When Battlefield 3 came out, the bar was set higher than ever before, when we got our first real challenging list from a Battlefield game.
Battlefield 4 moves in completely the opposite direction, with a trophy list much more relaxed to it's predecessor.
The list is split by both the Single Player and Multiplayer components, though the large majroity of this list is catered towards the Single Player portion of the game, with the co-operative campaign from Battlefield 3 being completely absent on this occassion.
The "Tombstone" trophy, awarded for Completing the Campaign on Hard, can be challenging in some areas, with some unforgivingly accurate enemies and quick deaths equally contributing towards a steady challenge, but even with this, the campaign is incredibly short, with just 7 missions to complete, and will take you around 6-8 hours to fully finish. It doesn't measure up anywhere near Veteran difficulty on certain Call of Duty titles.
The rest of the Single Player trophies relate to a variety of other things. There are a standard selection of progression based trophies awarded for completing each level for the first time, including trophies awarded for seeing the 3 different endings of the game based on sacrifical choices made by the player. There are also trophies awarded at incremental stages for obtaining all 28 collectibles across every level, as well as a handful of tasks to be completed during certain missions. All of these trophies are made even easier to obtain by the use of chapter select to drop into each level once you've completed the game.
The "Full Arsenal" trophy, awarded for Unlocking all assignments and collectibles in the Campaign, covers off most of the aforementioned activites relating to other trophies within the list. There are a handful of assignments that require you to achieve a certain score within missions, which is driven by your performance within a level, and each level has a bronze, silver and gold threshold score to achieve. Performance is scored on kills and accuracy (headshots, multi-kills etc.), and achieving a gold score will unlock the assignment for that particular level, so you'll need a tactical approach, rather than a run and gun approach, which won't net you enough points to reach the gold threshold, which is certainly worth noting.
Even with any clean up required, the Single Player part of the list is still only around 10-15 hours in length, and apart from a few trickier segments of the campaign, is mostly just a progressional experience. The chapter select feature can be used to complete pretty much every outstanding task you may have, including the trophies awarded for seeing each of games 3 alternative endings, which cuts a potentially large amount of time off, as it negates the requirement for the player to have to replay the campaign in it's entirety multiple times. In this regard, the game does everything to cater it's experience with the average trophy hunter in mind.
It is also worth mentioning that there is a critical bug (which was never fixed) whereby your saved data could corrupt and disappear without explanation, causing you to have to restart the entire campaign. This is obviously frustrating, and did happen to myself when I came back to finish off the list, but given how quickly you can complete the game and clean up everything else, it isn't exactly a dealbreaker, albeit important to note regardless.
The Multiplayer portion of the game is also nowhere near as demanding as what it was in Battlefield 3, but across the 5 trophies distributed amongst the competitive online mode, this is where most of this list's challenge truly lies.
The "Call me "Sir"" trophy, awarded for Reaching rank 25, is a standard levelling venture, and despite not requiring anywhere near the same amount of time as what was required in the previous title, there's still a solid commitment necessary in order to achieve this trophy.
Working towards stars for weapons, ribbons and assignments is the best way to make progress, netting 10,000 experience points per star. However, you'll need exactly 796,000 experience points to hit rank 25, which will take the average player anywhere between 25-30 hours. It's recommended to play conquest, which awards alot of experience for capturing and defending flags, and if you're playing in large scale games, there will naturally be more opportunities to kill people and net additional experience.
There is also a slew of DLC available (with additional trophies attached) which can be used to assist in the progression of levelling, as they give the player access to new ribbons and weapons/equipment which will also unlock the ability to earn more service stars and additional experience outlets.
Either way, this is a long slog, and actually requires a suprisingly steep climb in experience in correlation to the level you have to reach, so on face value, it doesn't seem like it would be as demanding as it actually turns out to be.
The ".45 old school" trophy, awarded for Performing 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer, doesn't actually seem too difficult on face value, but actually requires alot of additional background work in order to achieve.
The M1911 Handgun isn't a readily available weapon, and much like alot of the weapons and equipment in Battlefield 4, requires you to unlock it by progressing the Handgun experience bar. The M1911 is one of the final handguns along this list, and you'll need 34,000 experience points with Handguns before you unlock it for use, which is alot for a weapon that is only really effective in close quarters combat.
Given the fact the only way you can obtain weapon-based experience is through kills, which usually only award you between 100-150 points per kill, it will take you roughly 300-350 kills with Handguns to reach the necessary amount of experience points you need to unlock the M1911 Handgun, and even then, you'll need a further 45 kills with it in order to fulfil the actual requirements of the trophy, which collectively, will take you a reasonable amount of hours and patience to achieve. It's better to play on small maps where you're likely to get more kills and also have a better chance of obtaining these kills due to the close combat nature of smaller maps, where handguns generally fare better than when used on larger scale maps.
All in all, most of the challenge from this list comes from the amount of time and effort you have to put into the Multiplayer portion of the game. A couple of long-haul trophies is just enough to keep you on your toes, but is also where pretty much the bulk of this rating comes from.
The Single Player experience is mostly a checklist exercise, with a short campaign mode, sprinkled with a touch of replay value for anything you may have missed along the way, whether that be collectibles or a points threshold for a score related trophy. Even if you encounter the mysterious save data wiping bug, the campaign is so short, it doesn't even make it that much of an inconvience if you have to start over. Easy, in comparison to Battlefield 3.
Notable Trophies -
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| Tombstone - Complete the Campaign on HardFull arsenal - Unlock all assignments and collectibles in the Campaign Call me "Sir" - Reach rank 25 .45 old school - Perform 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer |
.45 old school
Perform 45 kills with the M1911 Handgun in Multiplayer
