The Endless Backlog and Trophy Checklist of Arctic Cress

[Arctic Cress]

A nice break from some more serious games with this platinum.

 

#198 Kandagawa Jet Girls

Another day, another fun multiplayer game from Honey Parade Games. Apparently this is also a tie in with some anime I didn't watch, but I doubt the story is any more compelling than the one attached to this game. Platinum is pretty basic and only one of the stories has a chapter race that's actually somewhat difficult, but I still cleared it on the first try. The AI only uses the base versions of each jet machine, so any upgrades you put on the one you use makes the game that much easier.

 

I also finally completed Apex Legends! I'm really bad at it even with my friends so it took forever to finish it up.

 

Apex Legends (+1, 12/12)

 

I finished the Battleship Warboats challenge over at TrueTrophies so there's a bunch of random games getting trophies again. Probably won't be going back to any of them soon since I want to play Persona 5 Strikers, but I am interested in getting back to some of them later on, like Final Fantasy XIII-2 and Valkyria Chronicles 4. Something to think about for the summer, maybe.

 

A Hat in Time (+1, 9/28)

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (+10, 23/42)

Final Fantasy XIII-2 (+1, 9/32)

Gems of War (+2, 78/90)

Granblue Fantasy Versus (New, +15, 15/50)

Mahjong Gold [PS4] (+4, 6/12)

Megadimension Neptunia VII (+1, 6/35)

Okami HD (+1, 12/51)

One Piece: Pirate Warriors 2 (+1, 21/40)

Robotics;Notes Elite (+1, 16/50)

Tokyo Jungle (+1, 5/13)

Valkyria Chronicles 4 (+1, 9/36)

 

Next will be a deluge of new games for KYC as always for March. Fun as usual!

[Arctic Cress]

One more Lightwood Games title for the pile.

 

#199 Link-a-Pix Deluxe

The last of the Lightwood Games that I currently haven't finished (yes, Block-a-Pix Deluxe is in the list below, but I completed it on the Vita), this puzzler has you linking numbers on a grid to form a shape. While the game has 240 puzzles and I intend to play through all of them, the platinum only requires a tenth of those, instead assigning the trophies to a number of individual puzzles. Most of these trophies have a picture of an animal drawn in their grid. I really just wanted to clear out some of the games on my trophy list that the recent TrueTrophies challenge shoved on it - there's a lot of games started during that which I do want to play through at some point!

 

March is always a limited gaming month for me, even with Kill My Completion going on, so the trophy updates aren't as expansive despite the month since the last update. Here they are, though:

 

Block-a-Pix Deluxe [PS4] (+3, 49/56)

DJMAX Respect (+2, 71/109)

Dragon Sinker (New, +6, 6/31)

Earth Defense Force 2: Invaders From Planet Space (New, +3, 3/63)

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (+1, 31/35)

London Detective Mysteria (New, +2, 2/16)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (New, +8, 8/15)

Persona 5 Strikers (New, +9, 9/47)

Edited May 21, 2021 by Arctic Cress

[Arctic Cress]

Been well over a month, but the 200 milestone is finally here!

 

#200 Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception

Played Prelude to the Fallen last year and it was easily the best new series I picked up during the year. I also started Mask of Deception last year as well, but early on I was very disappointed with how the game began with its glacial plot, if there was one in the beginning at all. Another TrueTrophies challenge pushed me to the eleventh battle of the game, already 2/3rds of the way through, and by that time there was a lot more happening and after the challenge was completed I went all the way to the end - and the impact of how I want to continue this series made me throw this right into a milestone platinum with little effort. Though it's not a bad choice - considering its genres, it fits in very well with the top games in the top 100 list I just finished the writeups for on another website. I'm very satisfied with it being there. It's time for Mask of Truth and I've already seen the opening and see a large amount more of the Prelude to the Fallen characters, which overall I was a big fan of! Hopefully this proves to be a good conclusion to this trilogy of games.

 

A month with a TrueTrophies challenge happening means a lot of random trophies from a huge number of games, and this month is no exception:

 

Bastion (+1, 8/23)

Block-a-Pix Deluxe [PS4] (+3, 52/56)

Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition (+13, 77/81)

Digimon World: Next Order (+1, 17/45)

Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot (+3, 26/42)

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (+1, 32/35)

Farming Simulator 19 (+1, 10/24)

Ghost of Tsushima (+5, 10/60)

Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match (+2, 21/37)

The House in Fata Morgana (New, +1, 1/13)

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation (+1, 21/41)

The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel II (+11, 15/51)

Let's Fish! Hooked On (+2, 12/31)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+2, 10/15)

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death (+3, 10/37)

Retro City Rampage (+2, 4/14)

Samurai Warriors 4 (+2, 28/54)

Super Neptunia RPG (+7, 13/36)

Touhou Genso Wanderer (+5, 10/43)

 

The next platinum might be Mask of Truth or it might not be, who knows! I'll find out soon enough.

Edited May 8, 2021 by Arctic Cress

[Arctic Cress]

A brief stop at a Kemco RPG before continuing with a few more serious games.

 

#201 Dragon Sinker

One of the many jRPG titles from Exe-Create and Kemco that are on pretty much every platform these days. This game however has a very in-depth job system that makes the game a lot of fun to experiment with different combinations throughout the entire game. I played the entire game on the hardest difficulty and like you would expect, the first few bosses are pretty tough and then it gets easier as you unlock more skills from the different jobs. It definitely tries to emulate the feel of a NES RPG too much at times - even down to the graphics and music. I enjoyed this one a lot more than the other title I played from this group (Antiquia Lost) and might try a few more in the future. After beating the game, there's still another dungeon to go through to get the true ending and a bonus dungeon with some interesting boss fights, including a gauntlet fight where you fight the same boss in a battle as long as possible, while the boss gets a slight powerup every time you kill her. The platinum required ten kills, which was no problem at all.

 

I've been concentrating on a few titles (along with the above game) so there aren't too many updates despite the two week gap.

 

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (+1, 33/35)

Gems of War (+1, 79/95)

Ghost of Tsushima (+6, 16/60)

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation (+3, 24/41)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+1, 11/15)

Mahjong Gold (+1, 7/12)

Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth (New, +17, 17/57)

Edited May 23, 2021 by Arctic Cress

[Arctic Cress]

Another Lightwood Games stack. I still enjoy them even playing through them multiple times though!

 

#202 Block-a-Pix Deluxe (PS4)

Not much else to say here. Still confused to why the PS4 gets a bigger display when it's still easy to see everything even when the Vita remote plays the PS4 version (like in Fill-a-Pix), but who knows.

 

I was on vacation most of the time since my last platinum, so there's not too much in the way of updates. Besides one game which was my main game through most of it:

 

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation (+2, 26/41)

Level 22 (+2, 11/21)

Super Bomberman R Online (New, +4, 4/10)

Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth (+28, 45/57)

[Arctic Cress]

The Science Adventure continues with my next platinum.

 

#203 Robotics;Notes Elite

Thanks, platinum image!

Another very good visual novel in the Science Adventure series, though it's definitely the weakest of the four I have read so far. Definitely the weakest cast, much different from Chaos;Child or either of the Steins;Gate games, but I was still hooked onto it for a good portion of the ending scenes. The platinum doesn't require much extra work besides reading through, just a couple extra trophies regarding the robot battles and Twipo (game's version of Twitter) responses. I missed one tip in my playthrough because I didn't zoom in enough in IRUO to collect a geotag at some point, but it was easy to use the Daily Records function to jump to the tip needed. A nice refreshing break from some of the other games I've been playing through recently.

 

And speaking of those other games, here are some of them:

 

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation (+6, 32/41)

Megadimension Neptunia VII (+1, 7/35)

Pic-a-Pix Classic 2 (New, +12, 12/19)

School Girl/Zombie Hunter (+5, 20/41)

 

Probably will finish a Vita game for the next platinum!

[Arctic Cress]

It's been two days, but the next platinum is no surprise given the trophies earned at the end there.

 

#204 Pic-a-Pix Classic 2

There was a recent sale on Lightwood Games' catalog so it was the perfect time to pick up some of the games I haven't purchased from them yet, including this one! Still, it's just a quick picross game with 150 puzzles in between a few other games I'm playing through. Not much to say about it other than that.

 

A few other games continue to trek towards their completions.

 

Ghost of Tsushima (+1, 17/60)

Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth2: Sisters Generation (+2, 34/41)

I am Setsuna (+1, 28/50)

[Arctic Cress]

A pretty average visual novel takes the next platinum.

 

#205 Kotodama: The 7 Mysteries of Fujisawa

PQube localizes a lot of these visual novels over here. However, I've found most of them range from mediocre to bad, with Root Letter, WorldEnd Syndrome, Punch Line, and now this game. This game requires four to five playthroughs depending on how thorough you are at collecting certain keywords. While the game is very short (about four hours even without skipping, but you will want to skip after seeing the same scenes multiple times), unlike the other games I listed, the true ending to this one seemed rushed and didn't resolve anything. Unfortunately for me I still have three more visual novels I've purchased from them - but obviously with how I've found these to be I'll probably put most of these off for a while.

 

Not too much in between this and the last platinum, but with the long weekend there might be some more progress made.

 

Ghost of Tsushima (+5, 22/60)

Level 22 (+2, 13/21)

Nexomon: Extinction (New, +4, 4/57)

Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth (+3, 48/57)

[Arctic Cress]

One of the best games I've played, and a clear cut top 10 game of all time. Maybe even top 5.

 

#206 Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth

In my Mask of Deception writeup above, I complained about its glacial plot, but this game starts off a lot better than that one did - reminds me a lot of Prelude to the Fallen's storyline, with the interesting civil war storyline through the game. It then shifts and answers practically every last story thread remaining from Prelude to the Fallen and Mask of Deception, tying up the trilogy in the best way possible. The final battle is one of the best in any video game to date. Though not only is the story great, but the strategy RPG portion actually has a decent challenge to it, especially if you take it and go all the way to the end of the Dream Arena. There's a lot of interesting scenarios it gets into and it was a worthwhile challenge to go through it all. I think that was what was missing in the other two games - Prelude had no challenge whatsoever until its one bonus battle and Mask of Deception had a very underdeveloped Dream Arena compared to this one. Being able to succeed in both parts of the game makes this the clear cut best game of its series.

The platinum does not take much besides finishing the Dream Arena to its end, but some of the drop rates on items are ridiculous, and you need to get every drop from every mission (all are repeatable). Some drops have a low rate when you get to the final missions of the Dream Arena, down to a low point of 25% - took about six runs of the last fight to get both of the 25% drops from it. I've seen some comments saying this took many retries to get, luckily this did not happen to me for any of the drops, but my save file still shows a bit over 80 hours played to get everything done. Considering the story was over at around half that, it does take a while to get everything!

 

I've gone though a few KYC games since going through all of Kotodama above, along with a bunch of other games while I sort out what I need for Gaming by Numbers. There's a TrueTrophies event going on as well, but it doesn't require any extra effort.

 

Demon Gaze (+1, 15/41)

Disgaea 3: Absence of Detention (+1, 16/54)

Ghost of Tsushima (+5, 27/60)

Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition (New, +10, 10/25)

Level 22 (+2, 15/21)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+1, 12/15)

Nexomon: Extinction (+8, 12/57)

Pic-a-Pix Pieces 2 (New, +8, 8/24)

Samurai Warriors Chronicles 3 (+1, 11/50)

[Arctic Cress]

This appears to be the last of the pic-a-pix titles, at least for a good while. None seem to have been released since May 2020, at least!

 

#207 Pic-a-Pix Pieces 2

This game has a ridiculous amount of content for a picross game, clocking in at 480 color puzzles (making up 20 images - 24 puzzles per image). Got it in a sale for $4, so it was less than a cent per puzzle. It is still color picross so it is much easier to finish all the puzzles, but still a great value overall. Vita version has some bugs in the game as it wasn't optimized for the system. Both are documented in the forums for the Vita version here, so I won't repeat the explanations here. Just a bunch of annoyances, but it's probably best to play it on PS4/5 as those systems do not have these bugs.

 

While that was going on, I got a bunch of random trophies including what I did for the tail end of KYC, ready to do whatever needs to be done for the MAFFA tournament in the Community Events forum.

 

Hunter's Arena: Legends (New, +3, 3/30)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares (+1, 14/34)

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (New, +10, 10/41)

Streets of Rage 4 (New, +20, 20/46)

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story (New, +10, 10/30)

[Arctic Cress]

A different type of adventure game rather than the visual novels that are all over my profile.

 

#208 Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition

Not the most interesting platinum image, huh?

Thanks to people on another message board I frequent, I bought this in a sale at some point and was excited to play it as many people there had very high praise for the story in this adventure game. Unfortunately because of that I am slightly disappointed overall. The story was good and I definitely got interested as the story progressed, but I did not think it was amazing or "the best video game story" as I have heard it talked about. The soundtrack for the game is fantastic though, with a lot of tracks I really enjoyed - probably will grab the $10 digital album I saw when I searched for it. This is another adventure game trophy list, similar to Grim Fandango, that rewards exploration and finding additional events that are not part of the actual storyline. I feel that most adventure games should do a trophy list similar to this one, though this was a bit lacking (not that I did not explore as much as I could when I had the chance!) Still, an enjoyable read, one definitely different from the usual games I play, so I am glad I had a chance to play it.

 

Not many trophy updates as this was completed in the same week as the previous platinum, but there are a few!

 

Hunter's Arena: Legends (+5, 8/30)

Level 22 (+1, 16/21)

London Detective Mysteria (+2, 4/16)

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3 (+5, 16/50)

[Arctic Cress]

One more long completion for Gaming with Numbers brings this platinum.

 

#209 Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot

A good action RPG that covers the entirety of the Dragon Ball Z series, from the Saiyan saga all the way through the Buu saga. I watched most of the series when I was a kid like many of us here, though I never managed to finish the Buu saga when watching it back then - so I finally saw it all the way to the end. The game is decently challenging for the first half of the game, and then you unlock Big Bang Attack and the difficulty just plummets every time you control Vegeta in a battle - the range and damage that one attack does compared to everything else in the game is so broken compared to any other attack. Since you can choose your party for most of the optional battles, I almost always controlled Vegeta for them. My save file when I got the Platinum was just over 44 hours in total - and I did almost all of the sub stories (since they did the bulk of the post game leveling). As for the DLC stories, I might check them out at a future date, but I don't have interest in any of them at this point.

 

I also completed Mahjong Gold for the PS4, which doesn't have a platinum. It's about the same as the Vita version, except with no touch screen so it's much more annoying.

 

Mahjong Gold [PS4] (+5, 12/12)

 

It's been a couple weeks, so there's a few trophy updates to list. Not too many, though!

 

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (New, +6, 6/30)

Level 22 (+2, 18/21)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+1, 13/15)

Musynx [PS4] (New, +13, 13/27)

Nexomon: Extinction (+4, 16/57)

Pic-a-Pix Classic 2 [PS4] (New, +14, 14/19)

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3 (+5, 21/50)

Streets of Rage 4 (+1, 21/46)

[Arctic Cress]

A short update for a few newer completions.

 

First, this one, it's a stack, so no write-up for it.

 

#210 Pic-a-Pix Classic 2 [PS4]

 

The other platinum is a very easy one that I picked up just to fill the 4 slot in Gaming by Numbers.

 

#211 Energy Cycle

Did it in one hour just to fill the slot.

 

The other two completions had no platinum trophies. Firewatch and The Midnight Sanctuary are both story-driven games that I think are decent games, but I still wouldn't recommend either to be worth playing. Both games definitely have their share of problems throughout their short run times that can drag the whole experience down.

 

Firewatch (New, +10, 10/10)

The Midnight Sanctuary (New, +11, 11/11)

 

No additional trophies as I was just focusing on completing games for the end of the community event, but there will be a lot more for the next update!

[Arctic Cress]

Another TT challenge has happened, but first, a short Vita platinum.

 

#212 Ganbare! Super Strikers

A cross between soccer and a strategy RPG seems like it would be a real winner if done correctly, however, this game falls short of the mark. The AI is so easily exploitable that at the end of most games, I was just waiting for the AI to waste its turns doing nothing and handing me the win with a single goal scored on my end. With a better AI and a more in-depth story mode, this game could be a real winner. Instead, it's just a five hour novelty game that I somewhat enjoyed playing through. The platinum requires nothing additional besides finishing story mode in full.

 

A new TT challenge means a lot of trophies from forgotten games, and this one is no exception. Though I am concentrating on the Ghost of Tsushima platinum recently, so that might be a bit of an exception.

 

Bastion (+1, 9/23)

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (+5, 23/45)

Genshin Impact (New, +13, 13/50)

Ghost of Tsushima (+17, 44/77)

Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match (+1, 22/37)

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (+3, 9/30)

Level 22 (+1, 19/21)

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+1, 14/15)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares (+1, 15/34)

Musynx [PS4] (+2, 15/27)

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive (+4, 22/37)

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3 (+1, 22/50)

Sky Force Anniversary (+2, 6/14)

Song of Memories (+1, 13/37)

Valthirian Arc: Hero School Story (+1, 11/30)

Yakuza 3 Remastered (+6, 19/50)

[Arctic Cress]

There is certainly not many AAA games in this topic; however, here's one that finally caught my interest.

 

#213 Ghost of Tsushima

One of the very rare AAA games that I actually play through - though I'm definitely intrigued at historical games even if the story in this one is almost all fantasy. The true strength of Ghost of Tsushima lies in the story and characters, where it really shines - some of the side quests are extremely powerful, such as Yuriko's second tale. The combat is also very good, which is definitely needed since there's a lot of combat in its fifty hours of gameplay (and why I'm not yet going into the DLC yet). While the stealth sometimes takes a backseat to the combat, it also shines when it comes to the forefront - disabling entire enemy camps without being seen is very possible with all of the Ghost techniques Jin has at his disposal. The only downside is that it's very much a checklist open world game with the very many fox shrines, haikus, and other areas all over the place, and of course the platinum requires finding almost everything out there. Definitely glad I played it to the end. Once I'm in the mood for more Ghost of Tsushima, I'll check out the Iki Island DLC but for now I'll be going back to other games I've left behind. 

 

I played a few games today after getting the platinum yesterday, so I'll add them to this post. Since Ghost of Tsushima also has a bunch of DLC as well, I'll keep it tracked in this section as well until it's all completed.

 

Ghost of Tsushima (+8, 52/77)

The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (New, +3, 3/20)

Persona 5 Strikers (+2, 11/47)

Super Neptunia RPG (+3, 16/36)

[Arctic Cress]

A game that was at 1/13 before the last update was not exactly the game I would have expected to be my next platinum, but there you go.

 

#214 The House in Fata Morgana

Top 10 visual novel and definitely worth a play through. Despite the somewhat slow start through the first few chapters, the game quickly picks up and connects the entire thing together, with a fantastic soundtrack throughout the entire run. The PSN version (and Switch version) adds A Requiem for Innocence, Reincarnation, and eighteen more additional short stories to add more to the story, but the main story is the best part and the true highlight of the game. The platinum requires only to find all eight endings in the main story, and then to read all of the available stories. It is a pretty common platinum on most trophy websites because people used the back door to unlock everything immediately and got all the trophies in under a hour, which is a shame - it's definitely a story that should be experienced.

 

I also completed the old PS+ game Level 22. It's a very unique stealth game based in a modern office setting where most of the trophies are tied towards collectables in each level.

 

Level 22 (+2, 21/21)

 

Not too much in the way of other updates, but more than the previous one.

 

Genshin Impact (+1, 14/50)

Girls und Panzer: Dream Tank Match (+1, 23/37)

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (+4, 13/30)

Musynx [PS4] (+4, 19/27)

Nexomon: Extinction (+4, 20/57)

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds [PS4] (+4, 26/37)

River City Girls (+3, 15/30)

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3 (+11, 33/50)

[Arctic Cress]

Another horror-themed game for the month is the next platinum.

 

#215 Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

 

I definitely had a high opinion of this game when I first started it back in 2019; fast forwarding to now though I have a less favorable opinion of the game. I found the game very difficult as I kept going through, and had various problems throughout the game, losing hours of progress through various deaths. Regardless, the RPG mechanics did however make it more enjoyable and there was always the option to grind more if needed. I beat the game in the mid-40s on normal mode, not needing to overlevel too much, and finished the game at level 63 thanks to all the item farming. I do believe it's a good game overall, but I'm not interested in playing more Metroidvania games for the time being. The platinum requires everything at 100% except all the weapon techniques (though one technique has to be mastered) and it's mostly running back and forth in the base and smashing lanterns for gold over and over to buy enough alkahest to dismantle your items to craft more items. An endless loop of crafting. Base item drop rates from demons are pretty abysmal but there are plenty of ways to raise it.

 

I also finished the Love Live! game with the obnoxiously long title. The Aqours card farming took over 1,000 plays to find the last skill card drop which is completely ridiculous.

 

Love Live! School idol festival ~after school ACTIVITY~ Wai Wai!Home Meeting!! (+1, 15/15)

 

Other than that, not much else during the week. Bloodstained's 22 trophies were the majority of the trophies earned since the last platinum.

 

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (+3, 16/30)

Mary Skelter: Nightmares (+1, 16/34)

Nexomon: Extinction (+7, 27/57)

Shenmue III (+2, 5/64)

[Arctic Cress]

This game wasn't even started as of last update! It was pretty short considering I knew what I was doing, though.

 

#216 Doki Doki Literature Club Plus!

Like many people, I played the original game back in 2017, so my purchase was more for the additional things added to this version (though there wasn't much in general). The base game is still as I remembered it. The new side stories added to the game each have a focus on the relationship between two of the characters and details how the Literature Club was formed before the events of the main game happen. It's pretty short though, only took around 3-4 hours to read through all of them. The platinum requires all endings, CGs, poems, and music to be unlocked in the end, which requires a lot of reloading to get certain things to come up. Fortunately, it doesn't take too long to do so.

 

I'm only really playing one other game (though I did play another) and DDLC was a good break in between dungeon crawling runs. Small update this time.

 

Mary Skelter: Nightmares (+11, 27/34)

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive (+2, 28/37)

[Arctic Cress]

After the last update in this topic, the next platinum should be no surprise.

 

#217 Mary Skelter: Nightmares

One might look at this game and say 'another dungeon crawler by Idea Factory and Compile Heart, pass' and while that's definitely true, it's probably their best work yet. An amazing first person dungeon crawler with a lot of in-dungeon puzzles that aren't annoying, lots of character customization, and plenty of extra exploration in the various areas that are available. The only thing I didn't like is probably the lack of voiced dialogue in the English dub as the Japanese voices do a lot more, but that's to be expected with a niche game like this one. Platinum requires getting both the bad and good endings, getting a single character to level 81, beating 80% of the monsters in the game, and completing the postgame dungeon which is literally three levels of 100x100 spaces and is so big that the map barely fits on the Vita screen. Still enjoyable, though; I love exploring through these maps, though I wish there was more reward to doing so at times. As there's no localization of the PS4 version of the next game in the series, I'll be moving over to the Switch for Mary Skelter 2 before returning to the PS4 to conclude the series.

 

No other trophies, the two platinums were only about three days apart. Next time!

[Arctic Cress]

Continuing with the visual novel cleanup, I have

 

#218 London Detective Mysteria

Unlike the last otome game I played (Hakuoki) the protagonist in this one is actually very capable and goes to a detective academy in London, where she meets all of the other major characters in the game. While there are some small mysteries in the plot, the mysteries are pretty easily solved and do not require too much thinking, especially if you've played other visual novels with similar mysteries. The common route is also way too long and is pretty annoying to go through even with skip, and the skip to next choice sometimes bugs out and crashes the game. Thankfully the individual routes and the epilogues are pretty good, and were worth the effort to unlock - along with the true ending. Unfortunately it ends with a To Be Continued and the developer has not made any games since releasing this one back in 2016. Dunno if we'll ever see a sequel, and an even less chance if it does release that we'll see it localized in English.

 

Started a few games for KYC, nothing much else otherwise. Demon Gaze gets a few trophies as I'm looking for another dungeon crawler to go through, and I think I've exhausted all the easier trophies in Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3. A lot of grinding ahead for the rest.

 

Blue Reflection: Second Light (New, +2, 2/49)

Demon Gaze (+2, 17/41)

Final Fantasy VII Remake (+1, 28/54)

NEO: The World Ends With You (New, +8, 8/51)

Persona 5 Strikers (+1, 12/47)

Samurai Warriors: Chronicles 3 (+2, 35/50)

[Arctic Cress]

The Great TrueTrophies Score Challenge is fully underway, and here's the first real platinum I've done specifically for it.

 

#219 Death Mark (Vita)

This game is a short horror adventure game. It involves exploring multiple areas to save a number of protagonists from a curse that is known only as the Mark, given from various spirits in the game. I found it to be interesting enough to keep my attention, and I enjoyed my... eight hours with the game. I would have liked a few more chapters to go through before the ending happened (there's one additional DLC chapter, but it seems weird playing after how it ended). The platinum requires only story events, but you either need to do a second playthrough or keep separate saves as each chapter has two different endings depending on whether the spirit is either destroyed or saved based on the items you collect and use in the chapter. I used it mostly to get the 2000 trophy XP for the TrueTrophies bonus, chosen over some visual novels as those would give next to no points in the TT contest. It was still a nice surprise of a title, and I might check out the other game in its mini-series at some point.

 

A lot of other random gains in other games accompany this platinum, as well as some games started for KYC. One game to note is Croixleur Sigma which had no updates in four years; I managed to find a tip that led me to get past the one roadblock trophy in that one. Not sure if I can get the platinum, but it's a lot closer now! The other game that received a huge boost is One Piece: Unlimited World Red where I finally pushed through to the end. No points to any guide I found because none of them ever told me how to unlock Chapter 5 and I had to figure it out myself. (You have to expand the town itself to unlock the later chapters.)

 

Akiba's Trip: Hellbound & Debriefed (New, +6, 6/55)

Blue Reflection: Second Light (+14, 16/49)

Croixleur Sigma (+8, 36/46)

Lost Judgment (New, +5, 5/51)

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death (+4, 14/37)

Musynx [PS4] (+2, 21/27)

One Piece: Unlimited World Red (+15, 27/57)

PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate (+1, 18/27)

Rainbow Moon (+2, 42/53)

Retro City Rampage (+3, 7/14)

Severed (New, +2, 2/25)

Yakuza 3 Remastered (+2, 21/50)

[Arctic Cress]

It's been over a month since the last update, and I got three platinum trophies since, but I didn't feel the first two warranted an update to this topic. Here are all three of them:

 

#220 36 Fragments of Midnight (Vita)

 

#221 Nurse Love Syndrome

 

#222 Croixleur Sigma

 

I mentioned in the last update that I found a tip on how to get past a roadblock in Croixleur Sigma (turning on control assist), and it did eventually lead to the platinum trophy. Even with that tip it still was a difficult one - the platinum requires the aforementioned story mode run to be done in eight minutes and thirty seconds, as well as to clear the 50-floor dungeon mode with no continues (with floors that have every monster on the floor deal double damage so you die in one hit to a miniboss. I died on the 50th floor twice before finally succeeding). It's definitely a platinum that took a lot of effort and skill, and I'm happy with the results.

 

During this time I also finished the DLC for Plague Inc: Evolved again, this time with The Cure DLC. Nothing really difficult trophy-wise.

 

Plague Inc: Evolved (+3, 61/61)

 

And with that, lots of games that have been started or updated since the last update happened. The tail end of KYC got another new game on the list, and the 12 Days of Christmas and random weekly GTTSC challenges over at TrueTrophies have added a whole bunch as well. I managed to beat Nexomon: Extinction and Resogun so these have some of the largest updates on the list below.

 

Blue Reflection: Second Light (+6, 22/49)

Burnout Paradise Remastered (New, +16, 16/95)

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (+1, 26/41)

DJMAX Respect (+5, 76/121)

Fantasy Strike (New, +15, 15/43)

Freedom Wars (New, +10, 10/43)

Genshin Impact (+1, 15/50)

Ghost of Tsushima (+1, 53/77)

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (+5, 21/30)

Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational [PS3] (+4, 21/38)

Langrisser I & II (+1, 1/42)

Lost Judgment (+1, 6/51)

Megadimension Neptunia VII (+1, 8/35)

MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death (+3, 17/37)

The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories (+2, 5/20)

Musynx [PS4] (+3, 24/27)

NEO: The World Ends With You (+2, 10/51)

Nexomon: Extinction (+20, 47/57)

Persona 5 Strikers (+13, 25/47)

Phantom Breaker: Battle Grounds Overdrive (+7, 35/37)
Rainbow Moon (+2, 44/53)

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- The Prophecy of the Throne (New, +14, 14/33)

Resogun (Vita) (New, +22, 22/34)

Revenant Dogma (New, +10, 10/31)

Severed (+4, 6/25)

Shenmue III (+1, 6/64)

Shin Megami Tensei III Nocturne HD Remaster (New, +6, 6/37)

Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut (New, +33, 33/51)

Team Sonic Racing (+4, 33/52)

Tetris Effect (+4, 31/43)

Thumper (New, +2, 2/19)

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA (+2, 8/51)

[Arctic Cress]

On today's agenda is two Vita games that probably should have spent more time fixing the various bugs that plagued each game. The first one had a ton of the actual game crashing and multiple times where the game locked up, and the second had some menu problems where the battle window just didn't appear at times - or the text was completely missing.

 

#223 Slayaway Camp: Butcher's Cut (Vita)

 

If you combined the ice floor puzzles from a JRPG with a horror movie parody and Minecraft-like characters you would get something similar to Slayaway Camp. Honestly, it doesn't seem like a bad combination - the problem with the game is how badly it runs on the Vita. Loading times are abysmal for such a simple game, and the numerous crash bugs were annoying (luckily the game's autosave helped with that a bit). I can't recommend this game at all on the Vita - find it on a system that runs it better if you want to play it.

 

#224 Dragon Fantasy: Volumes of Westeria

An updated re-release of Dragon Fantasy Book I, which originally released back in 2013 on the PS3/Vita. This release was for the PS4/Vita, and whoever purchased it originally got the Vita version for free. I of course did not find this out until two years after its release on the system. Compared to the original release, there's a few trophies that have you playing through chapters 1 and 3 (the longest ones - chapter 1 is over half the full game's runtime) in a more challenging way, but given that this is a Dragon Quest parody RPG it basically just means grind more. There's new story content with a new intermission in between Chapter 3 and Intermission M, which is basically a forced stealth mission and is extremely annoying to play through, so I don't know why they even bothered since it is so short in the first place. In summary, there's nothing really here to interest you if you have played the original game, and if you haven't, it's merely an average way to spend eight hours or so. Muteki Games has been pretty silent since this game's re-release so who knows if we'll ever see the Book III they hinted at way back.
 

Been quite a while since the last update again, so here's another big one! I managed to beat the Re:ZERO VN during this time, so it gets a huge boost here. Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 is also the first PS5 title to appear on my PSN account with trophies.

 

Burnout Paradise Remastered (+15, 31/95)

Fantasy Strike (+5, 20/43)

Farming Simulator 19 (+1, 11/24)

The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles (+6, 27/30)

Hyperdimension Neptunia: Producing Perfection (New, +15, 15/39)

Mind≒0 (New, +14, 14/36)

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 [PS5] (New, +31, 31/43)

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- The Prophecy of the Throne (+16, 30/33)

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin (+4, 14/41)

Severed (+2, 8/25)

Sly 2: Band of Thieves (+3, 18/36)

Sparkle 2 [Vita] (New, +7, 7/14)

Team Sonic Racing (+1, 34/52)

Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of DANA (+4, 12/51)

[Arctic Cress]

Another trophy milestone, another... Ace Attorney platinum? TAKE THAT!

 

#225 The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles

Overall, the game was a solid title, though that's more on GAA2 than its predecessor, and I can understand why Capcom originally passed on localizing the first half back on the 3DS.

My overall game ranking for the series: 6 > 3 > GAA2 > 1 > LvW > 5 > 2 > AAI1 > GAA1 > 4

I guess the only place to go now would be AAI2 at some point, to finally complete the series. Hopefully this will have sold well enough to continue the series on PS consoles (as I've placed both the Phoenix Wright Trilogy and this game at certain milestones) and that we finally get Ace Attorney 7 at some point.

 

 

There's only one other trophy update here, and it's beating Sparkle 2, an old PS+ title. Not much else to talk about since the last update was only two days ago!

 

Sparkle 2 [Vita] (+3, 10/14)

[Arctic Cress]

And I'm back for my 3rd... and 4th platinum within a week's time.

 

#226 Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World- The Prophecy of the Throne

Ignoring the ridiculous word salad the title happens to be, this is a pretty simple visual novel with a handful of strategy RPG like scenes scattered throughout its runtime. It deals with an alternate path off of volume 3/episode 11 in where instead of the royal selection being continued, a sixth candidate is found which delays it all together, and Subaru tasks himself with finding out who the fake candidate is. It was a pretty interesting story, all things considered, but the runtime was pretty short (around 18 hours long). What is nice is that Spike Chunsoft opted to dub the game, with all the voice actors from the anime returning to reprise their roles. Considering I watched the dub myself, it was nice to have the game like that, as most anime games don't get this treatment. The platinum doesn't require much in general besides that, opting to include some optional objectives in each strategy RPG mission, plus requiring multiple playthroughs of the game (two trophies require a 3rd playthrough) making alternate decisions at the beginning of the story to unlock all the CGs in the game. Fortunately, skipping through the entire story took only a hour and a half, so it wasn't difficult to do so after I had finished everything else.

 

#227 Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 (PS5)

I already had the PS4 version's platinum, so despite this being my first PS5 platinum it isn't that big of a deal! It was very similar to what I did with the PS4 version, spend 10-15 hours playing the game regularly, then idle grind puyos for 15 hours. Still had fun with the first ten hours, though!

 

Didn't play much else since it's only been a few days, but here's the rest of the update:

 

Burnout Paradise Remastered (+1, 32/95)

Link-a-Pix Deluxe [PS4] (New, +14, 14/23)

Mind≒0 (+3, 17/36)