DLC #119 - Battlefield 1 - Turning Tides

With what turns out to be the most challenging out of the Battlefield 1 DLC packs, Turning Tides comes with a recurring theme of sea-based combat, adding a series of naval based weapons, gadgets and vehicles, as well as a handful of new water-themed maps which allow for extensive off-land combat.

The package also adds the new Conquest Assault game mode (which is effectively the standard Conquest game with a few tweaks on the methods of victory), and also the new "Gallipoli" Operation, which has 1 of the trophies in this set attached to it, and earned via completion of the operation.

You'll also be required to perform a roadkill with a sea vehicle, which effectively means you'll have to kill a swimming enemy whilst in a boat, and the package also requires you to amass 15 kills with the new L-Class destroyer, a heavy duty warship loaded with health and big enough to make very light work of enemies, meaning 15 kills is a breeze.

The new slew of weapons also comes with the standard assignment based trophy, and the hardest group of weapon challenges in these DLC sets;

Naval Weapons Collection
Perform a kill with all the "Turning Tides" weapon variants

Same rules apply as before. There are 9 new weapons to unlock via a series of assignments, with a total accumulation of 264 kills required in order to trigger this trophy. This is a much smaller  total than the previous DLC packs, but quickly evened out by some frustrating assignment objectives.

Again, there's potentially alot of crossover from some of the objectives within these assignments that may have already been fulfilled within the main game or other DLC packs, and you can attempt the secondary method of scavenging the weapons individually off the battlefield from downed enemies. If you could pick up melee weapons, I would most certainly recommend this for what's to come.

What makes this DLC package the hardest out of all 4 are the requirements to unlock the Naval Cutlass melee weapon. Most of the challenges within the various assignments across all packs were relatively trouble-free right up until this point, with both assignments required to unlock the Naval Cutlass presenting their own challenges.

Part 1 of the assignment requires you to Capture 20 flags whilst in a boat, which might not seem terribly difficult, but alot of the sea vehicles you'll use across the water-based maps leave you horribly exposed to enemies whilst you're capturing control points, particularly to snipers/other land-based infantry (since you're never actually contained inside the boat when you're using it), and air bombers, which make light work of sea-based vehicles in general with their powerful air attacks. This can make capturing flags very challenging, and you'll die often trying to achieve 20 captures. It's always best to park up within the capture zone, and then man a mounted weapon in order to defend yourself and the boat, but this also can present it's own issues with squad members spawning in the drivers seat and potentially maneuvering the boat outside of the capture zone, so there are multiple challenges to contest with here.

Part 2 of this assignment requires you to kill 15 enemies whilst they're swimming, which is the more challenging aspect of this assignment, but only by virtue of the fact you'll need alot of patience in order to accumulate this many kills for the required task. You don't need to be swimming yourself, which limits you to only being able to use a handgun, meaning you can stand over bodies of water on land and wait patiently for enemies to appear, picking them off with longer range weapons, which is definitely the best approach. This can be a very long waiting game at times though, and enemies have a general tendency to use boats to transport themselves across bodies of water, rather than swim, which naturally makes sense. Enemies can also submerge themselves underwater for large periods of time, in order to avoid detection, which makes it even harder to spot out swimming enemies who you may not even realise are there at times. Add in the fact there's also alot of circumstantial luck, and it really slows down progression towards full completion, and combined with Part 1 above, it eclipses any other assignment within these sets of DLC, especially for time and tedium.

Despite having the least amount of required kills than any package before it, it's something that is quickly made up for by the Naval Cutlass assignment, which could arguably add at least 4/5 hours onto the package. It can also be very frustrating having to wait for the map rotation to cycle through into a water-themed map too, which is something else to bear in mind. You can't  make any progress towards unlocking the Naval Cutlass unless you're playing on a water-based map, after all.

Total completion time lies somewhere in the region of 10-15 houts, though this has the scope to be way more open ended thanks to both parts of the Naval Cutlass assignment. Most challenging Battlefield 1 pack thus far.

DLC #118 - Battlefield 1 - They Shall Not Pass

Containing the least amount of trophies out of the 4 Battlefield 1 DLC packs, They Shall Not Pass is also subsequently the easiest of the 4 too.

The package adds the standard for Battlefield add-ons. New maps, weapons, gadgets and vehicles are all accounted for, as well as the new attack vs defence Frontlines game mode, which requires to progressively capture points and advance up a battlefield towards the final portion in sector, with all sectors to be claimed in order to achieve victory.

The 4 additional trophies don't actually shift much focus onto the core aspects added into the game along with this package.

The new St Chamond Heavy Tank gets some love, in which you'll need to accumulate 25 kills with, but the other 2 trophies within the package are awarded for merely spending 30 minutes playing on the side of the French Republic as a Medic and obtaining 4 kills with the Trench Raider Elite Class, which is a special kit pick up randomly located on any of the 5 new maps contained with this package.

However, the constant within the Battlefield 1 packages are the Gold trophies, which focus on the completion of weapon assignments to unlock the weapons contained within the DLC;

Maitre d'Armes - Perform one kill with each of the 5 primary Weapon Assignments weapons

In exactly the same way in which the Apocalypse DLC required kills with each of the new weapon variants bought into the game via the DLC package, this trophy requires exactly the same thing.

There are 8 weapon variants, awarded through the fulfillment of assignments required to unlock them (the reason the trophy lists them as 5, rather than 8, is because 3 of these weapons come with 2 modification variants, making it 5 unique weapons).

Similar to the Apocalypse DLC, you can either unlock the weapon variants by conventional means of completing the specific assignments tied to them, or you can find them on the battlefield acquired from downed enemies. I will maintain throughout the entire assessment of this DLC set that the former is always the favorable option, purely because you cannot specify how long it would take you to find each weapon variant through trial and error.

One thing that's important to note is the fact that, having already completed the Apocalypse DLC, this naturally created a certain degree of crossover where partial amounts of the assignments for this trophy had already been fulfilled. With that said, you'll still need a collective total of 318 kills, which, despite being over 100 kills shorter than the Apocalypse DLC, will still take a degree of time dedication.

Due to the fact the weapons come as part of the package, these were untouched and the accumulation of kills began from zero. The aforementioned crossover comes from other requirements which can be fulfilled from the main game, such as obtaining 75 resupplies and 50 revives. This naturally cuts down the completion time, but with a hefty amount of kills still required, this will take somewhere in the region of 8/10 hours alone.

There aren't really many assignments that are that challenging. They're mostly accumulation activities using a variety of weapons and gadgets, and as mentioned, this makes it the least challenging out of the 4 DLC packs to date. If you've previously dabbled within the Multiplayer portion of the game, you will have made progress towards some of these assignments already, which will of course help, and even though there is a little bit of specific focus on the other trophies within the package, they are also accumulation based and shouldn't take much more longer than everything else.

Platinum #90 - Dishonored

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

In the current easy run of Platinum trophies, Dishonored seems to fit in quite well. Despite having some challenges along the way, (mostly stemming from an incredibly convoluted trophy list), this is a game which can be completed at a pace dictated by the player, though you will have to be prepared to run-through the game at least a few times, possibly even more, in order to achieve the Platinum trophy.

You take control of Corvo, a protectorate for the Empress, who is framed for her murder and abduction of her daughter Emily. Whilst imprisoned and soon to be executed, you're broken out by a group of Loyalists who know you're innocent, and assist you on a mission to find Emily but also to seek revenge against those who framed you in the first instance.

You'll progress through levels, using varying game mechanics in order to complete the objectives within via different methods, which is heavily interwoven into the entire trophy list, and will require you to explore most options if you want to unlock this Platinum trophy.

This list contains everything. Trophies awarded for completing the game under certain conditions, killing assassination targets in specific ways, completing other actions within levels in certain ways, collectibles, missables. Alot is accounted for, and whilst it's true that the story is only about 8-10 hours in length, you'll most definitely have to complete it more than once, and depending how well you track the rest of the list, this could also extend into more than twice.

The "Resolution" trophy, awarded for completing the game, is where you'll start. The list contains a healthy portion of progression-based trophies, and these are awarded at regular intervals during the story, except in the instance where the trophy is awarded for performing a certain action when you reach a specific point in the story. This also technically makes them missable if you choose to take a different approach which goes against the fulfillment requirements of the trophy. For example, there is a trophy for simply assassinating the Lord Regent, Hiriam Burrows, but then also a trophy awarded for neutralising him by broadcasting his crimes instead. Both trophies require you to take different measures in order to advance the story, which cannot be achieved at the same time, and this crops up multiple times within this list. I counted 15 progression-based trophies, with a small collection of these which have to be achieved across multiple runs.

This also extends to the "Dunwall in Chaos" and "Just Dark Enough" trophies, which require you to complete the game in high chaos, and complete the game in low chaos respectively. Nothing of note, other than to evidence the point that you cannot fulfil the requirements of these trophies simultaneously, leading to another run of the game in order to grab the other one you missed first time round.

The "Clean Hands" trophy, awarded for completing the game without killing anyone, adds yet another endgame trophy which has conditional completion requirements attached to it, and whilst you can tandem alot of these trophies into 1 run of the game and unlock them all together at the conclusion of the story, you end up having to constantly assess where you are with this list and what you need to do to achieve what you have left. It's really distracting, and is probably the biggest element of challenge within the entire game. 

Incidentally, I think this is also the hardest trophy in the whole list. You'll have to neutralise every assassination target, which requires more creativity than direct assassination, and you'll also have to move through every level either undetected or exclusively using the chokehold maneuver to neutralise enemies. You can also fail this trophy under very minor technicalities, including accidentally dumping unconscious bodies into water, causing them to drown, or leaving them on the floor to be eaten by a plague of rats. Pay attention to the statistics screen at the end of each level, and you'll see a counter for deaths. If this has a tally, you'll have to restart the mission, and these mysterious deaths occurred for me more than once, which is frustrating. The ability to be able to just restart a mission or reload a save is a good safety net to have for this trophy, but the cautious method is the slowest way to beat this game regardless.

The "Ghost" trophy, awarded for completing all missions after the prologue, without alerting or killing no one but key targets, is also another playthrough to consider. This is effectively the "Clean Hands" trophy, adding the point that you cannot alert any enemies, which means you'll have to be extra cautious when getting through each level. Naturally, you would combine these 2 trophies in one run, but you could very easily complete the game without killing anybody, but alerting an enemy accidently along the way. This would still allow you to achieve the Clean Hands trophy, but would in turn, negate this one. It's just another example that emphasises the explanation as to how things can easily get messy when it comes to picking apart a methodology for how to attack this list in the best way.

In reality, you don't have to beat the game 3/4 times, and a tandem approach is the best way to go about this list, but if you're not prepared with a solid plan of attack, you will be playing through this game a small handful of times. One redeeming feature of this list is that fact that, despite having 4 difficulty settings ranging from casual to hard, you're never required to beat the game on any specific difficulty levels, and when you play this game on casual, it is very easy to bypass large sections of certain missions and complete levels extremely quickly, which is a Godsend given how many times you may have to revisit certain parts of this game.

Finally, the "Art Dealer" trophy, awarded for collecting all the Sokolov Paintings, is a standard, but highly missable, collectible trophy, and is the sole reason why I had to play through this game one final time, taking my total number of playthroughs to 4.

There are only 11 Sokolov paintings, and they're dotted around in certain missions where you simply have to grab them from their designated locations. The complication here comes from the final painting, available in mission 7 of the game. It is directly tied into 2 other trophies on this list, which, just like the High/Low chaos trophies mentioned at the top of the review, are branched into a choice where you can only unlock one or the other depending on which character you side with. These 2 characters are called Granny Rags and Slackjaw, and you have to complete 2 side missions for them prior to mission 7, where you encounter them both in a situation where you have to side with one over the other, which ultimately leads to the death of the character you choose to oppose.

This occurs in a room where the final Sokolov painting is seen, and is only available if you complete the missions for both characters and trigger the final decision. Due to the fact you can you only earn 1 of the 2 available trophies for siding with 1 character, I ended up trying to unlock the Slackjaw trophy on it's own, in the same playthrough as trying to obtain the Sokolov paintings, which meant I ignored the Granny Rags questline, and did not reach the final decision, which in turn, meant I could not obtain the painting in the final room. I had to go back over the game one last time, complete ALL side missions for BOTH characters, and then reach the final room in mission 7 to grab the painting.

Admittedly, this could have been prevented by better planning on my own part, though it is also important to note that I followed a guide which pointed out you didn't need to satisfy the requirements of both characters in order to reach the final Sokolov painting, so I won't take full responsibility here. It does also serve as the cherry on top to evidence a trophy list that pulls the player in every direction, and is ultimately difficult to dissect without resorting to the fact you might as well play the game 3/4 times just to be extra sure you can earn every trophy without having to worry about missing something accidentally.

For certain parts of this list which, on the flipside, are made a bit more user-friendly, you can use chapter select to go back through the game again and obtain trophies which are specific to certain chapters, rather than play through the game again and having to watch out for those specific segments of the story. With everything else out to catch you out, this is a welcome repreive when polishing off the list.

I will maintain the notion that the game itself isn't really that challenging. The absence of difficulty sensitive trophies means you can play through the game at whichever leisurely pace you choose to, and this is definitely something to take advantage of if you start to hit the third or fourth playthrough and just want it to be over quickly like I did. Even in scenarios where you have to be more creative, the game does a lenient job of guiding the player through the game, using a lot of visual clues and a hinting system to make sure you're never really stuck. 

Even when you think you've planned well, there is always something that seems to trip you up, and the need for multiple playthroughs caused me a few issues. You also have to constantly be aware that you don't breach conditions of trophies when trying to complete the game in numerously different ways which could cost you. This isn't a hard game, but the trophy requirements add a new dimension to the whole package, which splits it straight down the middle.

Notable Trophies - 

Resolution - You completed the game
Clean Hands - You completed the game without killing anyone
Ghost - You completed all missions after the prologue, alerting or killing no one but key targets
Art Dealer - You collected all the Sokolov paintings

Hardest Trophy -

Clean Hands
You completed the game without killing anyone