Trophy Feedback/Tips

[Matto_lsi]

I just finished the 100% for this game.  With the exception of one trophy that needed a much higher count than specified, all trophies popped when they were supposed to (or even a little early) and NONE of them were actually hard.  Here's my feedback, in case anyone else ever tries to 100% this game and are worried about the really low percentages.  To be honest, not a single trophy on this list deserves to be ultra-rare.

 

Challenges:

Challenges are ok.  They're not super hard, they're not super easy.  If I had to rate them, I'd say most are a 3/10 or 4/10.  Maybe one or two are harder than that.  Ironically, the later challenges are easier than some of the earlier challenges.  Once you get used to the controls, most of these challenges won't give you much trouble.  I only struggled on a couple, and it wasn't because the challenge was hard, but because the time to get S rank was pretty ridiculous.  There's a couple challenges where the minimum time you could possibly complete it (because the challenge makes you survive for a specified amount of time, for instance) is the exact time needed for S rank.  So if you don't aim perfectly and get lucky with where your shots hit, you will add 1-2 seconds to your time and get an A rank instead.  Don't be deterred by this, though.  It will happen.  Sometimes things spawn in weird places (like on the edges of the screen where you can't see them).  Just keep trying, these will all come in time.  And I HIGHLY recommend doing all of these at S rank first before playing the main game.

 

Kill trophies:

These are all very easy to get if you have 4 controllers, just a little time consuming.  I can't speak for doing them against bots, as I didn't, I used 4 controllers.  You won't have hardly any issues if you have extra controllers to use.  If you don't, borrow a couple from friends before you get started.  Even with 4 controllers, its still a little bit of a grind, and not really a fun one, pretty mind-numbing.  Even with that said, they really don't take much time, though.  As someone who spent over 600 hours on GT5, this grind is very short and laid back, in comparison.  I did have trouble with Old School Principal, not cause I couldn't get the in-game achievement, that was easy, but for some reason the game either didn't count them all, or didn't count certain modes.  I did at least 75 in both Championship and Tournament modes (in that order) and only earned the trophy after I had well over 150 total.  This was the only trophy that didn't pop on time or early, so it wasn't that big of a deal.  However, to help anyone going forward, here are the exact settings I used to UNLOCK each trophy.

 

Swords in Space - Life Quantity: 50%, Arena - Tournament, Teams: No, Matches: x10, Bounties: No,

Ship: Cypher, Weapon: Plasma Sword, Enemy Ships: Striker, Enemy Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Location: Luthin VII - Alpha sector

Barehanded - Life Quantity: 50%, Arena - Tournament, Teams: No, Matches: x10, Bounties: No

Ship: Striker, Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Enemy Ships: Striker, Enemy Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Location: Luthin VII - Alpha sector

Here it comes! - Life Quantity: 50%, Arena - Tournament, Teams: No, Matches: x10, Bounties: No

Ship: Cypher, Weapon: Quantic Slinger, Enemy Ships: Striker, Enemy Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Location: Luthin VII - Alpha sector

Old School Principal - Life Quantity: 50%, Arena - Tournament, Teams: No, Matches: x10, Bounties: No

Ship: Striker, Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Enemy Ships: Striker, Enemy Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Location: Leonis Prime - Alpha sector

Xenocide - N/A - see 'Widow maker'

Widow maker - Life Quantity: 50%, Arena - Tournament, Teams: No, Matches: x10, Bounties: No

Ship: Cypher, Weapon: Hydra Cannon, Enemy Ships: Striker, Enemy Weapon: [Doesn't matter], Location: Uroboros Serpentis - Alpha sector

 

You'll want to avoid teams for the first 4 trophies above because a 1v3 match will give your ship pods which will shoot the other ships.  Just do no teams, so it's a free for all.  As mentioned above, I used 4 controllers, so the other 3 'players' were idle, making them easier to kill.  If you don't have the controllers and have to fight bots, you can decide how many (between 1 and 3) you want to fight, and can set their difficulty to easy.  I used Alpha maps for these as well, because they are smaller maps, have less/smaller asteroids, and easier/smaller alien ships.

 

Some quick tips:
Swords in space - Don't just swing the sword at the ship.  This will make it move away from you and do only a little damage.  Instead aim the sword in the direction of the ship you're moving towards, and then wiggle it very quickly without changing the direction you've aimed.  This will make the sword hit the other ship rapidly, killing it in a split second before it can move away from you.  If the ship does move away from you, don't chase it.  Turn 180 degrees and fly toward the ship with your sword out.  99% of the time the head on collision between your sword and the other ship will finish it off.  Do not ever pin another ship against an asteroid.  It will almost always credit the asteroid with the kill, and not your sword.  I chose to leave enemy ships as default Strikers because they have low life and don't move around as much as the other smaller ships with low life (like Cypher and Pulsar) when you start hitting them.  I could usually kill all 3 ships every round, 29-30 a match, when I played against Strikers, compared to between 22-25 against other small ships.  In general, I found the Striker to be the best opponent for every trophy.

 

Barehanded - I found that boosting (with R1) into other ships head-on worked best.  If the initial hit doesn't kill them, turning around 180 degrees and boosting into them in a head-on collision worked to finish them off.  More often than not I rarely took much damage this way, so you don't have to tailgate them trying to ram them from behind as I found I took more damage that way.  However if you feel comfortable doing this, then ramming them from behind and 'pushing' the other ship while boosting will do consistent low amounts of damage, and as long as they don't run into an asteroid, you'll often get the kill.  Again, Striker on Striker action was the easiest for me for this trophy.

 

Here it comes! - I actually enjoyed this one.  It took a few rounds to get used to the sling, but there's actually a lot of different ways to use it.  For instance, you don't even need to 'sling' an asteroid.  The only criteria for a kill to count is if the asteroid ends up with a trail behind it once you release it from your sling.  As the default for 1st controller is green, you should see a green trail behind the moving asteroid.  I found that going up to a asteroid, holding L2, then pushing it a little and releasing L2 had the exact same effect as 'slinging' it, the asteroid just didn't move as quickly.  However speed only matters for the brown asteroids, as they won't kill the other ships without a lot of momentum behind them.  The blue asteroids, however, can be barely moving and just graze another ship with full health and still kill it.  Blue asteroids are harder to move around, but again, if slinging them in the direction you want seems tricky, you can hold L2 and just push them a little to get the trail going behind them.  I also want to point out that if you are spinning an asteroid around and let go right before it hits a ship, even if the trail doesn't become visible until after the ship is destroyed, the kill will usually still count.  You just have to release L2 before the asteroid makes contact.  If a trail never develops (cause you didn't spin it fast enough, for instance) than the asteroid will get the kill.  But if the trail pops up, you'll likely get the credit.

 

Old School Principal - So I started doing this in Championship mode and I never got the trophy to pop.  I then resorted to Tournament mode and it popped, though it was a bit delayed.  The Old School in-game achievement isn't tricky, but since you never actually get the credit for these kills, I feel like this trophy ends up being a little buggy.  Basically all I did for this was shoot another ship twice using the main gun with R2.  That took a little over half its life.  I did this and then waited for the aliens to finish off the ship.  I never fired L2, and I never got the killing blow on the ship.  When I did, I didn't get the Old School in-game achievement.  When the aliens did kill the ships I shot first, I often did get the achievement, but not every time.  I can't really say 100% what it takes to get this achievement to credit during each round, but I can say for sure I very reliably got it with this method.  I have a feeling though that you need to use Tournament mode to get this trophy.  Even if you get the Old School in-game achievement 50+ times and the trophy doesn't pop, don't get discouraged, just keep going after it.  This was the only kills trophy that didn't pop for me when it was supposed to.  And it did eventually, just took a lot more kills than I expected.

 

So after I got the specific kills trophies, I still had a LOT of player kills and alien kills left to do.  In contrast to most of the information I found online, neither of these just came from going for the others.  Not even close.  However, if you go for player kills with the settings I specified above, you'll usually get the 3 player kills per round, plus 300-400 bullets fired per round (for the Rain of Bullets trophy) and another 10-20 aliens killed per round.  I ended up getting the Xenocide trophy way before I got the Widow maker trophy doing it this way, and I wasn't even trying to kill aliens.  I just picked the system with Alien Nests and the little guys just got in my way when I was killing players.  Since I did the other kills trophies first, I switched to the Hydra Cannon cause it fires 4 bullets instead of 1, and I was doing 1v3 teams, so I got 4 pods to start, which auto-fire at aliens, ships, and asteroids as you get near them.  This helped to get extra alien kills without trying and firing extra bullets per round, which help with other trophies.  Additionally, I already had the Space Lone Wolf trophy by this point, but waiting to do your 1v3 wins here will probably work, not that you need to worry about efficiency as you'll be doing a lot of extra matches for your final trophies.  The main point, though, is that alien kills will come easily and naturally while going for player kills this way.  You shouldn't need to worry about them at all.  If you somehow get Widow maker first, just keep playing the same map with Alien Nests and ignore the other players and kill the aliens instead, though I promise this won't really be necessary.  I had to do twice as many extra matches for player kills after I had earned Xenocide, which ended up being hundreds of additional rounds.

 

Misc Trophies:

As mentioned above, I did Space Lone Wolf before everything above, and I did it in Gladiator mode, but as long as you play 1v3 in any mode and win (easiest against idle controllers) then you should get this trophy.  I can't remember the specific settings I used, but I believe I used default ship and weapon settings, played in Gladiator mode, set Teams to Yes, and Lives to 1.  I think I set time to 60 seconds, also.  Again, this would probably be faster and easier in Tournament mode while going for player kills later in the game.

 

Can't touch me - Getting 5 defensive pods is much easier than it sounds.  I can't remember my exact settings, but if you start a 1v3 match you start with 4 pods.  The green power-ups are defensive pods.  You usually get them when destroying player ships, larger alien ships, and sometimes asteroids.  Start a 1v3 match, kill stuff, and pick-up an extra pod.  I did it by accident, actually, lol.

 

Don't worry about suicides until the end.  Once you've done everything else listed above, you'll want to finish the rest of the 'fights' needed for Brawl Club trophy.  I was about 150-200 fights shy after doing every other trophy in the game.  So once you get here, just start up matches in Tournament mode, x10 rounds per match, default ship settings for all controllers/bots, and start committing suicide by holding L2, L1, R2, and R1 at the same time when the match starts.  You can play 1v3 or 1 on 1 with a bot, it doesn't matter, cause you're killing yourself.  Just don't do a 4 player free for all or you'll have to wait for the other ships to kill each other every round, which takes a lot of extra time.  You'll get the trophy for 10 matches ending in under 3 seconds, 50 total suicides, and 100 mirror matches very quickly this way.  You can also switch systems/planets and sectors after every round and knock out the Interstellar brawl trophy after the first few matches.

 

That should be it!  This is a very easy game with very easy trophies.  While playing I kept thinking of so many better opportunities for trophies than the ones this game got.  I can't actually recommend that you play this game, cause it's not very fun to 100% (at least not on your own, maybe I would have enjoyed it with friends).  However, the percentages for this game are stupidly low.  This game, under normal circumstances, should have 50% or more for most trophies and none of them should be Ultra Rare.  This game is easy.  A little grindy.  But very, very easy.  It is not hard.  It is not tough.  It is not tricky.  But when you combine a small grind with a mediocre game, this often happens.  I just want to be very clear that this is NOT a difficult trophy list.  I hope that the information I provided might help someone who was considering going for this game, but was hesitant.  I was very hesitant myself, and only pulled this game out of my backlog because of a competition.  I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it actually was.  So don't think a list of all sub 1% UR trophies makes this game hard.  It's just that no one is bothering to grind it once they play a few matches and find themselves too bored to continue.

Edited May 6, 2020 by Matto_lsi