platinum 50: forspoken

Trophies: 54 (2 gold 7 silver 44 bronze) 
Time to platinum: 66 hours 
Platinum name: Forspoken (very imaginative)
Achievement rate: 3.9%

Okay, it took me longer than I would have liked to lock down that elusive 50th platinum, but it’s finally a done deal - whoop whoop! Originally I was leaning towards Stray, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to sit down and knock out the required two-hour speedrun. Then I shifted my focus to A Plague Tale: Requiem (which I still intend to get at some point), but I just found myself dragging my feet as I tried to mop up the remaining trophies on a second playthrough. In the end, I got the bit in my teeth in regards to Forspoken - in spite of it being a not insubstantial grind - and just knuckled down and started chipping away at it each day.

It’s not a particularly complicated or challenging platinum… like most open world games, it’s simply a time-consuming one. Thankfully you don’t have to 100% *everything* on offer… but you do need to clear 100 points of interest (caves, villages, ruins, locked labyrinths, etc…), complete 50 monuments (out of 54, so you can skip a few of the tricker-to-reach ones), take all 50 photographs, find all 20 Tanta familiars, complete all 20 flashback challenges (no specific tier required), find all 12 founts of blessing, collect every piece of equipment (25 cloaks, 15 necklaces, and 30 nail designs), defeat all 4 abominations, unlock 80% of the archive (which equates to 464 entries), complete all 9 cat chase detours in order to collect the 9 required poppets, travel 100 km using magic parkour (which takes a while, but should come naturally by just playing the game)… and oh yeah, you have to unlock all 105 spells (by accruing mana) and then LEVEL UP all 105 spells by completing the designated challenge for each one (most of which are pretty straightforward, but the last dozen or so… cue the Tina groan from Bob’s Burgers). By the way, make sure to upgrade your assigned cloak and necklace with the available knockdown buffs in order to more easily complete those pesky “downed enemy” spell challenges (like Maelstrom and Firetrap and Seeker Dart Level 3). 

Naturally, certain frustrations cropped up along the way. The “Craftsperson” trophy requires you to craft “two of Frey’s original pieces of equipment”… which means you have to craft the “Unbroken” cloak and the “Home Sweet Hell” necklace by unlocking the sewing kit, which requires you to laboriously acquire 64 old coins by completing puzzle chests. Fine, whatever. But then I discovered you need 6 lucid garlands in order to actually craft both items… and I only had 3. And the only way to get more is to kill the glowing nightmares inside a break storm and pray they happen to drop one (as opposed to some other useless crafting material you already have six dozen of). Good grief. Anyway, here’s a pro tip I found online - go to the Farcoast Terrace storm, but rather than approach it head-on from Crosstide Coast, fast travel to the Nowhere refuge and then backtrack until the storm triggers. Then turn around and head back towards the refuge - you’ll encounter several glowing nightmares along the way, with a much higher rate of lucid garland drops (just make sure to use the Burrow spell to vacuum them up automatically).

Everything else is fairly straightforward… a standard mix of automatic story checkpoints and random challenges (perform five shimmies in a row, perform ten precision counters, use all four types of Tanta magic in a single battle, kill at least three enemies with a single blast of surge magic, etc…). There is one bronze called “Moves,” in which you have to complete all of Pilo’s QTE dance minigames, which seems like a total kindergarten trophy… until you get to the final round and, well - let’s just say if I had to listen to Pilo clap his hands and say “Watch and learn!” in that dweeby voice of his one more time ("Like thees... and THEES"), I might have snapped the controller in half. Otherwise, however, I’d say 90% of the grind was time enjoyably and painlessly spent and, on the whole, this was definitely one of the more satisfying platinums I’ve earned.