PSN Platinum Trophy Thoughts No.251 - No.260

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

#251 & 252 - Monument Valley 2 (PS4 & PS5)

Difficulty: 2/10

Compared to the first one, the sequel’s puzzles are much more straightforward. When I played the first one, I searched for the guide several times, but for the second one, I didn’t search even once. I just beat every level by twitching every object and attempting to arrange them differently. Although the puzzles are not intriguing, the art style of every level, especially the color design, is still aesthetic and encourages me to take some screenshots.

#253 - Once Upon a Katamari

Difficulty: 3/10

Glad to see another new Katamari title after 2011, but unfortunately, the game controls are still unsatisfying. (1) Adding a simple control that only uses one joystick instead of two makes the game much easier, but when turning left or right, it still feels stiff, and there’s no right joystick sensitivity adjustment to make it turn faster. (2) When climbing ladders or other items, the collision detection still makes it hard to aim in the right direction.

The trophy list is simple: play all levels and collect all crowns and cousins. With the new item system being added, using a radar to detect where the collectable is is easier than before. And the magnet also makes item collection faster. However, just like previous titles, only one cousin will spawn in the first playthrough, which means you’ll need to play the same level three times to collect all three cousins, if there are.

Thanks Namco, the music is as cool as usual.

#254 - Resident Evil Requiem

Difficulty: 3/10

Instead of RE9, RE Revelations 3 would be a much more appropriate name for this game, I think.

When splitting the gameplay into Grace and Leon’s parts, players can enjoy both the survival horror and action parts in one title, and, story-wise, it makes much more sense to split the gameplay like this, so that no one complains like, “Why put Leon in such a survival horror game? He is a veteran with more than 20 years of experience dealing with BOWs”. As THE weakest protagonist, Grace surely makes the survival part horrifying, especially on Insanity Mode, in which even the Requiem won’t work on The Girl.

Besides, Capcom never disappoints in delivering nostalgic elements: the ruins of RPD, the gas station, Kendo’s gun shop, and the basketball court that appears in the remake series for the first time. And in RPD, you can still find Chris’ jacket, Jill’s beret, Tofu, and Rebecca’s photo.

However, RE9 shares the same problem with all current-gen games that use high-quality textures and high-polygon models. In East Raccoon City, most interactable items, such as doors, ladders, and destructible objects, are hard to find. Old games usually colour them differently to distinguish them from ubiquitous objects, but in recent years, game devs have increasingly tended not to do so. Therefore, this part becomes terrifyingly lengthy. To be honest, I would prefer deleting this part and adding more maps for RPD and ARK.

Overall, the trophy list is not as challenging as RE4 Remake. All bosses, including Hunk, could be killed by one hit using the infinite RPG. The only research needed is the speedrun, in which you may need to take some notes on the key items in order.

+ Good balance between survival horror and action

+ The map of the care centre offers a positive experience to explore

- Every map other than the care centre seems a little bit boring

- Pressing R1 to heal should be optional so that I can put zooming on R3 and running on R1 without putting healing on L3

#255 - Tomb Raider: Legend

Difficulty: 2/10

Once played this game on my NDS as a kid. Finally had a chance to play it on PlayStation. But since it’s the PS2 port, the graphics are… meh. With the PS5 rewind function, most stages are easy to handle. Not to say that there are also cheats and airwalking glitches. Different from what the trophy guide says, I found playing the hardest difficulty on the second run with cheats much easier than doing it on the first run, especially those boss battles. The only unsatisfying part would be the camera, making it hard to aim for jumping and grappling.

#256 & #257 - Resident Evil 4 (PS4 & PS5 100%)

Difficulty: 5/10

What a torture…

Don’t get me wrong, the game itself is awesome, but after the Mercenaries Update, the playthrough management looks a lot messier than v1.0, and I didn’t notice that getting S+ on Hardcore won’t unlock the trophy for S+ on Standard. I should recheck the guide before playing this on the newest version lol.

Graphics and gameplay are as solid as OG, although I really hope that there would be a Chapter select like RE5 so that I don’t have to replay the whole game to collect what I missed before. Besides, because the game is much longer than “typical RE games” (like REr, RE7 and RE2r), it makes the speedrunning also more difficult, since there are lots more enemies to pay attention to, and I could barely remember the treasures’ locations, which ends in buying Paid Upgrade Tickets from the PS Store. Those tickets do help a lot tbh.

I personally found the DLC chapter much easier, even though Ada has less DEF than Leon. Maybe it is much shorter so that I could speedrun without using a cheat sheet, and it is more linear without retracing back to previous locations. Using skip tricks in Chapter 6 also makes the laser bunker section less frustrating.

+ Fully next-gen graphics

+ Unlike RE3r, the story is almost the same as OG (The laser beam cutscene is in Ada’s DLC chapter)

+ Ashley is less noisy than OG

+ Gyro aiming

- No chapter select after beating the game

- Loading the previous save from the gameover scene won’t reset the timer, and it takes forever to load the map

#258 - Memories Off | #259 - Memories Off 2nd | #260 - Omoide ni Kawaru Kimi: Memories Off

Difficulty: 1/10

Somehow I’m not very into this series, at least so far. Plotting the whole story in a small town, without any fantasy part (like Fate/Stay Night) or twisted storyline (like Ever 17), makes the whole game tedious to read. And, from the perspective of 2026, 20 years later, the girls are… not that attractive at all, except Tsubame and Takano from MO2. At least a sound cue will be played when the conversation options pop out, which makes the fast-forward clean-up phase much easier.