Platinum Trophies Wrap-Up – January 2023

I have become quite the trophy hunter over the past couple of years while I wasn’t updating The Hannie Corner. While I’m sure I will write about why I am willing to put myself through pain in order to complete games to 100%, for now, I thought I would update everyone on the Platinum trophies that I earned throughout the month of January, as well as give a quick rating as to how difficult I thought the platinum was, and whether I would recommend going for it.

Overall, January was a good month in terms of Platinums. I hit another milestone with my thirtieth platinum, and finished a few games that I really enjoy. While I didn’t get any super difficult Platinum trophies this month, I am setting up a few more difficult titles that I intend to get to throughout the year.

TOEM

TOEM is a short and sweet puzzle adventure featuring a camera. The protagonist goes from place to place across this adorable black-and-white world with a camera, taking pictures of items throughout the map in order to complete quests and solve puzzles. None of the puzzles were particularly difficult, making this a very casual puzzle game, but some solutions were kind of clever or interesting in some way. Since it isn’t very long, I would recommend playing as much as possible in a single sitting, as that makes it easier to remember where objects are for solving the trickier puzzles or remembering where an NPC is for specific trophies.

TOEM doesn’t overstay its welcome and the platinum took very little effort beyond just beating the game, so it was easy to go back and wrap up the remaining missed trophies at the end. My main recommendation to make cleanup as easy as possible is to take photos of everything along the way, not just what is necessary for solving specific quests. I don’t think this took me any more than three hours even with some cleanup, though, and I had a really fun time playing this. I’m glad this started off my year.

Total Trophy Difficulty: 1/10

Would I Recommend Completion: Absolutely!

Cat Quest II

I loved the first Cat Quest so much that I’ve actually beaten it a few times across multiple consoles and earned the platinum trophy on it. This meant that it was only a matter of time before I played the sequel, though it did take me a while. Overall, I enjoyed this light action RPG filled with puns and jokes, but I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as the first entry. I’m sure the move to optional co-op was great for families, but as someone who primarily plays RPGs solo, I didn’t enjoy having an AI companion. Sometimes, the AI would get in the way and frustrate me, and other times, my companion made the game laughably easy.

As far as the Platinum is concerned, it’s a fairly standard trophy list. Complete all of the side quests, do all of the dungeons, and collect all of the equipment scattered throughout the world. Cat Quest II, like its predecessor, plays like baby’s first Diablo (which I mean as a compliment, not an insult), so nothing on this list is going to be enormously challenging to the average player. As long as the player learns the correct timing for dodges and which spells are overpowered, all challenges are beatable without too much trouble, though this game will throw a few curveballs in along the way with some of the endgame superbosses that caused me to actually need to think and strategize.

My only complaint is that towards the end, hunting down those final treasure chests and remaining dungeons I hadn’t done was a bit of a chore, and nothing on the UI did much to help me. I found my final collectibles by rapidly moving my camera all around the map trying to figure out what I had missed. It would have been nice to have a slightly easier time trying to figure out where to go next to wrap those trophies up, as it caused some unnecessary extra game time. Overall, though, I had a good time and I really hope there is a Cat Quest III!

Total Trophy Difficulty: 3/10

Would I Recommend Completion: Yes, as long as you’re okay with a grind

God of War (2018)

I love God of War, as can be seen in my video game rankings from 2022. Since every tenth platinum shows up permanently on the sidebar in PSN Profiles, I try to make those trophies something that really matters to me. My tenth was Final Fantasy XII, my twentieth was Hades, and now, this is my thirtieth. God of War is a beautiful game that is likely to remain in my memory for years to come, with characters that I feel attached to and a story filled to the brim with emotion and charm. This is an experience that I believe all gamers should try at least once, which is why it hurts to write the rest of this entry.

I absolutely hated every second of getting the Platinum for this game. Nothing about this trophy was a fun journey after the credits rolled. I had to hunt down every one of Odin’s ravens, a collectible that caused me to have to wander aimlessly around every area of the game in order to figure out which ravens I was missing. I also had to find all of the treasure map rewards and artifact spots, similarly frustrating adventures that caused hours and hours of backtracking.

It turns out that movement isn’t very fun in God of War after the end of the game. All of those really long elevators, slow cutscenes where Kratos lifts a boulder for Atreus to slip through, and methodical wall-climbing segments that were ordinarily used to add tension or create cute character moments between the two leads? Well, it turns out that in order to traverse the world post-game, I still have to put up with all of those slow moments, but without any of the dialogue to pass the time. I must have spent hours on my phone by the time I wrapped this Platinum up, waiting on elevators to finish moving me to where I needed to be, which is not a fun way to spend a gaming night.

Once all the collectibles are found, though, maybe the platinum journey will get easier. Nope! After all of that, I still had to grind through the two optional areas, which are battle arenas of sorts, and spend hours upon hours grinding out the special resources there for upgraded armor and varying trophies. This took me forever and it was not even the slightest bit fun after the initial few runs through each respective arena. The only moderately good side to this is that I had endgame gear after all of this pain, making most of the superbosses an absolute breeze for those trophies.

In fact, the superbosses were the part of the trophy I was warned about going in, but in the end, that was probably the least terrible part of the trophy. I enjoyed most of those fights. Even the hardest one of all of them didn’t take me longer than about 45 minutes to finally figure out how to defeat successfully. Once I finally popped that Platinum, though, I did not feel any joy. I was just relieved it was finally over and I could move on to something else.

Total Trophy Difficulty: 5/10

Would I Recommend Completion: No, play the game until the credits roll, but do not complete this game

That is it for my January platinum trophies! I know this is a pretty strange list of games, but I wanted to make sure I got myself off to a good start in 2023 with some more relaxing platinum trophies. Hopefully my lists contain some more difficult games in the future, but for now, I’m happy with what I have accomplished so far. Eventually, I would like to go back and make a list of all the Platinums I earned throughout my account’s history to this point so I can rate it similarly, but that may take me a bit to compile. In the meantime, I will continue these monthly updates because it is a fun way to track progress.

Did you accomplish anything in gaming this month? Let me know in the comments below!