An unusually laid back FIFA Platinum, which definitely bucks the trend of the previous titles in the series, with what is without question the easiest list to date, though still not without a few difficulties.
The "In Form!" trophy, awarded for finding a Team of the Week player in a pack in Ultimate Team, returns to the list for the second consecutive year, and is still 100% purely luck based.
It took me much longer to find an In Form player this year in comparison to last time out, which made the journey slightly harder, given the fact it required me to accumulate more coins to afford the amount of packs necessary to unlock the trophy, but as with all luck based trophies, there's no guarantee you'll be able to achieve this Platinum, which is a difficult concept to accept.
As far as luck based trophies go, this is definitely the most difficult I know of. The probabilities of getting an In Form player are seriously low, and with absolutely no direct influence over the chances of obtaining an In Form card, your completion of this list is at the mercy of the game, regardless of how easy the general difficulty rating of the list as a whole might be. As before, this trophy will make or break your chances of achieving this Platinum.
Sticking with Ultimate Team, the "I Love this Club" trophy, awarded for achieving a club value of £85,000,000, also makes a return, and is just as time consuming as the previous iteration of this trophy.
Club value is developed by amassing players, and depending on the grade of player you collect the most of (Bronze, Silver, Gold), it can take anywhere between 800-1000 players to reach £85,000,000, and in terms of in-game currency, you can expect to be saving up at least 200,000 coins for packs and players in order to get you to within the required total of players necessary for the trophy, so it's by no means a small target that will come round quickly.
Pulling good players that sell for big money will make this trophy easier, since you can gather coins quicker by selling them off for big profits, as can buying packs with real money, since you can then convert the packs into more coins without the extra expenditure of buying the pack with coins in the first place. However, without such short-cuts, you can expect to plug a fair amount of time into the Ultimate Team game mode in order to achieve this trophy.
Away from Ultimate Team, and the only other trophy of any note that presents any sort of challenge in this game, is one of the Gold trophies in the list. The "Skill Legend" trophy, awarded for becoming Legendary in one of the skill challenges, requires you to reach the final stage of any of the games 8 skill games, and although the Bronze, Silver and Gold stages of each challenge are easy enough, the final task, which is also the one that unlocks the trophy, is seriously difficult in comparison.
This is mainly down to the fact the final challenge turns off all in-game assistance, and forces the player to complete the challenge using purely manual controls. After trying practically all 8 disciplines, I eventually settled on crossing, and even then, it took hours of practise in order to perfect the skill and beat the challenge, which was thoroughly rewarding after the amount of time and effort plugged into a single trophy.
The "Filling Cabinets" trophy, awarded for winning a Cup in seasons, is also a tricky trophy, and requires you to win 4 straight online matches in a 16 team round robin tournament format, which is always tough given the competitive nature of Multiplayer FIFA and there are also a small selection of trickier circumstantial trophies, including scoring a goal with a diving header, clearing the ball off the line and preventing a goal and scoring a free kick after running over the ball.
The "Getting Real" trophy, awarded for playing 25 EAS FC Matchday games, is just simply a matter of playing kick off games against the computer until you hit 25 completed matches. However, it's important to note because the trophy is glitched and could unlock later than anticipated, and given the fact there's no statistic around how many games you have completed, it just turns into a bit of hit and miss speculation until it unlocks.
As always, there are a selection of trophies dedicated to the game's Career mode, but for the first time, these are incredibly simple to achieve, and should take no longer than a full season to grab all of them. As always though, you can simulate through the calendar and still unlock the trophies at any point, for those who don't want to plug hours into the Career mode, but it's definitely important to note that not every trophy can be unlocked through simming out the season.
The "Impressive" trophy, awarded for achieving one of your season objectives as a player at any point in your career does actually require you to hit your season objective, which can't be achieved through the simulation of games. You don't have to wait until the end of the season for the player development report, since the trophy will unlock the moment you hit your target, but it is the first time you will actually have to delve into the Career mode without the benefit of being able to simulate through the season.
There's not much doubt that this is the easiest FIFA Platinum to date. There are a host of trophies that you will just stumble across playing the game naturally, and there's little on offer that will make you seriously go out of your way to unlock.
However, despite the general ease of the list, the "In Form" trophy will be a serious deal-breaker for alot of people, and could actually prevent you from earning the Platinum, which is a strange circumstance given how easy the rest of the list really is.
The time estimation will vary anywhere from 50 hours to never, and if you are one of the lucky ones who achieves the "In Form" trophy, then the rest of the list really shouldn't be a problem. Without taking any of the short-cuts listed above, including simulating matches in Career mode and purchasing Ultimate Team packs with real money, then you can definitely expect at least 100 hours out of this list.
In terms of true difficulty, it's only really the trophies related to the Skill games and Online seasons that provide a genuine challenge of gaming skill, but you can't emphasise the significance of the "In Form" trophy enough when considering overall difficulty, which brings the rating of the list up significantly.
Along with the naturally time consuming nature of any FIFA game, it's still a list to be wary of, despite the difficulty being the lowest of any FIFA game to date.
Notable Trophies -
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| In Form! - Find a Team of the Week player in a pack I Love This Club - Achieve a club value of 85,000,000 Skill Legend - Become Legendary on one of the Skill Challenges |
In Form!
Find a Team of the Week player in a pack
