Battlefield titles haven't exactly always been the most challenging to beat, but Battlefield 1 lowers the bar to the shortest standard yet, with the easiest Platinum trophy of the Battlefield series to date.
This list, coming in relatively small at just 32 trophies, is split between both Single Player and Multiplayer, combining to make what is one of the easiest Platinum trophies to ever make it into my collection.
The Single Player portion of this list focuses on the Campaign mode, which is a fairly original concept called "War Stories". Rather than include a normal story, with a defined beginning, middle and end, like pretty much every war game in existence does, the Battlefield 1 Campaign is broken down into 5 individual short stories, told from the perspective of 5 different characters.
Each of these stories focuses on specific aspects of the game, from "Through Mud and Blood", which focuses on Daniel Edwards, a Mark V Landship crew member, whose missions will demonstrate tank warfare, and "Friends in High Places", which focuses on Clyde Blackburn, an American pilot, whose mission will showcase air-based combat.
There are other gameplay mechanics demonstrated elsewhere, but the War Stories are an interesting and original approach for the Single Player aspect of a genre that doesn't tend to stray too far from a more standardised blueprint for Campaign offerings.
Around two third's of this whole list is dedicated towards the War Stories.
The "War to End All Wars" trophy, awarded for Completing the campaign on Hard difficulty, will require you to complete all 5 War Stories on the toughest challenge possible. Each War Story contains anywhere between 2-4 missions within, and they all individually vary on length, combining to around 6-8 hours for full completion.
You'll also be awarded an individual trophy upon completing each of the 5 War Stories, which adds a nice flow along the way. However, Hard difficulty really isn't that hard at all, and it's a very casual experience which makes this Platinum very accessible, and one of the reasons why it's such a low scorer.
The "Master of adaptation" trophy, awarded for Completing all challenges in the campaign, is where this list starts to earn some difficulty points, albeit to a somewhat lesser extent.
Throughout the War Stories, each individual mission will contain a series of different challenges contained within, indicated via a blank codex entry on the pause menu from within the mission. They are effectively assignments which have been a staple part of Battlefield games for a long time, and often form the basis for trophies within both core game and DLC lists. There are a total of 53 codex entries to unlock, which equates to 53 challenges, which, upon full completion will award the above trophy.
It is important to note, out of these 53 challenges, there are 5 codex entries awarded for completing the final mission within any given War Story, making these automatic, and a further 13 codex entries awarded for collecting all of the field manuals in specifically chosen missions. The field manuals are just a standard collectible activity, and there are usually, but not in every instance, 5 to collect per mission, and you can take the exact approach I did and just bypass combat to the location of the field manuals and pick them up in one fell swoop, which makes them nothing more than a slight sidetrack activity. You are also awarded a trophy for both collecting all fields manuals for any of the 5 given War Stories, and for a full collection.
They vary drastically in difficulty. Some are so easy to the point where you could unlock them naturally, but there are a small handful that can be trickier, and will certainly require multiple attempts to unlock. These are usually the codex entries unlocked by completing certain sections of missions without being detected by enemies (of which there are about 3/4), and therefore focus on the stealth elements of the game, which can be naturally lengthy anyway because you need to be extra cautious, and when you're detected, you'll have to reset and go back to the start, which can be frustrating. These difficulties do also extend into other challenges, such as those that involve air-based combat and some of the tank-based missions too. The "Total War" and "Forte Et Fidele" missions from within the "Friends in High Places" story, as well as "Over the Top" from within "Through Mud and Blood" are the standout missions which contain some of the more challenging codex entry challenges.
They're not make or break by any means of the imagination, but they will stretch the overall completion time of the list, and you'll need a bit of practice to get by and unlock some of these codex entries, so it isn't always completely plain sailing.
This is pretty much where the list peaks, even before we even get onto the Multiplayer portion of the game, which contains 10 trophies, and makes up the final third of this entire list. None of these trophies will encourage you to explore anything other than the surface of the whole Multiplayer experience, despite 4 of these 10 trophies attributed to this area of the game being Gold trophies.
This may initially lead you to believe you're in for a tough journey, but they're all complete throwaways, and not just the 4 Gold trophies. Every single trophy within the Multiplayer part of this list is a giveaway. If you're the sort of player who's purely into grabbing those high value trophies, for lowest amount of effort possible, then this one's for you. The 4 Gold trophies require you to simply level up each of the 4 different solider classes (Medic, Scout, Assault, Support) once. Just once. This will take a few hours maximum per class, so combined, it's still an additional 6-8 hours on top, but in comparison to other games that may feature trophies for Multiplayer leveling ventures, it's a little bit too easy, and proves to be a bit devoid of ideas.
In previous Battlefield titles, the Multiplayer portion of the list has usually been where the games difficulty tends to shine through. That was certainly the case in Battlefield : Bad Company 2 and Battlefield 3 at least, but here, with every online trophy accounted for collectively, you'll barely hit 10 hours to earn all of them, which also emphasises the ease of the rest of the list outside the 6-8 hours you'll need to dedicate to reaching level 2 with each of the Multiplayer classes. There's no point going into any detail for the rest individually, because there honestly isn't anything else to say. If you focus on reaching rank 2 for each class, the rest will follow along the way.
The whole list is a bit of a damp squib, to be perfectly honest. It'll suit some people but I personally feel the bigger titles should always carry a greater challenge with them when it comes to trophies, but it isn't always to be.
The Single Player portion does at least slightly elevate this challenge, which is just as well, because without the in-level challenges, we'd be looking at something lower than a 3/10, which would be a first for the collection. You'll need to beat each of the 5 War Stories on Hard difficulty, and this is unlocked from the outset, so there isn't a prerequisite to beat them once on a lower difficulty beforehand, so you're free to tackle these on Hard from the get go, which I would encourage. There is a decent amount of replay value, as you'll have to trawl back through individual missions gathering any missed collectibles and also tick off the vast amount of challenges, so I would recommend any strategy that minimises repetition, and Hard difficulty won't give even the most casual player many problems.
With around 6-8 hours to beat the War Stories once over, I would allow for around double this amount of time to go back over everything else which you may have missed. This will include collectibles and challenges, but a time that will also vary depending on the extent of tidy up required. It just happened to be around a 15 hour experience for me when it was all wrapped up.
The Multiplayer portion is somewhere in the region of an additional 10 hours for everything attached to this mode, which makes the collective package a 25-30 hour experience, which sounds about right to me. It's a shame the Multiplayer trophies didn't have more conviction put into them, as I personally believe Battlefield is still one of the best Multiplayer games on the market, though there has been a slew of DLC which has generously plied the game with some trophies, so the poor showing in the main list has been somewhat offset.
There's no doubt that this is the easiest Battlefield title to date, with a Single Player component that seldom offers a genuine challenge, and a Multiplayer portion that does even less than that, literally giving away trophies for minimal effort. Combined, it fully justifies the low score, and makes Battlefield 1 just the 7th title to receive a 3/10 in my collection.
Notable Trophies -
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| The War to End All Wars - Complete the campaign on Hard difficulty Master of adaptation - Complete all challenges in the campaign |
Master of adaptation
Complete all challenges in the campaign
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