Despite having a practically non-existent learning curve, and the simple nature of the game, it still springs up a relatively solid challenge in it's trophy list, with a handful of trophies that will make you work hard for the Platinum.
The list packs a generous amount of progression based trophies, with the "Moth to a Flame" trophy, awarded for completing all cases on the Arson desk, being the final port of call for finishing the game's story, which includes just over 20 cases across 5 different police desks, and you're probably looking at a good 15-20 hours to beat the main game first time through.
There are also a small selection of trophies awarded for completing certain chapter specific actions, all based around choosing the correct decisions during interrogations or hunting for clues, but most of these are hidden, due to their spoiler-ish nature. You can go back through each case using chapter select at any point, so they're easy to unlock if you miss them at all, and you'll need to replay cases at the end in order to achieve a 5 star valour rating anyway, so missing them first time around is irrelevant.
On the subject of case ratings, they're actually the centre of the toughest trophy in the whole list. The "Shamus to the Stars" trophy, awarded for completing all story cases with a 5 star rating, requires you achieve almost near perfection in each case, by discovering all clues, answering every interrogation question correctly and causing minimal damage to cars and property during the case.
Achieving a 5 star rating without any aid or assistance is a difficult task, not to mention time consuming, since you'll most likely need to replay the majority of cases again. You can use intuition points to find harder to see clues or remove answer options during interrogations, and if you've already beaten the game and you're replaying cases to 5 star them, you'll start with 5 intuition points per case, which is extremely helpful in cases that contain alot of clues and questions to answer. In most cases, it's the interrogation questions that will prevent you from earning a 5 star rating, and the leeway for error is extremely small, with the game allowing you no more than 2 incorrect questions or missed clues for a 5 star rating.
It's also important to drive carefully and minimise damage to your surroundings, especially for cases that contain car chases and shoot-outs, which are fairly frequent. Assuming you're relatively intelligent, and as long as you're careful and use intuition points sensibly, you shouldn't have too many problems, though it's still the hardest trophy in the game by a mile.
The "Auto Fanatic" trophy, awarded for driving every vehicle in the city, requires you to discover all of the game's 95 vehicles scattered around the city, and is an extremely time consuming, and in some respects, frustrating task. The main issue with this trophy is the fact that the majority of the vehicles in the game have no concrete locations, and aside from the obvious (service vehicles being located next to hospitals, police stations, etc.) and "special" vehicles that pop up in garages at marked locations, you'll have to drive around, most of the time aimlessly, in order to find exactly what you need.
It isn't a problem at first, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of needing only a handful of vehicles, then you can literally spend hours searching for them, and the game gives you no assistance at all regarding their whereabouts. Many of the vehicles can look extremely similar too, which throws you off horribly sometimes, and even though the game does record which vehicles you've collected, and the ones you still need, you have to quit your game and go to the car showroom in the man menu in order to view them, and even then all you see is a silhouette of the car that's missing. Not exactly a great help when most of them look similar.
It turns out to be a pretty frustrating trophy, and it adds unnecessary hours onto the Platinum timescale. Of course, it does all depend on how lucky you are with stumbling across the remaining vehicles you need to unlock the trophy, but chances are, you'll be slogging away at this one for a good few hours by the time it boils down to those last few cars you still need for the trophy.
On the collectibles angle, the "Hollywoodland" trophy, awarded for finding and inspecting all gold film reels, requires you to locate all 50 gold reels scattered around the city, and just like the "Auto Fanatic" trophy, it can be just as annoying too. The film reels aren't marked on your map, and there's nothing that will allow you to display them, so you'll have to have a physical guide at the ready, and since the map is incredibly expansive, and the reels are scattered around heavily, you'll be trekking the surroundings for a good few hours if you want to find them all, resulting in a bit of a grind.
The "Public Menace" trophy, awarded for racking up $47,000 dollars of penalties during a single story case, requires you to wreck as many cars as you can before finishing any case. Even though this is simply matter of causing as much destruction possible, the majority of the vehicles in the game aren't worth that much, and if you don't approach the trophy in the correct way, it just turns into another unnecessarily long grind.
The quickest and most effective way to obtain this trophy is to grab one of the special cars, since most of them are worth well over $5,000, which is way more than what most of the cars in the game are worth, wreck it and then wait for it to respawn. It might take a few minutes to reappear, but it's alot faster than any other available method for this trophy.
To top it all off, and something that seems to be typical of Rockstar games, the "City of Angels" trophy, awarded for reaching 100% game completion, requires you to fulfil everything in the entire game, including beating all story cases, collecting all vehicles and gold film reels, completing all street crimes and finding all newspapers and landmarks.
There's alot to get through, but most of the items required to achieve 100% are included with their own trophies within the list, and the game does actually track what you have left to collect on it's own game completion list, so you shouldn't have any difficulties finding out what you still need to fulfil the criteria for the trophy to unlock.
When you account for 15-20 hour story, and then the repetition of cases that need to be 5 starred, it is a pretty time consuming list too. Add on top of that the collectibles and other tasks required for the 100% completion rating, and 40-50 hours is a realistic estimate for most people.
All in all, it's a solid Platinum trophy to achieve. The difficulty of the game itself mostly hinges on being able to obtain a 5 star rating in every single case, which is a tough little venture. However, some frustrating collectible based trophies and a hefty amount of work needed to attain a 100% game completion rating also contribute to the overall rating of the list.
Notable Trophies -
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| Shamus to the Stars - Complete all story cases with a 5 Star rating Auto Fanatic - Drive every vehicle in the city Hollywoodland - Find and inspect all gold film reels The City Of The Angels - Reach 100% Game Complete |
Shamus to the Stars
Complete all story cases with a 5 Star rating
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