There's no doubt that Rockstar are masters at what they do. Excellence is their thing, but they'll always seem to make you work for their Platinum trophies, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is no exception to the rule.
Set as a prequel to Red Dead Redemption, you take control of Arthur Morgan, a member of Dutch Van Der Linde's posse of outlaws intent on making money through whichever way possible, usually criminally, in a bid to escape the cowboy lifestyle once and for all.
Things begin to quickly spiral out of control, and the gang ends up constantly on the run from various groups intent on hunting them down, and this leads you through a thrilling tale of classic outlaw action.
Be prepared for twists, altercation around every corner, money heists and betrayal. The cast of characters are excellent, full of variety with loads of interesting personality dynamics at play, including Arthur, who is a great protagonist. Gameplay is snappy, with guns feeling punchy and authentic, with revolvers, carbines, knives and dynamite to provide huge variance in combat.
The open world is stunning, full of different environments from rocky, snow-topped mountains, to sun-basked desert, to gloomy swamps, all bustling with a huge variety of wildlife. Dynamic weather effects and people cut from different societal backgrounds also add to the exceptional attention to detail of this vast open world. It exceeds the original in every way possible.
It's easily one of my favourite games of all time. I loved the original, and I believe this one is better, somehow managing to trump it's predecessor in every way, which had already set a high bar. Story, better. Open world, better. Characters, better. Everything is just better, even if the trophy list did make me somewhat fall out of love with it a little bit towards the end of the journey.
On this note, the game has 52 trophies in total, including the Platinum, and there is a reasonable amount of crossover within the trophy list, when compared to Red Dead Redemption.
In some areas, it follows the classic trophy template for a Rockstar game. Beat the story? Check. Obtain 100% completion? Check. Online grind? Check. It is still creative enough to keep it at least feeling fresh in that charming Rockstar way, but the core foundations are still largely at play here, with a number of familiar Rockstar-esque requirements that will ensure you're plugging hours upon hours into this trophy list.
The list is split between the Single Player and Multiplayer game modes, and we'll begin with the Single Player side of it.
Firstly, the story itself spans across 6 main chapters, and 2 additional epilogue chapters, totalling 109 missions across the game. It is a thorough story and will take a decent amount of time to beat. It's hard to say how long exactly. The combined elements of there being no in-game stats menu that tracks your game time and the constant dipping in and out of side activities makes it hard to tell how long each individual component of this game takes.
There are progression-based trophies awarded as you make it past each chapter within the story, including the "Endless Summer" gold trophy, awarded for Completing the Epilogue and reaching the conclusion. However, due to the fact this is a requirement towards the 100% completion checklist for the game, it's not really considered to be notable, though there is another task within this trophy list which is much more relevant to the story.
Firstly though, the "Best in the West" trophy, awarded for Attaining 100% completion, is classic Rockstar. Aside completing all 109 story missions, you'll also need to indulge in a host of other additional activities to reach 100% completion. Some of those are very small and not worth mentioning, but others certainly stand out. These include completing all 90 in-game challenges - A series of 10 challenges spread across 9 different disciplines, such as gambling, hunting and exploration, as well as finding a bunch of different types of collectibles and strangers to fulfil side quests for.
This will consume alot of your time, and it's mad to think you'll have still barely scratched the surface by this point. I found it made most sense to work on 100% completion straight away following on from beating the story, as you'll probably find that you can simultaneously work on some elements of the 100% checklist whilst progressing through, leaving the remainder for clean-up afterwards.
None of the individual requirements of the checklist itself are particularly challenging. The game doesn't come with set difficulty levels and only some of the higher tier challenges can be a bit of a nuisance, but most of the checklist is merely just that and hugely based on volume alone.
Sticking with the main story, the "Gold Rush" trophy, awarded for Earning 70 Gold Medals in Story missions, requires you to beat all objectives within 70 of the 109 main story missions available. When I said there was another task more relevant to the story, this is exactly what I meant.
This trophy also made an appearance within the Grand Theft Auto 5 trophy list, and it's back in Red Dead Redemption 2. I didn't put any focus into the Gold Medals when I played through the story for the first time, and when I reviewed this properly, I had only obtained 4 Gold Medals naturally, meaning I'd have to play through the vast majority of these missions again at least once - But in many instances, multiple times.
It still works exactly how it did in GTA 5. Each mission has a number of objectives you'll need to fulfil within that mission to achieve a Gold Medal. These range from just 1 to as many as 5 different objectives, and they wildly vary in both expected time of completion and difficulty. The good news is, you get a reasonable amount of leeway, as you can afford to pass up on 39 missions which will not be required for this trophy. There are a couple of catches though;
Firstly, you have to fulfil all objectives to earn Gold. So, for example, if you managed to only fulfil 4 out of 5 objectives in a particular mission, you'll only be awarded Silver and will be forced to replay the mission from scratch. There is no margin for error. This'll also apply if you die during the mission at any point, which automatically rules out the possibility of achieving Gold by default, even if you were to successfully fulfil all objectives - Something I took a handful of missions to find out.
Secondly, the progress towards objectives will only count if you achieve all of them at the same time, so you won't be able to go back into a mission and tick off anything you missed. It's all or nothing. This is particularly frustrating for lengthy missions with a time limit requirement, knowing that if you're too slow, you'll have to go back in and do the mission all over again, but I did also fail on much easier objectives at times too, so it's not even like it's always the more difficult elements of a mission that can cause problems.
You can be methodical to an extent, and pick your way through them, but you'll be forced into tackling some of the tougher ones eventually. Despite there being a reasonable amount of leeway, 70 is still alot, and it is disappointing to complete longer missions and realise you missed a single objective, or you weren't quick enough. I don't think this is a bad way to promote replay value, but I do feel like the execution is flawed. Why does watching cutscenes still make the clock run on timed missions? Why is there not a "restart mission" option, for quick convenience? You have to either reload a previous save, or play out the mission to the end.
These things all amount to lost time, and can make this seem more frustrating than it needed to be.
The "Zoologist" trophy, awarded for Studying every animal across all states in Story Mode, is where this list truly peaks. Where everything else prior to this felt slightly grindy, but still gave me a reasonable sense of fulfilment and enjoyment, this is where this list halted that dead in it's tracks. When I said at the top of the piece there were elements of this list that made me slightly fall out of love with this game, this is exactly what I was referring to.
For this trophy, you'll need to find 152 different variations of animals, and study them via your binoculars to complete the animal compendium, and it is the ultimate test of trial and error.
Natural progression through the game will probably have seen you through a reasonable portion of these, and intel from others on where you can find the animals you haven't seen yet is generally pretty reliable, and it helps you coast through this challenge for the most part. It's still long-winded, because there's still 152 in total that you'll need to find, and in most cases, skin for an associated trophy, but every now and again you will hit an absolute wall.
The Florida Panther, Regular Panther, Western Bull Moose, Western Moose, Rio Grande Turkey, Timber Wolf all had me wasting hours upon hours of mine aimlessly wandering the open world just trying to get even a sniff of these creatures. You'll seem like you're making good progress, knocking off these discoveries at a nice tempo, and then just suddenly end up cold.
The main issue here is, there's no guarantee as to where you'll find some of these animals. A general region is always a sound bet as a starting point, but specifically, there are differing claims out there when it comes to pinpointing exact locations, and, at least in my experience, absolutely no consistency in any of them. I would resort to bouncing point to point across known hotspots, trying various times of day, using bait/not using bait, saving and loading, and yet I still just seemed to be completely at the mercy of the RNG Gods. The extent to which I felt my own control played a part within achieving this trophy felt about as minimal as you can imagine.
Trial and error is fine - As long as it's mastering a skill-set, developing a strategy, understanding a new play-style. Not just wandering aimlessly throughout a huge open world environment going purely off blind intuition and luck. Trawling through different places for hours just to find a single animal, and then repeating this process 6/7 more times, just for the next animal in the compendium to give you the same issues all over again. It just isn't it. The whole activity felt lethargic and numbed the joyous side of the experience.
Finally, the "Notorious" trophy, awarded for Reaching Rank 50 in Red Dead Online, will ensure you also delve into the Multiplayer side of this game.
This is a very similar experience to the one in Red Dead Redemption. There are a multitude of options to accumulate experience, ranging from competitive team-based game modes, beating challenges to earn buckle awards and completing free-roam activities, so the flexibility allows you to tackle this with preferences, or even as a mixture if you don't settle on something.
I made sure I unlocked the other Multiplayer trophies as I progressed towards rank 50 first, of which there are an additional 16, making up a reasonably sized chuck of the overall list. None of them really stand-out, but some of their requirements are directly linked to ways you can achieve experience points, as pointed out above, so it makes sense to go after these extra trophies on your way towards the highest level.
Rank 50 requires around 220,000 experience, and will take around 40-50 hours. Double experience events, which are common for Rockstar games with an online component, will help you slash this expectation significantly, but none of these ran during the period of time I progressed through the online side of the game. I heavily leant on team-based game modes, as this was simply the most fun I had when playing online, once I'd ensured I had earned the other trophies within the list. Some of the game modes are excellent, specifically Hostile Territory, Up in Smoke and Make it count - and exciting game modes always make levelling grinds more fun.
I broke away from the Single Player to tackle the Multiplayer, purely because I'd spent months with the game already and needed to break things up a bit knowing I still had significant work to do on this list. Striving towards Rank 50 was a smooth experience, with loads of fun and variety along the way, which is a stark contrast to my bug-ridden, hacker-infested online experience with GTA5. I certainly enjoyed this element of this list more than glorified birdwatching!
Even by the standards of the average Rockstar open world game, there's a hell of a lot to do to complete this list. Even by the time you clock the main story in it's entirety, and move into the post-game clean-up, it feels like there's an entire second game lying in wait for you once you begin to unravel the rest of the trophy list. Even then, you realise that's still technically only half the game because of the Multiplayer component. There are multiple layers to this Platinum, and thick ones at that.
The game is great, absolutely one of the best, but the trophy list is exhaustive and will drain every last bit of energy from you with some gargantuan tasks towards full completion. Just beating the highly dramatic Story mode once over will put you through the ringer - Only for the list to require you do it all over again for the Gold medals. Then you've still got the rest of the 100% completion requirements and studying every animal, along with a Multiplayer levelling grind to act as a cherry on top.
Overall time estimate is tough to gauge, but I would have enough confidence to suggest it's in excess of 200 hours, and that's where the majority of this difficulty lies. In terms of skill factor, it's not an overly great challenge at all, but anything that will make you commit a couple of hundred hours to it is always going to reach the upper-mid echelons of any Platinum rating scale, and Red Dead Redemption 2 is a perfect example of that.
Notable Trophies -
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| Best in the West - Attain 100% completion. Gold Rush - Earn 70 Gold Medals in Story missions. Zoologist - Study every animal across all states in Story Mode. Notorious - Red Dead Online : Reach Rank 50. |
Hardest Trophy -
