DLC #153 - The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine

To round off the Witcher 3 experience, a final story-based expansion pack, similar in many ways to Hearts of Stone, at least from a trophy list perspective.

However, a very different, but equally excellent storyline acts as the foundations to Blood and Wine, re-affirming the stance that the Witcher excels within it's story-telling and development of a great plot.

This final instalment sees Geralt travel to the new land of Toussaint, called upon by the Duchess of Touissaint, Anna Henrietta, to fulfil a contract against a seemingly unstoppable Vampire killing off members of the Royal Guard. The investigation into these string of murders takes numerous twists and turns along the way, culminating in multiple endings depending on the various paths the player can take through to the end of the questline. 

The Hearts of Stone story was great, but Blood and Wine was even better for me personally, and made for the perfect end to a game that just seemed to keep ascending in quality right up until it's finale.

As previously mentioned, the similarities between both DLC packs lie within the trophy list, with a solid offering of 13 trophies again here, and as before too, a handful of these trophies are missable, relating to certain choices or moments within the main story quests that you'll have to keep on top of in order to make sure you potentially don't miss them.

This has been a consistent theme throughout the Witcher 3, including the main list, and is probably my only real criticism of the game. It's a shame for a title that contains such great stories that are a joy to watch unfold, that you have to read into the trophy descriptions if you're wanting to make sure you grab everything without the necessity to play through the story again for the fear of missing something.

This has led to me understanding certain plot points ahead of time as a consequence, which is something I would ideally loved to avoid entirely, but this game is long, and as I've mentioned before in other reviews linked to this game, I want to minimise repetition where possible for games that contain considerable length.

Of the 13 trophies here, 6 of them are missable, and of these 6, 4 of them relate to the main story arc, requiring you to perform certain actions which, if not fulfilled when required, will be bypassed entirely, with the only remedy being to hope you either have an earlier hard save to load up from, or just by simply starting again from the beginning. 

Two of these trophies also split at the final quest, where you get the option to choose to approach the ending of the story through two different ways and thus, granting a trophy for experiencing each ending separately. You'll need to make sure you retain a hard save right before you make this choice, and since it occurs at the very end of the game, failure to be aware of this will require an entire second playthrough, and even just the main questline alone is around a 10-12 hour experience.

Both branches are a good 2-3 hours each, and they both offer unique quest paths with great endings, so it feels right to do them justice and include separate trophies for them within the list.

Away from the main story, the remainder of the trophies are fairly standard. Some of them are attached to the new side quests on offer which introduce some expansions to the game, including the addition of a new Gwent deck named after the Skellige region, where you'll have to collect all cards, and experimenting with the new mutations feature, which also awards a trophy once you've completed the relevant side quest.

One final thing worth noting, obtaining any set of the new Witcher gear available throughout Toussaint will also grant you a trophy, but you'll also need about 30,000-40,000 in coin to be able to afford/craft all 5 new Grandmaster Witcher sets, so watch out for that and be prepared for the possibility of selling everything you own for the sake of the trophy, which is exactly what I had to do.

There is a possibility that you might need to purchase the crafting items, which will save coin, but some of these crafting items are expensive if you don't already own them, and each of the 6 items needed for a full set has a crafting fee on top. Luckily, I had alot of items hoarded in my inventory with enough value to afford all this, but I'm completely unsure what the contingency plan would have been had I needed to raise the majority of this money.

Overall, an excellent way to end the Witcher 3. It's one of the most polished and complete games I've ever played, and despite the missable trophies, not just here within this DLC offering, but across the game, being a little bit too frequent, it doesn't do much wrong.

This package floats somewhere within the 25-30 hours range, given the amount of side content the trophies away from the main story will require you to explore, as well as having to complete the game to 2 different endings. As long as you're aware to not miss anything that could set you back, especially before making the final decision of the story, and you've got enough coin/valuables to be able to afford a full set of Grandmaster Witcher armour, it's a fairly relaxed experience.

Platinum #112 - The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

After just over a year on from completing the first of two DLC packs for the Witcher 3, it felt like good timing to finally knock this one on the head.

Contrary to my own belief, there wasn't actually much to clean up on the Platinum when I finally re-visited the game, though I do remember the sole reason for completing the Hearts of Stone DLC pack was in order to maximise the efficiency of reaching level 35 for a trophy contained within the main list.

Rather than going through non-trophy related side content to reach this target, it just made sense to do it whilst I went through some of the DLC, and after reaching it during the Hearts of Stone pack, that was the main trigger to go on and finish the rest, starting with the Platinum trophy.

The Witcher 3 is an Action-based, open world fantasy RPG, which is a genre I'm not actually that well versed in, where you assume control of Geralt of Rivia, a monster slayer by trade more commonly known occupationally as a Witcher.

The story revolves around the search for his daughter, who is on the run from a force known as the Wild Hunt, and the journey will transverse you across a big game world with many different environments to explore and pillage. As well as the main story arc, there is a huge amount of additional content, typical of any open world game, ranging from side quests, exploration opportunities, looting and widespread NPC interaction.

The trophy list is large in size, coming in at 53 trophies, and is a fairly typical list for an open world game, with trophies being spread across a host activities within the game, as well as a healthy focus on the progression of the main story.

The "Walked the Path" trophy, awarded for Finishing the game on "Death March!" difficulty level, should be the primary focus of this entire list, simply for the reason that, the length of time you can expect to put into this game is worth great consideration if you're thinking about possibly doubling this, and playing through the entire game twice in order to just get used to a lower difficulty level before tackling the Death March difficulty.

In instances where the highest difficulty level is available from the outset, I will always look to take advantage of this for avoidance of multiple playthroughs, but I would make this point even more poignant for a game of this size.

As someone who has always believed in the quickest available route through a trophy list, especially when they're as long as this, multiple playthroughs wasn't an option for me and I was always going to go head first into this challenge and play through Death March straight off the bat in order to only have to beat the game once.

Predictably, this seemed like a bad idea at first, because the game kicks you all over the place in the early stages on this particular difficulty level. It's not until you start unlocking magic and character skills, which are key to combat, that you start to settle in more, and this happens round about level 10 onwards, and the difficulty noticeably begins to taper off a little bit thereafter, so despite an initial scare, Death March isn't really that bad, and nowhere near as intimidating as it may seem at first.

Combat is fairly straight forward, magic is a game changer when you understand how and when to best use it and you'll constantly be rewarded with better equipment to handle enemies with greater efficiency as you complete more and more quests. There isn't really much that can stop you in your tracks once you hit a certain point whereby all the tools the game offers you are finally at your disposal, and it turns out to be a fairly relaxed experience.

On the way through to this trophy, the list includes a total of 10 progression-based trophies triggered at certain points within the main story arc, and as you gain access to more and more side content, which are usually introduced through the story at some point, you'll also unlock some trophies naturally this way too.

One important general note; The game contains 11 missable trophies, where you have to make the correct choice during a questline, or where you will have to complete a certain quest before progressing beyond a specific point, at which moment, the aforementioned quest will disappear. However, where those seem fairly standard, the missable trophies can be very easy to miss if you've not done your research.

For example, you'll need to collect every Gwent card in the game, but some of them are only available at certain points, so if you miss just one, you'll potentially have to face the idea of playing through the game a second time, and whilst there isn't any obvious indication as to how many hours you've managed to put into the game, this isn't a short one, and I made absolutely sure I did my research and left nothing to chance knowing this.

As much as I enjoyed this experience, I didn't want to have to go through it again, purely for missing something because I didn't do the necessary investigation work before hand. Saving often and creating multiple save files is a great insurance to this, and whilst it may not necessarily be 100% fool proof, it will work out to be a good damage limitation exercise where the alternative without it would be to just start from the very beginning again, so I would recommend that at the very least.

The "Munchkin" trophy, awarded for Reaching character development level 35, is nothing really outside of the usual levelling based journey, however, it is important to note purely because I didn't reach this milestone after completing everything the trophy list required of me. This is ultimately the main reason I delved into the DLC before completing the main list.

There is probably enough content within the main game to get you there if you want to do it without the questlines offered by the DLC, but I didn't even consider exploring this option, because it made more sense to progress this trophy via the DLC and unlock those other trophies simultaneously.

Although, I didn't notice many outstanding quests once I was finished, and I was level 31 by the time I'd seemingly completed everything, so there is a slight chance you may need to find something to grind for experience, but this won't be a problem for completionists with 2 DLC packs to also further complete. After reading up more on this after falling short of level 35 and having to explore my options, you can apparently hit this milestone by doing everything the trophy list requires of you, but for whatever reason, this wasn't my experience of this trophy.

The "Master Marksman" trophy, awarded for Killing 50 human and non-human opponents by striking them in the head with a crossbow bolt, is the only trophy in this list that made this game start to feel like a bit of a grind. The headshot detection is wonky and it takes around 3-4 hours to farm these 50 kills because there's alot of fast travel required to respawn enemies in good farming locations.

I do want to use this trophy as a way to bridge into mentioning a rare occurrence - A considerably lengthy trophy list that never felt like a grind. I'm usually a huge advocate of time consuming trophy lists equating to difficulty, and there have been many games in the past that have scored difficulty points because there is a reasonable element of length to their overall completion time but I can confidently say I don't feel this way about the Witcher 3.

The amount of time attached to your save file isn't recorded anywhere within the game itself, and because I didn't complete this game within a single sitting, it really is hard to say, even roughly, what my estimate is in terms of overall completion time. Between 70-120 hours possibly, but I enjoyed every second of it and never felt like the game was beginning to wear me down. Not until I had to get 50 headshot kills with a crossbow anyway.

Regardless, It didn't matter at that point, because I was nearing the end and just polishing off the remainder of a list that had kept me engaged from the first trophy right to the last, and that definitely counts for something when taking overall difficulty score into consideration.

Thus, I've gone straight down the middle score-wise here. Irrespective of the fact this never really felt like a slog, the length of time it takes to complete should still be a factor to some extent, because there is still a reasonable requirement of effort here, just maybe not as much as there would be under usual circumstances for games this length where the grind often kicks in at some point, and this is a great testament to the game.

Death March difficulty doesn't exactly live up to it's name, despite some challenging early signs that eventually fizzle out, but the vast amount of missable trophies can be tricky to properly keep on top of if you're not fully prepared on what to expect, and any minor slip up could see you having to play-through the game again, which would be a tough break for most trophy hunters.

Either way, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, you'll have one of the most pleasantly time-consuming Platinum trophy experiences available, which is a welcome rarity.

Notable Trophies -

Walked the Path - Finish the game on "Death March!" difficulty level.
Munchkin - Reach character development level 35.
Master Marksman - Kill 50 human and non-human opponents by striking them in the head with a crossbow bolt.

Hardest Trophy -

Walked the Path

Finish the game on "Death March!" difficulty level

Platinum #111 - Metal Gear Solid V : The Phantom Pain

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 7/10

Perhaps a little surprisingly, this is only the second time a Metal Gear Solid game has made it's way into my collection, following Metal Gear Solid 2 from the HD Collection on the Playstation 3 a whole 6 and a half years ago.

The completion of which was actually roughly round about the same time I first started MGS5. If I recall, it was my intention at one stage to add all of these trophy lists to my collection, and there are a fair amount of them in existence.

However, and I don't think I ever officially concluded this, but I'll take this opportunity to do so now. I won't be going back retrospectively to grab any of them at this point. That includes MGS3 and Peace Walker from the same HD Collection I got the MGS2 Platinum from, as well as MGS4, which was released without trophies, and then later patched to include them.

I do still have Metal Gear Rising : Revengeance in the backlog, but to suggest MGS5 has completely burnt me out would be a great understatement, and has very easily influenced this decision to leave the untouched MGS titles exactly that way.

The Phantom Pain follows on events directly from the aftermath of Ground Zeroes (an MGS title I never actually played), where Snake awakens from a 9 year coma with the primary goal being to seek revenge for an attack that left Snake almost dead, and his forces decimated. This turns out to be at the hands of a Cipher group called XOF, headed up by Skull Face, the main protagonist of the game.

Skull Face's motive is driven by carrying out Cipher's goal to unite the world by destroying all non-American cultures through creating a vocal strain parasite capable of killing non-English speaking people by attaching to their vocal cords, and distributing this across the world in order to wipe out large groups on mass. Snake's mission not only becomes one of personal revenge, but also part of a wider mission to prevent the spread of this virus intent on wiping out the majority of the World's population.

This trophy list is large in size, clocking in at 43 trophies, including the Platinum, and this has to be one of the most labour-intensive games I've ever completed.

Not only is there alot of content within this list that encourages you to explore practically every single element of the game, but this longevity extends to levels of repetition that eclipses the majority of the games in my collection, and it all adds up to an overall package that, despite containing it's challenges, is mostly drive by time investment, and ends up being one of the longest Platinum trophies I've ever earned.

The most important thing to note about this game, compared to previous MGS titles I've played, is the direction. The Phantom Pain is a open-world sandbox MGS game, and although this wasn't the first game to take the MGS series down this path, and away from it's very linear roots, this was certainly the first MGS title I played from this perspective, and the game translates well across to this model.

The game still has a focal main story, which is spread across a series of 50 missions, taking place across 2 main locations (Afghanistan, and then later, Angola-Zaire), and this mode is where the vast majority of the trophies in this list are centred around.

The "Elite" trophy, awarded for Completing all missions with a S rank, is a staple favourite requirement from MGS games, and working towards this as you go through the game should be the primary focus.

Obtaining an S Rank requires a score of over 130,000 at the end of the level, with points awarded for a numerous variety of actions. However, the best results come through either time or stealth bonuses. Completing the levels quickly and/or without triggering combat alerts, reflex time or killing enemies are the best 2 ways to maximise points, but this is difficult to achieve initially, when you're exploring missions for the first time and don't have the relevant level of background knowledge in order to succeed, so the majority of my maiden playthrough was purely for casual purposes. I did find that, time became less relevant as long as I maintained maximum stealth, so this ended up being my uniform approach throughout the game, and this at least meant I came out of a small handful of levels with a first time S-Rank, but it wasn't many, and the majority required me to re-visit them to earn this trophy.

Once you've completed the 31 main story missions, you'll unlock 19 additional missions, which for the most part are direct copies of the original 31, but with an added condition, such as Extreme difficulty, where enemies deal way more damage, or Total Stealth, where any triggered alert instantly ends the mission. This is where some of the aforementioned repetition really hurts the game, because you end up re-visiting so many of these levels and their variants, the tedium starts to set in big time, and this extends into other tasks within the trophy list.

This is also the main reason why this Platinum took so long for me, and it may be important to point out that, I completely understand that there are guides out there that can show you how to beat a level within 5/6 minutes in order to achieve an S-Rank, which would have significantly helped the progress here, but as someone who's always wanted to not use a guide for certain things, this is something I didn't want to entertain. It therefore would take me well over an hour to beat a certain mission to S-Rank by just simply tackling it in my own way without any guidance. I appreciate it would have saved me alot of time off the overall completion, but I wasn't interested in shortcuts unless I could figure them out myself. If it took me over an hour to beat a level, but I managed to do so with perfect stealth and it still got me the S-Rank, then the question of whether I could have done it quicker was irrelevant to me.

What I will add though, was the fact that, there were a small handful of occasions where I would spend well over an hour trying to earn an S-Rank on a particular mission, only to complete it and find out I was way too slow, which negatively impacted the amount of points to the extent where it was perhaps only enough for an A-Rank, or I would get spotted by a random solider towards the end of a mission and lose my stealth points, which would have exactly the same level of impact. Though this thankfully didn't happen that often, it was the most frustrating part of trying to S-Rank some of these missions, and if it looked like there was a faster way to complete them, it did become quickly apparent as the missions unfolded in front of me, so it was never difficult to spot opportunities when they presented themselves.

Overall, it was a good challenge, and figuring out different ways to beat these missions with an S-Rank was a fun task which kept things fresh for as long as possible, though the inevitability of tedium through playing some of these levels multiple times did eventually kick in. However, the sense of reward for putting time into carefully beating a level, achieving the S-Rank for it and being able to do that without any guidance was great.

On top of this, there are also 10 trophies, which is around a quarter of this list, awarded for beating specific missions for the first time, so natural progression is awarded regulary within this list. You'll also be awarded for completing each of the 50 missions once.

The "Executed" trophy, awarded for Completing all mission tasks, is the next step beyond achieving S-Rank for every mission.

Each of the 50 missions within the story contains a number of optional objectives, varying anywhere between 2 to 8, adding an extra layer of replayability onto these story missions. Again, some of them will come naturally as you play through the story and focus on achieving those S-Rank ratings, but you can guarantee a fair amount of re-work here as you go back over these levels again purely for the purpose of this exercise.

The vast majority of these are not that difficult, and act merely as a checkbox exercise solely for the purpose of padding the depth of this game further, though some of them are reasonably challenging and make you tackle certain levels from a different angle to what you may have chosen to do when going for the S-Rank on them.

This was the point where the game started to wain on me on a little bit. Going for S-Rank was fine. I'd taken a long break from the game, so it felt fairly fresh, and I was taking the challenge in my stride. To then have to go back through all these missions again, just to fulfil some secondary objectives that I cared less about, was a bit dull. Some of these objectives are also structured in such as a way that you can't beat them all in just 1 additional playthrough of the mission, and will have no choice but to play them over a few times. There are also some that require you to play through large portions of the mission, just to reach the point of being able to fulfil the objective, and if you miss out, you'll have to play through from the beginning again. This is mostly regarding, but not limited to, the objectives that require you to listen to a final conversation between 2 people, which will require you to spend 15-20 minutes building up to that by following someone around the map and listening to all pre-requisite conversations. Nowhere near as fulfilling of a task.

Also, those 19 post-story missions, most of which are copies of the previous 31? The copied variants also have the exact same mission tasks, so the repetition really starts to hit you hard when you realise you're literally doing the same things over and over, to the extent to which I was desperately trying to find reasons to still be enthusiastic about this game, whilst progressing through this task.

Once this trophy has been unlocked, you will at least be done with the Story mode, though this is where you'll spend the vast majority of your time with this list anyway. However, the grind isn't quite over just yet.

The "Achieved" trophy, awarded for Completing all SIDE OPS, requires you to venture into the Side Ops mode. Separate to the Story, the Side Ops is a series of individual challenges contained within certain areas of the main story mission space, and requires you to fulfil a small handful of tasks across a total range of 157 Side Ops.

They'll require you to rescue prisoners, eliminate tank/heavy infantry units, clear areas infested with land mines and extract highly-skilled soldiers, amongst a few other things. Some of these tasks are duplicated as much as 20 times, and the novelty wears out pretty quickly as you realise this is yet another task purely for the benefit of padding depth to this game. Across the 157 Side Ops, there are around 7/8 different types in total, and even though I used these Side Ops to break away briefly from the monotony of replaying Story missions, the reprieve was just as brief, due to the staleness of this mode itself. They're effectively segregated versions of regular gameplay elements that already exist as part of the core game - Destroying tanks, extracting soldiers, rescuing prisoners, they all make up things you do as part of the main story anyway, so just to see these already existing gameplay elements stripped away into a completely separate mode and just labelled "Side Ops" is lazy and, if not for the fact necessary for the Platinum trophy, pointless too.

These Side Ops aren't particularly difficult, and they can beaten fairly quickly, but there's still a great volume of them, and they add to a trophy list that really didn't need to suffer any more from mindless repetition that offered little extra reward. I suppose you could liken them to the VR Missions in MGS2, though there are thankfully a hell of lot less Side Ops to tackle, which is something at least.

That pretty much covers the core of this list and going through these 3 trophies is the predominant focus of this game. Once you've covered off the Story mode to S-Rank, along with the mission tasks, as well as completed all Side Ops, there isn't much else to go into in regards to other game modes, however the list does cover alot of elements of the RPG angle to this game which are important to mention.

You'll need to Develop 300 weapons, fully upgrade Mother Base and reach level 50 with all staff units and when you're working towards any of those tasks, for which trophies are also awarded, there are 2 elements to consider.

The first one is resources. Developing weapons and base upgrades costs resources, which are naturally farmed over time or instantly whilst out and about in the open world completing missions. Once you have the resources, then they require development time to complete upgrades, so it's really important to always be conscious of this at all times. If you're not developing weapons or upgrading the base/staff in the background whilst playing the game, you're potentially burning time, and the last thing you want with a game of this length, is inefficiency when it comes to time management.

You don't want to reach the conclusion of this game and realise you still need to develop loads of weapons or Mother Base upgrades because you forgot to do them as you went along. They don't require any effort, but for a game that already takes a long time to beat, you really don't want to be wasting extra time at the end just waiting for upgrades to complete when you really should have been doing this in the background as you played through the game, so I feel this is a really important nugget of information to reveal. Always have something on the go at all times.

The "Deterrence" trophy, awarded for Developing a nuclear weapon, also fits within this criteria, and possibly even more so, given the fact that a nuclear weapon takes 24 hours of real time to develop. However, that's not why this is mentioned in this instance.

Once you have gathered the resources to create a nuclear weapon, and confirm the start of the process, you will be deducted 50,000 Heroism points, which will have a direct consequence on the "Hero" trophy, which is awarded for obtaining the codename "Hero", achieved at amassing 150,000 Heroism points.

It isn't exactly a deal-breaker, but it makes more sense to reach the title of "Hero" before you create the nuclear weapon, otherwise you risk having to clawback 50,000 heroism points for beginning the nuclear weapon process, which could unnecessarily prolong this task.

Onto the most important point of this Platinum. I know I've slightly mentioned the fact that this game takes a long time to complete, without actually quantifying this with a certain number, but truth be told, such length becomes a blur and I don't actually know how accurate my final total is. Going purely off the records screen on the main menu, I spent a whopping 269 hours on this game, and whilst I personally find it hard to believe I've spent that much time going after this Platinum, I have no justifiable reason to disbelieve it.

The main story isn't exactly short, and obtaining an S-Rank on all 50 story missions, as well as going after the secondary mission objectives, with the Side Ops on top, I can see how it builds up when you piece it all together as a larger picture, and whilst I haven't really mentioned any of it, there are a fair handful of trophies that require you to spend some reasonable time on extra-curricular content, such as capturing all 47 species of wildlife, and finding all Blueprints, Key Items and Invoices throughout the game world.

I would say 269 hours grants this game the title of my lengthiest Platinum ever, and even though I wouldn't say the challenge of the game is that high, that sort of length has to count for something, and as I mentioned at the top of this piece, this game did completely drain me when all was said and done. 

As someone who has believed since day 1 that length is always a factor in Platinum difficulty ratings, this is where the majority of the score for this game comes from, and I was pushing through some fairly intense tedium barriers by the end of this game. I appreciate it could, and will, be shorter for some people, but the insistence for me to complete this list with my own approach to S-Rank and mission objectives will have no doubt been the main contributor to a higher completion time. There is at least a mark or two for some of the S-Rank requirements of certain missions that are a little bit tougher, as well as some challenging secondary mission objectives to go through, but persistence was certainly the order of the day.

Notable Trophies - 

Elite - Complete all missions with an S-Rank.
Executed - Complete all mission tasks.
Achieved - Complete all SIDE OPS.
Deterrence - Develop a nuclear weapon.

Hardest Trophy -

Elite                                                                                                              Complete all missions with an S-Rank

Platinum #110 - Tom Clancy's The Division

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10

Every so often, I explore a new series of games which, although provide a bearable experience, don't really do enough to entice me into further exploration.

It's not that The Division is bad. It's actually fairly palatable, but does it make me want to invest in The Division 2? Not at all. I had the exact same feelings towards Destiny 1. They're decent enough games, just not good enough to the point where I feel like they're worth continuing on with.

The central plot is based around uncovering the mystery behind a virus sweeping across New York City, labelled the "Dollar Flu", due to the fact contamination occurs through the transfer of money.

The premise is fairly cliche - A number of factions that control the city have a vested interest in the virus for various reasons, some of which involve obtaining access to the virus in order to detriment the human race, meaning your primary objective, as a Division agent, is to be drafted in to prevent this from happening.

The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies in total, and these do mostly span across the story mode of the game along with the RPG elements that come with it, including levelling up your base of operations, crafting items/weaponry and venturing into the PvP arena known as the Dark Zone.

This isn't an especially tough list in terms of the actual challenge presented here, but it is long-winded, and it does feature alot of repetition that makes you re-tread old ground very often, which becomes a hard slog as you push towards the end of the list. 

The "Know No Fear" trophy, awarded for Finishing all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty, will require you to play through each mission within the story twice through before you unlock this trophy.

There are 16 main story missions in total, and the "Hard" difficulty mode is not available from the outset, meaning you'll have to beat every mission once before going back through and tackling them again on the hardest difficulty level.

The irony is, it was actually harder first time round, because difficulty scaling is present as you progress your characters level and use the experience and resources earned through beating the story missions in order to acquire new skills, craft better equipment and become much stronger as a result and these are necessary to provide a balanced challenge. Given the fact the game is designed to be tackled in groups, it can be tough to play through this on your own, and that is the biggest challenge I faced as I attempted to reach level 30 and beat the story for the first time. Even playing with other agents, it was still a battle to get through certain levels, but not quite to the point where it ever felt insurmountable. On top of this, you will earn a separate trophy for reaching level 30 too.

Once I did beat the story in full, I gained access to the Final Stand arena, where I completed the previously featured Final Stand DLC. This lifts the levelling cap and allowed me to level my character up way beyond level 30 and pick up much stronger gear. So much so to the extent that, when I went back over the story on Hard difficulty in order to unlock this trophy, I literally ended up walking past enemies because I was so over-levelled and my equipment was so powerful. The same story missions that were taking me, in some instances, over an hour to beat in my previous run, were now being beaten within 10 minutes, and whilst I understand this may have been different had I not over-levelled my character by going through the Last Stand DLC, this was the route I took and the review should reflect this.

Along the way, there are 13 progression-based trophies, which unlock upon the completion of certain story missions, and by the time you unlock the "Know No Fear" trophy, you should have almost half the list completed as you also start to get into some of the RPG elements mentioned above, which are critical to developing your character, and ultimately progressing through the story.

Away from the main story offering, there are way too many collectibles to note any one of these trophies specifically, but the list offers out an additional 6 trophies that span an overall total of 290 collectible objects, so it is still worth mentioning.

Collectible items will only appear on the map when you get to within a very close fixed proximity of them and there's no other way to reveal them all at once so you'll never know exactly where you need to go for which items, and given the fact they can appear at a variety of different elevations, whether it be underground, within a building or on a rooftop, it becomes imperative to follow a guide for this exercise, and is certainly one of the least enjoyable collectible-based experiences I've had with any game.

Further to this, character movement feels clunky and it's a complete pain in the arse to get attacked by factions every time you turn onto a new street within the open world environment - 2 key factors which ultimately become a real inconvenience when you've got to trawl every corner of the map hunting down almost 300 collectibles. It prolongs what is already a fairly time-consuming exercise, and it would be best to pick up whatever you can as you naturally move through the game, mopping the rest up at the end. It isn't an advisable plan to fulfil this requirement in bulk, purely because of the monotony attached to it, so my best advice would be to pick up anything that comes naturally and use a guide to finish the rest at the end.

The "I am the LAW!" trophy, awarded for Killing 20 Rogue Agents, will require you to visit the briefly aforementioned Dark Zone, which does have it's own focus within this trophy list with a small handful of other fairly simple trophies, aside from this one.

The Dark Zone allows you to enter a previously forbidden area of New York City, which contains stronger groups of enemies, better loot and most significantly, other players.

For the most part, human players will be passive, and are in the Dark Zone to take advantage of the potential for NPC enemies to drop valuable loot, however, human enemies also have the capacity to turn themselves rogue, which will allow them to attack and be attacked by other human players, and these are the circumstances required to fulfil this trophy.

The reason this was tough for me was because, as someone who is modest enough to admit that I only ever strive to do the minimal required amount to beat a game in accordance to whatever the trophy list asks of me, it meant that, when it comes to the big, bad Dark Zone, I end up being one of the weakest characters present, making it incredibly tough to kill enemies who are more than likely way above my level of strength.

Once you reach level 30, and the level cap blows up, it is seriously hard to compete with other players unless you invest your time into further levelling and obtaining the better gear that comes with this reward, and as someone who only has the requirements of the trophy list at the heart of my best interests, I have no motivation to continue to play the game purely for the sake of character progression, which is something a lot of people do still play the Division for.

This, of course, is absolutely fine. I accept we all play games for different motives, but this did seriously disadvantage me in the Dark Zone as I constantly came up against stronger players. I did notice that groups of people love to get together and just fight, which is where my opening came in, hanging around hoping to get the killing blow at the right time and effectively just scavenge kills towards the trophy. It took me the course of a few weeks of dropping in and out whilst going through the rest of this list when I knew other players were around fighting each other, but I did manage to get there eventually. It certainly wasn't as easy as I felt it could have been, but knowing this was because I didn't want to put the time and effort into levelling my character, I accept that I was forced to find a harder way through.

When I reflect on the main menu upon completing this game, and read the total playtime of 6 days and 12 hours, that's a level of time investment that equates to over 150 hours, and there won't be many games out there I've put that much time into. It is important to deduct a reasonable amount off that for the Last Stand DLC, which I assume would be counted within this, but that would still make this a 100+ hour Platinum trophy at the very least, and I've always been of the opinion that time has always meant something when it comes to rating difficulty of a list.

The overall challenge of this game doesn't peak too high, though it can be rough playing through the game first time round when the enemies are much more relative to your characters level prior to reaching level 30. However, the Dark Zone challenges were a legitimate difficulty barrier, and I can never ignore a list that demands well over 100 hours from me to fully complete, so I'm happy to fit this somewhere around just above the mid-range of difficulty. 

It's time-consuming, the Dark Zone experience was a frustrating one from a personal point of view and collectibles are horrendous, both in terms of volume and practicality. There are still 2 DLC packs to get through, so there's still some way to go, but I'm glad to make another significant step towards full completion by finally grabbing this Platinum trophy.

Notable Trophies -

Know No Fear - Finish all of the missions at Level 30 on the Hard difficulty.
I am the LAW! - Kill 20 Rogue Agents.

Hardest Trophy -

I am the LAW!                                                                                                      Kill 20 Rogue Agents

DLC #152 - Assassin's Creed Unity - Dead Kings

It's been quite a common reoccurrence for Assassin's Creed DLC to contain additional story-driven content as part of it's extra offerings through the years, and this is reinforced with the Dead Kings pack.

Adding an extra 7 trophies, Dead Kings focuses on events post-Unity, where Arno Dorian meets up with Marquis De Sade. He offers Arno proper closure on his story - a boat heading to Egypt, which will allow him to leave Paris for good and the memories of Elise de la Serre behind.

The simple request is that Arno finds a manuscript which contains information on the whereabouts of an Artefact possessing great value, which is also being hunted by a group of Tomb Raiders led by Napoleon's army.

The location has been refreshed, with this content taking you into Saint-Denis, which is of a much smaller scale, though it does contain an underground area, where you'll be encouraged to spend most of your time via main story missions and the collectibles you'll also need to find to complete this list. It's fairly obvious that there is a deliberate focus on the catacombs within this DLC, and most of Sequence 13 takes place within them. The new lantern mechanic, which allows you to navigate past wild animals within the catacombs, was also built specifically for this DLC.

The trophy list is fairly straight-forward, but also very demanded, requiring you to complete everything this content has to offer to finish the list. With that in mind, the easiest way to break this down would be to discuss one particular trophy;

Hydrogen Bonded - Achieve 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings.

The "Hydrogen Bonded" trophy, awarded for achieving 100% synchronisation in Dead Kings, requires you to complete everything checklisted within the progress tracker as part of this DLC package. The other 6 trophies in addition to this one will be unlocked on your way towards fulfilling the obligations of this task, so it's effectively a Platinum trophy within it's own merits of this list. The main game never required you to complete everything to 100%, so it is a somewhat surprising requirement, and there is a fair amount of content to get stuck into here.

Aside from having to complete the new 13th Sequence as part of the extended story, along with the secondary objectives within each memory, there are also a large handful of Artefacts, Bicorns and Chests to find and collect (because that's exactly what you wanted after collecting 400+ of those in the main list). These requirements also come with 2 new Co-op missions to complete, a handful of riddles and some side questing in the form of murder mysteries.

There is alot of variety here, and it will all take you somewhere in the region of 10-15 hours to complete everything in order to reach 100% synchronisation. As long as you commit to working towards this trophy straight away, everything else will come naturally along the way.

Just like the main list, there aren't any difficulty-sensitive trophies, and with the map of Saint Denis being fairly small in comparison to Paris, it makes it much easier to jump around grabbing collectibles and completing side tasks. This ensures the DLC carries through the fairly relaxed undertones of the main list, and makes for an fairly comfortable completion to complete the experience.

Platinum #109 - Assassin's Creed Unity

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 4/10

If there is any series of game that feels like it has a template for trophy list reviews, it is almost certainly Assassin's Creed. I see you FIFA, but this is my 7th Assassin's Creed Platinum trophy, and the only thing that ever really seems to change is the era of time the game is set in.

Speaking of which, Assassin's Creed Unity sees you assume control of Arno Dorian, a member of the French Brotherhood of Assassin's, and is set during the height of the French Revolution.

Arno meets Elise De La Serre, whose father takes in Arno after his own father is murdered. After failing to deliver an important message that pre-empts the death of the Templar Grand Master De La Serre, Arno is not only accidentally complicit to his murder as a consequence of not delivering the letter, but also mistaken for being the killer at the scene of the death, which is witnessed by some powerful and influential Templars.

This will take the player through a story of revenge and redemption as Arno is inducted into the Brotherhood in an attempt to clear his own name and take revenge on the group of Templars responsible for killing De La Serre.

The trophy list is large in size, containing 51 trophies in total including the Platinum, and follows a formula very typical of Assassin's Creed trophy lists.

The "Curtain Call" trophy, awarded for Completing Memory Sequence 12, is the final trophy upon conclusion of the main story. As is always the case with Assassin's Creed Platinums, there isn't a pre-set difficulty level, which naturally means there's also no pressure from anywhere else on the trophy list relating to difficulty based challenges.

The combat still moves in the traditional Assassin's Creed way. They have slightly tweaked it here, because you can no longer take advantage of certain mechanics that made the combat overly-simplistic in previous titles, such as chaining combos and human shields. You still fight with a stance, and instead, react to your opponents actions, with parrying playing a huge role in killing enemies. You can be more aggressive and fight on the front foot with the "attack" action, but you'll find it easier to parry or dodge enemy attacks and fight when you've broken their guard. I have personally always found this one of the easiest combat mechanics in any game, and this is no different this time round. It makes the experience very casual, on the whole, and completing the story was a breeze. You'll also unlock alot of progression-based trophies, for completing each sequence leading up to, and including Sequence 12.

The "I Want It All" trophy, awarded for Completing all Single Player mission challenges in Paris, is directly linked to the main story sequences, most of which include specified challenges within the memory the player must complete in order to obtain this trophy.

Again, this has been replicated numerous times across the Assassin's Creed franchise, and it's best to fulfil as many of these challenges as possible as you go through each memory, in order to minimise the need to replay memories again once you've completed the game. Most of these challenges are fairly easy, and if by any chance you miss them, you can always reload the last checkpoint within a memory to reset your progress and make sure you finish them before you complete that particular memory.

Understanding this from previous Assassin's Creed games allowed me to consciously go through these challenges in conjunction with playing through the game normally, which increased efficiency when handling this list, and I only needed to go back and replay 4 memories across all 12 sequences in order to fulfil this task at the end of the game. The fact I had managed to clear the vast majority of them first time round is a strong testament to how easy they generally are to complete though, and this shouldn't really require much rework.

The "I Got Skills" trophy, awarded for Unlocking all Skills, incorporates the big new feature to Assassin's Creed Unity - Co-op mode.

Co-op mode is effectively a series of missions separate to the main story which, despite containing guidance on a recommended maximum number of allies up to the total of 4, can be completed on a solo basis. In order to unlock all skills, which grant you new manoeuvres, weapons and equipment, you'll need to earn all Sync points to unlock every single skill available, leaving no margin for error.

The vast majority of these Sync points come from completing Co-op missions, as well as finding them within the Co-op levels, which is where the association comes. Whilst the Co-op missions are designed for 2-4 players, you still have the option to run them solo, but this will become overwhelming in certain scenarios, especially for the missions that recommend high numbers, so it is best advised to use the matchmaking tool or grab a partner.

If you complete them with at least one other player, you'll find this relatively straight-forward, and although the fact you can run them solo means this is still technically a Single Player Platinum, it is strongly advised you finish these missions with others in order to minimise any issues you may run into difficulty-wise trying to complete them alone. The list does also contain an additional 5 trophies specifically for Co-op mode, which you should earn as you go through unlocking the skill points, but the new mode is shown some reasonable support within the list.

Assassin's Creed titles are also well known for their tendency to include collectible trophies within their lists, and not only is Unity another fine example of that, it also turns this standard up a couple of notches along the way.

The "Curiosity" trophy, awarded for Opening every chest in Paris, requires you to locate all 294 chests scattered on the map. They're located both above and below ground, and will only appear visible on the map when you run past one. You can purchase a map within the in-game menus via the E-Store, which will reveal the locations of every chest instantly, which I would strongly recommend as a good counter to the sheer volume alone.

Even then, this is still a pretty monotonous exercise, and most of the red chests you'll spot across the map are guarded by soldiers that you'll either need to fight or bypass in order to get to the chest, which ultimately adds more time onto an already time-consuming task. 

There isn't much more to add than that, but a large portion of the overall completion time will go towards this trophy alone so it's certainly worth mentioning, and it is an extremely boring exercise, especially given the fact that there are no other real rewards attached to opening chests other than purely for the fact there is an associated trophy within the list.

It is also important to note that are also 128 Cockades to collect as part of another trophy on this list, and whilst this is less than half the amount of chests required, this does still combine to total 422 collectible items across the entire game. It's not a light activity at all.

As is usually the case, this is another Assassin's Creed game that sits towards the lower end of the difficulty spectrum. The combat, despite some subtle changes that were probably designed to make it slightly more challenging, is still relatively easy to adjust to, and the fact the game has a pre-set difficulty level that offers up a fairly casual challenge, is the main reason why Unity joins on at the lower end of the scale.

The collectibles are a pain though, and deserve an entire point on the rating completely by themselves. It isn't necessary to have so many collectibles when there are no other reasons to hunt them down other than the fact the trophy requirements dictate that you need to unlock them all. Money eventually becomes inconsequential because you earn so much of it, as you progress through the game, and the chests yield nothing else other than currency, so it does feel like a pointless exercise that is there to purely pad completion time.

The game does parlay you on the fact that you do not need to achieve full 100% synchronisation and therefore does neglect alot of the side content from the trophy list, though even with this accounted for, I would still say this is around a 40-50 hour experience.

The majority of the other trophies within the list shouldn't really require any specific focus, and as long as you complete both the main and Co-op story, you should have most of it done by the time you turn your attention to the collectibles, with any clean up necessary at the end of these. If you can stomach the inevitable tedium of all those collectibles, this shouldn't give you too many problems at all, and does still come in as one of the easiest Assassin's Creed Platinum trophies to date.

Notable Trophies -

Curtain Call - Complete Memory Sequence 12.
I Want It All - Complete all Single Player mission challenges in Paris.
I Got Skills - Unlock all Skills.
Curiosity - Open every chest in Paris.

Hardest Trophy -

Curiosity                                                                                                        Open every chest in Paris.

DLC #151 - Fallout 4 - Far Harbor

This whole trophy journey sort of sums up my own feelings towards Fallout quite well. These games are OK experiences on the whole, but ultimately a bit messy and lack stability. I started this DLC aiming for it be my second completion, and prior to the Platinum trophy, and since then I had completed every other DLC as well as earned the Platinum before ending the series with this.

The main reason Far Harbor was outstanding beyond the rest of the DLC and the Platinum trophy itself was because of a in-game character dialogue glitch that ultimately meant I had to restart the entire Far Harbor story and hope self-correction took natural cause (which it thankfully did). Again, it kind of sums up Fallout and it's notoriety for being held back by bugs and glitches.

Anyway, Far Harbor focuses on the case of a missing person, who is believed to have fled from her family towards a place called Far Harbor. The questline is triggered by listening to an audio tape from the family reaching out for support and you have the option to investigate the case.

You find out very quickly that the concerned party is a couple, and the girl in question is their daughter, who is under the belief that she is a synth, and has fled under the knowledge that Far Harbor is a refugee relief centre for synths - a place she believes will give her a greater sense of belonging. As you travel to Far Harbor to look into the case further, the story unravels and your real reasons for ending up at Far Harbor become more apparent.

Despite the issues I ran into regarding the trophies, this is the strongest DLC offering in Fallout 4. It contains the most content, the most expansive story and the best new environments/characters that make the game feel genuinely fresh, where most of the other DLC packs just felt very stagnant and uninspired. The Nuka-Cola expansion was good, but I felt Far Harbor was better.

The pack also adds 10 trophies, 5 of which are driven by the new questline, awarding you trophies as you progress through and uncover the secrets hidden deep within Far Harbor. It's a place inhabited by the townspeople you meet and will carry out these quests for, who are fighting greater battles against the Children of the Atom, refugee synths and dangerous creatures, whose natural habitat is the island itself. It all blends together well and adds to a strong story-driven experience. Carrying on playing through on the "Hard" difficulty still failed to present me with any true challenges, and being able to acquire some seriously tough arsenal, including the new Harpoon Gun, made this even easier.

A couple of these story-related trophies are missable, dependent on which decisions you make as you go through the questline, so it may be important to ensure you're making the correct selections in line with trophy accomplishment along the way. 

The remainder of the list comes from various miscellaneous tasks, some of which come in familiar guises, such as finding 20 different locations, killing 30 creatures native to Far Harbor and collecting all issues of "The Islanders Almanac" magazine - Some fairly standard requirements by this point.

This comes complete with a small shout-out to the "Push Back The Fog" trophy, awarded for Unlocking 3 Far Harbor Workshop Locations - After unlocking 2 of them, the next quest triggered an endless looping dialogue that I just couldn't seem to get out of. I reloaded old saves, completed other related quests in order to alter the quest path and, out of sheer desperation, physically attempted to beat a solution out of the Far Harbor residents. None of which worked.

So I parked it and came back to it on a brand new save once I'd completed every other DLC pack and also the main list for the Platinum trophy. In reality, this was around 10-12 hour experience, but this glitch would have extended this by another 3-4 hours. It was a very apt to way to wrap up another complete (and buggy) Fallout experience.

Platinum #108 - Fallout 4

 Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

"War Never Changes" - And neither do Fallout trophy lists, it seems.

It's been a long time since a Fallout Platinum trophy featured here - The last one was Fallout : New Vegas at Platinum #42 almost 10 years back in July 2012.

That's a long time for things to change, but the Fallout formula has mostly stayed the same in practically every single aspect.

Fallout 4 takes place post-Fallout 3 to the tune of around 10 years, set in a place called the Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic setting considered to be "retro-futuristic".

The game begins during a period of time just before the Commonwealth is reduced to a post-apocalyptic, danger-inhabited wasteland, where your character is living with their family in a completely harmonious setting. A knock at the door eventually sees you being led into Vault 111 amidst the warnings of an incoming Nuclear bomb, and whilst inside Vault 111, you and your family are sheltered within cryogenic pods.

Shortly after this occurs, your son is kidnapped by an unknown party from within the Vault, and your partner is killed in their attempts to prevent this, but confinement to the cryogenic pods make you helpless to prevent this situation and you suddenly awaken 60 years later after your body is preserved in ice.

Upon awakening from this, the end-goal is clear - To find your son and the reasons behind his kidnap. Naturally, I won't go beyond the basic plot, but you'll be unleashed into an open world full of perils, exploration, companions and differing factions you'll have to make critical decisions with or against - Just to emphasise the continuation of the similarities to previous Fallout games.

The trophy list is large in size, clocking in at 51 trophies in total, including the Platinum trophy, and just like many of the elements within the game, doesn't stray too far from the standard when it comes to trophy requirements in comparison to the previous 2 Fallout games.

That's not to say there isn't anything different, and the things that are different are actually some of the things that end up being more relevant when discussing overall difficulty, but you can still expect to mostly see a very questline-driven, naturally progressive list focused around beating various quests for the different factions you'll encounter and fulfilling metric-based objectives around killing a certain amount of creatures, hacking a certain amount of terminals and picking a certain amount of locks, amongst other examples - but things you've seen accounted for before if you already have experience with Fallout titles.

The "Prepared for the Future" trophy, awarded for Deciding the Fate of the Commonwealth, concludes the story, which is generally a fairly casual experience. Unlike the "Hardcore" run in Fallout : New Vegas, there aren't any trophies dedicated to difficulty here, and despite choosing Hard, I never once felt like I couldn't beat any specific segment of the game. The first encounter with a Mirelurk Queen at the Castle was a little bit hairy, but aside from that, it was all mostly downhill.

No matter which path you choose to take as you go through the story, and which factions you decide to fight with and against, the conclusion will always present you with this trophy. However, there is a particular fork in the road where you'll have to make a save to return to later in order to ensure you take the alternative path to the end of the game. Save game trickery is not a new concept for Fallout games, and has existed in every single one, but it has previously been more complicated than it is here. On this occasion, all you need to do is reach a certain point near the end, make a save to go on and complete the game, unlocking this trophy, and then just reload and take the alternate path to finish up the other quests you were locked out of first time round.

Fallout : New Vegas had 4 separate endings, all of which required the player to go back to a certain point and make a different decision, so Fallout 4 is nowhere near as laborious, with the requirement of only having to go through one other path.

I count exactly 23 trophies which are either related to specific quests within the main storyline, or certain progression-related points where you side with a faction, which is almost half of the entire list, and when you also take into account you'll obtain much more of this list as you go through to pursue the end-game, you should have a largely complete list by the time you conclude the main story.

The rest of the list includes the previously aforementioned metric-based trophies, for hacking a certain number of terminals, picking a certain number of locks and killing a certain number of humans, creatures etc. - All of which should come naturally through the various environments you'll grace as part of the questline. Collectibles also make a return through Bobble-heads and magazines, which may require some recreational exploration, and all of the above are very familiar returning trophy requirements.

However, I did have to take advantage of the DLC in order to reach the required milestones for some of these trophies, as well as the "Legend Of The Wastes" trophy, awarded for reaching Level 50 - That's not to say the content isn't there to achieve it, but it made more sense from an efficiency point of view to use the DLC trophies in order to make progress towards level 50, rather than the side-content away from the trophy list that wouldn't earn me any progression towards trophies. This is the main reason the DLC lists have ended up coming through prior to the Platinum.

The "Benevolent Leader" trophy, awarded for Reaching Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement, is where the game starts to become a little less straight-forward.

I did mention above that there are elements to this list that focus on some of the new features within Fallout 4, and that they end up being the more relevant aspects to this list when we discuss overall difficulty. This is especially true of the new settlements feature, which graces a Fallout game for the first (and hopefully last) time. 

Just briefly, for background purposes, settlement mode allows you to build thriving settlements, recruiting people to live within, work for and protect these communities as you watch them grow and prosper. Think The Sims. Just purely from a personal point of view, I think it's boring and pointless, but unfortunately, some effort is required to indulge in the mode for the sake of the Platinum trophy, so here we are.

The first important thing to note is that the trophy description is actually wrong - You don't need to fulfil this objective within a large settlement, the confusion to which ends up costing me a significant amount of time here. I chose Sanctuary Hills, which is the starting settlement, due to it's size, and the fact I already had it populated with 10 people at 83% happiness, so it seemed logical, at the end of the game, to choose this settlement to work on for this trophy.

There are key aspects of a settlement that need to be fulfilled in order to create happiness growth. Things such as ensuring that there is enough food being grown, the water supply is ample and defensive units are in great enough abundance to provide a safe environment, but the issue with this trophy is, there doesn't seem to be much consistency in what actually works, despite it being quite clear what you need to achieve 100% happiness.

I carried on recruiting new people within Sanctuary Hills, to the point where there were 31 people present, with enough food, water and defensive units to keep them appeased. I was also assigning every settler a job to work on (which is also defined in most guides to increase happiness effectively), and yet, this was fine up to the point where I reached around 94% happiness, and then suddenly started to regress, fluctuating between 89% and 94% without any real logical explanation as to why or how - I didn't change my methodology. Every new settler I recruited was given a job, usually at a clinic, and I also made sure there was enough food, water, beds and defence relative to the amount of settlers present. The fact my progress towards this trophy not only halted, but actually started regressing was something I just couldn't figure out.

I came to a stalemate on this method when I discovered that you can only recruit a maximum number of settlers based on your total Charisma +10, so 31 was my highest available, and I didn't know where to go from there other than to look at other options. By this point, I had spent around an additional 8-10 hours to effectively just go backwards.

It was at this point I discovered you didn't actually need to work on this trophy on a large settlement, much to my frustration at the time, because the trophy is very explicit in it's instruction that you need to fulfil this obligation using a large settlement, which was the reason I stuck with Sanctuary Hills to begin with.

I moved across to a smaller settlement, using a method where you can build dog cages, release the tamed animals into the settlement, build a robot and, apparently, you get 100% happiness instantly because a robot does not require food or water, so this is not factored into the happiness rating. 

Sort of, but not quite. I did get to 80% instantly, and this trended upwards at a solid rate of around 3-4% every couple of minutes. It looked like I was onto a winner and then it hit 95% happiness and halted. I had to improvise, and build a clinic to assign the robot to work on that with the understanding from my previous settlement that this could kick the happiness meter back into life, which it did. It took a while to move from 95% up to 100%, as it had stopped increasing by large increments by this point, and every percentage was being earned over a 20 minute period, so it still took a few hours, but it was a relief to finally get there and complete this list.

This seems like alot to mention for a list that practically boils down to 2 trophies, and this was actually a relatively simple adventure right up until the final hurdle. Naturally progressing through the main story questline will net you a large portion of this list, and you'll seldom have to stray from this path to unlock everything else that falls outside the questline. 

However, even though settlements aren't tough to understand on paper, the logic surrounding them throws you into a world of trial and error that ended up consuming my time and effort without any reasonable reward aside the final trophy required for Platinum.

Speaking of time, it's hard for me place an estimate on the Platinum trophy alone, mainly down to the fact that I used the DLC in order to pursue other trophies within the main list, including reaching level 50. My save file clocks it around around 120 hours, but with the consideration of all DLC included within this timeframe, it makes it hard to pinpoint a time range for Platinum completion alone. It's possibly somewhere within the 50-60 hour range, though it is also important to note I did often stray away to also complete side content unrelated to trophies along the way, and does also include replaying the final portion of the game for the potentially missable trophies.

Does it do enough to at least sit on par with the previous Fallout games? It's honestly hard to say. It's been so long since I played a Fallout title, I've actually forgotten, so this makes comparisons harder to draw conclusions from. It doesn't have a requirement to complete the game in any variation of "Hardcore" mode like New Vegas did, and overall, there isn't much here that's actually that challenging from a gameplay perspective, but it is lengthy and the trials and tribulations of the settlement feature was the cherry on top. Except the cherry was actually a raw onion, and not a cherry.

Notable Trophies -

Prepared for the Future - Decide the Fate of the Commonwealth
Benevolent Leader - Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement

Hardest Trophy -

Benevolent Leader                                                                                           Reach Maximum Happiness in a Large Settlement

DLC #150 - Fallout 4 - Contraptions Workshop

After the tribulations surrounding the Wasteland Workshop DLC, I was more hopeful of better fortunes for what is sort of, but not quite, the final piece of DLC within Fallout 4.

Contraptions Workshop, just like Wasteland Workshop, focuses again on the creation element of Fallout, and adds a host of new objects to build in order to unleash upon your settlements.

This package also adds 3 new trophies, which are thankfully both much easier to achieve, and less strenuous on the scavenger hunting necessary for the Wasteland Workshop content.

The focus is still based around building some of these new contraptions you'll have at your disposal as part of this package, but the big difference here is that you won't require anywhere near the level of raw resources to build what you'll need in order to achieve all 3 trophies and complete this list. 

They're also way less glitchy. I didn't have a single issue making any of these trophies pop, in comparison to the trial and error nature of Wasteland Workshop, which, in turn, led to a much swifter completion.

You'll need to build a Weapon, Armor and Power Armor rack - as well as displaying one relevant item on each for 1 trophy, as well as building a Pillory and assigning a settler to it for another - both of which required resources I mostly had, but even a short trip to a trader sorted out the small amount of missing resources I needed.

The final trophy just requires you to produce 100 objects from a builder - A device which can be loaded with raw materials to make certain objects, which can then in turn be recycled through the builder, which is perfect for creating the 100 objects necessary for the trophy.

I would estimate this took me around 45 minutes. A very welcome change of pace to finish off this Fallout 4 DLC set. I do still have some unfinished business in the form of Far Harbor, to go back and grab a glitched trophy, but that will formally seal things off.

DLC #149 - Fallout 4 - Wasteland Workshop

*Sigh*

"Up to 15 Minutes" for completion time in the particular guide I read.

I did come with the understanding that this wasn't technically the reality, based on the fact that this was under the assumption you had already acquired every material necessary to craft the items pertaining to the Wasteland Workshop - and merely needed to build them.

However, I didn't anticipate running into a package full of some traditional glitchy Fallout goodness, which stacked the hours on top.

Before I jump the gun any further, this piece of DLC focuses on some of the new contraptions introduced as part of the Wasteland Workshop, along with 3 new trophies, which take a specifically closer look at animal cages and arena fighting.

There are a couple of prerequisites to note.

Firstly, you will require a pretty hefty shopping list of items in order to build all of the contraptions that correlate to the 3 trophies on offer. These will mostly be for the 15 different types of animal cages you will need to build, and will require you to possess some unusual meats, such as Yao Guai, Stingwing and Radstag meat, which is both hard to farm in the natural wasteland and to buy from traders due it's rarity. Mirelurk Eggs and Nuclear Material can also be a pain to find, but this part of the process is the most time consuming element of this package. You may have alot of these materials already from playing through the game, but as someone who doesn't like to horde junk, and not being that aware of how useful it would come to be, I needed alot of resources, which costs both time and money.

Secondly, you'll need to have invested your skill points into 2 specific skills within the Charisma skill ladder - Animal Friend at level 5 and Wasteland Whisperer all the way down at level 9 - in order to build some of the objects you'll need to tame these creatures. If you don't have them, you'll need to reset your characters statistics and re-distribute accordingly.

The process of collecting all the resources I needed took me around 3-4 hours, due to the aforementioned fact that I never saw the benefit of hoarding junk up until now, and therefore had to spend the time acquiring this vast list of items, so I'd spent this amount of time already without technically getting going. Fun start.

But it's only 3 trophies, and I'd read "15 minutes" so at least we were almost done...

Except we weren't, and whilst the 3 trophies on offer don't really "stand out" per their requirements being complicated, time-consuming or any other form of challenge any given trophy could take the form of - They were just terribly glitchy and problematic in the same way that Fallout games always seem to be.

You get the first trophy for having 5 tamed creatures in a settlement. No problem. Just build any animal cage, power it up with a generator, build an emitter which tames the creature (this is the object you need the special perks for, to be able to build), and the cage will spawn a tamed creature every 3-4 times you sleep for 12 hours.

This went to plan, until my settlers started randomly attacking my tamed creatures, which is detrimental to progress given the fact you have to have 5 creatures tamed simultaneously, and not in total, and every time you need to breed a new tamed creature from the animal cage, you have to "repair" it, which means sourcing more meat from a specific animal which I had already done in preparation for a later trophy. So I was suddenly scavenger hunting again.

Anyway, repeat the process, and then find out that different species of tamed animals will also attack each other, whilst continuing to be attacked by settlers whose natural reaction to this is to also get involved, and all of a sudden, we're back at square one again. There's no way to control which type of creature comes out of an animal cage. I used the Insect cage for this trophy, and ended up spawning Radroach, Bloatfly and Stingwing - Not a good combination apparently.

I eventually stocked up on Mole Rat Meat and went through a constant loop of just pumping out tamed creatures and hoping something stuck, which did eventually get me the trophy at the expense of another 1-2 hours of my time. "15 minutes" it said.

Moving on though, there's also a trophy awarded for starting a spectated arena fight in a settlement, another trophy with simple face value requirements, which also turned out to be anything but.

You can create 2 podiums (red and blue), assign 2 settlers to these podiums, and they will then ensue a fight to the death, which should in turn trigger the trophy. No problem.

Except, after carrying this task out on a settlement so often to the point that there wasn't physically anybody left to fight each other anymore, and still not seeing the trophy pop, I find out that some theories suggest you also need to build a Clocking-off Siren, which, when triggered, summons settlers to the arena area in order to spectate the fight, which is apparently a critical trophy trigger.

So, we reloaded, in order to regain our decimated settlement, and tried this out. Build the podiums. Again. Assign the settlers. Again (which is also glitchy as fuck, because they always run into invisible obstacles or just refuse to move). This time though, we then build this Clocking-off Siren, power it up and activate it and then watch the fight. And nothing happens. Just another dead settler and no trophy.

I then read up and find out that it is possible there are more triggers to this trophy, and large parts of the difficulties faced here are around the general cloudiness of what works vs what doesn't matter, and that you need to make sure the combatants don't see each other before they fight (which usually triggers a premature shootout), AND there needs to be an official spectator to the witness the fight. So I have to build an actual arena that has enclosures to ensure both fighters can't see each other when assigned to the podium and prior to the Siren being sounded (which summons the crowd). There also has to be adequate seating made available, which is populated by other settlers when the Siren goes off.

So I end up building, not exactly an elaborate arena, but something more extensive than I expected was necessary, to only then find out other stuff would occur that just didn't make sense. Settlers would stray from their assigned podium, settlers wouldn't seat themselves and react to the Siren properly and they would still somehow start shooting prematurely, even behind metal walls. The inconsistencies were rife and I was yet another 1-2 hours deep tackling what I now believed was a deliberate mindfuck and that this was the underlying challenge.

I did eventually discover that, it was easier to summon the settlers to watch FIRST, and then assign anybody who wasn't sat down to fight. Even though this still triggered a premature fight, I think they fact that some settlers were seated and started cheering when they saw the fighting was the trigger for the trophy, but I never actually read that method anywhere and merely drew my own conclusions - but at least it worked.

The final trophy just requires you to build one of every type of cage, of which there are 15 and this is where all those resources gathered are needed. This one was actually quick and didn't spring any unwanted surprises, so at least we finished up on a positive note, albeit around 8 hours into a package that absolutely shouldn't have taken anywhere near that long.

This led to pure inconvenience in the end, and even though I was never a big fan of the Workshop element of this game before, this package actually gave me reasons to actively dislike it. However, it gets us one step closer to an end that I'm glad is finally in sight.