Platinum Difficulty Rating

[superpj]

Originally Posted by PDJ2K

Dang, I voted a 9, but meant to vote a 10. Reason is simple: 900 battles trophies for one silver. Each of those battle trophies could be a normal trophy in an easy game like Up. And some of the battle trophies can be compared to gold trophies of hard games. So yea....

I agree totally, for example there's a missable BT that requires you to defeat nearly every type of ennemy from the beginning to the end with Faize (if not, you have to restart from scratch). This could easily be a silver or gold trophy in any game, but in Star Ocean it's just 1 of 900 BTs you need to get a silver trophy I would rate this game 11 if I could hehe

[Ranemoraken]

Well...it doesn't really matter how many Bt's are easy to get - even if there's only one super hard BT, that alone would shoot this up to a ten - because we're rating on how hard is it to get a platinum.

There will only be a handful of people who will ever get this, and that deserves a 10 in my mind. I'll reserve voting until later.

[kwokovich]

Voted 10, to get all the battle trophies takes alot of time and I respect anyone that does this

[Aidan]

Voted 9. It's extremely time consuming, and some of the bosses can be pretty damn difficult without the correct precautions or internet browsing. Finding all chests is ridiculous without a guide, and pretty much everything else is as well.

Some BTs are difficult and require multiple playthroughs. Some require formula and other advanced preparation. All in all, not a 10 due to the fact anyone could do this if he or she were given enough time, but regardless, the time it does consume can make this task tedious and difficult.

[osubuckeye420]

I give it a 10. Not because it's impossible (like holding all belts online at once in Fight Night), but just for the amount of time and prep it would take to get a platinum. It makes other time consuming games look easy.


Battle trophies are so incredibly random with things like "hit for x amount of damage".

Good luck to anyone who can put up with the game for the hundreds of hours it would take to get the platinum.

[squodge]

Everyone's voting 9 and 10. Is this really a difficult game?

If it were somehow possible to get plat in, say, 25 hours (and the game was still just as difficult), would people still vote 9 and 10? Is the difficulty really as tough as, say, Beat Zico on wipEout HD, or the speedruns in Mirror's Edge, or Late Boomer in Super Stardust.

In other words, if you just play the game (maybe with guides), would it really be a 9 and 10? Or are people voting because it's going to take a few hundred hours?

[superpj]

@squodge : personaly I have 100% on Wipeout, SuperStardust, SF4 & Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. But for me Star Ocean is a tougher plat. NGS2, Stardust or SF4, are hard games, but a very talented player can plat these games pretty quickly. On the other and no matter how good you are, you need to spend 400+ hours on Star Ocean. This game is extremely frustrating. Most of the trophies are missable, timeconsuming, and the game is extremely hard (for me near impossible) to plat without a guide because you need to know exactly what to do if you don't want to restart from scratch X times (missable chests, missable quests, missable BTs, synth the right stuff to deal exctly XXX damage or heal exactly XXX hp, beat EQ or GC on their 1st/2nd form to do it under 10min, play with Faize as soon as you get him to kill 130+ kinds of ennemies, etc.). Many of the battle trophies are really vicious and need a roadmap, more than any ther game I've played so far.

So yes it's more timeconsuming than purely difficult, but you have such an amazing number of things to do that once you try to plat it you'll realize it's serious

[squodge]

Originally Posted by superpj

@squodge : personaly I have 100% on Wipeout, SuperStardust, SF4 & Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. But for me Star Ocean is a tougher plat. NGS2, Stardust or SF4, are hard games, but a very talented player can plat these games pretty quickly. On the other and no matter how good you are, you need to spend 400+ hours on Star Ocean. This game is extremely frustrating. Most of the trophies are missable, timeconsuming, and the game is extremely hard (for me near impossible) to plat without a guide because you need to know exactly what to do if you don't want to restart from scratch X times (missable chests, missable quests, missable BTs, synth the right stuff to deal exctly XXX damage or heal exactly XXX hp, beat EQ or GC on their 1st/2nd form to do it under 10min, play with Faize as soon as you get him to kill 130+ kinds of ennemies, etc.). Many of the battle trophies are really vicious and need a roadmap, more than any ther game I've played so far.

So yes it's more timeconsuming than purely difficult, but you have such an amazing number of things to do that once you try to plat it you'll realize it's serious

The reason why I asked was because I'm considering an RPG to add to my collection. I'm not one to really stick to any genre, and I want to give RPGs a chance.

I guess what I was most interested in was whether it was possible to play through the game without a guide (so I could at least enjoy it first), and mop up trophies afterwards (which is how I tend to play games). I did that with all the games that I have platinum, particularly Rock Band 2, which I just chipped away at in the course of three months.

But by the sounds of it, this game is bloody hard (or at least the trophy set is) because of the ridiculous things you have to do, plus the sheer number of missables.

I'm not too bothered about time consuming, particularly as I'm one of those sods who had no issues with Bladder of Steel in RB2 (I even did the Endless Setlist twice, and would have no qualms doing it a third time if that meant another gold trophy lol). The main things that bother me are missable trophies (if I don't use a guide, which means spoilers grrr) and online trophies (Guitar Hero can fuck off and die). I have no problems with grinding, or trophies that require a ton of skill (e.g. Beat Zico, which I don't have - but at least I can only blame myself and not the AI or ' bad luck').

EDIT: Can you (or anyone else who's played other RPGs on the PS3) recommend an RPG for an RPG noob like me? I used to play Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (the actual board/book/dice game) when I was younger, must have played it for about 5-6 years, so I'm not a true RPG virgin. Just that I've not played a computerised version.

[superpj]

Yes you can beat it without a guide. The game itself is pretty easy if you play on Earth (easy) or Galaxy (normal) mode. Personaly I love Star Ocean but you should read our critics before you buy it :
What do you like/dislike in this game ?

It's an old-school RPG, if you need something more modern or that looks more like Dungeons & Dragons, try White Night Chronicles.

[starcrunch061]

Originally Posted by squodge

I'm not too bothered about time consuming, particularly as I'm one of those sods who had no issues with Bladder of Steel in RB2 (I even did the Endless Setlist twice, and would have no qualms doing it a third time if that meant another gold trophy lol). The main things that bother me are missable trophies (if I don't use a guide, which means spoilers grrr) and online trophies (Guitar Hero can fuck off and die). I have no problems with grinding, or trophies that require a ton of skill (e.g. Beat Zico, which I don't have - but at least I can only blame myself and not the AI or ' bad luck').

We're talking about a different world of time-consuming.

As a fellow RB2 platter who also sat and played the endless setlist, alone), it's completely different. Forget missable trophies, as you have to play the game at least 3 times through. Forget the difficult battle trophies, like killing the Ethereal Queen with Lymle in 10 minutes. When you are killing 30000 enemies with a character to get one of 900 necessary battle trophies, you'll know pain. When you realize you have to do it with ANOTHER character, you'll realize the difference.

The sad thing is, I don't even think this grinding is as bad as the grinding in "White Knight Chronicles". I couldn't finish "Cross Edge," but you can ask Aidan about the pain of that one.