PSN Platinum Trophy Thoughts No.101 - No.110

Original post:
https://forum.psnprofiles.com/topic/81083-astray404s-trophy-shelf/

#101 - Conception 2: Children of the Seven Stars

Difficulty: 4/10

As I said in one of my status thread, this is a psvita game that I started 5 years ago. It’s a combination of visual novel and turn-based RPG. It is not that fun to play, maybe because I’m not that interested in RPG games (lol) or because of its roguelike maze design. Collecting all events are frustrating because I need to save/load a lot in order to get different versions of the same event. But overall it is not that hard. I would recommend getting the max affinity level in the 1st playthrough and collecting all max-level events, and then doing a speedrun (about 6 hours) on the 2nd play through (all items, character levels and city levels will be saved) and get all other events that is relative to the affinity level. 

#102 Taiko no Tatsujin V Version

Difficulty: 3/10

Maybe because I’ve played many kinds of rhythm games like Beatmania (not the iidx one, that one’s too hard  ), DDR, Project Diva series, and Theatrhythm FF series, TBH I didn’t find it too difficult for me, even with the 25 tracks on Oni difficulty. The buttons on psvita are way harder to press than the touch screen of 3ds, so I have to get used to the psvita buttons. 

If you have difficulty plat this game, my suggestion would be

  1. Practicing different patterns like RBR, RBB, RBBR, and so on;
  2. The crown count in vita = crowns in normal mode + crowns in Shinuchi(真打) mode, so basically choose 13 easy tracks and play them in two different modes.

#103 Fate/Hollow Ataraxia

Difficulty: 1/10

A classic visual novel which is a sequel (?) of Fate/Stay Night. If you could understand Japanese than I would highly recommend read it instead of pressing fast forward button just for those trophies. Basically I bought this for the mini-game Capsule Servant cuz it’s exclusive on the vita version. 

I found a guide online and arrange the text in a more readable doc file. In case anyone needs it:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/17mAm5nU_YYsiKbxJEZ1_kYQXLBRj1jOFYcjdquccKYI/edit?usp=sharing

(Yes it is in Japanese :V)

#104 Persona 3 Dancing in Moonlight & #105 Persona 4 Dancing All Night

Difficulty: 2/10

I would like to say that those remixes are pretty good. I will definitely add some amazing tracks to my playlist if I’m able to get the OST. This series is not that difficult since for P3D you can get the “Auto Scratch” modifier at the start of the game, and although P4D does not have the Auto Scratch, the notes are still readable so you don’t have to actually remember the pattern.

#106 Persona 5 Dancing in Starlight

Difficulty: 2/10

Rhythm games from Atlus/Sega always have the best character & stage designs and visual effects, and this is one of the reasons that I love & hate their rhythm games lol. Watching your fav characters dancing while keep pressing buttons is not a easy task but thank god this series is not that difficult. Sometimes those visual effects just block your view and make you unable to detect notes. However, since it is just a fan-service game I won’t complain that much. 

Some of my fav songs in this game:

  • Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There
  • Tokyo Daylight
  • Price
  • Last Surprise

(Makoto is cute)

I’ll definitely try P5 or P5R in the future if I have time for a JRPG with long story line.

#107 Ridge Racer (PS Vita)

Difficulty: 4/10

TBH I’m not a racing game player, I bought this game just for its fascinating music @_@ 

I do love tracks composed by Hiroshi Okubo and Ajurika (This guy also composes tracks for Tekken I think), but this game could be pretty tedious at the end, especially when you need to farm for the Filthy VIP trophy, which requires you to get the 1500th rank. Some players used the save editor to cheat their points so you need to grind even more CR points than before. Cuz it’s 2020, 9 years after the game has been released. 

The base game only contains 3 maps and 5 cars, and I highly recommend buy the game pass which gives you more maps and cars so you won’t run out of your sanity in the end-game phrase. For the devil car and angel car duel races, my suggestion is – use your team vision if you, like me, are not confident in your racing level. 

Verdict: Everything other than CR farming is fun to play.

#108 Devil May Cry 2 (PS4)

Difficulty: 2/10 (I HAVE THE CODE)

I sort of understand why this game is being criticized so many years after I got the plat of this game. Have to say that this game is pretty horrible on camera and action design. Like some old Resident Evil games, the camera rotates wherever it likes to, plus the map menu does not describe the map appropriately (which direction am I facing to?), making the map indistinguishable. For the action part, Dante seems to have muscle weakness that it takes forever for him to swing his sword, but Trish is fine, or maybe the best character in the whole DMC2. The time for combo chaining is too short that you have to hold the gun button all the time to keep your S-rank combo. Sometimes the sub-machine gun and the launcher seems too OP that makes you don’t wanna do the melee attack if not looking for a perfect S-rank on mission. 

Gotta put DMC3 on my must-play list, but I need to play some 3A titles to get some rest… :V

#109 - Uta Kumi 575

Difficulty: 4~5/10 

The worst and the 3rd challenging rhythm game that I have ever played on my PS consoles (Beatmania iidx and Taiko are the 1st and 2nd definitely). 

Basically it is a Japanese word/vocab puzzle game that asks you to fill-in-the-blanks, but you need to do this while doing the rhythm part! Switching tapping between the front screen and the backpad is frustrating. I wish I could have 3 hands lol. The most important thing: songs are horrible - Stupid lyrics, poor-tuning Vocaloid singers… Ugh. There ARE one or two good songs but it could be much better if the lyrics is better, or not in the 575 format. Or it could be much better if the singers are not Vocaloid singers. 

Thank god I’ve learned Japanese for several years so that I could even be able to play this game. Cuz for the plat, you need to FC on all songs while choosing all lyrics correctly. For most songs you could pause and choose the correct lyrics combination but not all of them are cheat-able.

#110 - MGS 3 (PS Vita)

Difficulty: 5/10 

I always have a feeling that Hideo Kojima is the most overrated dev. My friend recommended this game to me several years ago, and I bought both the MGS HD collection on my vita, and a MGS 3D on 3ds, which I think it’s mostly identical to MGS 3. It’s my first time to play this game seriously on vita, and… it sucks. 

First of all, there’s no tutorial in the game, so it took me about one or two hours to figure out how this game works on my vita. The only reference I found is the digital instruction, and it still confuses me. For example, it says “Touch center of the rear touch pad to interrogate, while tap center of rear touch pad to thrust”. WTF? There’s either holding the button or pressing the button, so what is the difference between touch and tap? Beside, the control is just weird. For the shooting, you hold R to focus, hold square to aim, and release to shoot. Usually we just hold L to aim and press R to shoot (in some RE games there’s pressing square to shoot also). If you find yourself not good to shoot, you need to press O to cancel. It’s quite hard to press O while holding the square, and it’s too messy. 

Second, cutscenes and non-stop talks. The game starts with 3 cutscene, one for the mission intro, one for the historical background, and another for Snake. And there are also other tedious cutscenes later, one after another. Due to the Snake Eyes trophy, for some of them you are not allow to skip, and it’s really painful. I understand that there’s a global hype for cinematic expression in video games decades ago, but even so, is this kinda too much? And the lady in the save channel, each time I contact her, she will double check “Snake do you need to save your file?”, ofc I wanna save my god damn game, or I wouldn’t access this radio channel. After saving, she still keeps asking “Snake have your ever heard… / do you know…”. Jeez, just stop. 

Third, collectables. I don’t have many complaints about those collectables like birds, fruits, and mushrooms, but without a guide it is pretty hard to identify them. And.. 64 Kerotan figures are definitely too many for a 7-to-8-hour-long game. Sometimes you’ll have to backtrack, not for the story, but for those figures, so I wonder if their purpose is just to make the game looks taking longer time to clear. Some of them are hard to aim during the last part when you’re on Eva’s bike. 

The last thing, I kinda know that the main theme for this game is anti-war and anti-violence, that it exaggerates the painful expression on enemies to make you show your sympathy on them. However, some of those bosses are too magical and unrealistic, and their supernatural powers seems not fit in such a theme. For the PEACE WALKER trophy, actually Snake did kill the boss at the end, so does it count? :)