Professor Seajay's Platinum Academy

[ProfSeajay7]

I started this thread as a "platinum rain day" thing but dropped that for my Making it Rain thread. Still, this is a list of all my platinum trophies, both shameful and proud.  I'll put some reviewy stuff but I am not @Cassylvania so I can't snark, just give some honest opinions of the games I have played.

 

If a platinum trophy or game has no (XXX) after it, it means that it's a Playstation 4 version. If I do a stack, I'll note it.

 

As a note: While I do have some... easy titles in my repetoire, they were there to fulfill a purpose or because I was too sick or unmotivated to spend more than six hours on a game. In no way do I play games just for the trophies. That means anything which involve Shovels(including Shovel Knight, which I relegated to Account #3: Sorry, Yacht Games, but I don't feel like trying to bash my head on a wall by going check-pointless ) is banned. No jumping of any kind and no titles ending in a single letter. I did a bunch of Pig D clones two accounts ago and that was a mistake. While I got them fast, it was an AFK experience. At least the Mayo series requires you to swap to costumes every now and then while you tap the mayo jar! 😜

 

My Platinum Trophies (In Order, Left to Right / Up to Down) (Spoilered and iconed to reduce load times)

Spoiler

Total So Far: 119

Quote

The First 52 Platinums: My A-Z-Z-A List

1. Ape Escape: On The Loose!
2. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery (PS4)
3. Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink
4. Daggerhood (PS4)
5. Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek
6. FullBlast (PS4)
7. Gravity Duck (PS4)
8. Hoggy 2 (PS4)
9. InkSplosion (PS4)
10. Jack N' Jill DX (PS4)
11. Kingdom of Arcadia (PS4)
12. Lara Croft GO
13. Mekabolt
14. Nape Retroverse Collection (PS4)
15. Oilver's Adventures in the Fairyland
16. Persian Nights: Sands of Wonder
17. Queen's Quest 2: Stories of Forgotten Past
18. Reverie (PS4)
19. Storm Boy
20. Tetra's Escape (PS4)
21. Unpacking (PS4)
22. Virtuous Western (PS4)
23. Warlock's Tower (PS4)
24. Xenon Valkyrie+ (PS4)
25. Yoko & Yuki: Dr. Rat's Revenge
26. Zeroptian Invasion (PS4)
27. Zero Strain (PS4)
28. Yooka-Laylee
29. Xenon Valkyrie+ (PS5)
30. Word Wheel by POWGI
31. Venus: Improbable Dream
32. Ultra Hat Dimension
33. Tic-Tac-Letters by POWGI
34. Sissa's Path (PS5)
35. Roundout by POWGI
36. Queeny Army (PS5)
37. Pic-A-Pix Deluxe (PS4)
38. One Word by POWGI (PS4)
39. Nape Retroverse Collection (PS5)
40. Mekabolt+
41. Legends of Talia: Arcadia (PS4)
42. Knightin+' (PS4)
43. Jigsaw Zen
44. Intrepid Izzy (PS4)
45. Heroes' Trials (PS4)
46. Gaps by POWGI (PS5)
47. Final Fantasy
48. Eventide: Slavic Fable
49. Deep Space Rush (PS4)
50. Crossovers by POWGI (PS4)
51. Bai Qu: Hundreds of Melodies (PS4)
52. Aer: Memories of Old

Games in my Backlog:

Spoiler

Evoland (32/66)

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart (19/47)

Hogwarts Legacy (2/46)

Nexomon [PS5] (8/68)

Secret of Mana (1/38)

Nexomon [PS4] (8/68)

World of Final Fantasy (2/49)

Legend of Mana (6/30)

Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom [PS5] (7/33)

Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX (2/17)

Castlevania Advance Collection (1/49)

Oceanhorn 2: Knights of the Lost Realm (2/35)

TY The Tasmanian Tiger (6/38)

Dark Cloud (11/28)

 

Edited Tuesday at 11:25 PM by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

A brief update on my plans in the future.

 

 

I plan on possibly linking a new Square-Enix account so I can play FFXIV's free trial on October, as it will be then that they are expanding the Free Trial to include the Stormblood content. Stormblood is my favorite FFXIV expansion(unless the upcoming Dawntrail manages to usurp it, and from the reveal trailer it looks pretty likely ), so I would love to see how a person who has Free Trial can handle the stuff there. With the inclusion of the Four Lords trials, the Ivalice alliance raids and even Eureka(lolz), I'd like to see how long it would take me to get through the new free trial... as a White Mage. Yes, I am not very fond of White Mage(I'm more of a Scholar myself) but since Conjurer is the only healer role class you can get before Level 30, I have no choice. You see, I've usually mained Melee DPS but before the cool stuff like Reaper came along, I used to enjoy healer jobs. They are the guys who give you from dying to a mechanic that drops everyone to 1 HP.

 

So, now that the game has given us AI bots for mandatory dungeons and the Realm Reborn trials, and the Main Scenario roulette is more balanced, I want to see how hard it is to be a healer doing stuff without all the benefits like the marketboard, retainers and whatnot. I probably won't be crafting or making money in this game, but we'll see when 6.5 drops.

 

In the meantime, I am still working on the other games. I won't abandon this project until it's done, which will happen once I complete the A-Z-Z-A challenge.

[AihaLoveleaf]

On 9/11/2023 at 2:26 PM, ProfSeajay7 said:

I plan on possibly linking a new Square-Enix account so I can play FFXIV's free trial on October, as it will be then that they are expanding the Free Trial to include the Stormblood content. Stormblood is my favorite FFXIV expansion(unless the upcoming Dawntrail manages to usurp it, and from the reveal trailer it looks pretty likely ), so I would love to see how a person who has Free Trial can handle the stuff there.

This could end up being useful research for new players to benefit from. Personally, the bottomless pit that is the PS5 FF14 trophy list is something I'll probably never take on without the ability to clone myself first. Regardless, I still like to keep an ear open for opportunities people are able to find to ease the burden of gigantic gaming projects like it.

[ProfSeajay7]

11 hours ago, AihaLoveleaf said:

Personally, the bottomless pit that is the PS5 FF14 trophy list is something I'll probably never take on without the ability to clone myself first.

A shame FFXIV is fiction, or else I could have gone over to Mor Dhona and stolen the advanced Allagan tech, brought it back here, and invited you over to use it so you could indeed clone yourself with it. 😄

 

I do agree that the PS5 trophy list is a bottomless pit and it will never end until the game shuts down, but by that time it'll be impossible to complete unless we had two years advance warning as some of those trophies are complete timesinks. Having earned the platinum for both trophy lists on an older account, I can attest to how bad the grind is.

 

But I love the grind. The game is a beautiful piece of fiction and an aspect of the great JRPG series that has been going on for longer than Pokemon, which has no trophies. (Black 2 and White 2 had achievements but as one named Johnstone can attest too, you have to be a completionist mule to want to even attempt 100%.  😛 )

[ProfSeajay7]

So.... uhm... I have a confession to make...

 

 

I've been playing a lot of Pokemon Violet lately.

 

Now that the second part of the Pokemon Scarlet/Violet expansion, The Indigo Disk, is coming out, I had to finish the story of The Teal Mask before Thanksgiving, so I spent all October speeding through the entire three stories of Pokemon Violet(since that is the only physical copy of Pokemon SC/VI I have, my Scarlet version is digital) so I could experience the Teal Mask.

 

So... I haven't earned a lot of trophies or playing a lot of PSN games. In fact, I ended up doing shovelware games for my A to Z and Z to A challenge(which I should have abandoned and restarted my account since the creator of that topic was MIA and did not update, I was the only one who updated that thread )... and a few games bugged out and didn't pop trophies

 

So right now I have to go back and do second playthroughs of those games to fix those situations, backing my saves so I can reload and try again and again and again until those damn trophies pop. Pokemon is the only salve on my tired trophy hunting soul.

 

I do intend to play more games... just not as many, due to it being the holiday season with Thanksgiving and Christmas.... and The Indigo Disk on December 14. So I apologize if I don't update as often as I should.

[ProfSeajay7]

 

So you may think I am a cop-out because I platted a shovelware title called Queeny Army, which is just Contra with boobs and no aliens. (Though to be honest I only did the first two levels.)

 

That's because THIS (censored) game trolled me. You see, Queen's Quest 3 is an Artifex Mundi game... and I will never play another game by this company ever again because of one trophy.

 

Namely, the one which requires you to complete all the minigames and not skip them. Standard AM fare, it was there since my first experience with the company with Clockwork Tales.

 

However, the trophy did not pop. I thought I had to do the bonus story games so I did. No pop. The trophy was glitched. This pissed me off and made me delete the game for three weeks. Then it hit me...

 

There are some mini-games involving a character telling you what your mission is and there are find the object puzzle games during these briefings. You can skip these dialogues... but if you do, the game considers that as skipping the minigame EVEN IF YOU DO THE MINIGAME LEGIT. So I voided the trophy on the first one of these.

 

This is annoying. This was not an issue when I did Persian Nights as you can skip the dialogue there and not void the "no skip minigame" trophy. This is a black mark against Artifex Mundi to me and thus I will put it on the crap list of "Games Never to Be Thought About Again."

 

Queen's Quest 3 is the one game that sh**-stained the entire company's lineup for me. To be fair, I did platinum the Nightmare from the Deep series... but that was ten years ago when I was more inclined to play these games for story. Now, I skip every cutscene. So, advice to indie game companies who want to make me buy their games. Don't do any of the following:

 

1. Make me get DLC trophies that cause my blood pressure to spike and cuss up a storm and rage-quit. I am 50 years old as of now, I do not have the time to waste trying to defeat a super-boss on the highest difficulty where I die in one hit unless I pull off the PERFECT super-parry. I never will play Dante Must Die difficulty. Because of this, I will never play Kingdom Hearts 2 ever again unless I can get an emulator for the original non-Final Mix version. Likewise, if I do play Kingdom Hearts 3 again, it will be on a burner account that never gets access to the tracker of this site.  (FFXIV gets a pass because I am playing it on the PS4 and therefore sacrificing quality for an easy to do trophy list with only two hard trophies and several grindy ones and no DLC. I am doing the platinum on the PS5... on my old dead account which has been abandoned due to having way too many of #1 games like A Hat In Time. Seriously, Gears for Breakfast, you got dumped because you HAD to add in the Seal the Deal DLC trophy list which makes you get ALL the Seals. I Hate You. 🤬)
2. Force me to do multiplayer(I don't know how to boost), do online trophies(since your game will become incomplete when you are forced to shut down the servers or go bankrupt, servers cannot last forever) or do difficulty trophies. (This is why I can't do Kingdom Hearts for the most part, because I hate Critical Mode. I am 50 years old, I have yet to kiss or have sex with a woman because I couldn't get a girlfriend in high school. I want to go enjoy life, not waste my life having heart attacks because I can't beat a superboss on the highest difficulty. I am not saying kill the trophies, just know that I will never play your game if you make me do it. I know people that can beat Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix on Critical Mode, but I am not one of those people -I can't get past Roxas on Critical Mode.)
3. FORCE ME TO DO A SECOND PLAY BECAUSE A TROPHY FAILED TO POP AND I CAN'T RELOAD MY SAVE. This is why I will never touch Artifex Mundi again, because every game forces an auto-save at points, meaning you can't go back. (Eventide Slavic Fable also glitched in an old account and was unbeatable because somehow the game thought I had collected everything when I hadn't in one spot and I couldn't get back to that spot. Luckily, I learned that if you get everything you need and then go to that spot, you will have no trouble.)

#3 is also why I had to do a visual novel instead of Book Quest, because even though Book Quest was easy, the Craber trophy failed to pop even when I talked to the fisherman and defeated the crabs for him. The Guide I was using said that Craber would pop at that point but it did not... and I can't reload a save, so I will have to do a new playthrough, fight the (censored) dragon again a zillion times, and BACK UP MY SAVE BEFORE I TAKE THE CRAB QUEST.

 

You know what? I should just screw it.

 

 

At least Pokemon won't betray me. I don't give a damn about Scarlet and Violet's bad frame rate, at least the autosaves don't put you in an unwinnable state. Especially with the new DLC coming out after my birthday.

Edited March 1 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

First off, an announcement. (And a wish that I could resize the photos I upload... )

 

I finally  hit max rank in all the Stormblood Tribes! Woo!! (Happy dance) If I ever see a damn Ananta, Kojin or Namazu again, it'll be too soon! 😫🐟

 

Now that I realized that I will be spending another six weeks getting all the Shadowbringers tribes to max rank, I can be glad that I won't have to do a final quest for them. But now I have to finish Endwalker to unlock the elephant-people, robots and bunnykin for the Endwalker tribes... which means having to finish Endwalker. *sigh*

 

But another announcement. I'm going to be adding a new list promoting a site called RetroAchievements. We all are trophy hunters here, right? Ever wanted to play an old N64 game and hear that sweet trophy ding for getting al the collectibles in DK64?

 

 

You won't get a platinum trophy, but Retroachievements has created a web site that lets you download a special launcher on your PC that lets you emulate old games with their special cores and tracks your progress, giving you an X-Box style achievement pop when you get a task done. (If you condemn emulation, I apologize, but they haven't found a way to mod hardware yet.) They also have a progress tracker like the one on PS5, and even move achievements to a new list for those you are close to completing.

 

I will be listing off progress and achievement I earn for any old games I do. Right now I am doing a challenge to get 100% Retroachievements for all of the localized Dragon Quest Monsters titles before The Dark Prince comes out in December. I probably won't make it(these RPGs are long) but I will be using emulator functions to make the games go by faster. If you are interested, click on the link I put in this post just above the screenshot and go check it out!

 

EDIT: I just realized that the mods might cock a brow at me for mentioning game emulation, and while I would defend it as a way to save old games from being forgotten(since it costs you your eternal soul to buy old hardware and software these day - Pokemon Soul Silver now cost $300 on Amazon.com), I understand that there might be policies on the forum making emulation topics taboo. However, since I haven't gotten a warning ordering me to take the post down, I am safe to assume that as long as I don't mention it too much, I am relatively safe.

Edited November 17, 2023 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

So I was inspired by S_y_n_e_IR_g_Y's thread where he was doing a platinum rain event where he would pop 500 platinum trophies in one day. Platinum rain is where you get 99% of the trophies but leave the last one before the platinum and then pop them all in 24 hours by earning that last trophy in each of them.

 

I wasn't doing 500 games, that would kill my sanity. No, I'm sticking to a smaller number... 151.

 

And there is a second condition...

 

 

Before I can even start trophy hunting a game, I must shiny hunt for a unique shiny Pokemon so I have 151 unique shiny Pokemon in Pokemon HOME.

 

I did shiny hunting before to get colored Pokemon for an older challenge which I completed but that was painful. This time I am just going for the shinies and don't care if they are butt-ugly. The shiny hunting shouldn't take too long and I will name each Shiny Pokemon after an aspect of the game that I will play.

 

I will put up a new thread in this forum detailing my progress on that project after I get my first game to 99%. It will be called Shiny Platinum Rain[working title].

 

[ProfSeajay7]

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you have a happy Turkey Day even though you probably won't celebrate now as it's the middle of the night.

 

I would put up another screenshot but sadly the Playstation 4 and 5 have deleted the option to share screenshots and videos directly to Facebook and Twitter, so unless I do some red tape with the Playstation app, no more screenshots.

 

But I did want to say I actually got some progress in my FFXIV career... mainly by picking up a new Level 1 job and power-leveling it to 79 in three days. I picked up a new Tank, Warrior, because to be fair, I was not pleased with Dark Knight and Gunbreaker and Warrior is baby's Tank due to how easy it is to handle and I need a tank if I want to do all the Endwalker role quests. Well, okay, you didn't want to hear about my journey from Level 1-70. You want to hear that I finally got further in Bozja than I did on my last character because I was lucky to get the pop-up for Castrum Lacus Latore. I wish it didn't take hours to get in. But got through that and got to Rank 13 in mettle and got from 71 to 79 in just a few hours.

 

Trophy-wise, I'm busy on my first game of the special Pokemon challenge.  I promise we'll update soon.

[ProfSeajay7]

Well, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince came out, but I am not calling in my pre-order until the 6th as that is my 51th birthday and I asked my parents to pay the difference as my birthday present. 😩

 

So I completed my second RetroAchievement game, Dragon Warrior Monsters 2: Tara's Adventure. My third will be Dragon Quest Monsters Joker on the DS.

[ProfSeajay7]

Finally got The Dark Prince early since I pre-ordered it... not! I thought I had pre-ordered it but I guess I did on another store and my dad was pissed about going hunting so I just told the clerk to screw it and had to have my dad pay full price(the pre-order I put down was only $5 so it wasn't that bad, but still...); it's a great game and I love the music though I feel like having the Dragon Quest IV battle theme for the normal battle theme was a dis-service for the original DQM theme. Oh well. *shrug*

 

Hopefully will get through my first held-off game tonight. Also, I am holding off on FFXIV 6.1+ content as I am working on getting Level 90 on every jobs on a second alt, Penny Star. Really great female human I made. Might use the Fantasia to make her Elezen so she could look like Rose in The Dark Prince, great character design.

[ProfSeajay7]

Well, since it's Christmas Day, I might as well just plop these on ASAP. I promise, no more Artifexies after this one...

 

#56: Yuletide Legends (PS4)

#57: Yuletide Legends (PS5)

 

Yep, it had to be done. Artifex Mundi decided to jump on the meme bandwagon started with that comedic song called "Grandma got run over by a Reindeer", where Santa accidentally murdered an old lady by a hit-and-run. The song spawned a cartoon Christmas special where the Grandma's grandkids run about trying to rescue Santa Claus before Christmas is ruined... and Artifex Mundi has you play as a, get this, Christmas crime detective and try to get Santa out of jail. And get this, Krampus is the one who got Santa framed. Yeah, THAT Krampus.

 

As per modern Mundi titles, this one is so stupidly easy it's not worth mentioning, but it was either this or the trash title Xmas Run, so I bit the bullet and platted both versions(PS4 and PS5). Oh, and be careful if you decide to do this for next Christmas, the PS5 version is slightly bugged and if you try to back out of a cutscene, you will softlock and have to redo the entire game.

 

I needed to at least get another plat trophy before the end of 2023, so why not a Christmas themed one? Happy Holidays!

[ProfSeajay7]

On 12/25/2023 at 8:31 PM, ProfSeajay7 said:

I promise, no more Artifexies after this one...

 

Yeah, I know, I know, never make a New Year's resolution again.

 

 

#58: Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily (PS5)

 

The only reason I did this game was because it had an abundance of RED in the image and I needed a RED image for the Kaledioscope 2024 event!!!!!

 

Anyways, this game was the time that Artifex Mundi jumped the shark for me. I didn't mind that games beforehand no longer required you to do the game on Expert difficulty. But now you aren't even required to do all the mini-games without skipping, just a few. Also, it's a snowy clime and we're still in January.

 

I'm busy prepping games for the platinum rain day challenge so I can't platinum any of them. I do intend to try to get some more games on the platinum list, but for now, I am just prepping up games to 99%. They'll all get the last pop in Summer.

[ProfSeajay7]

Platinum #59: Eventide 2: Sorcerer's Mirror

Okay fine, I needed a game with a Pink color in the image and I wasn't touching Disgaea 5 again for a while.

 

Anyways, this is a short point-and-click but this game has you make decisions in five scenario, either a good one or an 'evil' one... but it doesn't matter jack squat as the scenario plays out the same way with only a few minor differences. I'm glad that AM didn't go with a full karma system(I used to enjoy Infamous: Second Son; not so much now after seeing Dhelsin choke a guy to death three times 😭) but why bother with these scenarios if the result is the same?

 

Anyways, that's all I have to say. This is the sequel to Eventide: Slavic Fable, and a reference to the Fern Flower is in this game but not much else. I'll probably do Eventide 3 later to complete the series but for now, I want to focus on meatier games.

[ProfSeajay7]

Platinum #60: Ape Escape (PS4)

 

How utterly ironic. My first platinum milestone was the PSP version of this game, which is now the 60th platinum milestone.

 

That's not to say that this game is shovelware. Far from it, this was a milestone in video game history as the first Playsstation game to require the analog sticks. Before then, games could be played with the directional pad. Without this game, PS5 controllers would have never had analog sticks! 😛 

 

Anyways, it's a far inferior version to the PSP remake, Ape Escape: On the Loose!, but it has all the same elements. Why is it inferior? Because the gadgets sometimes require rotating the analog stick in the same way the first Mario Party did, causing traumatic injuries. Not really, but trying to use the Hula Hoop or Sky Flyer is an exercise in frustration.

 

Anyways, that's all for me. I'm still prepping games for my Platinum Rain Day event. The PS5 version of this game will be one of the preps.

 

And yes, this is one of the games on my Kaleidoscope card.

Edited January 13 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

Platinum #61: LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7 (Vita)

 

This was done for the Kaledioscope event and that purple image fit my mood on this game and made me remember the bad memories.

 

This is a port of the 3DS version of LEGO Harry Potters Years 5-7. They had a portable version of LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4, but it was on the Nintendo DS only and was far inferior to this title, having movement ripped from the LEGO Marvel Superheroes game they did on the 3DS, which was god-awful. I am glad this never got ported to the Vita, though 5-7 isn't much better.

 

I say this with confidence. I do NOT recommend this game if you want the LEGO Harry Potter experience. The Legacy Collection for the PS4 did it much better. Hell, even the PS3 versions were better than this hot garbage. The dueling in this game is just random and the duelists are either brain-dead or stupidly hard. In fact, you can't even WIN against Snape at the end of the Half-Blood Prince story, his zaps are inhumanly fast.

 

Sadly, you have to clear every opponent in the Dueling Club to get some trophies, and it's annoying. My advice: Avoid the dueling club until you get Voldemort unlocked, he has five duelist hearts so you can afford to get hit a couple of times. Keep deflecting attacks until your opponent fires a curse and you can deflect it to curse them, giving you four free zaps. Yeah, this dueling club SUCKS.

 

And it would be tolerable.... if the game didn't randomly chug at 10 frames a second every randomly. It sucks when the lag hits when you are dueling or in the middle of  a level you just made progress in.

 

Needless to say, avoid this game unless your parents only gave you a Playstation Vita for gaming entertainment, and even then, sue them for child abuse. DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS AS A LEGO VITA TITLE. THERE ARE BETTER ONES. 😠

[ProfSeajay7]

 

Platinum #62: TOEM - A Photo Adventure

 

I did this game because the image was gray and I needed a gray image for the Kaledioscope challenge. This also qualified for the Comfy and Cozy Games challenge because, to be honest, there is no conflict in this game. The hero goes on an adventure to take his own photo of the namesake, Toem Peak, which is the top of Mount Kiiruberg. This world is all black and white and not a drop of color exists in this world... except on certain nights, when the peak of Toem explodes with colorful auroras. Your goal is to take a photo of this rare event for your own photo album, just like your grandmother did when she was your age.

 

This game is amazing. It doesn't have flashy graphics, you don't face a threat to the world, and all you are doing on your adventure... is taking photographs.

 

The trophies are very simple and the game ends after you go home after snapping a shot of the rare event, but to get there, you need to get your bus card stamped to allow you to take a public bus to each destination, and to do that, you need to complete tasks for people which requires, yep, taking photos of items. This game progresses as fast as you want it to, but slows you down by requiring you to fill out your photo compendium with photos of all sorts of things, some which require you to snap shots of magical cubes that change the landscape when snapped. You get attachments to the camera that let you take photos from a distance and scare off animals with a horn, and there is a shell game but it's really easy. The game is quite relaxing and fun. I used BadDriver's guide to get all the trophies but he didn't have the DLC trophies so I had to get another guy for that.

 

Yes, this game also has a DLC pack with ten trophies, where you travel to the Island of Basto, which has a day-night cycle, unlike the rest of the world. Certain photos can only be snapped at night and certain areas are inaccessible in the daytime. This may sound like a chore but the DLC is very easy to complete (the hardest thing to do is win the rhythm mini-game for the Pro Gamer trophy) and this is a love letter by the developers for your supporting the game. I think it is awesome and the devs are free to make a Toem 2 for more photo-snapping pleasure.

[ProfSeajay7]

So it's taking a while to find a good game to pop off before the end of the month, because my mind is divided between LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga for the PS4 and Final Fantasy XIV, as I want to clear 2.0 before the Moogle Treasure Trove event. (I know it will last for two weeks, but I want to make every day count. )

 

However, I wanted to mark three games as special themes based on the future Dawntrail expansion for FFXIV based on the jobs that will introduced in the 7.x patches. I have ideas for Pictomancer and Beastmaster but no ideas of Viper.

 

For the record, here are the games I have picked out for the other new jobs:

 

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (PS5)

I chose this game to represent the magical spellcaster that will be in Dawntrail, Pictomancer. It was shocking to see what the spellcasting job was as a lot of people thought it was some other type of mage like Green Mage, because Yoshida's sacred shirt had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it, but the reference was their names, which are the names of Renaissance artists. (Technically, I found that Donatello was a scultpor, but whatever.)

 

Since the Pictomancer's magic is invoked by painting images, I thought that this lovely story about using paint to change the environment was the perfect fit.

 

Nexomon (PS5)

 

Nexomon is a game about monster-catching, so this will be the theme for the new limited job(yes, they finally have a second limited job after five expansions!) which they revealed to be Beastmaster. Since Beastmaster in Final Fantasy was only in the fifth game and involved catching animals to use in combat, I thought that a Pokemon-like game would fit the bill, and Nexomon is Pokemon in all but story and name. While other games might fit the Beastmaster role better(since that job is about catching creatures, not evolving them), but any excuse to put a Pokemon-like game in my trophy cabinet is a plus!

 

And now the rub...

 

 

This picture is basically all we know about the first job, Viper. It uses two swords that can combine into a polearm at any time. I need ideas for a game that involve a person dual-wielding swords or wielding a staff-like weapon.

 

All in all, I just wanted some input. In the meantime, I'll try to get one more game platinum before the end of the month.

Edited January 31 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

Had to remove some pictures as one of them broke. Anyways, finally have a new platinum, one which I am happy to send far far away...

 

#63: LEGO Star Wars - The Skywalker Saga (PS4)

 

I have the Playstation 5 version of this game prepped for my Platinum Rain Day challenge, but not this version. This version was even worse than the PS5 version because they decided to skip on quality, lending to frame rate issues, load times for swapping characters and entering screens, softlocks and crashing five times.

 

I have an abridged review on my Platinum Rain Day thread if you are interested.

 

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go fall asleep for six hours to make up for the time I lost on this game.

[ProfSeajay7]

#64: Adventures of Mana

 

Let me para-quote someone on Youtube for this. Ahem...

 

"Final Fantasy Adventure is one of the most epic games for the original Game Boy. If you like The Legend of Zelda, you'll find a lot to love here: A large world to explore, dungenos with puzzles to solve, and tons of bosses to fight! You may think this game ripped off a lot of its ideas from Zelda, but it actually came out several months before a Link to the Past on the Super Nintendo, and two years before Link's Awakening on the Game Boy!"

 

"Final Fantasy Adventure was developed by SquareSoft and originally it had nothing to do with Final Fantasy. Square began working on a game in 1987 called Seiken Densetsu, which roughly translates to 'Legend of the Sacred Sword.' It was going to be a massive adventure game for the Famicom Disk System in Japan and was planned to come on FIVE DISKS! The absurd number of disks required to play the game is probably why it got canceled. Square sent an official letter to all those who pre-ordered the game to inform them of the cancellation and redirect their pre-orders to another game they were releasing later that year... The original Final Fantasy. A few years later, and the Final Fantasy series had become Square's most popular game franchise."

 

"In Japan, they had released three games in the series, and the original was a hit in North America as well. They decided to revisit the idea of Seiken Densetsu, but this time they retooled it as a Final Fantasy spinoff on the Game Boy. The next game was called Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, and one of the designers from the original Final Fantasy, Koichi Ishii, was given the opportunity to direct it. He designed all of the new characters himself, and then added in elements from the Final Fantasy franchise: Red and Black Mages, Chocobos, and even Moogles. Considering that we didn't get Final Fantasy II or III in the States, with the Final Fantasies we got after the original being Final Fantasy IV and VI on the Super Nintendo, this game was the first time we saw Chocobos or Moogles in the United States! The game was retitled Mystic Quest in Europe and was the first time any European saw a Final Fantasy since the original was never released in Europe."

 

"There is also a rich story that Ishii worked on with Yoshinori Kitase, who would go on to direct the games Final Fantasy VI, VII, VIII and IX as well as Chrono Trigger."

 

"This game was extremely popular when it released in North America in November 1991, delivering a deep player experience that was uncommon on the mono-chromatic Game Boy. The world that it created was so popular, in fact, that it spawned an entire new franchise. A sequel was created for the Super Nintendo, Seiken Densetsu 2, and it was localized in North America... as Secret of Mana."

 

The above text was mostly quoted from a nameless Youtube creator whose channel is simply called:

 

 

I used their guides because, to be honest, Adventures of Mana is an HD re-release of Final Fantasy Adventure. The name of this re-release reflects that this was the first game in the Mana series of video games. With the series being revisited soon with the upcoming Visions of Mana, I knew I had to revisit the series. I have done so a few times because these games are amazing and accessible action RPGs.

 

 

The guides I used can apply to Adventures of Mana because the game is a re-release so the dungeons, bosses and story remain the exact same as in the original Game Boy title. If you want nostalgia, though, the Nintendo Switch does have The Collection of Mana which has all three games in the original Mana trilogy in one collection title, unaltered. I'll touch on this when I get to Trials of Mana, and yes, I will.

 

The only negative of this game is the required grinding, since there is a trophy for hitting Level 99. This time I killed Werewolves until I hit Level 71 before I headed to the elephant run at the Land of Mana, the area just before the final boss. Werewolves always respawn when you zone out and there are always four of them in the room, so if you just utilize sleep magic(yeah, that spell you thought was worthless) to stun them so they don't hurt you, you can pretty much kill them quickly.

You also need to watch your level ups. Every time you level up you have a character to choose from: Warrior, Monk, Black Mage or White Mage. These increase one stat by two points and two by one. Two characters will work together: Warrior gives +2 to Power and Black Mage gives +2 to Intelligence, and the rest of the points will ensure that if you alternate between Warrior and Black Mage, you will always have all stats equal and be at one higher than the level you are at. This is needed as there are trophies for getting 99 in each of the four stats, so if you keep taking Warrior once and then Black Mage in the next level right from the start, you can get all stats to the max of 99 right as you hit Level 99. I think you can also do so if you take Monk/White Mage, but I didn't risk it.

 

There are also trophies requiring you to have owned one of every weapon, helmet, armor, and shield as well as one of every normal item and learning all the spells. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII, you won't void the trophy if you get rid of the items, you just need to acquire them. There is one missable item: The Blood Sword. It is in the dungeon of Glaive Castle and if you miss it you cannot go back to the castle to get it, so be sure to pick it before you fight the Dark Lord or you're screwed. Everything else is only missable once you defeat the boss at the top of Dime Tower, as you'll be unable to go back to the overworld once you leave the tower and be stuck in the Land of Mana and the endgame, so make sure you check everything else off first. You need to visit every equipment shop(marked by a sword) to get all of the armor and weapons. It's easy to ignore them and regret it when you are the final area. Oh yeah, some items and equipment are only from random drops.

 

Despite all this, this is a great game for the Playstation Vita. It's exclusive so if you want to put this game on your cabinet, you need to have a Vita or PSTV. But's it is a fun experience... and the background is a tan-gray fog, so the Kaleidoscope event allows me to put it in my tan slot.

 

Sorry for the longer post, but I had to note why this game is awesome. Below are links to the video guides on U You Can Beat Video Games' Youtube site. (Also, the videos always have videos of the guy's two dogs. 🐶)

 

Final Fantasy Adventure - ULTIMATE GUIDE - ALL Areas, ALL Bosses, ALL Secrets, 100% (Part 1)

Final Fantasy Adventure - ULTIMATE GUIDE - ALL Areas, ALL Bosses, ALL Secrets, 100% (Part 2)

[ProfSeajay7]

#65: Final Fantasy IV
(Pixel Remaster)

 

As U Can Beat Video Games said, Final Fantasy IV lied about its age when it came to the Super Nintendo in the USA, being called "Final Fantasy II." That was the game I played and my first Super Nintendo RPG, and that is the game that made me turn into an RPG nerd and respect the genre.

 

Sadly, I did not respect this game well enough as I cursed it with profanities due to a mistake I made. The Pixel Remaster trophies are mostly the same, with the requirement of 100%ing the treasure chests...

 

Well, I missed one, and in one of the "no going back" places, the first run of Tower of Babel. One chest out of 16. This is why you use a guide. That meant I had to play through the entire game twice, as the chest tracker only applies to your current save, not previous ones. And I had gotten to Level 84 on the first run.

 

Well, I bum rushed it today and finally got it done, catching that chest I missed. Still, I respect the game. FFIV was a cult classic and they even made a randomizer mode for the original game that is run in speed-running tournaments.

 

Anyways, expect to see a huge update soon, as I am cleaning up my PS4 platinums in prep to replace my PS4 for a recent PS4 Pro I just bought.

Edited February 7 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

As my dad told me just now...

I'm so dang PS'd right now.

 

Why? Well... it's my dad again... you see, my mom has gotten addicted to estate sales, which are like garage sales for the dead, basically offloading all the belongings of a person who has passed from this world, since "You can't take it with ya." (Not all estate sales have those conditions, some are just giant garage sales where the owner decided he spent too much $ on junk and needs to get rid of it ASAP.)

 

Weeeeeell, they called me yesterday about something he found at an estate sale, I said I didn't care abut it...

 

 

And he got it anyways. Yes, a used PS3 for $35. So now I have the PS3, which still works, so that means I have MORE games to work with.

 

Goddamn it. As if my backlog wasn't big already.

 

All rants aside, I did find a couple of used PS3 games and my dad found a bunch but I got rid of three of them(that involve Sack Boy, so yeah, not playing LittleBigPlanet anymore as they have online trophies and I think the servers for the second LBP are dead now so those trophies are unobtainable, I traded them in to a retro store for $15 in credit which covered the cost of the games I bought), so here is what I have in my PS3 library now(all physical copies as I'm not eager to waste time setting up my credit card to link to this device):

 

(1) Ni No Kuni (Greatest Hits Edition)

(2) LEGO Batman 2: DC Superheroes

(3) Sonic Generations (this was the game my dad found in the estate sale)

 

I don't have a controller because the controller we found was for the old X-Box, though my PS5 controller worked with it, for the most part - it can't access the home menu while playing a game.

 

Edited February 9 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

Well, finally got this out of the way...

 

#66: Chicory: A Colorful Tale
(PS4)

 

I bought this game to play with my nieces and ended up just giving up on them. I thought that since it had co-op, I could have Olivia play with me. Unfortunately, she's too young to play Super Mario Odyssey as Cappy and too young to know how to move a cursor.

 

Ah well, this is a very beautiful game anyways. There are boss fights but you have the option to skip them. That's the only combat in this game, the entire game is exploring the world our hero Pizza, a young pup who is the janitor of the Wielder Tower, the home of the Master Wielder of the Brush, who is charged with coloring the world. And the title of the game shows the name of said Wielder.

 

Yeah, this game has anthromorphic animals, but the focus is on color and art. You use a magic paintbrush to paint stuff to alter the terrain so you can solve terrain puzzles. However, the real anguish here are the collectibles: 131 pieces of trash which are exchanged for tons of furnishings to decorate places with and 120 pieces of clothing, 40 lost kittens, and 25 brush styles. Oh, and you have to do painting for 20 art classes.

 

The game is very art-intense, but you do not need to be a master artist to play this game. Most of my paintings were crap but they were approved anyways. The story revolves an evil force that is corrupting the world with blackness and draining color from the world and you have to take up the Brush and paint color back into the world while helping anyone you can. You will get rewarded with articles of clothing(shirts and hats), decor for decorating rooms and more. You also have a camera you can use to take snapshots, and if you aren't using a guide like I did, you want to use the camera app to take photos of things that will be needed to progress in the various dungeons.

 

All in all, a great game but you won't be able to finish it in under 40 hours, but the colors are so gorgeous I'd be shocked if you didn't take some time each day to help Pizza and Chicory cleanse the world one screen at a time.

 

Just make sure that, if you are playing with kids(there are options to put warnings for dark story scenes so you can get the kids to leave the room before the scary parts), make sure they know their way around a controller.

Edited February 11 by ProfSeajay7

[ProfSeajay7]

 

Happy Valentione's Day everyone. No, I did not mispell it. That's how it's spelt in Eorzea.

 

Unfortunately, I'm stuck with visual novels as I am a 51-year old virgin, so let's just say I'm going to probably make a tradition of earning a platinum by reading a visual novel involving romance every time this year until I am courageous enough to get out and hang out at a single's bar.

 

Which comes to the following pair of deuces.

 

#67: Starlight Shores (PS4)
#68: Starlight Shores (PS5)

 

A visual novel about a woman who won a free beach weekend and invited her friends to reconnect with them during a meteor shower and beach party. Usual visual novel fare with multiple endings and getting trophies for experiencing all of them. For the reason of being Valentine's Day, I forced myself to read the dialogue of the first ending, which ends with the protagonist kissing one of the girls he joins in the beach party with, which happens during a meteor shower. This is how you are supposed to go through visual novels, reading every ending and watching the characters develop in the short period of time and develop romantic relationships and tell stories. (Did anyone know the story of that girl who ended up trapped in her tent during a thunderstorm and crying your eyes out from fear and praying to her imaginary friend? No? Well, that's because you skipped the text and fast-forwarded through it.)

 

This is why I try to avoid visual novels. Not because I wouldn't read them, but because I don't read them. This is why this genre is so easy to platinum, because reading the novel is sadly optional. Great, I just got f'king depressed. (Yes, there is also profanity in this title, but these are adults, people. If the characters were ten years old and chatting about their crushes, there would be less f-bombs being dropped.)

 

The art is great, the characters develop well and we learn about their backstories... but that's not going to matter jack if you fast-forward and only pick the options you need to pick. Oh well, who am I to judge? Have a happy Valentine's Day, everyone, and stick to jello shots for booze or else you'll be puking up your guts.

[ProfSeajay7]

#Cancer: 36 Fragments of Midnight

"So... you've met with an unfortunate spot, have you not? Ho ho ho!"

 

So I am sorry to this cute game for having the position set for #SEXMEMES, but something had to be #69. At least it wasn't Sakura Succubus.

 

Also ironic is that I earned #69 during Valentine's Day, a day most would say is the most erotic holiday out of the year.

 

Anyways, I'm hoping to send in my application to the A-Z Platinum Trophy Club, and I need to earn 16 platinums in the alphabet. I also was inspired by Youtuber SANDREZ and his video on platinuming the Z-A list with a numbered title being in the list, so I am starting with a non-letter title, and this was the one I came to think of, as I've earned this platinum nay many times.

 

It's a very simple procedural generated platformer where you have to get all 36 fragments and get back to the starting point. The hardest trophies are doing this task in under six minutes(I got 5:39) and getting all 36 fragments and then dying. I kept dying too early as my lizard brain wasn't capable of doing precise jumps and shut down after I reached this point, so I died too early 10 times before I got the achievement.

 

Still, it's a very chillax game and a bit spooky. I recommend it if you don't like background music, although the loud wind blowing is annoying too.