The final installation of Assassin's Creed on the Playstation 3 follows a fairly standard tradition, very much in line with the normal expectations of an Assassin's Creed trophy list, and despite being fairly lengthy, contains one of the easiest trophy lists in the series.
Shay Cormac is the main protagonist, with a heavy emphasis on sea-based travelling and combat, and a follow up from the Black Flag installment on the Playstation 4.
The "Templar then; Templar now" trophy, awarded for completing the game, relates to the main story sequence, which is actually much shorter than that of stories in other Assassin's Creed games, with just 6 sequences to get through. There are also 4 sequences relating to the present day, which don't really add much to the game other than walking around an Abstergo facility in first person of an unnamed protagonist, and merely act as fillers between main story sequences.
All of this, including going back for any secondary objectives, (which are paramount to 100% synchronisation), should take no longer than 8 hours. The story offering is very brief, and if you keep an eye on the secondary objectives, you can easily minimise the amount of replay value you'll have to contest with later on.
The bulk of the time spent on this trophy list will be allocated to the vast array of side activities in the game, which has been fleshed out way more than the main story, with a huge amount of collectibles to grab and activities to complete.
Despite some of these being new aspects to the series, they're very repetitive and grindy, and half the struggle will be getting around the amount of times you'll have to repeat these feats. There are 200 Animus Fragments, 24 Templar maps to find, along with 24 dig site locations relating to each map and 150 quest items, amongst other things. These all have their own seperate trophies attached to them aswell, so there are no shortcuts here.
However, you'll only need to complete half of the Naval campaign, and achieve 100% synchronization on just the main story missions (though this is probably mainly down to the fact all of the secondary memories in this game are collectible and activity based, rather than a deliberate plan to make things a bit less labourious for the user).
The gameplay is exactly the same as it always has been, and therefore, contains no real difficulty spikes, but that doesn't mean there aren't at least a few challenges to be had from this list here and there;
The "Master of the North Atlantic" trophy, awarded for completing all legendary battles, requires you to defeat 4 missions containing some of the hardest ships and convoys in the game. There is a big emphasis on sea-based combat in this game, which is probably the biggest change for the series, and these battles will test your skills and ship durability.
Even with a fully upgraded Morrigan vessel, these are still extremely challenging fights, and you'll need to nail down solid tactics and acquire a bit of luck to win each of them. It's probably best to make sure the Morrigan is fully upgraded before tackling any of these in order to avoid frustration, but even then, you could find yourself replaying them a number of times in order to beat each one, and this trophy ends up being the most difficult one in the list.
On the subject of the Morrigan, the "Phantom Queen" trophy, awarded for fully upgrading the Morrigan is one of the more individually grindy trophies. The amount of resources needed to achieve a full upgrade is massive, and this is mostly down to sinking and then looting other ships in the North Atlantic. Alot of them on scarce on the supplies they give out, which is the main reason this takes a while, but it also means you'll most likely have to wait longer to tackle the legendary battles too as you build your armoury and give yourself a fighting chance.
The "Supplier" trophy, awarded for taking over 10 large supply camps while only the VETERANS cheat is active, is also worth a mention. Whilst not difficult within it's actual requirements, all 4 of the trophies relating to cheats require a certain amount of Abstergo challenges to be completed before the cheat is unlocked. In this instance, 65 challenges are required to have been fulfilled before you can begin to work towards this trophy, and given the fact there are only 75 Abstergo challenges to complete, the margin for leeway is quite small.
Most of these challenges are relatively straight forward, but you may have to be forced to tackle a few that could present a few difficulties, and this will add extra mileage onto the completion time of the list. However, as mentioned previously, the actual requirement of the trophy isn't at all difficult, but the preqrequiste has be considered.
Overall, this is business as usual for an Assassin's Creed title. Despite the story mode being short in comparison to previous Assassin's Creed titles, the wealth and depth of secondary content more than makes up for this shortcoming, and you can still expect to plug anywhere between 30-40 hours into the Platinum trophy here, which is a par timescale based on other Assassin Creed games in the series.
The game mechanics are completed unchanged, and as a result, make the game incredibly easy, especially when it comes to combat and free-running, and despite the odd spike in difficulty presented by the legendary battles, and some of the optional objectives in the main story sequence, the only real challenges presented here come from overcoming the repetitiveness and borderline grindy nature of the secondary memories, side activities and collectibles, but if you can get your head around that, you have a fairly routine Platinum trophy waiting at the other end.
Notable Trophies -
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| Templar then; Templar now - Complete the game Achieve full synchronisation -Achieve 100% synchronization in all main missions Phantom Queen - Fully Upgrade the Morrigan Master of the North Atlantic - All legendary battles completed Supplier - Take over 10 large supply camps while only the VETERANS cheat is active |
Master of the North Atlantic
All legendary battles completed.
