a couple bucks. Well worth it as a low-investment (time, attention) diversion.

Also, wow, just over a year since my last platinum. What a disgrace. And I bailed on FF7R with only one trophy left to go, too...

Oh damn, looks like I forgot to post one. I better do it now, since it doesn't seem like another one is coming for a while...

Platinum trophy #60: Yoku's Island Express (PS4 on PS5)

A cute concept, but ultimately disappointing. The game design, both on the individual pinball stage side and on the overall Metcastlevania world-backtracking design side, was somewhat awkward and clunky and could have been better implemented. Some nice areas, some cute music, and probably worth a single non-completionist play-through for fans of the genres, but I wasn't blown away.

[Claytone]

Platinum is Pac-Man World Master from Pac-Man World Re-Pac.

Platinumed this in just about 9 hours. Another well-designed trophy set. Trophies for story progression, trophies for optional stuff, and a couple challenge trophies (beat X boss without dying, hit a jackpot on the slots minigame, clear Stage 9 on original Pac-Man, etc.).

This is a faithful but improved remake of the original, fairly short game, so it just doesn't take all that long to do all that stuff. The biggest limiting factor by unlock % seems to be clearing Stage 9 of Pac-Man 1980, which really isn't that hard! Well, it's hard in the same way solving a Rubik's Cube is hard, which is to say that learning how to do it independently would take a lot of time and effort studying the game/toy, but today you can just go on YouTube to learn and memorize a few patterns, and that will get you most of the way there. It's not 100% rote, and you will need to do some improvisation, but each stage up through like 15ish has deterministic openings that you can exploit to minimize the amount of improvisation/skill you will be forced to execute to finish the board. Idk why I'm typing this all out here. I guess it just sort of amuses me that being good (or at least above-average) at original Pac-Man is more of a memorizable parlor trick than much of an actual skill (unlike the more modern iterations with greater randomness). Still fun to have in your back pocket, though!

The problem preventing people from getting that trophy, I suppose, is that you'd have to know Pac-Man has exploits like that in the first place to even know to look it up.

[Sharecrow]

Got platinum in Alien, which took me about two months not counting previous failed attempts at sticking with it. Great game. One of the Best Games I’ve Ever played.

[Sharecrow]

Got platinum 54 in Asteroids Recharged. My son and I had a blast with it.

[Kong Wen]

Oh damn, looks like I forgot to post one. I better do it now, since it doesn't seem like another one is coming for a while...

Platinum trophy #60: Yoku's Island Express (PS4 on PS5)

A cute concept, but ultimately disappointing. The game design, both on the individual pinball stage side and on the overall Metcastlevania world-backtracking design side, was somewhat awkward and clunky and could have been better implemented. Some nice areas, some cute music, and probably worth a single non-completionist play-through for fans of the genres, but I wasn't blown away.

Platinum trophy #61: TOEM: A Photo Adventure (PS5)

This was one of the PlayStation Plus freebies from September 2022, and I was in the mood for what looked like a relaxing/chill game after pounding through a few stages of Tactics Ogre: Reborn. This fit the bill perfectly! It's a cute little puzzle adventure / fetch quest game where your little dude goes around and takes pictures of stuff and solves the locals' problems. I don't think I'd recommend it for the full $30 asking price, but if you picked it up on PS+ already or it drops under $10, don't sleep on it.

[Claytone]

Platinum is The Song of Life from Yakuza 6: The Song of Life.

As I mentioned in chat, this is by far the easiest platinum in the Yakuza series (up to this point, at least). It's still got a couple annoyingly time-consuming things to do, but unlike the others, it doesn't require you to spend countless hours grinding out the "completion list," and it doesn't require you to do a second playthrough. Perhaps most importantly, it doesn't require you to be any good at mahjong.

Overall, a pretty fun plat. Again, a couple mildly annoying grinds, but mostly pretty reasonable stuff. While I may not be able to call this game a :C: by the strictest standards, I would certainly say I did everything of substance in the game (side quests, finished extra modes like baseball and fishing, etc.). That's a first for me with this series. In the interest of getting through the numerous lengthy games of this series quickly enough to eventually catch up to new releases, I've definitely played a leaner slice of previous entries, taking more of a "greatest hits" approach to side quests and such. It's nice to have really seen everything with Yakuza 6.

And in any case, for a series I love this much, I felt I had to at least snag this easiest of the Yakuza platinums. With the Ishin! spinoff forthcoming next month and Like a Dragon Gaiden (a direct sequel to 6, rather than the more recent 7) later this year, I'll be curious to see if the requirements for those will be reasonable enough for me to add a couple more to my collection. Regardless, I'll surely be playing them!