PSN Platinum Trophy Thoughts No.121 - No.130

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

#121 - Fate/Extella

Difficulty: 3/10

Had some moods to clear some very-rare plats so I picked this one from my backlog. The very-hard difficulty is actually much easier than I thought with all code casts brought, and those traps can also be countered by pressing the attack button at the right time (although none of the guides mentioned it lol). There is no tier for characters and you can beat the VH difficulty using whoever you like, but I highly recommend Nero if you don’t have a preference since some of her stages cannot be played in the free mode and she is easier to use than Altera.

+ The first ARPG game (?) of the Fate series (Tiger Colosseum looks more like a FTG)

+ The counter system is similar to Onimusha’s Issen but much easier to trigger. It looks weird in a Musou-type game but better than nothing. You can literally counter every attack including the trap but I still recommend bring some code casts for safety

+ Side stories are fun to play

- Sometimes camera angles could be weird

- Cutscenes could cancel your combo and EM

- Some character’s in-game rendering are glitchy

- 5,000 Aggressors… This is horrible

#122 - LEGO Ninjago Movie: The Videogame

Difficulty: 3/10

100% on all maps took me lots of time even with a video guide. Although there are reports of completion glitches, I’ve never experienced in this game. Maybe the devs have already fixed them?

+ Character variety. Most time need to switch between characters to solve puzzles, though some end-game characters like Master Chen could save you some times

+ Great music, but those BGMs give me a vibe of Traditional Chinese music instead of Japanese-Ninja-thing

- Interactions that using (jumping and wall dash basically) have a weird timing

- 2P character sometimes will block your way, becoming frustrating especially during the race

#123 - VA-11 Hall-A

Difficulty: 2/10

As a visual novel, it is fantastic, although I did expect more lol

Maybe I need to become more weeboo to enjoy this game more?

+ The bartender minigame makes the whole gameplay much more fun instead of pressing and progress all texts like some old Japanese visual novels. You can look up drinks’ information in the computer and pick up the best drink, and sometimes there are more than 1 best choice. (I do hope that there’s a challenge mode that only includes the bartender minigame)

+ Great music with synthwave vibes

+ Great illustrations, although character designs are more like some 90s and 00s anime girls instead of pure 80s character designs

- Lack of main story. The whole story only involves daily talks in a cyberpunk “Glitch” city in which people’s minds are controlled by virus. Everyone has his/her separated storylines and some of them may connect to others’. However, the story seems too separated and may need a main theme (like a murder or accident or something similar) to connect all characters at once

#124 - Final Fantasy VIII

Difficulty: 3/10 (With booster)

A revolutionary one compared to previous FF games. There are lots of changes in the system so I spent almost 8 hrs (Disc 1) just to figure out what Magic Junction is, but anyway it’s an awesome game.

+ A brand new battle system

+ Exploring the open world has much more fun than FF7, and there are more sub-quests and hidden stories

+ Triple Triad is the best mini-game I’ve ever seen that could function not only as a mini-game but also a boost to your battle, due to the Card Mod ability

- Too many FMVs (C’mon I just wanna play the game)

- Lack of facial expression. It is a remastered version so I won’t expect too much, but watching Squall sitting in the seat and holding Rinoa in his arms with a “I don’t give it a XXXX” poker face seems… weird

- The “pointer” from FF7 has been removed, so there’s no way to indicate the position of your character and doors that you could enter, making the exploration a little bit difficult since you may not be able to notice a ladder or a door

- Difficulty adjustment and non-linear exp required to lvl up. Squall’s high ATK plus the RNG Odin makes leveling too easy. With one-hit kills, it is hard to perform Card Mod or Devour. Besides, higher level means higher difficulty, and there’s lack of in-game descriptions regarding this.

#125 - MediEvil

Difficulty: 3/10

A fantastic combination of retro gameplay with modern graphics, although it may need more polishing.

+ Challenging stages. There’s no checkpoint in each stage but since almost all stages could be cleared under 10 mins if you could get familiar with the map, it won’t be a problem

+ Music that gives you Halloween atmospheres

- Lag and framerate drops occasionally, especially in Scarecrow Fields

- No HP refill at the beginning of each stage. Although going back to the Crypt and picking up two vials also works, but wouldn’t it be better if Dan’s HP is automatically refilled at the beginning of each stage?

- Dash and parry are both on R1: Pressing R1 when walking/standing is parry and when running is dash. The left stick of my controller is a lil bit stiff so maybe this is not a good idea

- The hit animation of sword is weird… but not an issue tbh

#126 - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Difficulty: 3/10

My friend recommended me this several months ago, saying that its system is similar to Dark Souls (and Bloodborne). However, after I got the plat of this game, my verdict is, that this game is just a horrible rip off of DS. It “inherited” most of the bad aspects from DS, but none of the good features from DS are implemented in this game.

+ The NA version contains multi-language text such as Japanese and Chinese. Multi-language is always an issue, especially in some Square Enix games, that should I buy the EN version or the JP version? Why can’t SE publish a version that has both? (Thank god they made it in FF7R)

- Freeze & Loading & Framerate drops. None of the 3A games I played except this and AC Unity have such a bad performance on my PS4 Slim, and this is much worse than AC Unity.

- No auto-save. Remember that when you play DS and you wanna quit the game, the game will always brings you to where you were when you quitted last time due to its auto save feature. This game only saves when you interact the meditation point, so a suddenly CE-34878-0 will ruin your hours of playing if you forget to save your game. BTW who the earth will use the meditation point if there are still lots of stim canisters in stock…

- Enemies will revive upon meditation. Don’t get me wrong, but this feature does work well in DS and Bloodborne because of their story settings. DS has a undead world setting that fire will bring back lives, and Bloodborne is mostly a nightmare setting, so the revive of enemies make sense. However, the revive of enemies in Fallen Order is totally BS since it does not make sense at all. Does Cal’s meditation brings back their lifes? Or those enemies are just mind-borne?

- No fast travel. This makes the end-game garbage collecting frustrating as hell cuz you’ll have to find a video guide or image guide to find the route. Most of those collectibles are literally useless because they are just outfits for Cal, BD1 and Mantis. To be honest, shortcuts just don’t work that efficiently except the large elevator in Kashyyyk. The devs must be drugged.

- Weird combat system. (1) Some of the advanced skills needs time to charge and release, and this will make them garbage since you don’t have time to charge most of the time and your charge will be cancelled upon hit by enemies. Those most powerful skills are always the basic: Slow, Push, Pull, normal attack, and the ranged saber attack. (2) For melee human-type enemies you’ll have to break their defense gauge to do actual damage. This reminds me of God of War (PS4), but even when Kratos is using his fists, he could still do actual damage to enemies, although it’s much less than other weapons. (3) Counter is useless when facing a group of melee enemies. A successful counter will not grant you invincibility and also will not grant you a time window to attack, because you could still get hit and lost your chance to attack after a successful counter.

#127 New Sakura Wars

Difficulty: 4/10

A nostalgic reboot/sequel of Sakura Taisen series. It’s good to see old characters, robots and listen to old BGMs.

+ The map is much more detailed, with more interactions/quests with NPCs

+ Quests and events are fun to watch, as a dating simulator

+ Great remix of old BGMs

+ The Koi Koi minigame has a great tutorial for people who doesn’t know how to play the game (like me)

- The main story is kinda cliche, and some characters cannot leave me a great first impression

- Battle is tedious, especially when you need to finish all battle simulator stages on S rank with all girls

#128 - Valkyrie Drive: Bhikkhuni

Difficulty: 5/10

It is a mediocre game with some fan services, but those trophies are the most nasty ones I have ever seen: not hard but grindy as hell

+ Fan service

- Glitches including: (1) Enemies will randomly disappear upon drive used (2) Defeat the final boss but the clear will not appear (3) Objects sometimes are placed in weird location (e.g. The grass backdoor)

- Stupid grindy trophies. 100 naked body, all lingerie and 5M exp are horrible, especially when other trophies only took me around 30 hrs but the platinum took around 65 hrs

- The 1.00 version (JP) is almost unplayable due to the insane stages in the challenge mode

#129 - Gundam Breaker 3

Difficulty: 2/10

I should buy the PS4 version instead of the laggy vita version lol.

Trophy list is pretty self-explaining: beat the game 3 times in different difficulties and some misc trophies. However I have to admit that the last NT playthrough is pretty boring due to the tedious and lengthy stages and elite enemies that appear over and over (although it’s able to skip some of them using self-explosion). Even with my best load-out it takes about 30 mins or even more for some stages. The best part of the game must be the Gunpla customization part, not only for aesthetic, but also for the functioning and special sub-weapons.

• Gunpla customization

• EX skills and burst attacks could be learned so those special moves could be unleashed even without the specific parts

• Lengthy and tedious stages

• Your HG teammates sometimes are too vulnerable, especially in Extreme and NT difficulties. You’ll have to bring a healing ability just for them

• (PS Vita) Horrible framerate drops and lags

#130 - Psycho-Pass: Mandatory Happiness

Difficulty: 4/10

I am not going to comment on the story part because I really skipped a lot. (Guess I might have reading disorder and cannot handle games with too many texts) For me the 2048-minigame is the most relaxing part, challenging but fun, although lots of grinds on points to buy those voices and illustrations, even with backup saves