AceAttorneyEric's Platinum Rain Day: My Epic Crusade through Every Mainline Final Fantasy

[AceAttorneyEric]

Hey there PSNprofiles! Today I want to share my progress on an undertaking that has consumed my soul since October of 2022. One day I had the bright idea to platinum every mainline Final Fantasy game. The catch is that I am holding off on actually popping the platinum trophy in any of the games until I have every game lined up to plat in a single day in order from I to XVI.

 

Currently, I am one trophy away from platinuming VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII (well, technically two away if you count the platinum trophy itself). Right now I am working on doing the same for the XIII trilogy. I have also been working since October on the free trial version of XIV for PS4 so I'm done with the grindiest part of that platinum, which is the 1,000 levequests trophy.

 

Originally, I was just going to platinum every game in order from VII to XVI because I-VI weren't available on PlayStation. That's why I started on the free trial version of XIV before anything else because I knew that the 1,000 levequests trophy alone would take 6 months to obtain and I didn't want to wait that long after getting the platinum for XIII: Lightning Returns to get the platinum for XIV. However, while I was a little more than halfway through VII I read an article that the ESRB potentially leaked that the I-VI Pixel Remasters were coming out for PS4 and Switch. It was at that time that I realized that if I stopped playing VII before fighting the final boss, I could move on to VIII and then IX etc. until I looped back around to the remasters so that I could make the first Final Fantasy game my first Final Fantasy platinum. Then I said to myself "WAIT I can have my own platinum rain day! I can literally earn the platinum trophy on every mainline Final Fantasy game in order in a single day!"

 

That initial excitement has carried me this far, and I intend to see this to the end. I originally expected that this undertaking would take about 7 months... But man I was off. So far it's been about 9 months and I've only completed 6 of the 18 or so games that I intend to complete. Life just gets in the way sometimes and I can only dedicate myself to playing once or twice a week, if I'm lucky. 

 

But I'll carry on! Currently I'm in Chapter 11 of XIII and I'm going through it at a much quicker pace than X and X-2 which were the games that really slowed my progress down. When I have every title lined up to platinum, I'm considering recording the final day as I pop the platinums while I discuss my experience with each game. It's been rough not earning a single platinum trophy in months, but I'm still enjoying my time and fighting the burn out!

 

I'll likely post updates in this thread. Thank you to anybody reading!

[SoliDeoGloriaIHS]

Quite the epic undertaking.  I have no doubt you can accomplish your goal.  I wish you the best and look forward to watching your progress. 

[modest_undue1]

This is something I'll wait around for.

Wishing you the best of luck fella.

 

 

"Life, is Roblox. Don't let anything get in your way." - DJ Khaled

[AceAttorneyEric]

I have an update! I'm finished with the Final Fantasy XIII Trilogy. Well, finished lining them up to platinum I mean. I'm surprised that it took over 3 months for that trilogy alone. Man, I'm really slacking. I know this is a hot take but I really enjoyed that series, after getting passed the "corridor simulator" section which took up most of the first game.

 

But I'm ready to tackle the next beast. Final Fantasy XIV. This one I've been slowly working on since the beginning via the free trial, so the grind to 1,000 levequests is basically complete (the PSNprofiles guide provided a very quick and endlessly repeatable one that only takes about 10 seconds to complete). I have a little less than 100 levequests left to complete according to my in-game achievements tab so that'll still be my last trophy to earn but I won't have to sit around for 6 more months waiting for it. I've not made much progress in the game aside from grinding the levequests so I'm still intimidated by the scope of this game but I think I'll be able to finish A Realm Reborn quicker than it took me to finish the FF XIII trilogy. Famous last words, I know. 

 

Originally I planned to just keep playing on the free trial of the PS4 version of the game until I unlock all the requirements to pop the trophies so that I can save money on purchasing a subscription, but I just changed my mind after reading this comment from @Boni_Neto who did just that. While it seems like I can still play on the free trial account to get most of the trophies set up to pop immediately after subscribing, it looks like buying a subscription can severely cut down on the grind for the crafting trophies in particular. Especially since, in my case, the character I've been playing with since October 2022 is in a server that is still still considered "new" (over a year later) so I can get a 1,000,000 gil bonus if I upgrade to a full subscription since my alchemist is level 60 after crafting so much and completing that levequest hundreds of times. That 1,000,000 gil bonus should make a lot of those grindier "Craft 1,000 items" for the other classes less tedious since I'll have the gil to purchase a lot of raw materials.

 

Getting a subscription might also give me the encouragement I need to actually make progress in the game since it'll cost real world money after the 30 day free subscription period ends. Wish me luck!

 

Edit: I went ahead and got the subscription. As expected, no trophy immediately autopopped because you need to do one more of each thing before they pop. However, I did get the 1,000,000 gil deposited into my account as soon as I logged in as well as a bonus 15 days of free playtime to total 45 days of gametime.

Because I already met the requirement for synthesizing 1,000 items as an alchemist (since I had to craft way more than that for the repeatable levequest I mentioned) that trophy popped as soon as I crafted a distilled water which was the first thing I did upon logging back in after subscribing. Since I was still next to the levequest giver I accepted the quest and turned in the 3 potions to finally get the trophy for completing a levequest (even though I've completed that quest hundreds of times already lol). Then I knocked a few other easy trophies out of the way to get the ball rolling. Let the real grind begin!

Edited November 24, 2023 by AceAttorneyEric

[Boni_Neto]

Hello, my friend, I'm glad that my experience helped you a little in choosing your own path with A Realm Reborn. It was, to me, the hardest one because of the 6-months commitment, so I'm super happy that it's over. I'm also doing this Final Fantasy journey like you are, but in a much slower pace, since I've been playing other games, and I sadly wasn't able to play them in order, nor did I think about your ingenious plan of leaving every game one trophy away from the plat so you could have all of them lined up in the end. But it's been fun for me as well, I still need the 6 classics and XII on the PS4. I will have to conform myself that I won't have the 13 trilogy because I never owned a PS3 and I don't think I ever will. This console is becoming harder and harder to find in my country, and the one time I tried to buy a used one, it came with the wifi broken. I also don't like the idea of buying a PS3 just to get a platinum. But... something really nice happened these days and I was finally able to order a PS5 (very expensive here), and here I am, hoping that Square might do a remaster or remake of - at least - the original FFXIII. In the meantime, I'll save some money for XVI, I'm really excited with the prospect of being able to play the newest games in the market (something I thought it wouldn't be possible due to the PS5's price in here). Anyway, sorry for the long reply, and all the best luck. I'll be waiting to see your list fully completed.

Edited November 25, 2023 by Boni_Neto

[Super_Mep]

Wow man this is really cool. Can't wait to look at your profile and see them all Platinum in chronological order. 

[ProfSeajay7]

Daaaaamn, I need to get back on my Pixel Remasters. I have FF2 and FF3 rotting in the backlog. Great work, AceAttorney.

 

Have you been using the "One For the Road" leve to get those levequests? That's what I am doing in my own version of the Free Trial. (I wanted to try it out because of the Stormblood content but I am seriously annoyed by how much load time there is, and sadly I can't offload to the PS5 because the PS5 free trial gives you trophies and I don't want the PS5 trophy list as that's impossible to complete. )

 

What I plan to do is, once I get all of the achievements in game related to the trophies and only have a few left(like clearing the fifth turn of the Binding Coils, which I will probably use Party Finder for, although I will probably be going to the end of the free trial and now that you can hit Level 70 in it, I think Twintania could be soloable ), I will upgrade, use the Mog Station to get a story skip to get 30 Platinum Allagan Pieces(I'll buy the Realm Reborn one since it's only $11), toss the book and sell the pieces to get 30,000 gil which should be enough money to do all 1000 crafts for all the crafters. After that, I should get the platinum by doing a few random things to pop all those other trophies, then I'll cancel the service and get my Square-Enix account deleted, removing all the progress I made on the game and my characters.

 

(I'd love to play on, but I am not going to buy two Square-Enix accounts when I already have a Lalafell on my last account waiting for Dawntrail. In fact, the only reason I didn't delete my last PSN account was because of this Lalafell, which just finished the Endwalker story and will be busy getting into Dawntrail when that drops in the summer. The FFXIV on my main account is just to try out the new expanded free trial stuff as Stormblood is my favorite expansion.

 

If you want to upgrade now to get the crafting done more easily(since you will get retainers to help you get ingredients and store junk), then you do you. I'm taking my time.

 

I'll also be playing most of the Final Fantasy games and might put some of them on my own Platinum Rain Day project.

Edited December 2, 2023 by ProfSeajay7

[AceAttorneyEric]

I'd like to thank everyone for commenting. It means a lot to me knowing that you guys took the time to read my overly long ramblings and are so supportful of this adventure. Seriously, every comment brings a smile to my face!

 

On 11/24/2023 at 11:20 PM, Boni_Neto said:

I still need the 6 classics and XII on the PS4. I will have to conform myself that I won't have the 13 trilogy because I never owned a PS3 and I don't think I ever will.

 

I'm also really hoping for a XIII trilogy remake. Every other mainline game (aside from 11) is available on PS5, so why not 13? I had to buy the three games physically and got lucky that I got them for a decent price, but it was a bit annoying having to dust off the ol' PS3 just for them. Because they took me so long to beat, I had nothing but my PS3 plugged into my living room TV for months. I do hope you get the chance to play them for the trophies, but I do believe they're available on Steam if you just wanted to play them on PC that way. Also, I hope you'll enjoy XII when you get to it. I really did, it was the only one that I played when I was younger so I felt nostalgic about it. But playing at 4x speed was absolutely mandatory, haha.

 

On 12/2/2023 at 10:26 AM, ProfSeajay7 said:

Have you been using the "One For the Road" leve to get those levequests? That's what I am doing in my own version of the Free Trial. (I wanted to try it out because of the Stormblood content but I am seriously annoyed by how much load time there is, and sadly I can't offload to the PS5 because the PS5 free trial gives you trophies and I don't want the PS5 trophy list as that's impossible to complete. )

 

What I plan to do is, once I get all of the achievements in game related to the trophies and only have a few left(like clearing the fifth turn of the Binding Coils, which I will probably use Party Finder for, although I will probably be going to the end of the free trial and now that you can hit Level 70 in it, I think Twintania could be soloable ), I will upgrade, use the Mog Station to get a story skip to get 30 Platinum Allagan Pieces(I'll buy the Realm Reborn one since it's only $11), toss the book and sell the pieces to get 30,000 gil which should be enough money to do all 1000 crafts for all the crafters. After that, I should get the platinum by doing a few random things to pop all those other trophies, then I'll cancel the service and get my Square-Enix account deleted, removing all the progress I made on the game and my characters.

 

(I'd love to play on, but I am not going to buy two Square-Enix accounts when I already have a Lalafell on my last account waiting for Dawntrail. In fact, the only reason I didn't delete my last PSN account was because of this Lalafell, which just finished the Endwalker story and will be busy getting into Dawntrail when that drops in the summer. The FFXIV on my main account is just to try out the new expanded free trial stuff as Stormblood is my favorite expansion.

 

If you want to upgrade now to get the crafting done more easily(since you will get retainers to help you get ingredients and store junk), then you do you. I'm taking my time.

 

I'll also be playing most of the Final Fantasy games and might put some of them on my own Platinum Rain Day project.

Yep, One for the Road is the leve that I was smashing through. According to my log I did it around 930 times so far and I'm avoiding doing any other leves until I have the rest of the trophies because I don't want to accidently pop it since it seems like a decent one to leave for last since it's easy to time when it pops.

 

Also, in case you didn't know, you can actually play the PS4 version of the game on PS5. That's exactly what I am doing. I have very fast load times, I barely even notice them. If you play the PS4 version on PS5, you'll have the PS4 trophy list. Trust me, I was super careful about this because I did NOT want to accidently pop anything on the PS5 list.

 

If you're scared that you downloaded the wrong version, you can check on your PS5 dashboard that it's the PS4 version. Let me know if you'd like me to take some screenshots and I can try to use them to explain better. 

 

I don't regret updating to the full package now, I like seeing the trophies pop as I earn them. The 2x EXP and 1,000,000 gil were godsends. It hasn't been that long but I'm absolutely loving this game, so I'm nearing the end of the main story of ARR already. Once I complete it, I plan to change my job to a Blue Mage which should make defeating 10,000 enemies and completing 1,000 FATEs a lot quicker than using my Paladin.

 

Using macros strategically, I was able to make the most boring part (fishing 1,000 times) much less tedious because I was able to watch TV while I did it and only press one button every time I felt the controller vibrate. I don't have the macro on hand but I can post it if you're interested in using it for your grind. It's similar to the one on the trophy guide, but I changed it up a bit. I'm still not done with fishing 1,000 times, but I'm pretty close. I haven't really touched any other role yet aside from alchemy (for the leves) and a bit of mining, but I don't expect that grind to take too long. I am also a little intimidated by Bahamut, but hopefully going to the Party Finder and requesting help "for a first time bonus" will be effective. 

 

I didn't think that there was actually a shot that I could get this all completed within the 45 days that I was given before having to pay for another month, especially since how long some of the other Final Fantasy games have taken me so far, but I've been absolutely no-lifing this game so if all goes well I'll have the platinum ready to go with time to spare.

[ProfSeajay7]

On 12/3/2023 at 8:05 PM, AceAttorneyEric said:

Because they took me so long to beat, I had nothing but my PS3 plugged into my living room TV for months.

Also, FFXIII has the easiest missable trophy in the game that will force you to start a new game. You should know what I am talking about. That's why I decided never to touch that game. 🤬

On 12/3/2023 at 8:05 PM, AceAttorneyEric said:

Also, in case you didn't know, you can actually play the PS4 version of the game on PS5.

Oh really, I didn't know that. I'll have to look up how to do that. Playing the PS4 version on its consoles is so incredibly bad. The only reason I didn't try that was I thought you had to upgrade to the PS5 version. Thanks for the tip!

[ProfSeajay7]

On 12/3/2023 at 8:05 PM, AceAttorneyEric said:

Let me know if you'd like me to take some screenshots and I can try to use them to explain better. 

How can you upload screenshots? Sony canceled sharing screenshots to Twitter. (That's how I uploaded my screenshots.)

[ProfSeajay7]

On 12/3/2023 at 8:05 PM, AceAttorneyEric said:

I don't have the macro on hand but I can post it if you're interested in using it for your grind.

Sure, anything to make fishing easier.

On 12/3/2023 at 8:05 PM, AceAttorneyEric said:

I am also a little intimidated by Bahamut, but hopefully going to the Party Finder and requesting help "for a first time bonus" will be effective. 

I just used PF and asked for a carry. You'd be surprised how many Level 90 players will offer to one-shot Twintania for you to alleviate their boredom after doing HARD content while waiting for Dawntrail. And yes, you only need to do Turn 5 to get the trophy, you don't need to do the other four turns of Binding Coils. You're welcome.

[AceAttorneyEric]

Final Fantasy XIV is done! Only thing left to do is the final 20ish levequests but that should only take a few minutes on my Platinum rain day. Wow, I really enjoyed that game but the grind was no joke. I completely underestimated how mind numbing completing 1000 FATES would be. Even using the most efficient method mentioned in the trophy guide that had me run back and forth between two FATES, that task alone took hours upon hours. Other than that, I also had to grind to get 10,000 enemy kills because they didn't come naturally even after finishing ARR, 100 guildheists, and 100 instances but I discovered an easy way to finish that up by killing tons of Shade Seeker enemies in the Sastasha dungeon. I didn't find that method anywhere, so I recorded it. 

 

On 12/5/2023 at 4:12 PM, ProfSeajay7 said:

I just used PF and asked for a carry. You'd be surprised how many Level 90 players will offer to one-shot Twintania for you to alleviate their boredom after doing HARD content while waiting for Dawntrail. And yes, you only need to do Turn 5 to get the trophy, you don't need to do the other four turns of Binding Coils. You're welcome.

Funny enough, less than 5 minutes after I requested a boost for it, a guy joined my party, said "let's roll" and then he one shot the boss for me. Pretty anticlimatic at the end of the day but it got the job done! I found that for grinding the combat related trophies specifically, getting a Blue Mage at the earliest opportunity is a must. The work that goes into leveling him up and getting him Doom is worth the tons of hours saved while he melts FATEs like butter.

 

Moving on, it was while wrapping up the item crafting trophies yesterday that I started looking into Final Fantasy XV for the first time and learned that while getting the platinum trophy is easy enough, you can't complete the trophy list 100% through normal means because of the Comrades DLC originally being available for FFXV before moving to a standalone game--making the trophies inaccessible unless you play it on version 1.18 - 1.26 which requires quite the workaround. C'mon Square!

 

I found this thread with a method to downgrade the game to the appropriate version to get the Comrades DLC back in the main game, but it was a huge headache to get setup on my end. In fact, I was unable to get it working on my PS5 so I had to resort to getting it set up on my PS4. Luckily I found some tips from this comment by a user named *checks notes* @Boni_Neto once again!

 

This is the second time (so far) that you've inadvertently helped me out, my friend. If I ever find myself in your specific town in your specific country I'll make it a point to buy you a drink. @Veritas7Ax also provided information in that thread as he was troubleshooting it himself that proved to be useful to me.

 

I still don't know why I wasn't able to get the downgrade working on PS5, but since I got it working on PS4 I'm not going to complain. As much as I enjoyed FFXIV, I'm looking forward to starting a new game. Even though I'll be starting with the Comrades DLC which I'm not particularly excited about grinding in.

[ProfSeajay7]

I hope you have a happy New Year's Eve, Ace! When the ball drops, I'll probably have to get back onto 14 and start getting those jobs on my main to Level 90 because the 6.55 content will drop in mid January so I need to get Nemona to the end of the MSQ so I don't have any loose ends going into Dawntrail. 😛

 

Also should be killing hunts to get sacks of nuts for the future expansion.

 

11 hours ago, AceAttorneyEric said:

Funny enough, less than 5 minutes after I requested a boost for it, a guy joined my party, said "let's roll" and then he one shot the boss for me. Pretty anticlimatic at the end of the day but it got the job done!

 

Yeah, that's how most people would do it, usually people who need to get that last level to 90 on their Wondrous Tales and one of the duties in the table is "Binding Coils of Bahamut", so they just say "meh" and when they see someone requesting a boost for Twinie, they say "Meh, easy WT" and help you out.

 

11 hours ago, AceAttorneyEric said:

I found that for grinding the combat related trophies specifically, getting a Blue Mage at the earliest opportunity is a must. The work that goes into leveling him up and getting him Doom is worth the tons of hours saved while he melts FATEs like butter.

Yeah, probably need to do that, but that means I have to get my free trial character out of 2.0 content.

 

Glad you got FFXV downgraded to get that stupid multiplayer DLC done. I downloaded FFVII Remake for my secondary account for the Platinum Difficulty Challenge, so if you have played it, any advice on how to tackle Hard Mode would be appreciated.

[Boni_Neto]

12 hours ago, AceAttorneyEric said:

I found this thread with a method to downgrade the game to the appropriate version to get the Comrades DLC back in the main game, but it was a huge headache to get setup on my end. In fact, I was unable to get it working on my PS5 so I had to resort to getting it set up on my PS4. Luckily I found some tips from this comment by a user named *checks notes* @Boni_Neto once again!

 

This is the second time (so far) that you've inadvertently helped me out, my friend. If I ever find myself in your specific town in your specific country I'll make it a point to buy you a drink. @Veritas7Ax also provided information in that thread as he was troubleshooting it himself that proved to be useful to me.

 

I still don't know why I wasn't able to get the downgrade working on PS5, but since I got it working on PS4 I'm not going to complain. As much as I enjoyed FFXIV, I'm looking forward to starting a new game. Even though I'll be starting with the Comrades DLC which I'm not particularly excited about grinding in.

Hello, mate, I'm glad you were able to get XIV basically done. I had the same experiences as you did. I also used the 2 FATEs from the guide (horrible grinding) and the Binding Coil of Bahamut also lasted for 5 seconds, it was indeed anticlimactic after such a grind, but kinda funny at the same time, because I had been dreading that particular trophy for 6 months.

 

As for XV, it's great to know that once again my experience also helped you. I heard that downgrading it on the PS5 is a hit or miss, doesn't work for everyone, but on the PS4 is a sure thing, although the software might take a few times to work well. At least, after you complete Comrades, you can go back and play the rest on the PS5. Enjoy XV, I know many people don't like it, but I think I'm weird, because I thought it was pretty great. Hopefully it's also the last FF game that provides a complicated trophy hunting for its fans. Cheers and thanks for the drink hehe

[AceAttorneyEric]

Update: I finally finished XV. Something I learned about myself having played so many of these long and dense JRPGs in a row is how much I tend to powerlevel at the very start just to make an already easy game even easier by going through it with a busted main character. I don't always do it, but I certainly did here.

 

While I didn't go as crazy powerleveling in XV at the start as I did in X-2 or XII, I did spend many hours here abusing the Warp Strike AP gains against Gladio in Basic Training at one of the earliest opportunities I could do so in Chapter 1. As a result, I gathered enough AP to unlock nearly every ability and enough EXP to level Noct from 5 to 30-something in a single trip to the 2x EXP Hotel which you can enter once for free during Chapter 1 (while the other bros stayed level 5 lol).

 

Because of this early overleveling, I barely struggled at all in the main game. Some of the DLC fights took a while to master, but the main game was easy peasy. But after grinding 1,000 FATES in XIV and repeating missions for hours in XV: Comrades to eventually get the RNG based Come Back, Kenny trophy, I just needed a more laid back experience for a change of pace.

 

I did enjoy the story and ended up consuming a lot of the supplemental content, but this is far from my favorite Final Fantasy game. 

 

I'm downloading XVI right now. I glanced at the trophy guide and saw that it'll take two playthroughs since the Final Fantasy mode unlocks after beating it once, so I'm excited to enjoy the first playthrough without worrying about trophies.

 

Hopefully the second DLC actually does release in Spring as scheduled so that I have an opportunity to get the trophies in it before the Platinum Rain Day, but we'll see.

[ProfSeajay7]

Could you give me your notes? I just downloaded FFXV for my other account to play since FFXIV has a collab event with FFXV where Noctis ends up in Eorzea. (Not gonna get the car as I don't have the time to get the MGP but I will get the hairstyle so my Lalafell looks like Noct. ) So I decided, since FFXV has impossible DLC I wanted to add it to the list along with FFXIV, FFXVI(when I get the time), FFVII Remake(just started the second chapter) and FFVII Rebirth(when I get the time). 😜

[AceAttorneyEric]

On 3/11/2024 at 6:23 PM, ProfSeajay7 said:

Could you give me your notes? I just downloaded FFXV for my other account to play since FFXIV has a collab event with FFXV where Noctis ends up in Eorzea. (Not gonna get the car as I don't have the time to get the MGP but I will get the hairstyle so my Lalafell looks like Noct. ) So I decided, since FFXV has impossible DLC I wanted to add it to the list along with FFXIV, FFXVI(when I get the time), FFVII Remake(just started the second chapter) and FFVII Rebirth(when I get the time). 😜

Notes for what? How to downgrade FFXV to get the Comrades DLC? Check out this comment on this thread. That's ultimately how I was able to do it.

[ProfSeajay7]

10 minutes ago, AceAttorneyEric said:

Notes for what? How to downgrade FFXV to get the Comrades DLC? Check out this comment on this thread. That's ultimately how I was able to do it.

I'm sorry, I meant how you played the game, I don't intend to do the DLC for FFXV. That was tactless, I should stop bumming people for help on how to play a game and play it blind. I'm just worried about missable trophies.