Platinum Retrospective & Trophy Tips

[Drag-On-Detritus]

I've happily spent the last week very casually revisiting the first Psyvariar thanks to this re release. I wasn't really trying for any trophies and most of them popped anyway. I would say this is a free plat for Psyvariar fans & SHMUP fanatics but it's do-able for almost anyone. Maybe not for people who request Inksplosion/Squareboy/Sound Shapes share play sessions but even then, maybe those people as well, if they actually tried.

 

First off the 1CC trophies. You don't need to reach the true last boss for these, just put the settings on very easy, bombs & lives to 5 & play for survival. Stay low level & the game will end super fast. It's hard not to get the 1CC under these conditions. 

 

The stage select screen revolves around what level you are & if your level isn't high enough you are locked out of harder/later stages & the game ends early. To prevent this you can play 2 player which adds the total level of the two ships together. I was playing with someone else & this actually wasn't ideal. If player two joins in mid game it will be the same level as you are currently so for the path of least resistance have the 2nd player join in at the end of a stage, let them die next stage as well as letting the continue timer count all the way down & have them join in just before destroying the boss. Please note that if one player looses all lives just as the boss is destroyed you might not be able to continue until the level select screen & if that happens the game will not count the collective levels and you will probably be locked out of the hard stages & have to restart the whole thing.

 

You can also set lives to 1, bombs to 5 & abuse short bombs & continues to level up more. This is a good way to easily get the max level trophies. 

 

For the XX replay stages you have to beat the stage & boss with just 3 lives & bombs. The bullets are much faster than normal & buzz is at a pissweak 0.20 percent so for the most part you can't just ride a wave of invincibility. These stages are where the DLC character 'Blanche' comes in handy because Blanche has a shield which saves you from a hit & recharges when broken and most importantly has a sword attack mapped to the shortbomb button (hold the normal bomb button down for a short bomb if you want to do one with Blanche btw). The sword attack takes the bosses down extremely fast so all you have to do is learn the very short stages, save your bombs and at least one spare life. XX-D is a little bit harder because the boss has so much health, but if you have all bombs & lives it's still pretty easy just might take a few retries.

 

The secret trophy I'm still not completely sure of, the picture gives you a hint but even that didn't help until I tried a few things out. IIRC I got it by point blanking a certain pattern on the stage 3-B boss right by the left or right wing, after shooting the far left & right parts of the wing off. I'm pretty sure it was Medium Unit & the Buzz Character. If you're unsure of the pattern I'm talking about just watch one of the super replays on youtube where you can see the player milking levels from the pattern. I'm not real big on Medium Unit & mostly play Revision so it took me an embarrassingly long time to get this compared with the other trophies.

 

The 10,000 buzz chain can be done quite easily on the X-D boss. It will not unlock in practice mode but it's a good idea to go in and practice because you need to do a whole play through either power levelling or using the 2 player exploit every time you want to attempt this. Continues don't matter so it's a good idea to set lives to 1 & bombs to 5 so you can suicide & restock bombs quickly if you mess the sequence up. Some of the patterns allow you to get multiple levels at a time but you need to know when to use short bombs otherwise you'll probably get killed before getting the 10,000 combo. Once again watch the super replays on youtube for solid ways of milking the boss.

 

Alright I think that covers just about everything. I see at this point in time there are a whopping 93 people with the game on this site, sadly the leaderboards in the game don't show too many more players so I'm doing this write-up hoping more people might pick the game up. I'd personally really like to see the 2nd game remade as well as that's the one I'm nostalgic to a fault about. I could just play it on dreamcast, ps2 or xbox but.... EH.

 

Anyway I'm happy to answer any questions if I didn't cover something here & if anyone else picked up the ltd sound box.... How annoying was it having to get a converter out just to play the damn record because they inexplicably pressed it with that massive hole in the centre!? 

Edited September 23, 2018 by readytofuky

[GunarmDyne]

Thanks for the advice. Hopefully Blanche becomes available on US PSN soon.

[Drag-On-Detritus]

No worries, glad I wrote that stuff down at the time 'cause I wouldn't be able to remember that much now! I hope it helps out. At the time I thought it was pretty wild how many of those trophies can be cheesed but IIRC those X stages with the low buzz rate weren't entirely effort free & not everyone will be as enthusiastic about them as I was. I'd say for newcomers the platinum might be a 4 or 5 out of 10 just to be fair but shmup enthusiasts should have no issues. 

 

It's crazy how long that US version took to come out. Thought I read about free dlc codes being given out as an apology but if not I would go as far as to recommend buying it & I'm pretty well against that sort of thing in general. 

[Vergil]

Did this release digital in west? Can't seem to find it

[Drag-On-Detritus]

On 17/08/2019 at 11:20 AM, Vergil said:

Did this release digital in west? Can't seem to find it

 

Sorry, I thought it was but on further inspection not yet (wtf!). The dispatch games store still lists it as a pre-order as well. Apparently the western release has been a bit of a shitshow. I purchased the JPN ltd box with the 7" vinyl over a year ago & that shipped when it said it would so I dunno what their problem is with the other regions but it sucks for everyone who's still waiting!! 

[Champ147]

For the 1cc on medium unit I'm having trouble. To make the game end sooner, or earliest possible, what level should you be at for each stage? I can't seem to be low enough level or something. I get up to level 6-7 and stage 4 before I die. 

 

For those interested in buying the game I know it's available via physical at stores. It's a bit rare though so may want to call or look up your stores inventory before you go. And it's not available on PSN. 

[Drag-On-Detritus]

32 minutes ago, Champ147 said:

For the 1cc on medium unit I'm having trouble. To make the game end sooner, or earliest possible, what level should you be at for each stage? I can't seem to be low enough level or something. I get up to level 6-7 and stage 4 before I die. 

 

For those interested in buying the game I know it's available via physical at stores. It's a bit rare though so may want to call or look up your stores inventory before you go. And it's not available on PSN. 

 

For the levels, 6-7 is very low you might want to get a bit higher than that to power up the ship a bit. To get the TLB a lot of levelling up is required so it should be fine to level up a bit. I only played Medium Unit when I needed a trophy specific to that mode so memory is hazy here but are you using the buzz character with max lives & bombs set in the options? I understand the DLC character isn't available yet for regions outside JPN & AS but if it was an option I'd say use Blanche. It sounds like you're close in any case. I might fire up the game later on today to get a better frame of reference. Can't remember exactly how many stages constitute that optimal easy 1cc path.

[Champ147]

8 minutes ago, Drag-On-Detritus said:

 

For the levels, 6-7 is very low you might want to get a bit higher than that to power up the ship a bit. To get the TLB a lot of levelling up is required so it should be fine to level up a bit. I only played Medium Unit when I needed a trophy specific to that mode so memory is hazy here but are you using the buzz character with max lives & bombs set in the options? I understand the DLC character isn't available yet for regions outside JPN & AS but if it was an option I'd say use Blanche. It sounds like you're close in any case. I might fire up the game later on today to get a better frame of reference. Can't remember exactly how many stages constitute that optimal easy 1cc path.

I was going off the first post in this thread where he said to stay low level and play survival and that would reduce the number of stages you have to play before the game ends. With my normal play there was 6 stages in medium unit mode, not sure how many you can possibly cut off. 

[Drag-On-Detritus]

4 hours ago, Champ147 said:

I was going off the first post in this thread where he said to stay low level and play survival and that would reduce the number of stages you have to play before the game ends. With my normal play there was 6 stages in medium unit mode, not sure how many you can possibly cut off. 

 

Ah yeah I see I was a little vague there. I just did a 1cc run on Medium Unit using the Axion-R ship on Very Easy with max lives & bombs & the levels at the end of the stages were:

 

01 - lvl 15

2A - lvl 31

3A - lvl 47

4A - lvl 51

5A - lvl 60

6A - lvl 88

 

For some reason I thought there were less than 6 stages on the low level run but in any case it only took 15 minutes or less for that play through. I only buzzed what came my way & didn't try to chain level ups. Only ever used short bombs & most of the bosses took about 10 seconds to go down & I only had to dodge bullets a handful of times.