Tag: PS4

Trophy Hunters: Final Fantasy XV – Episode 2

Welcome back to another episode of Trophy Hunters. Several weeks ago, I wrote about another platinum quest, this time setting my sights on Final Fantasy XV. Square Enix’s most recent (non-remake)entry into the long-running series had been one I’d wanted to play for quite some time, and I’m glad I finally got around to it.

It’s been…a month(seriously?) since my previous update showing the trophies I’d managed to acquire in my first 14 or so hours of playing the game. I had only completed the game’s prologue and first two chapters of the story as I’d spent the majority of my time completing numerous side quests across the world. Prior to starting FFXV, I had heard the game started off with a more wide-open structure before becoming a straightforward, linear experience in the latter chapters of the game. In the past several weeks, I have completed the main story of the game and can honestly say that I quite enjoyed the game and ended up more attached to Noct, Gladio, Ignis, and Prompto than I would have imagined. The story did become linear almost to the point of feeling rushed in some of the later chapters, as it felt like the game went from chapters lasting 60-90minutes(depending on side quests, hunting, etc.) to taking roughly 20 minutes to complete each chapter in the final act of the story. This, along with the fact Square Enix had started the game’s lifespan with the intent of it following a “live service” model, FFXV can feel a little disjointed in parts(*this perhaps being due to only playing the main game and none of the additional dlc at this time*). Minor quibbles with inconsistent pacing aside, I had a lot of fun playing the game and seeing Noctis’ journey from burdened prince to king of destiny.

After finishing up the main story, you have the option to return to previous areas of the game. After taking the rest of the night to savor the story’s finale, I traveled backwards to work towards finishing the remaining trophy requirements. In addition completing 80 side quests(I had only finished half of them by the time I reached the end credits), I still need to finish collecting all 13 royal arms as well as upgrading the Regalia to a flying machine and fighting the adamantoise, a mountain-sized turtle with 5,000,000 hp. There’s also trophies for raising the skill level for each member of the party to 10…which is looking to be a bit of a grind. A preview for the next update post, right?

Note: In an attempt to stay relatively spoiler-free, I have been simply stating the story chapters as completed and not going into much detail regarding the events contained within

Here’s the trophies I have collected in the meantime…

The Open World

  • Completed Chapter 3

Living Legend

  • Completed Chapter 4

Dark Clouds

  • Completed Chapter 5

A Way Forward

  • Completed Chapter 6

Party of Three

  • Completed Chapter 7

Seaworthy

  • Completed Chapter 8

Callings

  • Completed Chapter 9

The Heart of a King

  • Completed Chapter 10

In the Dark

  • Completed Chapter 11

End of Days

  • Completed Chapter 12

Redemption

  • Completed Chapter 13

Homecoming

  • Completed Chapter 14

Divine Intervention

  • Summoned one of the Six for the first time

Being a Final Fantasy game, of course there’s a summon ability. Noctis is able to summon one of the Six, or Astrals, once certain conditions have been met during a battle. A prompt will appear on the lower left side of the screen, which I don’t think I noticed into much further in the game. Either way, once you use the summon ability for the first time you are rewarded with the Divine Intervention trophy.

Chosen King

  • Defeated Ifrit on Normal difficulty

Another of the Astrals inhabiting the world of Eos, Ifrit is one of the Six that is not able to be summoned by Noctis during the game. Instead, the party must battle against the God of Fire shortly before the final confrontation in Chapter 14. Full disclosure, I had been playing through the majority of FFXV on easy difficulty, which became a lot more difficult in some areas than I had anticipated, but for the Chosen King trophy you must defeat Ifrit(unintended rhyme) on normal difficulty. All I needed to do was remember to switch the difficulty up a notch before the fight, which wasn’t anywhere near as difficult as I was expecting given surprising difficulty curve in some of the later chapters of the game on easy.

The Power of Kings

  • Called forth the Armiger for the first time

The Armiger is essentially Noctis’ limit break in FFXV, which summons an array of royal arms and deals extra damage. It’s triggered with L1 + R1 after the Armiger gauge is filled by landing(and evading) enough attacks. Noctis is able to call forth the Armiger after collecting three of the thirteen royal arms during the main story, which unlocks the Power of Kings trophy.

Immortal Photobomb

  • Caught an image of Gentiana in a photo

Gentiana, who acts as High Messenger in aiding the Oracle, Lady Lunafreya can be captured by Prompto in a snapshot as you travel across Eos(another rhyme…). There doesn’t seem to be a particular way to unlock the Immortal Photobomb trophy as it works randomly and you won’t even notice unless you view through all of the photos taken at the end of a chapter, hence the trophy name…

Self-Mastered

  • Activated 50 ability nodes

The quickest way to the Self-Mastered trophy was to focus on the ability nodes that cost the least AP. I probably could have gotten this trophy a little bit sooner than I did if I would have remembered to take a look at the Ascension sub-menu more often. Now that I have the trophy for activating 50 of them, I can use any AP I acquire from here to put towards other skill-related ones for Noctis and Co.

Spinning a Yarn IV

  • Completed 20 sidequests

5 dozen left…

Spinning a Yarn V

  • Completed 40 sidequests

Just unlocked this one the other day, officially reaching the halfway point for the Weaving a Tapestry trophy for completing 80 sidequests. Only 40 left now….<uneasy laugh>

That’s all for now. I’m not entirely certain how long it will take to clean up the rest of the FFXV trophies, making my way through those last…40 side quests and getting those skill levels maxed out will keep me busy into August. I started the game back in May, so another week or two doesn’t sound unlikely. Until next time…thanks for reading!

Trophy Hunters – Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate

For my newest project/experiment I thought it would be interesting to play an agreed upon game with the intent of getting every trophy/achievement and writing a blog post about it. This was coming from equal parts: an interest to see the differences in approach regarding trophy hunting and my latest excuse to write about whatever games I’ve been playing. I’m not usually one to spend too much time chasing every trophy/achievement in games, save for a few that I really, really enjoy(God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, etc.). However, after spending a fair amount of time talking about trophy hunting in Discord and across various Twitch streams, I was inspired to choose a specific game that I would dedicate an extra effort toward getting that platinum trophy. I shared the idea in the Later Levels server a couple months ago and trophy hunter extraordinaire, Solarayo from Ace Asunder decided to join me in documenting the journey to a shiny new platinum trophy, with the possibility of a few other bloggers joining along the way. I intend to post a weekly update as I progress through, similar to what others have done with games like Animal Crossing, Civilization VI, or Dark Souls.

The Rules:

Complete all achievements or trophy requirements in the specified game and write about it, whether a single post afterwards or a series of updates. That’s it.

The Game:

The first step would be to decide on which game to attempt first, looking for something a little more middle-of-the-road in terms of difficulty than Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or The Last of Us Remastered. After some (very brief)brainstorming, we settled on Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, a game I had been meaning to play for a while. As with the other recent AC games, the path to getting the platinum is primarily playing through the main story, grabbing all the collectibles, and performing a few assorted tasks along the way.

I began playing Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate last Wednesday and I can confidently say I’m really enjoying it so far; I love the Victorian London setting and twin assassins Jacob and Evie Frye. The controls, while still that of the “traditional” Assassin’s Creed games, work well. My only complaint so far would be I’ve run into a few bugs/glitches and a few areas where the game doesn’t want to run as smoothly as other times, but nothing for me to dislike the game this early on. I also refuse to NOT mention the fact your gauntlet is equipped with a grappling hook, making traversal through the streets of London a bit more stylish and fun.

Taking a quick look at the trophy information on my PS4 shows a 2.2% completion rate for AC: Syndicate, making this the rarest platinum trophy in my collection once completed. The next lowest completion rates seem to be for the two trophies: ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Policeman’s Helmet’ which requires you to hijack a police carriage 20 times(2.8% completion) and Without a Grudge – destroy 5000 destructibles with your carriage. Keeping some of the requirements in mind while playing through the main story will definitely make for less post-game trophy cleanup.

I’m currently in the middle of Sequence 4 of the main story and have gotten off to a good start in completing the ‘Needle in a Haystack’ trophy which you must kill 5 enemies from within the same haystack to attain, and ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU’ – a trophy for flipping five vehicles by shooting the horses pulling them…I wanted to get that unpleasant one out of the way quickly. As long as I grab all the collectibles on my way through the main story and get the trophy for 100% synchronization, I’m pretty optimistic I can have another platinum trophy to add to my meager PSN profile.

If anyone else would like to join the trophy hunt, let me know. I’ll be back this time next week with another update. Thanks for reading!