Resident Evil 6 draws alot of parallels from Uncharted 3 (the most recent Platinum in my collection prior to this one).
Just like Uncharted 3, it is purely a Single Player Platinum, with the dedication towards its Multiplayer component spread across a variety of DLC packs, all of which are much more challenging than anything in the main list, and all of which were completed before tackling the main trophy list properly.
The main list itself is 51 trophies strong, and follows a very similar blueprint to that of Resident Evil 5 (which was my 6th ever Platinum trophy 8 years ago).
The most notable thing about this list is the amount of progression based trophies on offer here, for completing each chapter contained within the main story campaign. Along with 4 difficulty based trophies, the combined total of all progression based trophies in this list is 25, which makes up exactly half of the entire list, if you discount the Platinum trophy itself. This was exactly how Resident Evil 5 was structured, with trophies awarded for completion of each chapter along with beating the game on varying difficulty levels.
The campaign is structured slightly differently this time round though. Where Resident Evil 5 purely followed Chris Redfield through the entire game, Resident Evil 6 contains 4 sub-stories, focusing on 4 different main characters (each of which also has a sidekick you can play through with too, which lends itself well to the co-op element of the game). These are all interwoven to piece together the larger story, and there is alot of clever link up as you progress through each characters campaign, though this can lead to some repetition in terms of the environments you'll work your way through, and some of the enemies you'll face. The game generally does well to keep things fresh enough, especially given how lengthy the story is compared to alot of Single Player adventures in this era of gaming.
This culminates into the "Leave It to the Pro" trophy, awarded for Completing the entire game on Professional, and with each sub-story being split into 5 chapters, a trophy is awarded upon completion of each of the games 20 chapters. The other 4 trophies will be automatically unlocked whilst playing through the game on Professional mode, which stack upon completion, and are awarded for Amateur, Normal, Veteran and Professional levels. (The 25th trophy is awarded for completing the prelude to the entire game).
This game is not hard and whilst you don't need to go as far as the "No Hope" difficulty level in order to fulfil the requirements of this trophy list, it's hard to see how that would suddenly be such a big step from up from Professional bearing in mind "No Hope" is directly subsequent to Professional difficulty. Some boss fights can be problematic, and if you're at the peril of computer AI controlling your sidekick, you will be at a numerical disadvantage, but there isn't anything this game throws at you that can't be handled on your own. The one notable sticking point was the end boss within Chris and Piers campaign, which was not only tough to beat, but also took ages to actually figure out what you needed to do to do beat it. The rest was relatively plain sailing.
However, what this list lacks in difficulty, it does make up for in length, with 20 chapters that take anywhere between 1 to 2 and a half hours each to finish. The game will track the total amount of time it takes for you to complete each chapter too, so you can get an exact total right down to the minute in terms of precision. My completion time came in at a total of 27 hours and 14 minutes, going through the game just once on Professional difficulty, which is a very generous run-time by the standard of Single Player games these days. The only slight disclaimer to add is that I played almost 2 full sub-stories before leaving the game behind, and opted to restart from scratch when I returned to the game, which I suppose would technically add to the completion time, but for the sake of recognising that this was completely an optional choice, I won't consider it for my overall rating, or whilst determining overall timescales for full completion.
The longevity of this list extends beyond the campaign mode, with a couple of other trophies worth mentioning;
The "Mad Skillz" trophy, awarded for Maxing out all the skills that allow you to level up, applies some focus to the games character development system, and will require some degree of post-game grind in order to unlock.
There are a host of skills which can be leveled up in order to improve your character, and these are upgraded via skill points, which are acquired as item drops from enemies or found in boxes/treasure chests throughout the game. You will require 954,000 skill points spread across the 12 skills to which this trophy applies to in order to eventually unlock this trophy.
This amount of skill points cannot be achieved in one full playthrough of the game, and the extent to which you'll need to grind this out will be dependent on how many skill points you manage to acquire, and what you spend these on. The latter point is very poignant because the skill tree contains alot of skills that you do not need to purchase for this trophy, so unless you're actually wanting to buy them, you're only wasting points in pursuit of this goal, increasing the amount of time you'll need to dedicate to the post-game grind.
I finished this game still requiring around 450,000 skill points, which should add the context into how big the required total of almost 1,000,000 actually is. There is a popular skill point farming method which requires you to use chapter select to playthrough a segment of the game which will award around 20,000 skill points for around 10-15 minutes worth of work, which isn't too bad, but when you equate that to what was required for me, this still works out to around an additional 6-7 hours of grinding.
On the subject of grinding, the "Heirlooms" trophy, awarded for Collecting all the serpent emblems, fulfills the collectible aspect of this list (which every game seems to have these days), and requires you to destroy every emblem across the entire game.
In fairness, this isn't one of the most arduous or tasking collectible trophies you'll ever have to go through, and it is recommended to try and grab these as you go through the game, rather than have to come back and grab them via chapter select instead. Some of them are very well hidden, and chances are you'll need a guide to obtain at least a strong handful of them, but locating them as you go will minimise the amount of post-game rework you'll need to do.
There are 20 to find throughout each characters campaign, so this leads to a grand total of 80 to collect in order to trigger the trophy. One huge gameplay mechanic that works in the favour of the player is the fact you select checkpoints within each chapter via the chapter select option, and once you collect an emblem, you can exit the game immediately without losing your progress, which potentially cuts hours off this trophy. It means you don't have to play through chapters in their entirety, and it also minimises the amount of backtracking you need to do due to the ability to be very specific when pinpointing the starting area of a chapter.
It will still require some solid re-work though, if you choose to not grab them all in 1 fell swoop as you complete the game, and I still needed 32 emblems by the time I was ready to go after the rest of this list, which took me longer than grinding out the skill points I needed for the "Mad Skillz" trophy.
The rest of the list will come naturally as you go through the game. There's a sizable portion of accumulation trophies, and the rest may require you to go outside your normal remits of gameplay in order to achieve, but with a list that is literally half full of progression-based trophies, there naturally isn't much left to point out, and the list overall is definitely more about time required than it is about difficulty.
With a 30 hour campaign, which is strong as far as story-driven games go, along with some additional grinding which, although subject to individual circumstances, will add some reasonable amount of extra length on top, this is a list which requires a solid time commitment, and probably sits somewhere within the 40-50 hour timeframe. The actual challenge is minimal, and it's even easier when played in Co-op mode with a friend, meaning it sits practically near the middle of the rating scale.
Notable Trophies -
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| Leave It to the Pro - Complete the entire game on Professional. Mad Skillz - Max out all the skills that allow you to level up. Heirlooms - Collect all the serpent emblems. |
Mad Skills
Max out all the sklls that allow you to level up
