Despite being an average sized list, Battlefield 3 is also one that packs a solid challenge, and a dedicated time commitment towards the Platinum trophy.
The list is distinctly split into the 3 main areas of the game, including the Single Player campaign, Co-op and Multiplayer game modes, with the challenge adequately stretched across all 3.
In regards to the Single Player campaign, the "Semper Fidelis" trophy, awarded for completing the Campaign story on Hard, requires you to beat the game on it's toughest difficulty, and although it doesn't match up to anything near the Veteran challenge of Call of Duty games, it can be tough in sporadic intervals.
However, unlike in Battlefield : Bad Company 2, where you could use a blatant short-cut to completing the game on Hard, you'll need to play through from start to finish on Hard difficulty in order to unlock the trophy this time round, which instantly makes it more challenging.
Despite this, even with the difficulty spikes accounted for, the campaign is still relatively short, clocking in at around 8 hours to beat all 13 missions throughout. There aren't so many progression based trophies this time round though, and the collectibles are completely absent from the list altogether, but there are an abundance of chapter specific trophies to unlock, and although most of them are easy enough, especially with the luxury of chapter select at your disposal, there are a few that do add a challenging edge to the game;
The "You can be my Wingman anytime" trophy, awarded for completing "Going Hunting" in a perfect run, requires you to beat the mission without a single mistake throughout, and even when following a visual guide, this is still a tricky task to execute correctly, and you'll need at least a handful of tries to perfect the run with quick reactions and spacial awareness of the other fighter jets you need to destroy and avoid. There's also a frustrating 5 minute cutscene you need to comply with at the beginning of the level that cannot be skipped too, which is hard to sit through every single time you restart the mission from scratch.
Futhermore, the "Butterfly" trophy, awarded for taking down the jet in one attempt in "Rock and a Hard Place", despite being very self explanatory, is also far from straight forward. It's widely reported as glitched, and after spending the best part of 6-7 hours alone trying to unlock this trophy using various methods and potential workarounds, I can 100% attest to those claims. I still have no idea what was done differently on the run that it eventually unlocked it, but after executing every potential workaround suggested, it made this trophy difficult for all the wrong reasons.
The worst part about this trophy is the fact that the instance where the jet appears occurs right at the end of the level, which takes about 15-20 minutes to run through, so the constant refusal for the trophy to appear, leading to the long-winded re-runs, just make this trophy a frustrating, and overly lengthy, venture of trial and error.
The Co-op portion of the game offers up more of the same thing, though in a much lesser quantity to the Single Player part of the list.
The "Army of Two" trophy, awarded for completing all co-op missions on hard, requires you to beat all 6 missions on the toughest difficulty again, and although a few might have some tricky situations attached, if you can get a good partner, you should be able to breeze through them with no issues. Co-ordination skills are definitely necessary though, and whilst all 6 missions are doable with a random partner, it will make the experience less tolerable and more challenging, so you should grab a like minded partner at the first available opportunity.
You can easily beat all 6 missions in the co-op story within 3-4 hours, though this will depend heavily on the strength of your partner, but under the assumption you can go through each mission with someone with the same goal as you, 3-4 hours is a reasonable estimate, even on hard difficulty.
Continuing the theme, there are also chapter specific trophies to slog through here too, but the "Bullseye" trophy, awarded for saving the hostages without alerting any enemies in "Drop 'Em like Liquid", is by far the stand out one, and turns out to be one of the harder trophies in the entire list.
The level requires a perfect run of executing a high volume of targets without being spotted or alerting any other enemies in the process, and perfect co-ordination and timing are needed for best results. I'd almost go as far to say that a headset is a necessity, and without an instant form of communication, it makes it extremely difficult to communicate effectively enough to fulfil the requirements of the trophy.
You can't even afford to take your time in most areas, because the squad you need to protect will always be on the move, so you need to adapt to situations quickly and eliminate threats on a regular basis, which just emphasises the importance of instant communication when going for this trophy. You should be prepared to attempt this multiple times, but persistence is key and practice will definitely pay off, you just need to be willing to stick with it.
The Multiplayer portion of the game is where this list throws out the biggest challenge.
The "Colonel" trophy, awarded for achieving Rank 45, is a standard levelling fare, but hitting the rank of Colonel requires 1,875,000 experience points, which is a hell of a slog. It will take anywhere between 50-60 hours, typically, for most people, but actually took me just over 62 hours. The game will throw experience points at you for everything, and it's always important to work towards medals, which, despite often requiring a heavy accumulation of ribbons (usually for every 50 of each one), award a healthy 10,000 experience points per medal, which is always a welcome boost given the fact you'll need to accumulate almost 2 million points in total.
On a good game, you can easily accumulate anywhere between 15-20000 experience points, and with the additonal bonuses and ribbons on top, this can easily exceed 30000, but that would be during a game with maximum tickets, which roughly last around an hour and a half, so you'll definitely be in for the long haul, and this trophy alone ends up equating to around 3/4 of the overall completion time.
The " Decorated" trophy, awarded for receiving one of each ribbon in the game, requires you to unlock all 46 ribbons on at least 1 occasion, and although the vast majority of these ribbons are actually quite straight forward, there are a small handful that are much tougher and will require more than just natural play.
The ribbons in question mostly relate to kills through land and air vehicles, and the best way to unlock them is to just jump into big map games with maximum tickets, in order to give yourself plenty of time to rack up enough kills for each ribbon. Tank kills, transport kills, stationary weapon kills and especially air kills are the stand-out ribbons in the collection, and even though it might take a bit of time and patience, the longest games should give you enough time to work through them and rack up enough kills from each to unlock the ribbon. You'll need extra support for the air kills though, simply for the reason that jets planes and helicopters will practically require a real life piloting license to understand the controls and mechanics properly.
All in all, the challenge in this list is definitely ramped up from the previous title in the series, with an equal measure of challenging trophies and a hefty time consumption on top.
The hardest difficulties in both the Single player and Co-op portions of the game aren't the most difficult you'll come across by any stretch, but they still offer some tough individual trophies catered to specific chapters, and you'll need to plump about 20-25 hours into fully beating both modes.
The Multiplayer is where the game's true difficulty shines through, with a levelling grind totalling upward of 50-60 hours, and collecting every ribbon, not to mention trophies awarded for specific leaderboard finishes which will require you to finish 1st, 2nd and 3rd in the entire lobby. It amounts to a challenging experience, with almost 100 hours needed to grab the Platinum trophy. Solid.
Notable Trophies -
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| Semper Fidelis - Complete the campaign on Hard You can be my wingman anytime - Completed Going Hunting in a perfect run Took down the jet in one attempt in Rock And A Hard Place Army of Two - Completed all co-op missions on Hard Bullseye - Saved the hostages without alerting any enemies in Drop 'em Like Liquid Colenel - Rank 45 achieved! Decorated- Recieved one of each ribbon in the game |
Colonel
Rank 45 achieved!
