The Platinum Series [12]: Tales of Grace F

It's not me if I didn't get a platinum for arguably my favorite JRPG series, the Tales.It's been quite awhile since my last Platinum (FFXIII-2), added to the fact that I didn't have as much time as I used to for games. Overall, it took me about 3 months to platinum this game, or roughly 150+ hours of in-game time. Not so much I guess, compared to the time I spent on Tales of Vesperia or Star Ocean 4.

Title: Tales of Grace F
Developer: Namco Tales Studio
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: Japanese role playing game (jrpg)
Release date: March 2012 (NA)


Overall Platinum Difficulty: 5/10 (moderate) 

 If I could compare Tales of Grace F with another games that I've platinumed, I would say the difficulty is roughly similar to Resonance of Fate - there's not too many overwhelmingly skill/technical-based trophies, and most of the time you need to spend time grinding for a few trophies. In Tales of Grace F's case, it's the trophy that require you to develop your Eleth Mixer to its maximum capacity of 9999. A time consuming process, considering you normally get only a few eleth increase (sometimes NONE) when you cooked a dish in battle. Thankfully there's this wonderful dish called Miso Stew that made the task much faster - going from around 6.5k eleth to the maximum 9999 eleth in about 4 hours (though the non-stop grinding is boring).

Talk about skill-based trophies, there are a few of those, but none of them are as gruesomely annoying and frustrating than special challenge 17 in Tales of Vesperia (aiming Yeager's heart core). (Probably) the most difficult trophy to get; the "Beat _______ in 60 seconds"; beat the last boss on Chaos mode; beat the secret bosses in Zhonegace/Coliseum etc; are all easily attainable in New Game+ with little to no effort, especially on Easy mode. They are harder to accomplish in your first playthrough, but still attainable through title grinding/eleth gauge preparation/duelizing weapons. 

And then the rest of the trophies, in which largely requires you to unlock about 100 titles for each characters (except Richard). That's it. We really don't have to go through the tedious process of completely do everything like we need to do in Vesperia. No need to fight every single enemies, no need to complete every single Collector's book, no need to watch all skits, no need to get all items etc. I kinda wish there's a trophy for getting every single titles in the game, and THAT's what I call a real difficult trophy to get.

guess what I'm playing right now XD

Overall,  Tales of Grace F was a real enjoyment for me. While the "friendship" theme of the story is a little bit too generic and boring, the characters and good voice acting made up for that. But most importantly the gameplay is one that I really enjoyed the most out of recent Tales series. It's fast-paced, balanced, easy to chain, and nowhere near as broken as Vesperia (blablabla Tidal Wave!). The Grade system in this series also ensure that we can't really "farm" grade for subsequent playthrough (again, blablabla Tidal Wave!). The only other disappointment I had for the series are the forgettable musics, it was definitely one of the least memorable OST in recent Tales's series. 

Okay, time to anticipate the next Tales series to be localised into English, Tales of Xillia!!!! 

Speaking of which, where oh where is Tales of Vesperia PS3 English !!! ＼(゜ロ＼)

 

The Platinum Series [11]: Final Fantasy XIII-2

Right after platinuming Atelier Totori, I went straight into full Final Fantasy XIII-2 mode. Took me awhile, but finally after about 3 weeks, I’ve got what I really wanted: a Platinum trophy for the game XD Following my first impression post a while back, I was actually at the point nearing the end of the game, though in term of trophy completion, it was less than 30% completed. So after finishing the main story (and the not-so-favorable ending), I spent some time working on the rest of the trophies, which 90% of the time involved collecting and completing fragments of time….

Title: Final Fantasy XIII-2
Developer: Square-Enix
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox360
Genre: Japanese role playing game [jrpg]
Release date: Dec 2011 [Japanese], Jan/Feb 2012 [NA/EU]


Platinum difficulty ratings: 3.5/5

I’d say platinuming FFXIII-2 was much, much easier than its predecessor FFXIII, hence the relatively low difficulty ratings (pretty much about the same as Atelier Totori). Why? Because we don’t need to collect all weapons/accessory (or else we’d have to farm some super rare items endlessly, like we had to with the likes of Trapezohedrons in FFXIII), we don’t need to get 5 stars in every single missions/boss fights (though I still get 5 stars in most of the fights on Normal mode anyway). And thank god there’s no trophy needing us to tame every single tameable monster in the game, or else, I’d probably gone crazy.

In FFXIII, the “toughest” trophies to get are probably Adamant Will (beat Long Gui) and Treasure Hunter (collect every single weapons/accessories). But in FFXIII-2, Long Gui (which gave 1 fragment upon defeated) was nowhere as hard as the FFXIII version (Easy mode helps, to say the least), and there’s no such thing as Treasure Hunter trophy. So basically the “hardest” trophy to get is probably, to collect all 160 fragments in the game. Not a hard trophy, it's just…time consuming, considering it constitutes every single damn thing in the game – beat the extra bosses Yomi/Immortal/Long Gui/Ochu; get all paradox endings, answer some stupid trivial FFXIII quizzes…and solve Temporal Rift, which was one of the meanest, annoying and ridiculous obstacle in completing all fragments. The Tile Trials and Crystal Bonds can be a tad bit annoying at times, but the Hands of Time, god knows how mind-boggling this puzzle is that I can’t imagine many people would solve this puzzle manually, without the little “helping” cheat” provided by clockpuzzle.pl. (Obviously I opted to use the shortcut. I’m not gonna waste my time calculating the solution for the puzzle, duh).

Talk about bosses and monsters, who is the strongest monsters/bosses in FFXIII-2, actually? I honestly don’t know myself. Words of people across message boards are divided between Yomi, Caius Paradox and Raspatil as THE strongest bosses in the game. To be honest I personally didn’t find any of them particularly hard. Raspatil’s is just annoying cuz his offense is nowhere strong, and he’ll keep on spawning monsters if we didn’t defeat him quickly (we even got a trophy on beating him on Normal mode). Yomi is basically the reincarnation of Vercingetorix of Mark Mission 64 in FFXIII, and hence poison strategy works best against him. Then there’s Caius Paradox, probably the hardest of the three on Normal, especially if you don’t have a good monster to accompany you (for Serah), and even worse for Noel, since you’ll be fighting him alone. But still, he’s not overly dangerous if your Serah/Noel are fully developed and went for all offensive setup (maximize Mag for Serah - increase ATB charge rate; maximize Str for Noel – lifesteal attack), as well as having a good sentinel/commander to accompany Serah. I guess I was lucky to have a fully optimized Chichu and Goblin Chieftain with Serah by the time I face Caius Paradox.

By the time I completed all my fragments though, I actually still had one more trophy left: Serependitious – amassing 10,000 net coins in Serependity. Be it by chocobo race, or the simplest, luck-driven way, by the slot machine. People said we can just put tape L1 and let the controller do the job for you while you go to sleep, but I thought it's better to at least keep an eye on the monitor while the slot is rolling, so that once we got a Jackpot in Super Victory mode, we can just stop and save, then rinse and repeat from scratch. Playing the slot machine while in Super Victory mode is quite risky as it consume a lot of coins...

Anyway that's it about FFXIII-2's Platinum. Overall my opinion about the game hasn't changed much since my first impression post - I'm enjoying the game more than FFXIII in many ways, and the concept of time travel made the story more interesting for me. The permanent 2-people party in Serah and Noel was nice, added with a third selectable monsters that you can raise to your own desire, to suit the battle's need. Talk about Serah and Noel, I feel that Snow was really a stranger in this game. Where is he at the end of the game? And the ending....well, I shouldn't comment too much about it, but I kinda not liking the idea of another sequel.

Next on Platinum list: probably Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2

The Platinum Series: [10] Atelier Totori

Finally another Platinum to add to my growing list: Atelier Totori - The Adventurer of Arland. Being an ardent fan of the predecessor Atelier Rorona - The Alchemist of Arland, I knew I just had to get Totori, play the game, savour the scenes, and PLATINUM the game. Time for some brief platinum endnotes.

Title: Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of of Arland
Developer: Gust
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3)
Genre: Japanese role playing game [jrpg]
Release date: June 2010 [Japanese], September 2011 [NA/EU]


Overall Platinum difficulty: 3.5/10 (easy)

What, 3.5 difficulty rating only? Compared to Atelier Rorona (which was already easy to Plat), I'd definitely say that Totori was easier to Platinum - IF you know how to handle the events, calendar, dates, scenes, schedule blablabla in the game. Trophies are pretty much similar to how trophies were in Rorona - special events/scenes, max levels, beating monsters, endings, endings and ENDINGS. Some are straightforwards and automatically obtained, like the opening scenes, character introduction scenes (Mel/Sterk/Mio/Rorona etc), while others, you had to work for it a bit. Especially the multiple endings, which made up of probably about half of the total trophies needed for Platinum. One thing for sure, things are less repetitive and tedious in Totori. No more going to the Guild/meeting friends for requests, and the world map is much bigger. Though to get 500,000 cole, you probably had to do some utterly boring task of selling liquids from Spring Water over and over and over again....

Just like Rorona, events that can trigger a certain trophy will appear within a certain time limit, or when certain condition was fulfilled. But while in Rorona you had only 3 months for 3 years interval to do your assignments and complete some character's events/endings requirement, in Totori the time gap is much wider - 6 month interval, with the game spanning over 6 years of timeline, and hence you had a more flexible time to manage your stuff, juggling between traveling/adventuring, synthesizing or focusing on characters's scenes. Though that was kinda balanced by the fact that traveling, battle, collecting items from gather points etc consumed more time than it was in Rorona.

Triggering events for each and every ending trophies (11 in total - Bad, Normal, True, Wealth, Chim, Marc, Mel, Gino, Rorona, Sterk, Mio) were obviously hard without some sort of guidance, and it was definitely impossible to get all ending in a single playthrough without following a walkthrough. Thankfully the same method from Rorona work in order to obtain all endings in one go - by loading save files near the end of the game after fulfilling conditions for each endings, ie 500k money+certain quests for Wealth Ending, Chim's pie for Chim ending, character's friendship and quests for their ending, and ALL possible events for the True Ending. Unfortunately, the True End was kinda disappointing. Predictable and way too short compared to the beautiful reunion we had in Rorona's True Ending. Nevertheless, Sterk's Ending was the best, damn that lucky bastard!!!!

Overall, I really enjoyed Atelier Totori. Most of the fun factor came from watching Totori getting teased by people around her as well as many other funny scenes in the game. At the same time, I also enjoyed the alchemy/synthesis in this game, playing around with traits to make the best possible items, foods, weapons, BOMBS etc. N/A bomb was a real killer, but I wish that Tera Bomb from Rorona made a comeback. The animation when Rorona use that bomb was simply hilarious, and the damage a finely crafted bomb dealt was.....phenomenal. But if I had to pick either Atelier Rorona or Atelier Totori, I would say that I'm enjoying the predecessor more than the sequel. Maybe because I like Rorona Frixel better than Totori Helmold, especially due to the voice of Mai Kadowaki ;p


now GIVE me Atelier Meruru this May!!!


full Atelier Totori review coming...later.

The Platinum Series: [9] Sengoku Basara 3

Following Final Fantasy FFXIII platinum last month, I was left with not so much ps3 games to play – Vanquish, which I doubt I ever platinum (though I recently got back to it), Star Ocean 4 (same case with Vanquish), the unplayable Tales of Vesperia (Jpn), Front Mission Evolve (bored me to death, not going to bother playing), and FIFA11 which I've always played (aside from dota) whenever I was bored. Other games, I’ve already platinumed or lent to friends. So the only game that I could play to spend my every other night time is, Sengoku Basara 3: Samurai Heroes.

When I first bought the game, just like FFXIII, the thought of platinuming the game never really crossed my mind, because the seemingly large amount of work and hours needed. But I still resumed my play anyway because the gameplay was fun. And fast forward after nearly ~180 hours of playing, I finally achieved the long awaited platinum for Sengoku Basara 3. And honestly, I feel Sengoku Basara 3 is worth the odd 200 hours spent, at least if you're fan of Dynasty Warrior/Sengoku Basara-like action game.

Title: Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes (Sengoku Basara 3)
Developers: Capcom
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Wii
Genre: action-adventure hack-and-slash
Release date: July 2010 (JP); October 2010 (ENG)


Platinum Difficulty: 5 – 8 (varied)

For the first time, I couldn't really give a specific rating platinum difficulty rating for this game. On one hand, the game didn’t really require you to be a skilled combo/timing freak (cough*vanquish*cough) to survive even the hardest mode, therefore skill-wise, I’d put it on about 4 or 5. On the other hand, the some of the collection/grinding trophies can be quite time consuming, ie the bulk of the 200 hours of your play will come from trying to get these trophies, so in a sense, it’s a 7 or 8, farming-wise. But if I had to stamp a single rating (to platinum) for this game, I would give it a 6.5. Not really hard, and even the long hours needed to platinum the game doesn’t really feel THAT long. And I’ll explain that later.

Some of the easier trophies require you to simply complete each heroes (16 total) story once. Then, a trophy will also be granted for completing the game on Easy, Normal and Hard mode. Then there’s miscellaneous battle-related trophy which are easy enough to obtain, like finishing the battle on horseback, finishing the battle with a basara attack, performing 500, 2000 and 10,000 combo hits.

guess what theme did I use for my dashboard ;p

Then comes the “harder” trophy in the game (collect all ally; collect all weapons; collect all accessories; all heroes level 100; get 1,000,000 zennys etc) that require you to spend 100+ hours of playing. And it doesn’t really feel that long because of a few things. First, these trophies can be achieved altogether as you played through the game, without the need to focus of aiming for a single trophy. For example, we need to play each hero story at least 4 times to get their personal accessories, and there’s also guides that allowed us to get all allies on a maximum 4 playthrough for each heroes (except Ieyasu), so these two trophies tied neatly altogether. And since we need to play the story mode at least 4 times, we can take one playthrough on hard mode to farm their required 5th tier joke weapon (which is only available on Hard), and along with some fugitive huntings (which grant huge amount of experience), you’re pretty much guaranteed reaching level 100 even before you finished your 4th playthrough (my Mitsunari reach level 100 in 2 playthroughs, though I did play Sekigahara Intrusion on Hard with him twice, going from level 60 to 100).

Second reason that these “collection” trophies didn’t feel that long is because throughout these, you are playing 16 different heroes with unique skillset, across over possibly 30 different stages. None of the 16 heroes in SB3 are identical to each other when it comes to combat ability, and once you played a new hero, you have the chance to experiment and use a totally different skillset and combo than the hero you previously used. Granted, there are some heroes that you might not like for one reason or another (I know many people who hate Tsuruhime and Kanbe Kuroda), but hey, suck it up. I personally do not like using Yoshitsugu and Motochika, but I still managed to finish their story mode at least once on Hard.

The thing I like about the heroes in Sengoku Basara 3 is that almost every single one of them has a shining point that made them “special” or interesting to use. For Tokugawa Ieyasu, it’s his charging fist and super strong Headbutt. For Mitsunari Ishida (one of my favourite), it’s his Flash/teleport skill that made him so fun to use. For Yukimura Sanada, it’s…well, endless, easy chaining combos. For Masamune Date, it’s the Six Claws and dash cancels. For Tsuruhime, it’s the untouchable Rain of Arrow+Nayuta Issen (even Honda and Muneshige can’t come close to you). For Kotaro Fuma (also one of my favourite), it’s disperse, shuriken, counter, counter and counter. For Kanbe Kuroda (at fist I totally hate him, but then I like him), it’s the boss annihilator Criminal Smasher with my favorite 10 German Suplexes. For Motonari Mori it’s the manipulation of Decoy+Archer+Trap that made every boss looked like a fool. For Yoshihiro Shimazu, it’s OHKO Lightning Sword. For Saika Magoichi (my choice if I want to go through hard mode unscathed), hell, everything about her screams broken, imbalanced and overpowered, especially her personal accessories that made her pistol bullet changed into homing missiles (!). For Keiji Maeda, it’s his broken R1 dash attack, cancellable skill and super art that allowed him to recover health easily. For Oichi, it’s her crazy crowd control with Ocean Wisp+Demon Hands-free. For Nobunaga Oda, it’s his shotgun+demon dual mode and the unkillable Scorched Earth. Unfortunately I’m not so much of a fan of Motochika Aniki (his net fishing is only useful for taunting at most), as well as Yoshitsugu Otani (great crowd control but lack 1v1 boss battle capability). As for Tadakatsu Gundam, he absolutely wreak havoc in normal (especially with his L1+Triangle, the first hero I got 99,999 combo hits with), but I find him boring to use on Hard.

And the third reason, which probably isn’t really as important as the first two, is that each heroes has multiple story route, and within the same route, there are multiple branches of stages that you can choose to advance the story. Overall, it’s hard to get bored with the game as you try to platinum it, and even better if you had fun with the gameplay. Unlike, the overused example – Star Ocean 4 where you spend 80-100 odd hours just killing enemies over and over again to get that ridiculous 30,000 kill BT for Edge and Arumat. Now THAT is a boring trophy, despite how enjoyable the gameplay is.

*image source: gamespots

The Platinum series: [8] Final Fantasy XIII

Finally another platinum. When I first bought Final Fantasy XIII (it was the first game I bought for my ps3, along with Star Ocean 4 and Vesperia jpn version), I just planned to play and finish the game without any thought of platinuming it. After I started playing, the platinum thought still had not crossed my mind, and then even after I finished playing the game last year, it still had not. It was mainly because when I read through the trophy list, I thought some of the trophy was quite troublesome and a pain to obtain due to the grinding needed (which at that time looked ridiculous to me). But hey, I’ve platinumed/1000G The Last Remnant and NieR, so who am I to say about “some” grindings?

The festive break finally gave me the chance to return to my ps3, and I simply had to use that opportunity to platinum FFXIII. Last time I left the game, there’s about 6 trophies I had not obtained: 3 Mark 64-related Trophies; beating Long Gui Trophy, 5-starred final boss Trophy; and the “most” tedious one, collecting all weapon and accessories Trophy.

The first problem I had, as I highlighted in my FFXIII post-game entry, was money. So I spent about a day going back all the way to Eden plaza and farm the adamantoise there for Platinum Ingots/money. In the end I still stick with Vanille’s Death method the whole time, because although it is not that efficient compared to manual killing, it allowed me to multitask, I mean I can just mash the death command (after summon/buff/debuff etc) while watching something on my laptop : ) Surprisingly though, the adamantoise there didn’t take long to go down from Vanille’s Death (average 10 mins to down one, which include the time I deeded to regain TP by fighting the nearby soldiers), and even more surprisingly, they dropped Platinum Ingot much more often than I thought. Heck I even got 7 (yes, SEVEN!) super rare Trapezohedron drops on that run. I guess luck was really on my side on that day.

With lots of Platinum Ingots, it became much easier to upgrade weapons and accessories to complete the list for Treasure Hunter trophy. But even then, there was still one material that I lack to complete my inventory list….the Dark Matter. 5 items required this catalyst for upgrade, but Dark Matter cost a whopping 800,000 gil from shops, and alternatively, it was a rare drop from Shaolong Gui…a monster that I’ve never beat before. The first time I face him, my party was annihilated by his Ultima…until I watched the video on youtube on how to beat him. Damn was it easy. Most video showed Shaolong Guis getting taken down within 1-2 minutes, and while I followed almost exactly the same paradigm deck as the video used, I used a “safer” approach in battle, which in the end took me about 2-3 minutes to take one Shaolong Gui down compared to 1+ mins in the video. Not much of a problem, since I only needed a minimum of 5 Dark Matters, and in the end I got about 10 of them, enough even to create create Kaiser Knuckles and Magistral Crests.

The last trophy that I feel I need to put on here is Adamant Will, that is, beating Long Gui. To be honest I really don’t feel like putting my effort on beating this guy, because I think he didn’t deserve the effort (by the time you face him, you’ve pretty much maxed your crystal and most of your inventory). So I used a bit of “cheating” to beat him: - max upgrade all 3 Doctor’s Code and disassembled them to get 3 Elixers (restore all HP/TP). Go fight a Long Gui. Buff etc, summon to disable Long Gui’s leg, switch to Tri-Disaster and pummel away the downed Long Gui until he is staggered. Switch to Devastation (2 Com + 1 Sab), then continue attacking him. When he’s back on his feet, use elixir to restore TP, buff, and summon again. Then rinse and repeat. Long Gui down in 3 summons sequence, job done and the trophy popped up. Then I reload the save before I disassembled the Doctor’s Code : )

Overall how do I rate FFXIII Platinum difficulty compared to others that I’ve platinumed/1000G? I guess I’ll put FFXIII between The Last Remnant (harder than FFXIII) and NieR (easier than FFXIII). In Last Remnant, I still remembered the pain I had to endure to get a proper party and max their skills, then grind the rarest item for 6 hours without getting anything, and much more tedious stuff. FFXIII in my mind didn’t reach to that level for me. NieR could have reach the level of TLR, but as I mentioned, I was pretty lucky with the moonflower and rate item stuff that it felt to me that the game was somewhat easier to platinum than FFXIII. Nevertheless, none of these could reach the level of SO4’s grinding…ever.

Next platinum project (hopefully): Sengoku Basara 3

The Platinum Series: [7] Assassin's Creed II

*edit* 11/4/11, Platinumed : )

After finishing Resonance of Fate and completing most post-game quests for Star Ocean 4 International, I decided to try another game I borrowed from Reppu_Kiri, Assassin's Creed 2. As I mentioned many times before, I'm not really a big fan of western game, but it's not so bad to play this game for a change every once in awhile. The game was relatively short in length, and overall I could say that I'm liking the gameplay, and most of the story but the ending.

Title: Assassin's Creed 2
Developers: Ubisoft
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, Windows
Genre: 3rd person action-adventure
Release date: Nov 2009

Platinum Difficulty: 4/10

It's true that I still had yet to get a Platinum for this game because of one friggin trophy: Sweeper which required me to sweep 5 guards at once using a long range weapon. It's actually not a hard task, but somehow I've always get to sweep 4 guards at most after a lot of tries. I would definitely go back to this trophy once I get back to my PS3 in a few days.

*edit 11/4/11* And as mentioned, I finally got the final trophy yesterday, and hence the Platinum. It was not really that hard to get the Sweeper trophy after all: wear Auditore cap, lure the guards (one with a lance) to confined, narrow space/alley, disarm the guard and find the right timing for the sweep. And I got it in my first try lol.

Anyway, if I had to rank among games I've platinumed so far, I'd put Assassin's Creed 2 marginally below Atelier Rorona (which is also had 4/10 difficulty in my list). This is due to the fact that it's very, very easy to get many of the trophies in the games without much effort. There's only 1 missable trophy in the entire game (Fly Swatter), which shouldn't be a problem if we know the timeframe. Another slightly challenging Trophies involves finding and solving all subject 16's videos, as well as locating all 100 Feathers in the game, but that also was not that difficult with the help of proper guides. And lastly, the combat-related trophies, which can take time to master, but still not overly difficult.

Enjoyable games, with few minor problems

One of the stronger point of the game was the flamboyant and enjoyable gameplay. Being able to climb high place, performing high dive (aka Leap of Faith) in specific place into the bale of hay, and the various tricks and method to attack, ambush and kill: The quick way with dual hidden blade; the slightly slower way with poisonous blade; the "not-so-stealthy" way with hidden gun; or simply head on combat with long/short swords, maces, axes or unarmed. In combat, we could also disarm the opponent's weapon, evade their attacks and retaliate with counter kill. And this was even more enhanced by great graphic used in the game. There are a lot of side-missions available (racing to beat the thief's time; beat-em up to defend a woman's honor, a simple assassination contract etc), but to be honest I only did 1 of each (for the trophies), because completing them grant nothing but small amount of money, which we could obtained much more from our own income from the Villa Auditore chest. The mission of the main story can be repetitive at times (tailing, go to target location and kill etc), but it was compensated by the various method we could use to accomplish the mission. There's a lot more to the gameplay (bribing, blending, notoriety level, stealing, hiring people, puzzles etc) for our gaming experience.

*images credit to gamerspot*

Anyway, you know the 2 things I find annoying in the streets of Assassin's Creed2? The people carrying those boxes and the street musician (or whatever they called). A bothersome that if there's no guards around I'd bumped into them purposely and made their box crash/instrument fall. I mean, how can you easily get your hand slipped from the box just by a slight touch? And it's annoying when the musicians chase after me whenever they see me -__-

I've never played its predecessor so I had no idea what Assassin's Creed 1 like, but I heard that it had a poor ending, and that's exactly the same issue I had with AC2. I thought the Templar vs Assassin feud, which started way back since the era of Altair in AC1 were quite fascinating. Desmond Miles, a test subject 17 went into the Animus 2.0 to relive the memories of an ancestral nobleman Ezio Auditore da Firenze during his days in various place in Italy during the late 15th centuries, learning much about his days as assassin while also adopting Ezio's skills as his own. Throughout the story, we learnt about the conspiracy surrounding the death of Ezio's family, and eventually leads to an even bigger conspiracy, even bigger than the war between the Assassins and Templars. This is the point of the story (from Rome/Vatican onward), which IMO feels a bit awkward to me. Out of a sudden, the element of supernatural takes place, and talk about the creation of the world, the Apples and the Staff...wait what?

Overall Assassin's Creed 2 was quite a refined and enjoyable game to play. Not so short, but not that long either with fun gameplay, and lots of quest available. Some of the puzzles can be quite challenging if you attempt it without guide, and that's a plus. The pace of the story, especially near the end might be a turn off for some, but as a whole, AC2 was still a solid action adventure game worth playing. Oh, and somewhat easy to Platinum too.

p/s: title will be changed once I got the final trophy and Platinum this.

The Platinum Series: [6] Resonance of Fate

For some reason I had a strong urge to replay Resonance of Fate since coming back to M’sia, although I’ve already finished the 360 version (albeit not getting 1000G). Earlier this year I had planned to borrow the PS3 version from Reppu_Kiri (in exchange for me lending him Valkyria Chronicles), but it was not until early this month that we had a chance to meet, which somehow turned into an informal gath for the gforumer peeps at Tenshi no Cafe at e@Curve, Damansara. Some Maid Café, insane food.

Anyway, I finally got to borrow the game, and immediately played it. My aim for this game is simple: getting a Platinum. I’ve played the 360 version and had the rough estimation on the difficulty of getting the Platinum. And after roughly one week (or 90 hours), I finally managed to complete it.

Title: Resonance of Fate
Developers: Tri-Ace
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360
Genre: role-playing
Release date: Jan 28 (JP); March 16 (NA); March 26 (EU) 2010

Platinum Difficulty: 6/10

Back then in the 360 I only failed (or too lazy) to get one trophy: Stardust Hunter which required me to achieve a Star in every single Arena rank, and that totaled to 500 battles which I must gone through. Easy strategy wise, but a very boring and tedious task because we need to repeat each rank 10 times to get a Star (total 50 ranks). Now for the PS3 version, I was determined to endure it, and after spending almost the whole day entirely at Arena, I finally managed to get it…well I guess this is nothing compared to getting 30,000 kills BT for Edge/Arumat in Star Ocean 4, which I would likely never try to attempt.

I like the score/statistic board for thisgame. Recording almost every single detail about the game. Oh, and that chapter stats were for the second playthrough, hence the 90+ hours for all of them.

Aside of Stardust Hunter, the rest of the trophy was relatively easy to do. I mean, it’s easy as long as you’re accustomed to the mechanic/gameplay of Resonance of Fate. Because mastering the gameplay itself is not easy because just like Tri-Ace’s phenomenal series Valkyrie Profile Silmeria, the game employs something entirely different than the usual turn-based or real-time combat that you found in most jrpgs. Mastering the combat mechanic takes time, but once you know how it worked, marching through the game is a breeze. Well, maybe except another Trophy: Kings of Neverland, which require you to clear the ultimate secret dungeon in the game, Neverland. This dungeon was pretty much like Tri-Ace’s Seraphic Gate or Wandering Dungeon, except that it was much more merciless. Even at level 200+ (max level is level 300), there’s no guarantee that you can pass the dungeon without casualties, because the enemies are THAT strong. Good thing the final bosses in Neverland were not that intimidating. It’s kinda funny because in my fight, I focused on R****a first by chaining max charged MG (Machinegun) and a few charged HG (Handgun) continuously, and that leave her completely stunned to her death. The other boss, S******n only employ physical melee attack, which cause 500-1000 damage (out of 13k-15k hp on my party at level 260+) at most thanks to the imbalanced Neversuit and Hi-Polymer Padding.

The definition of overlevelled. Vashyron almost had a leet hp lol

Since I’ve written almost everything on my mind about the game on many of my old posts when I played the 360 version, I guess there’s not much things for me to say about the game anymore. The ps3 version was pretty much the same as the 360 version. If anything, I’d say that the story remained elusive as ever. I still like the way the story was presented, but I certainly hope Tri-Ace could release something that could explain everything about the story (much like how Grimoire Nier book was released to explain much of the game’s backstory).

On a side note, I love Leanne :3

The Resonating Fate (first impression)

The Neverending Fate [Part 1]

The Neverending Fate [Part 2]

[Review] Resonance of Fate

The Platinum Series: [5] Dragon Age Origins

Dragon Age Origin was one of the few games I brought with me since returning from Aussie. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of a western rpg games like this, but nevertheless, I try to enjoy the game as much as possible. And as weeks went by, I find myself finishing 2 full playthrough2 of the game, one as a Mage and another as a Warrior. That surprisingly left me with just 1 Trophy left to Platinum: reaching level 20 as the third class, Rogue.

Title: Dragon Age: Origin
Developers: Bioware
Platform: PlayStation 3 (PS3), Xbox 360, Windows, Mac
Genre: role-playing
Release date: November 2009


Platinum difficulty: 4/10.

Overall, I don't think any of the trophy in Dragon Age Origin was difficult to obtain.The slightly challenging one is probably the "Heavy Hitter" Trophy which require you to deal at least 250 damage with your character (we normally deals ~50-100 damage on regular attack/spells). Fortunately each class had certain skills that made this possible, such as Mana Clash for Mage and Arrow of Slaying for Rogue. Heck, we could even use the tome dupe glitch/exploit to pump our character's stats and easily deal the required damage with a simple normal attack. The Platinum was indeed relatively easy, but it still took quite some time to complete because it can took up to 3 playthrough (each for the 3 classes to reach level 20, which can range from 20-30 hours ), plus the 3 additional mini origin trophies (which took about 2 hours each) to achieve the platinum. Or, if you're simply want to rush, get the Awakening extension pack and easily get the level 20 Trophy in a matter of less than an hour, hence making the full Platinum requirement to just 1 playthrough.

Anyway, it took me two and a half playthrough to platinum this. My first playthrough was a mage, and although I didn't follow any proper walkthrough, I'm surprised that I coincidentally followed the recommended path to recruit the allies: Mage, Redcliff, the Elves and lastly Dwarf. But it was a so screwed up playthrough because I didn't know and missed so many things about the game. Missed Leliana at the Lothering, killed Wyne at the Circle Tower, not knowing that she was recruitable; missed getting Blood Mage specialization in my only chance as a mage, and more importantly, my skills and talents distribution was all over the place. My second playthrough as a warrior was better though, since I properly follow the walkthrough, and thanks to this, I managed a clean sweep at most of the trophies I missed in my first playthrough (including save and reload trick to side with both factions in each recruited allies, as well as the multiple endings). And to be honest, although at this point I only got 1 trophy left to Platinum, somehow I can't bring myself to play another playthrough as a rogue....until like a few weeks ago, when I finally decided to just speedrun the game, my final ever playthrough of Dragon Age Origin. Skip most cutscenes, did the Circle Mage and Redcliffe part. By then I was about level 10, but it was all that needed to reach level 20 on my rogue, thanks to the imbalanced gold glitch, which took me no less than 1 hour to jump from level 10 to 20, the Rogue Level 20 Trophy, as well as the Platinum. Well, at least for the main game, since it didn't count the DLC trophies.

Other thoughts

Throughout the game I played mostly on either Casual or Normal difficulty (don't want to hurt my brain by playing on something like Nightmare). To be honest, there was a huge gap between these 2 difficulty, almost as if the Normal was geared slightly toward Hard mode while the Casual mode was an utter joke where it's almost impossible for you to die. I sure hope Bioware could at least balanced the game a bit.

One more thing, the game is glitchy as &^%@#$. It doesn't happened often, but when it did, it really annoyed me. I remember one very common glitch point that happened to me so many times , and that really pissed me off: the locked hall in Human Noble origin story, after the battle scene. On another note, the game also has a "good" kind of glitch - the gold and item dupe glitch, which allowed you to have infinite gold, and infinite tomes. And yes, I did (ab)use them for the lulz, in my third playthrough.


Final thoughts
My final impression toward the game pretty much remained unchanged since I last made my first impression post: amazing story and great length of choices/options for players to choose, but as a whole, it definitely is not the type of games I'd thoroughly enjoy since my interest lies heavily toward jrpgs. Relatively easy Platinum though.

The Platinum Series: [4] NieR

Since coming back to Malaysia, I haven't enjoyed much games since I only brought back a few titles and pack the rest in my cargo to be shipped home from Australia. And it was not until about 2 weeks ago that the cargo finally arrived at my home, and much to my enlightenment, I decided to continue some games that I've long planned to play, and this include NieR.

Earlier I've posted my initial impression toward the game, which overall didn't receive much praise for me except for the superb music. But despite that, I still decided to finish the game because I'm curious about the story and a few other aspect of the gameplay that I might have not discovered yet during my initial play, as well as, trying to Platinum the game as a whole. In the end, after about a week of playing, I was able to get 100% Trophy completion for NieR, and in the process, learned much about the game, the story, the characters; and overall, improved my view toward the game : ) NieR was the fourth PS3 games I've Platinumed so far, after Last Rebellion, Atelier Rorona, and Trinity Universe.

Title: NieR/NieR Gestalt/Nier Replicant
Platform: PS3, xbox360
Genre: action rpg
Developer/publisher: Cavier/Square Enix

Platinum difficulty: 6/10

The general consensus of ps3trophy board rated the Platinum difficulty at around 4 to 5 rating, and I agree with with them. Most of the Trophies are pretty easy to get - story relared, or xxx boss within yyy minutes, which was a walk in the park once you reach your 2nd playthrough onward. Other Trophies include getting a certain amount of combo hits, beat the game in 15 hours, fishing, killing sheep, ride the boar, and sidequests completion.

Nevertheless, I'd raise the Platinum difficulty to 6 simply because of a single trophy - Forging Master, which require you to upgrade ALL WEAPONS to their maximum level. And trust me when I say that it was a sheer test of patience and endurance, because some of the rarest items are totally a pain in the arse to get. If you've played The Last Remnant or FFXIII and got the Trophy/Achievement related to the rare item farm, then you'll experience pretty much similar thing when you try to get this Trophy. Forlorn Necklace and Subdued Bracelet leads the pack of the most tedious and rarest items to farm, and others like Eagle Eggs, Piercing Metal, Memory Alloy, Broken Earring, Black Pearl and Giant Egg require quite a sum of patience to get too. As for me, I could say that I am relatively a lucky bastard who managed to farm most of the items without grinding much - in fact I even got 2 of my Subdued Bracelets without even trying to farm them. Another seemingly tedious Trophy to get is Legendary Gardener which require you to cultivate a certain rare flower. Some people have been reported unable to get the flower even after 5+ hours of trying, which I find surprising because I managed to get my flower in my first attempt! Maybe the Lady Luck sits beside me while I'm playing this game...

Anyway overall, getting Platinum for NieR is not difficult, but a tedious one because of a single Trophy which require you to farm rare items, which is really, really time consuming. Easily attainable for those willing to do it, I guess.


A Sad and Touching Story...
The story was divided into two parts, the first which ended about halfway through the game and the second part which begin 5 years after the first part ended. Once you've completed the game for the first time, you'll be prompted to save your game, which can then be loaded for New Game+ and you begin the game slightly after the start of the second part of the game. This also unlocks additional story and endings. And this is where, IMHO, the story of NieR shines the most when the character's background was touched, and then we were able to see things from the enemies' point of view. As a whole, it was one of the best story I've enjoyed in recent games, with no fairy-tale endings, added with so many tragic, sad and touching scenes that will stir your emotions. Not to the level of making me want to shed a tear, but was definitely sad enough for me to feel for the characters and enemies.

Emil's turning into skeletal doll, his sacrifice in Ending A, the Facade's Freya death and the Wolf story, the Junk Heap's P-33 tale, the Shadowlord in Ending B, Lost Temple's Hansel & Gretel, Kaine's story...and especially ALL THE SHADES in the game, especially the small one that kept dropping those "old colorbook", "used schoolbook".... you know what that really means. We are basically child murderer! Even some of the sidequests were filled with sadness - the lighthouse's old lady; the kid and shade in the village; and the lover's quest... and if you did the Emil Manor's Shade in the study quest in 2nd playthrough, it was also quite touching considering he didn't fight back at all. Coupled with some of the best background music to make the atmosphere really saddening and emotional. Oh how I love the way they use Dispossession, Yonah and Emil's variant songs to fill the sadness..

Even more depresing is the fact that most of the characters didn't end with a good note. And the ending. There are 4 endings in total, and the last one, Ending D could be said as the most brutal ending in video games, metaphorically speaking since it will end up erasing every single bit of your save files. I could say more, but might end up spoiling unnecessarily. All I could say is that the New Game+ really make the story of the game much more interesting and tragic.

There are a few aspects of the story which remained unexplained and players will wonder upon finishing the game. Much of these however were answered in a well documented Grimoire Nier, a strategy-information-guide book released alongside the game, which unfortunately only available in Japanese. Good thing the community eventually managed to pull much effort in translating the book, which is available online here. And from this I learned much about the background story of Nier and its relation with one of Cavia's game, Drakengard, as well as the connection between Gestalt and Replicant (hence the name of the game). I think it was a nice idea not putting these information in the game, because I consider the game deals more on personal issues - the issue between "final boss" and the main character, and the option to choose between saving one you love or forsake her to be with your daughter/sister; rather than the overall impact on humanity.

"How many rules are there about what to shout before dying in battle?"

Post-game comments: Gameplay
My general impression toward the gameplay of NieR didn't changed much since I last played the game, but I'd say it was slightly better than I expected. The simplicity of the combat mechanics was redeemed by the variety of magic and Word effect that we can use to make the battle enjoyable, and in part 2, we were even able to wield 2-handed swords and spears gives better option on dealing with the increasingly annoying enemies (Shades). With 2-handed weapons, you can pretty much swipes and knock enemies that try to mob you, whilst spears was amazingly awesome against bosses. 90% of people just poke things to death with the Phoenix Spear (and extremely broken weapon in all aspects), and I'm one of them :p

Boss battles in the second half of the game was actually much easier than those in the first part of the game, because we're not bound to certain technique/method to kill the boss, which were often the case in the boss fights in the first part of the game. There are three difficulty of the game: Easy, Normal and Hard; and we are free to change the difficulty midway through the game by exiting to the main menu and change in the option- a good features which I think should be employed in many other games. On a side note, the game also support custom music. You might say why the custom music import when the game's OST was so awesome? Well I agree, but when you reach the point where you want to grind the rare items, you might get crazy from hearing the same music starting over and over again...


Post-game comments: Characters
The average gameplay and graphic of NieR was compensated by it's tragic story, amazing music and interesting characters. NieR has 4 main characters - the hero we name ourselves; the foul-mouthed, skimpy-wear heroine Kaine; the sarcastic flying magic book Grimoire Weiss; and the kind-hearted, unfortunate child Emil. And each of them has unique and interesting personalities. The Hero cared so much about his daughter (little sister if you played the jpn version) Yonah that he'd do anything to save her, stark contrast to his muscled appearance. Kaine, which raise much controvesies over her gender, was extremely foul-mouthed, and seeing her arguing with Weiss over pretty much everything added enjoyable humor to the game, while Emil, being a kind-boy he is, always try to mediate things between the two.

Behind this humor, meanwhile lies the deep, sorrow past engulfing them, especially Kaine whose dark past with the cruel villagers of Aerie raised your pity toward her, while Emil also had his own tragic background relating to his origin. Over the course of the game, you can't help but feel sad for the sacrifice he made, from the day he "changed", to the final scene involving him in the game.


Enjoyment Value: 7/10
My final say on NieR: A great action RPG which didn't get much recognition worldwide. Great story, interesting characters and freaking awesome music, but had relatively average graphic and combat system which might not satisfy some players. Trophy-wise, most are easily obtained, and those with steel endurance could definitely Platinum the game without much trouble.