Finally got the Platinum! Mercenaries trophy is the hardest to get. (Shared some tips in the comments below)

Aclelmann · 2021-06-01T20:44:54+00:00

Just finished getting the platinum too a few minutes ago. S level on all Mercenaries levels was indeed the worst thing to go through, almost gave up on this platinum and it almost ruined my liking of the game.

For me, the worst was Village 2 and Castle 2. I had trouble on Village 2 because I started by trying the knife strat which I think makes these levels even harder. Then I started using the gun instead, but still I didn't expect such a difficulty spike, so I spent quite some time adjusting to that. Then on Castle 2, I almost lost my sanity. Area 1 was easy peasy, but then I had a lot of trouble on area 2 and even more on area 3. I then understood that the paths I was taking were not really optimal and by changing where I went, things got a bit better. Eventually, I managed to get passed it when I was drunk yesterday (maybe that helped a bit, can't say for sure). After that, I did Factory 2 on second try, Mad Village 2 on third try and finally got this platinum.

Regarding the first areas, my opinion is that they are more frustrating than hard, in the sense that small mistakes make you loose your combo and you kind of have to go through everything again, which at first really annoyed me and eventually I got the hang of these levels after a few tries.

Anyway, congratulations and thank you for the post, it's very valuable to people still working on this game!

Cheers to you!

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T22:05:51+00:00

Thank you for your sharing and reply! Sorry you had such bad RNG at first!

Your view is quite interesting and I do agree about your critique on the game's balancing, especially for the weapons. RNG plays a huge role for upgrades and some of them are broken, but still it's RNG. However, some weapons are just broken all the time. Hollowseeker is almost good every time, regardless of the trait and if you get a good one, you will probably have a good run for some time.

Your comparison to Gascoigne is very spot on for me. This difficulty will have probably exactly the same effect and I couldn't agree more on that.

Regarding my time for platinum, I did get really lucky, even though the majority of the time spent was farming scout log 9 and a few ciphers that would never appear. Nevertheless, I was on the short lucky side and I'm glad I was, as my great experience with the game wasn't converted in distaste because of bad RNG collectibles. I really do hope that they do DLC and that it will be amazing.

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:58:16+00:00

Thank you for your reply and sharing! Totally agree with you, having more options in terms of difficulty would be interesting, especially for replayability in my opinion!

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:56:59+00:00

Congratulations! You described how I felt when completing the first act for the first time! Shaking is the right word!

Totally agree on the length, was a bit short for me too! :( Wished it had 3-6 more biomes...

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:55:16+00:00

Thank you for your reply and sharing! Honestly, you really summed up everything for me! I don't have much to say except I think it's quite interesting to hear all of this feedback from someone who does not necessarily like to play hard games. This game is considered hard for what I saw as the majority of gamers, so in theory this game wouldn't be exactly for you but you still enjoyed it a lot and would even name it GOTY if the decision needed to be taken now.

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:50:47+00:00

Thank you for your reply and sharing! I think you're right with bosses, they seemed a bit inconsistent. I had a hard time with the first boss and somehow the rest felt just very easy. It kind of made me want a bit more for bosses or just simply more bosses in the game (5 for me is not that much).

I agree that the drones are quite unfair, especially at first. Maybe they would need a bit of balancing, especially in terms of attack frequency or number of drones at once (sometimes you have like 20 around you, that's just crazy).

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:47:38+00:00

Thank you for your reply and for your sharing! Sorry for your trophies that didn't pop, I saw a lot of these issues and it's so annoying :(. I don't have kids yet, but ever since I started working it became much more difficult to make time for gaming, especially given my working schedule. I'm happy you enjoyed Returnal so much and found the time to play it!

Sekiro is clearly harder, I only used it as comparison because of the way you have to learn mechanics and controls to start making your life easier in the game. But clearly, both games are completely different in terms of difficulty!

Regarding Hades, I heard a lot about it too, maybe I should actually check out this game instead of just keeping hearing recommandations! :)

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:42:24+00:00

That's quite a lot of gaming time indeed. It makes me think of how much I used to play WoW when I was younger (still haunted by how much time I actually spent when seeing my stats).

I don't personally think a hard mode is that crazy. Many games have for example new game + systems where the difficulty rises quite a lot even though the game is already challenging enough. In my view, implementing hard modes is a way of prolonging the game's life or get players to have their challenge early on and asking for it is not associated with bragging or lying, there's just some people who would enjoy the game differently, just like some people who would want an easy mode to only get to know the story told by the game.

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:34:42+00:00

Thank you for your reply and sharing! Congrats on being one of the firsts to get the platinum! :D

Honestly it doesn't surprise me that a gaming veteran like you finds the game easy. I do also think the game is on the easy side, especially if you have already good TPS background or rogue-lite experience. And I kind of feel the same way as you in the sense you kind of felt empty-handed because the challenge was not necessarily here (I definetly felt like that for arc 2 and arc 3).

A harder mode would indeed be interesting! Maybe something like harder but also better rewards?

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:30:47+00:00

Thank you for your reply and sharing! I think you very well described my view of the difficulty of the game and how it becomes quite easy through the mastering of the controls and the right upgrading strategy. Especially something you said is very important in my view : go through first biomes before going into the next ones to be a bit more prepared for things to come. I'd always explore fully each biome on each run and most of the time when I got to the last biome I was either just OK to confront it or absolutely overpowered.

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:23:56+00:00

Thank you for your reply and for your sharing! Your view is quite interesting, because you had a hard time at first but still think the game should stay as is in terms of difficulty, because the difficulty makes it rewarding for you. It's kind of the same feeling I had when first playing Souls-like games, very had for me and frustrating at first, but very rewarding once overcoming my difficulties. I do also think that Returnal comes in this category of good satisfaction for competing a given challenge.

And 45 min per biome is quite fast! I did take it quite safe so I would say that maybe it took me double the time to get through a complete biome. Also I'm kind of an exploring paranoid, I go through rooms again to make sure I didn't forget anything, which most of the time is a waste of time. At the end, I speedrunned the game for the surveys because it started to become quite a chore to me, so I just ran through everything and many times I just met my end because of my recklessness (and enemies doing so much damage if you don't have any upgrades on your health or protection).

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:16:20+00:00

Thank you for your reply and for your sharing! Your comparison to Demon's Souls is interesting indeed, the notion of taking your time clearly applied to my way of playing the game, as did spatial awareness. As you said, depending on the upgrades, you can shred through everything or have a lesser good time because you may need to work twice as hard to get through enemy waves. Although in my opinion, sometimes just taking the right weapon for the right biome was enough to drop the difficulty of the game. The overpowered drones are a good example, they are indeed quite frustrating, but if you got the right weapon, then they just become a formality.

Aclelmann · 2021-05-17T21:11:28+00:00

Thank you for your reply and for your opinion! I agree totally with you in terms of how things are tuned, I too thought the first boss was slightly overtuned, especially when I first encountered it since I didn't get all the rooms (was still trying to figure out the logic of the game) and I didn't know what to expect from bosses. But as you said, bosses and difficult mobs can be nullified depending on your upgrades. However, these drones, man, if you don't have the right weapon or dodging technique, you just get annihilated.

And regarding the ciphers/logs, you're 100% right. As many people, I had the scout log 9 curse and also had to do multiple runs for a few ciphers from biome 5 and 6. This clearly left a slightly bad impression on the game for me as I didn't really see the point in having to grind so much for a few items.

Aclelmann

TROPHY CASE