Here are some things you wouldn't normally do to build on the success of a decade long franchise;
Remove one of the most popular protagonists of all time. Squeeze a full retail release out for an idea that was originally scoped with just enough content to be Single Player DLC. Reduce the length of the story offering.
These are risks you can get away with when you've developed a franchise with as much love as Uncharted, and the Lost Legacy is a solid addition to the series, even if slightly a bit too obvious that it sits off to the side at the Uncharted family dinner table.
As mentioned, it was previously touted to be delivered as a form of DLC post-Uncharted 4, focusing on the side story of Chloe Fraser and Nadine Ross. You'll play out the entire game as Chloe, navigating the various chapters with Nadine by your side as they both seek to track down the Legendary Tusk of Ganesh. On the other side, a warmonger called Asav also has a vested interest in the piece of treasure, tying up a very typical Uncharted plotline. You want a very valuable piece of treasure, but so does everyone else.
There's no sign of Nathan Drake, Elena, Sully or any other deeply rooted character from the series even making as much as a sniff of an appearance, and Chloe and Nadine are left to take the spotlight completely uninterrupted. Some people will naturally feel like the absence of such a charismatic cast will zap the personality out of the game, especially after witnessing this group develop over the 4 previous games in the series and lend so well to the lore and story. There's no doubt it's felt here, but it's also important to distance the Lost Legacy and treat it by it's own merits. It isn't trying to fit in or be a sequel and this should be taken into account.
The better news - It's still Uncharted down to the bone. The game still proves that, no matter what they do with the cast, Naughty Dog are still the masters of their own creation. It mixes the perfect blend of puzzling, combat, exploration, cinematic set pieces and gorgeous, larger-than-life scenery. The pacing is perfectly executed and the edgy relationship that Chloe and Nadine have is portrayed brilliantly, and very akin to that of Nathan Drake and Sully.
If you miss Nathan Drake too much, you can either don his unlockable brother's skin in the bonus menu (about as close as you're going to get), or just take solace in the fact that the gameplay mechanics are still true to the Uncharted formula. The combat system, that balances stealth and all out gunfights, is still punchy and fluid. The platforming will see you climb huge buildings, stone carvings and rock faces - All shot from different angles to show off their true size and scale. The graphics still make Uncharted top of it's class too, full of vibrant environments and impressively detailed character models.
It will naturally draw comparisons and some people will see it as a step back, but it still has enough of what made Uncharted so great to be worthy of a look at the very least. Any Uncharted fan who chooses to pass on this just because of a weaker cast (by general consensus, at least) is only doing themselves a disservice. I would agree it doesn't reach the heights we've seen the series produce, but it's a good addition to the franchise that shows enough ambition to make you pay notice.
In regards to the trophies, this is a large list, containing 50 trophies, including the Platinum trophy, and delivers in classic Uncharted format.
Everything you know about Uncharted trophy lists is still well represented here. Beating the game on the infamous Crushing difficulty level, a host of collectibles, specific kill accumulation feats and chapter-based tasks are all present and make up the vast majority of the list, and there isn't much newly sprinkled into the formula here.
The "Progress Demands Sacrifice" trophy, awarded for Completing the Game in Crushing mode, was the first step on route towards the Platinum trophy. This may seem like an unusual place to start, because the prerequisite to unlocking Crushing mode would previously require the game to be beaten on any difficulty level in every Uncharted game I've previously played.
However, Crushing mode is accessible from the beginning in The Lost Legacy, and doesn't seem to require unlocking. I use the word "seem" because it looks like the option is greyed out on the selection menu, but doesn't actually prevent you from selecting it. I'm not sure if this was the intention or not, but given the experience I have with Crushing mode, I decided there wasn't much point in wasting time and jumped straight in with my first playthrough of the game to test my skill.
For those who have experience of Crushing mode with Uncharted games, it can and has been notoriously brutal and unforgiving, and the hardest versions of it across the series have gone down in folklore for their difficulty. The Lost Legacy, however, is not the same. Infact, it's nowhere near it, and Crushing difficulty in this iteration of the series is the easiest out of every Uncharted title I've played.
There are a couple of factors that contribute to this. Firstly, the game is much shorter than every other Uncharted game in the franchise, and only contains 9 chapters. Anything that effectively halves the normal length of it's usual story mode would almost certainly reduce the challenge too right? Not necessarily always true, but it is in this instance.
Secondly, The Lost Legacy makes stealth options much more accessible to the player compared to previous Uncharted games that were much more combat-centric driven. The game still contains plenty of encounters that can get hairy if you end up in a gunfight, but there almost always seem to be a solution via stealth that will allow you to bypass many areas of the game and avoid combat, which makes a significant difference on Crushing difficulty. I would always take advantage of these scenarios where I could, and adopted a stealth first approach to the game at all times. The stealth mechanics are somewhat questionable though. It's borderline impossible to fall back into anonymity once your cover is broken, and you're better off giving up and restarting the checkpoint, but this can be annoying when you've slowly made progress via stealth and have to redo it all.
There are still a couple of areas where you'll have no choice but to fight your way out, and you do still take damage incredibly quickly on Crushing difficulty - but it just never seemed as brutal or unforgiving as it has before. Some of those earlier Uncharted titles are forever etched on my brain for how brutally tough certain encounters are, and some of them had me stuck for hours wondering how I was ever going to get past them. To the contrary, I managed to beat my Crushing run of The Lost Legacy in just under 10 hours, and probably won't recall any stand out areas a few years from now - Unlike the pirate ship section towards the end of Uncharted 4.
There aren't any story-based progression trophies in this list, which isn't too surprising. Uncharted has never been big on these. However, perhaps a little more surprisingly, there is an absence of difficulty stacked trophies on this occasion. Previous Uncharted games would include individual trophies awarded for beating the game on each of it's difficulty levels, which would be awarded if you beat the game on a tougher difficulty than the trophy requirement. The only other trophy you'll earn for beating the game on Crushing here is for simply beating the game and that's it.
The remainder of this list after this is purely clean-up protocol, and there won't be any necessity to play the game in full again if you chose the same tact as me and beat Crushing difficulty straight off the bat. The only reason you ever needed to play through this game more than once previously was to unlock Crushing difficulty, and if you've played Uncharted before, you'll more than likely be fine to jump straight in without needing to spend any additional time on the story.
I proceeded to just pick off the rest of the list completely at random, fulfilling all the tasks that either required you to accumulate kills, perform specific tasks/actions and work on gathering all the collectibles.
Many of these tasks are really simple, and the efficiency of the chapter select feature really helps out here. The majority of the leg work in the post-game clean up comes from the collectibles though.
These have always been a staple of Uncharted games, and they're not sold short here either. Not only do you have to indulge in the familiarity of finding all 68 pieces of treasure and engage in all 17 optional conversations spread across the game's 9 chapters, but there are also a few newly added categories of collectibles to discover too. These include stopping in 28 specific locations to take advantage of a photo opportunity and picking 21 lockboxes. The latter does cross over with the treasures, as some lockboxes need to be opened to unveil hidden treasures you'll need for the trophy. That's a total of 145 collectibles across the game and individual trophies are linked to finding all of each of these collectible categories.
Just a specific note on the treasures, the game also adds the Queen's Ruby collectible, which plays a massive supporting role in gathering treasures. During Chapter 4, you need to collect 11 Hoysala Tokens as part of a larger puzzle. Once you've collected them all, you take them to a shrine to unlock the Queen's Ruby, a bracelet which pulses and chimes whenever you're close to a collectible treasure. This is a great help in picking up treasures as you go through the game and not having to reference a visual guide for all of them. I was able to significantly improve my success rate of picking up treasures during my Crushing difficulty run, and this minimised the necessity to backtrack post-game as I'd already collected the majority of the treasures I needed with the help of this accessory. It's definitely worth side-tracking for.
The game is incredibly clean-up friendly too. There is very clear signposting on which collectibles you're missing for each chapter, and not only can you drop back into chapter select in order to gather the missing collectibles, you can go a step further and drop into specific encounters that will start you from within a certain point inside the chapter, minimising replay necessity as much as possible. This is great for farming kills quickly and ensuring you don't spend too much time retreading old ground just to collect a missing treasure piece. Big seal of approval from a game design perspective.
Picking apart the remainder of this list was just a matter of dropping back into specific checkpoints where I could farm kills or start from the closest point to a collectible I may have been missing, and even if you've beaten the game on Crushing difficulty, you'll still be able to drop the difficulty level right down to the bottom and just walk through levels to hasten the process of polishing off the remaining trophies.
A final, and somewhat different task, requires you to make it to the outskirts of Halebidu in Chapter 5 without using a firearm or explosive. This will require a final partial run of the game, and ended up being the last trophy I invested into for this list. It has the potential to be challenging enough to become a notable trophy, however, the lack of restrictions on difficulty level means you can just boot up a brand new game and play through on Explorer difficulty. A difficulty so easy it makes a mockery of any possible challenge to be sought here, and you can practically run through most sections like a bullet sponge with the generosity of health it gives you.
There also isn't much combat throughout the opening 5 chapters of the game either, especially in comparison to the second half, where most of the action packed portions of the game are. It's easy enough to run through everything just hitting the melee button and turning your fists into weapons of mass destruction. It may take a couple of hours, but it's a straight-forward exercise, especially for a Gold trophy.
This is the easiest Uncharted Platinum trophy I've earned to date. Crushing difficulty may still have a couple of smaller challenge spikes, but just generally feels incredibly watered down in comparison to all 4 previous Uncharted games I've played. It certainly ranks the lowest out of the 5 titles if I were to rank them. The collectibles are aided by a very user-friendly chapter select feature and the importance of the Queen's Ruby in tracking down treasures without having to break up gameplay to acknowledge a visual guide further adds to this.
The plethora of miscellaneous trophies and their requirements are a giveaway, even the final Gold trophy on the list. If you've beaten Uncharted games prior to this, you won't have any troubles with this one.
Notable Trophies -
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| Progress Demands Sacrifice - Complete the Game in Crushing mode. |
Hardest Trophy -
