u/Past_Investment_6654

After an intense platinum in Nine Sols, I decided to mellow it down with a few easy platinums. I chose Venba to start, because I thought it was a quick cooking game. I WAS WRONG! While cooking was the central element, it was primarily a visual novel covering culture, identity and both the experiences of immigrants and children both in a country to immigrants. It was both beautiful and sad watching the slow development of the distant that developed between Kavin and his parents only to then come around for a truly sweet and beautiful moment. I can’t tell you how much I highly recommend this masterpiece. Now, I’m going to go call my mom and tell her how much I love and appreciate her.

My last few platinum have been fairly easy platinums, so I started to have a craving for some challenge. Que, Nine Sols coming on to PS+. I originally heard about this game through a group of YouTuber speed runners having it be apart of their multi world archipelago. Shout out to CJYA, SmallAnt, GrandPOOBear, Fir, AstralSpiff, failboat, dellamie, CraftyBoss925 and Moarf23.

This style of game normally isn’t my cup of tea, as I really struggle with mechanics in Metroidvania/Soulslike games. But, I absolutely loved this! It being a 2D platformer style massively helped with the Soulslike struggle. It was interesting and very reminiscent in play style to Hollow Knight with enough of a divergence to make it its own.

All in all, most of the bosses were actually not that bad. Aside from 3, I could usually beat the boss in about 5-10 attempts. The 3 that caused the most difficulty and rage were Lady Ethereal, The Fengs and EIGONG.

Lady Ethereal is the only boss besides Eigong who has 3 phases. Between her clones and parry chaos, I probably had 30-40 deaths before I finally beat her. I ended up memorizing her combos so well that I could almost constantly No Hit her phase 1 and 2.

The Fengs were hard primarily due to the second phase of the fight. When the second phase starts, you effectively change from fighting 1 enemy to fighting two and being unable to attack one of them. When Nuwa adds to the battle, you are now facing melee and ranged simultaneously. I’m sure that I died 25-30 times before I finally beat them.

Final, Eigong was an intense shift in style. She attacks so frequently, that room to attack her is small and rare. I ended up looking for builds and advice to finally get a strategy in order to beat her. Additionally, since I chose the true ending first, she had 3 phases to get through in order to win. Phase 1, I likely died 25-30 times before I finally got the patterns down. For Phase 2, I likely died 35-40 times before I was able to adjust to her substantial shift in attacks. Phase 3 was about 15-20 deaths before I was able to the two additional attacks of the phase. In total, I can estimate about 75-90 deaths before I finally beat her. (Also yes she is the reason for the post title.) Funny enough, I got so good at her patterns, that I was able to consistently No Hit her Phase 1 and beat Phase 2 with maybe 2 heals. When I had to fight her again for the normal ending, I did it first try since it doesn’t include Phase 3.

Ultimately, I absolutely loved the challenge after all the easy/easyish platinums. The story was fun, gameplay was challenging and characters compelling. All in all, I had a fun time, and it will be a while before I come back to plat the PS5 version. Now, I’m going to clean up some of my easier and shorter platinums for some cooldown.

For someone who has never seen the movies, this makes me want to. The story is interesting, the gameplay is fun and the contention between the themes of man vs machine is captivating and reminiscent of other games, like Detroit Become Human.

My only critique, is that it was occasionally a little buggy in both the miscellaneous trophies and gameplay. For example, one trophy requires you to blow up a motorcycle rider while they’re riding. The rider blew themselves up and the trophy still popped. Another was the shoot an enemy in the crotch (yes that is the real trophy) and it only triggered the trophy after like the 25th crotch shot.

Outside of that, the platinum was a fun, thought provoking and gung-ho experience that was very enjoyable and fairly easy. I definitely recommend it for those who haven’t experienced it yet.

This marks the second time in platinuming this game. I will say that this is an absolute amazing experience for a classic Lego game with the comedy and the grunt noises for speaking. That being said, it is a somewhat draining platinum experience. At bare minimum, you have to replay levels a total of four times each to collect all the Gold Bricks. Once for the Story, once for Free Play, once for the Challenge mode and once for the Super Story. So, it got very repetitive.

Next, the multiplier Red Bricks were far too expensive for the amount of studs you could possibly get in the levels. The 2x multiplier is 2,000,000 studs and, even if you collect a possible studs in the story mode levels, you won’t be even half way to being able to purchase it. You’ll likely be halfway through Free Play before you can afford it. Follow that up with the 4, 6, 8 and 10 times multipliers costing 6, 12, 20 and 30 million after and you’ll likely have already collected all the Gold Bricks before you buy the 4x.

Then, this leads to the final issue for the platinum of 4 billion studs required. Like most Lego games, once you’ve 100% the game, you can build an object or pull a lever that you produce a constant flow of high value studs. While this game does that, I’m almost certain it’s the lowest amount given out of all Lego games. This makes the 4 billion collection a very slow and monotonous grind.

All in all, the game itself, I absolutely loved. The platinum experience, very slow, repetitive and all around ehh.

P.S. For those wondering why I would go through the slog, with how I organize my game collection, I need to Plat both versions of a game in order to move it to my ‘Platinum and All Trophies’ folder.

And so, we have another repeat platinum. This was my 203rd platinum for the PS4 version, but since it’s leaving PS+ on July 21st, I decided to play a few games and then platinum the PS5 version to round it out. Like I said before, get game, easy platinum and highly recommend before it leaves PS+.

This was an amazing blast from the past. Alongside Spyro Year of the Dragon, Rugrats Search for Reptar was one of the games my sister and I played repeatedly on PlayStation. Over 20 years later, and we will still occasionally plug in the old PS2 and play the 2 games for nostalgia’s sake. I heard about this collection, bought it right away and enjoyed every second of it. I highly recommend this as both a fun and easy platinum.

This was a psychedelic trip. The premise is interesting, as you are trying to rebuild the memories surrounding a kidnapping. There are so many twists and turns, that I honestly can’t talk much about the story without spoiling anything. I choose to plat this since it’s leaving PS+ next month. I highly recommend giving this a try. P.S. For anyone curious, my new puppy’s name is Aria.

This game was the absolute epitome of way I love trying indie games. I saw the post on another subreddit informing about what games are leaving PS+ next month, so I decided to try and platinum a couple that interested me. I saw the image screen for Röki and didn’t think much of it. I WAS COMPLETELY WRONG! This was a fascinating portrayal of Nordic Folklore mixed with a story of loss and family. This is a point and click puzzle game that puts you in the shoes of a protective sister searching for her brother. The platinum is about 5-7 hours, with 32 trophies. It is definitely worth the play. However, if you go for the platinum, I highly recommend that you use a guide as 12 trophies are missable. It leaves PS+ July 21st and has a version for PS4 & PS5. Can’t recommend it enough.

This was an absolutely interesting game. It felt like an interesting cross between Astro’s Playroom/Astrobot and Puppeteer. The narrators and character actively break the 4th wall and address the player directly with the controller having far more utility than it usually does. I will give a pre-warning, the platinum is a dedicated collect-o-thon, so I would highly recommend using a guide either from the start, or after you finish the initial play through. Additionally, be mindful that some of the enemies (which are also collectibles) will sometimes not register as defeat because they survive on a platform just off screen. So be very mindful of the in game tracker.

This was such an interesting adventure. The story made me think of a cross between Assassins Creed and a walking sim. The point and click was interesting despite the short gameplay. This was fun, the characters compelling and the mystery intriguing. I definitely recommend this. I definitely needed this short fun after a Lego collection-o-thon.

This was absolutely amazing, and a perfect love letter to the character of Batman. The story spans the entire Batman story from origin story, to modern, excluding any Justice League. The LEGO comedy was on point and flowed well with the gritty style of Batman and Gotham. The gameplay is an immaculate combination of the Arkham Games. My only critiques, the game feels a little short in some chapters, the small roster of characters (only 8), and the collect-o-thon that reminded me too much of the riddler trophies in the Arkham series. All in all, amazing game and definitely worth both the price and as my 200th platinum. I’d give it an 8/10 or 9/10.

This was an absolutely amazing experience. Despite the fact that I could tell exactly how the story was going to go from the beginning, it was still very interesting to see the journey of the characters. The RNG of the egg collecting was great. It was especially interesting how, if you memorized the patterns on the eggs, you could get the specific creature type you want. Once I beat the game and got the White Monobos, it’s Stab Vital attack made getting my party to Lv 99 easy. The Tower of Illusions, specifically floor 49, and Teostra proved to be the most challenging. A bit of advice, for Teostra, equip Blightproof Armor, and use a Blightproof Gene on your preferred Monstie. For Floor 49, aside from a ton of healing items, focus on killing Rajang first. This game was fun and I definitely recommend it.

Now, it’s on to my 200th platinum. If anyone wants to guess, here’s a hint, it’s a game that came out not long ago.

Decided to go for a repeat short platinum, before I go into the grind of cleaning up trophies in my back log platinum collection. Absolutely loved this just as much as the first time I played it. Completely hilarious raunchy British humor. Weirdly enough, after my second time platinuming it, I noticed that the character design reminded me of the Cartoon Network show Clarence. Honestly, some of the characters, I could swear were taken directly from the show. Absolutely funny, and worth the play.

After playing A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, I decided to play an indie game I saw a few people play. Initially, it looked like a suspense puzzle game. In the end however, it ended up being a puzzle walking simulator that proposes philosophical questions on religion and morality. Indika as a character is interesting, and the journey is fascinating from a debatable point of view. It wasn’t long, but it was definitely worth the play.

I don’t understand why this game got as much hate as it did. I found the gameplay to be absolutely amazing as it inverts the normal play style of countless other games. Rather than rushing through the game as quickly as you can, it forces the player to slow down and be mindful of every movement. I did amazingly at replicating the suspense of the movie and the creatures hunting you. The mix of speed run and environmental trophies also made for interesting gameplay. The character’s asthma acting as your health bar made resource management that much more interesting. The fact that your character is a pregnant woman making her way to a safe haven through countless dangers to protect her child makes the story that much more captivating. This is definitely a recommendation for anyone interested in suspense resource management.

And so I complete another step in my Assassin’s Creed journey. This was an amazing experience that was worth the time. This felt like an amazing return to form for the series. Baghdad was an amazing landscape for the setting, I especially loved how they had little historical facts scattered around as a collectible. The gear was interesting as you could adapt them to however you chose to use stealth. Finally, the story was captivating as you watch the story of Basim and how he got to where he was in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Definitely recommend, and can’t wait to see what they do next after AC Shadows.

And here we are with another amazing Lovecraft inspired game. While mostly just a short collect-o-thon walking simulation with a few puzzles, it was an amazing cinematic first person experience. The story and character are interesting, the some trophies are fun and cheeky references, and it is compelling as you watch the story of Norah as she learns what happened to her husband and his expedition party. Short and easy platinum that is definitely worth the play.

After a decently long JRPG, I decided to do a fairly short and simple indie game for a bit of a break. I initially saw this game when Jacksepticeye did a play through. I decided to try it since it’s on PS PLUS, and while it was interesting, some of the controls and mechanics were janky and there were a few glitches that made part unplayable. I couldn’t even enter the doll house section because no matter what I tried, the pumpkins wouldn’t register the shots needed to get the jack-o-lanterns. Ultimately, it was fun, but killed by a few glitches.

This is an absolutely amazing JRPG! This game changes the formula of the typical fantasy adventure. The story follows the ‘trapped in a game’ trope and, rather than being upbeat or comedic, goes dark and sorrowful as well as a suspenseful mystery. The story takes place in a cancelled VRMMORPG that is now being ravaged by glitches and bugs. While playing the game, I initially felt like it was rather empty despite the large spaces. It took me a while, but I eventually realized that the emptiness is intentional as you’re the only player in a shutdown multiplayer and the NPCs are being corrupted by the bugs and becoming enemies. The enemies look interesting, as they combined with various kinds of bugs, but you can still tell what a few of them were previously. I wouldn’t spoil the plot, but if you go for this platinum, SAVE FREQUENTLY!!! Death end in the title, refers to the multitude of ways you can get a Game Over. You will need to experience most of these ends for the platinum, so save often. Loved this game, and definitely recommend it for anyone.