Mayellie

#45 - Afterparty Thanks for Not Reading a Book Instead Get All Trophies From the same studio that delivered Oxenfree, my favorite indie, Afterparty had been on my wishlist since it was revealed. After grabbing it while on sale, I got to follow Lola and Milo’s journey as 2 best friends who pass away and end up in Hell together. For a chance at returning to the mortal world, they must first traverse through Hell and its witty characters to challenge and outdrink Satan in a drinking game! Story: I loved Oxenfree’s story; it had the perfect combination of humor, and mystery. While I knew that Afterparty is not a mystery game, the story left me wanting more. It felt more “tag-along” than “do”. I found myself feeling a bit bored at times, and there is not much game to be actually played besides choosing a dialogue option. This leads into my next point where unlike Oxenfree, most of Afterparty’s endings offer no real difference to the story, and neither do they offer much replay value or continuity. Again, I felt disappointed because I thought the studio would at least deliver a much more replayable experience, given that’s what games that let you steer the story in whatever direction you like tend to do. That being said, there are pros! The humor is much more mature, touching on jokes regarding religion, Heaven/Hell, and other “adult” jokes. There were several instances where I actually chuckled or giggled in characters’ dialogues. The characters you meet are witty, funny, and add a lot of life to a game set in Hell (pun intended). 😇 Art + music: Night School Studio stuck to the same clean and pretty art style as Oxenfree. It’s a visually appealing game, and all the different tones of neon red and purple blend in quite well with the Hellish environment. The OST was also really good – there were a few instances where I would put my controller down just to listen to Hell’s booming music coming from Satan’s nightclub. Gameplay: Overall, it felt boring sometimes. Its pretty simple, scrolling sideways. There are no collectibles which feels like a missed opportunity to add some layers of what other characters are experiencing in Hell, and the lack of replay value is disappointing. There are also bugs in the game where the screen freezes for a few minutes before it seemingly fixing itself, which happened quite a few times. However, the voice acting is once again top notch which made the dialogue a bit more fun Enjoyment: 7/10 Difficulty: 4/10

#41 - Undertale Don't You Have Anything Better To Do? Obtain all other Undertale trophies I’d heard a lot about this PC classic, so I snatched it as soon as I saw it on sale! I liked the platinum trophy’s name, so I figured I’d also make it a milestone as my 2500th trophy! And I have no regrets. Undertale is a short, charming, adventurous, and unique RPG. With the freedom to progress the game through various ways and not needing to kill anyone, it gives a relatively short RPG replay value. Unlike majority of games, you never really have to kill anyone, and each choice you make matters. Characters will know and remember what you did which impacts both the remainder of your current playthrough and future ones! Additionally, the more you play the game, the more you understand its short little story. I felt this added some nice replay value to such a charming game. But what really takes the cake for Undertale is its brilliant, witty humor. If that’s anything up your alley, you’ll love it! It even breaks the fourth wall at times, and features such funny and charismatic characters that you can’t help but love, even if there isn't any voice acting. And don’t even get me started on the OST! Both the well-composed and very varied soundtrack, in addition to its simple but pretty visuals only add to Undertale’s charm. The trophy list is super duper simple, and can be done in one playthrough (although I did it in one and a half). Most trophies are unmissable, no collectibles, and there’s a handful of easy trophies you can easily get done if you had to go back for them. All in all, Undertale is the epitome of “games don’t need to be complex to be enjoyable”. While majority of games out there are somewhat serious, Undertale throws all of that in the bin and lets you date a skeleton, be angry at annoying dog, and showers you in rainbows. I appreciated that I could progress through the game my own way without needing to kill anyone like most games need you to. While it was a short experience, it was very enjoyable! Difficulty: 5/10 (some boss fights were such a pain in my pacifist run, though) Enjoyment: 8/10 Can recommend!

#37 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice Done Collect all of the other trophies I had heard so much about Hellblade: Senua’s Scarifice before it even released, as it was praised for its story and more importantly, its sound design. Hellblade follows the story of a Celtic warrior named Senua, on a tough and haunting journey to Hell to avenge the soul of her dead lover. However, the path is not easy, especially for someone who deals with psychosis like Senua. The game’s atmosphere is spot on. Everything from the visuals, level design, sound design, and voice acting is top-notch and you can tell that a lot of thought went to it. The sound design is what makes Hellblade different to other games I’ve played. It’s designed in a way that puts you in Senua’s shoes in a way that’s tough to explain. You can hear all her thoughts and whispering voices in her head bustling around you. Hellblade does a fantastic job of making you see things from Senua’s perspective, which makes playing with headphones non-negotiable. I thought the story and plotline were also well written. However, something that made Hellblade feel like such a chore sometimes was its incredibly slow pace. You go through short fast paced bits followed by very long slow-paced parts. Personally, I prefer games to be more balanced and not to be so slow. While the puzzles are designed well, there are a lot of them, but they don’t feature much variety. That made them feel boring and repetitive by the end of the game. I would say the same for the combat – it’s good, but gets boring. I find that the game lacked depth in those two aspects. Overall, Hellblade is a good game. Did it live up to my expectations? No. But is it still worth playing? Yep. Best way to summarize my feelings is by saying it’s not bad at all, but that I wished it were better. I will say that it gave me an opportunity to understand even a little bit of what people with psychosis experience, and if anything, it’s worth trying because of that. Difficulty: 5/10 Enjoyment: 8/10 (but drops down to ~7 for the very slow bits)

#35 - Destiny 2 Traveler’s Chosen Obtain all trophies in Destiny 2. I did it! After 5-6 months of extreme grind, dedicating over 270 hours to the platinum alone, and culminating my journey with beating the hardest and most unforgiving activity in the game of completing a Nightfall on Grandmaster difficulty, I finally got my Destiny 2 platinum. Long story short, I played D2 last year casually, and popped half the trophy list. In September, I decided to return to the game and attempt to platinum it. This is where things went severely downhill… 😅 I was fooled by the appearance of a short trophy list, and while half that list will pop fast, the other half is an insane and long grind. I started to feel so physically and mentally drained because I knew I had so much work to do weekly and daily (activities and challenges reset weekly, bounties only last 24h), which was tough to keep up with in between other IRL duties. I grinded week by week the same boring activities hoping for some luck and better gear than what I own. Eventually, you hit a point where regular activities won’t help you increase your level – you’ll need to do the tougher stuff and at an even faster and more consistent rate, all of that so you can get to a really high level, waaaay past what the average Destiny player will be able to achieve in a single season, so you can simply start (not complete, more on that in a bit) a Nightfall strike on Grandmaster difficulty. Sooooo, ya finally managed to level up an insane amount? Cool, but you’re not done! Even if you reach the maximum hard level in the season (1260, is insanely difficult and grindy to get), you’re still 15 levels below the minimum requirement to even ATTEMPT Grandmaster, which is 1275. “But… but… how do I level up?” Aha! Enters a new levelling up system called the artifact which works solely off XP. Expect to require 1million – 3 million XP per ONE artifact level. 😶 As for GM completion… I thought the grind to reach the level requirement was the only issue. Boy, oh boy, I was wrong. Grandmaster Nightfalls are absolutely brutal challenges for people out of their mind, and the hardest in the game. It’s tricky to explain just how much skill, dedication, and ability to keep your shit together GM completion requires to someone who doesn’t play Destiny. Some of the reasons GM is so so hard is due to insane negative modifiers, like limited number of revives for your team, powerful GM-only enemies that require specific mods to kill, you are at a disadvantage due to massively overpowered enemies that can one shot you, locked loadout, no radar, and so much more, but the most extreme was the no checkpoint system. If your team dies, it’s a wipe… you get kicked back to orbit and restart the whole thing. Most importantly, GM is only available for a limited time in a season, so if you don’t manage to complete it in time, congrats, Guardian! Restart your 200+ hour grind next season. After not 1, not 2… but 17 attempts, I finally completed a Nightfall on Grandmaster difficulty a week before the season’s end, cutting it too close. The extreme time commitment, sheer amount of perseverance, and skill needed are unreal. I would not recommend this platinum to anyone because it’s clearly meant to reward only elite, veteran players. It was mentally draining and incredibly stressful due to the high-level requirement, time constraint for GM completion, in addition to the fact that Grandmaster is godforsaken and literally designed to be nearly unplayable. Biiiiiiiig thank you to @Fox who's been grinding it alongside me since September, and tried his best to keep me sane (but failed ) throughout our journey to this plat. Wouldn’t have it w/o his help and support! (FYI: plat rarity is not as low as it sounds it should be is because Bungie only recently changed a relatively easy trophy to completing Grandmaster. Either way, I know the extreme lengths I went for the plat, and it’s going in my trophy cabinet! Also, it's worth noting that this is my experience with the trophy hunting aspect of the game, not the game itself. ) Difficulty: 10/10 Grind: 100/10 (nope, that’s not a typo) Time: 270+ hours

#34 - Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet Ultimate Sweet You've seen everything in the game! Thanks for playing! I reaaaaally felt that I could go for a super short and easy game to brighten things up among all my horrible Destiny 2 grind for the platinum. What better game to pick than Syrup and the Ultimate Sweet? This is an incredibly short visual novel revolving around the adorable story of candy-maker Syrup, her assistant Pastille, and a talking candygirl Gumdrop who randomly shows up outside Syrup’s candy shop, where all her delicious candy is made magic-free! As you play, you’ll have the option of selecting different dialogue choices, each opening up several different paths and outcomes to the story. The shortest run (and worst ending… and the ending I accidentally went for first… ) would take 5 minutes, with the longest and best path taking up to 15-20 minutes. If you pick the idea path which branches into several others, you’ll get to go on a mini quest to make the best candy in all of existence – the Ultimate Sweet! What caught my eye about this game was its incredibly cute and sweet (pun intended) artstyle and characters! Everything is so so adorable, and it made me wish that real life was as cute and bubbly as this fantasy world. I played the game several times trying to unlock different endings myself before checking the in-game menu for what else I was missing, and the choices I needed to make to get them. Since it’s so short, it’ll hardly take you longer than 2 hours to see all endings. Something I liked was you could fast forward through dialogue you’ve already read, but at points you haven’t seen before, the game would slow down so you wouldn’t miss them. This was important to me because I play games to genuinely enjoy them and read their story, so I wasn’t rushing through the dialogue, nor did I buy it just for an easy platinum. I can recommend this short-but-sweet game for anyone looking for a quick break from demanding games, or anyone interested in cute characters, a funny dialogue, and cheerful music. Enjoyment: 8/10 Time: 2h

I've been grinding this game since September, and it's gotten to the point where I'm so emotionally and physically drained. I was fooled by the appearance of a short trophy list, and while half that list will pop pretty fast, the other half is an insane and long grind, especially as someone who doesn't really own any DLC. I'm currently 1264 and I'm still grinding week by week the same boring activities hoping for some luck and better gear than what I own. D2 is an exhausting game because everything is time-sensitive. On top of that, as @Swotam mentioned, I've hit the point where only pinnacles pretty much can help me increase my level, except that pool of activities is also time-sensitive (each activity will give you pinnacles once per week), and it's a small pool to begin with. So you keep playing and grinding for hours on end hoping something you pick up will be worth it. The issue isn't the GM difficulty -- it's simply getting to the level of just being able to join it. The grind, even with a friend, has taken all the fun out of this game and truly cost me my sanity. I can't recommend this platinum to anyone, and if I'd known how bad it would be (to me, at least), I would not have pursued it. I'm not a hardcore Destiny player, but this trophy list was designed for those people who main that game, and have hundreds of hours on it. I'll only keep trying because I've done so much already, and I hope I'll make it to GM just in time. Destiny has exhausted me the past couple of months in a way I've never seen any other game do. It's a true and unforgiving commitment. Good luck to anyone else attempting this at the moment with GM Nightfall as The Prestige. EDIT: Did it a few days before season's end! Loadout is below, in case it helps anyone. Inverted Spire. - Voidwalker Hunter, bottom tree - Primary: Night Watch; explosive payload was the important perk - Special: Stars in Shadow; High-impact frame, Killing Clip, Major Spec & Killing Wind - Power: Xenophage. Anarchy would be better but couldn't manage to get it in time - Gear: Moonfang all except chest piece, which was Sixth Coyote. Very helpful when paired with bottom tree for frequent use of invisibility. - Mods: Overload rounds (Scout Rifle), Anti-Barrier Pulse Rifle, Global Reach, Machine Gun Reserves, Concussive Dampener, Scout Rifle Scavenger, Machine Gun Scavenger, Blessing of Rasputin, and Spoils of War.

#33 - Coffee Talk Coffee and Chill Get all trophy (trophy list could've used a spell check...) In Coffee Talk’s universe, you play as barista, sole employee, and owner of the eponymous Coffee Talk, a teeny tiny café hidden away in the fantasy version of Seattle, and a coffee shop that happens to only open late at night. In this fantasy world, humans, and other fantasy races like elves, succubi, werewolves, vampires, mermaids, orcs, and more, coexist! The premise of the game is different characters visit your coffee shop, and all with different things going on in their lives. Some might be going through a stressful time at work, others with racial issues, some might be visiting from an entirely different galaxy and need help blending in. You make and serve them drinks time and time again while listening to their experiences and watching the characters interact and meet. Eventually, you learn what drinks these unique and well-crafted characters in this alternate Seattle enjoy. I liked the emphasis on heart-to-heart conversations of issues that echo the real life world around you. This was actually my first visual novel, but it does have some gameplay elements. As the barista, customers request drinks, and you make them for them. There are various ingredients to work with, and you can mess about to explore special drinks and fulfill customers’ requests – do they want a sweet drink? A drink both extra bitter and very cool? A drink to calm down a regular werewolf patron on a full moon? There’s a level of complexity to making these drinks, and you can make custom, hand-poured latte art sometimes, so I found it fun. You have no idea how much time I spent trying to, ermm… make some NSFW latte art. The art style and OST are beautiful. Part of what reeled me in was the 80’s pixel anime aesthetic, and the jazzy lo-fi OST that plays throughout the game. Both really added to Coffee Talk’s calming and warm ambience. You could say they were the cream on the hot chocolate! I enjoyed this game, and I’d recommend it if you need a light game to play. It’s not exactly your average VN, and the ending provides an unexpected twist that adds some mystery. The captivating fantasy world of Coffee Talk with its fantastic OST and stunning art style drowned out the outside world enough to make me feel tucked away in this warm coffee shop with the characters. A nice, much-needed escape from reality. Difficulty: Seriously? It's a VN. Enjoyment: 8/10 Time: 12h

That's a lot of words for "I don't understand that some people play games for other reasons than I do, and not everyone needs to play games the way I do, or games I like. How dare they play games differently?!" Everyone plays games for different reasons. Some for the high trophy count from easy plats, and others for difficult games completion. Both can give people happiness and satisfaction. Get over it. Edit: A quick look at your profile tells me you have both Mayo games platted just 2 weeks ago... if you don't like "platinum devaluation", why do you do it?

#32 - Dead Island: Definitive Edition The Whole World Went Away Collect all other trophies Sooooo, Dead Island is about you being trapped on an island full of… the dead. You were having a nice, little vacation on some tropical island god knows where, when everything turns to crap. This is your typical zombie game – one that does not put the story or side missions in the spotlight, as that’s really not the focus of the game. Instead, I’d say the focus is more on mindlessly whacking some zombies and creating crazy weapons to wack ‘em with. Simple, right? Unfortunately, this game sucks to me, and here’s why. It’s a very “plain” game. I could not care about any of the characters or the story. You’re all trapped on an island with some zombies trying to eat your brains? Okay, cool, have fun. I don’t care. The characters are mainly annoying and feature some half-assed dialogue and script. The story is largely uninteresting and almost purposefully gives you no incentive to change your mind. Plus, the “go there, do this, fetch that” gets very boring and repetitive quick. The recycled enemies and boring combat made killing zombies, the one thing this game was meant to get right, pretty unsatisfying. Controls are funky, side-quests are boring, game lacks depth, firearm controls suck, voice acting is laughable and ridiculous, I can go on and on. It’s almost like the devs thought “what makes a game bad?” and put all those characteristics into this crap. Also, I get it’s a tropical island, but I’m a bit confused as to how all the male characters were dressed in actual clothes, whereas it seemed that there was some law written by the dead that all the female characters had to be in bikinis… Trophies: guess what, they suck too, hurray! You have the basic numerous “kill X characters with Y weapons”, which are fine. You have the “kill <insert annoying enemy type>” stuff as well, which is fine and some other miscellaneous stuff that you do across the island, such as picking up collectibles and whatnot. There’s a trophy to complete 75 (horribly boring) quests cumulatively, and a BUNCH of co-op trophies, some requiring up to TEN co-op partners. Luckily, in DI, you can randomly join other people’s games to get some trophies and hope they don’t kick you out. But hold on, if you thought that sucked, get ready for this: there’s a trophy to hit Level 50. To hit level 50, you’d need an amount of XP that you’d get by beating the game 3-4 times. Thankfully, @Fox was my zombie-whacking co-op partner, and since he platted the game already, he told me about levelling exploits that I did early in the game to get some OP weapons and fly through this crap. Also, the game is split into 4 acts. There’s a trophy for playing Act 1 4 times with 4 different characters. Just… why? Each time, there is 0 difference in the story and barely any in the gameplay. What’s the point? Just trophies intentionally designed to prolong a game that simply doesn’t have that sort of content. I really wanted to like Dead Island, but it aged badly (although that implies this was good at release… which I highly doubt it was). The nonsensical story and lackluster gameplay made for a not-so-good experience that not even co-op mode with a good friend could have redeemed it for me. Verdict: If you’re looking for a good zombie-whacking game, keep looking. This ain’t it. Time: 30 hours Boredom: 10/10 Difficulty: 4/10 Enjoyment: 3/10 is the only appropriate rating

Can't you guys read? It's called Cyberpunk 2077 for a reason...

I am not against change. I'm against stupidly unnecessary and detrimental change, which this is. All they had to do was remove the cap for super high-levelled people, and adjust platinums for rarity, so the rarer an obtained plat is, the more you progress. They did neither. 👍

#31 - Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition True Survivor Unlock every Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition trophy. Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition is my first ever Tomb Raider since I never got around to diving into the franchise on earlier consoles! I first played this back in 2018, where I completed the main story and got most of its singleplayer trophies, but ignored the MP. My favorite part of the game is solving the tombs because, duh, tomb raider. There’s definitely more emphasis on general adventure than tomb raiding, which I wasn’t expecting. The puzzles are somewhat complex, and sometimes took longer to solve than what I’m willing to admit… This TR’s story involves Lara and her crew on a ship searching for an island off the coast of Japan in search of secrets behind the ancient kingdom of Yamatai, and its powerful ruler, Himiko, the Sun Queen. After very conveniently crashing onto that exact island, Lara and her crew find themselves in a sticky situation where everything is not what it seems to be. Mystery? Check. Ancient history for (somewhat factual) ancient history nerds like me? DOUBLE CHECK! I was invested in the story for my first playthrough a few years ago. When I got around to playing it a second time, especially now that I’ve tried the second installment of the reboot, Rise of the Tomb Raider, I noticed some pros and cons. Pros for TR over Rise is the story is soooooooooo much more interesting. I’m pretty crap with video game story memory, so I don’t even remember what the hell happens in Rise, but I remember feeling pretty bored and wanting to hop onto my next game. Cons include some cliché dialogue here and there, with a sprinkle of annoying and bipolar side characters. Trophies: singleplayer and multiplayer. The former is straightforward and mainly comprises of killing enemies a certain way. They’re easy, but the issue is some trophies will be easiest to get in specific parts of Lara’s adventure. Meaning, if you went to Shantytown, where there are tons of enemies standing by ledges, and progressed without getting the “pull X enemies off ledges trophy”, then, you, my friend, are FUCKED! While there is free roam post-story, not many enemies respawn. This renders pretty much the entire list as missable. Kills don’t stack either, so they must be in a single playthrough. You need to get all collectibles too, but if you like to get the most out of your games, this should be a slice of cake. Second part is multiplayer, and is by FAR, the reason this is a 5% PSNP plat! Firstly, the MP is totally and 100% absolutely dead, which means you’d have to boost to get some trophies. The good thing is those trophies should not take longer than 30 minutes to boost, and you’d need only a total of 4 people. Secondly (brace yourself), you have to reach level 60. It’s a looooooooong grind. There’s 2 strategies to this trophy: solo grind, and boosting grind. With solo grind, you’re basically begging to be tortured. You need 1.7 million XP to Level 60, and solo matches grant you 20,000 XP… so to anyone who completed it solo, you’re legendary! Luckily, I boosted the grind. My very, very kind friend @Fox lent me a paw for several hours over 2 or so weeks so that I could use another 100,000 XP per match method that was still grindy, but MUUUCH better than solo grind. I literally would not have even returned to this game’s plat if it wasn’t for his help! Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my first TR game. Returning to it after playing Rise of the Tomb Raider helped point out its age, though. I was really interested in the mystery behind this long lost Kingdom of Yamatai, and the mythology behind it. While the Uncharted games are a bit more fast paced, I definitely see where they draw inspiration from. TR is an iconic franchise, and I look forward to trying Shadow of the Tomb Raider. Plus, it made me happy to play as a female protagonist! Difficulty: 5/10 Grind: 8/10 Enjoyment: 8.5/10 I recommend!