Earning every achievement in a video game is a very specific type of dopamine hit. This is even truer on PlayStation when there's a Platinum trophy at stake. For some players, this feat is reserved for only the games they love and enjoy the most, a rite that needs to be earned from both player and game.
Many like me, however, simply enjoy this process no matter the game; Shovel-ware, licensed, 100-hour RPG, party, fighting, online multiplayer—you name it. I've gotten better at picking and choosing when it's only Xbox achievements to collect, but Platinum trophies call to me even when I detest the game.
It's a problem I need to shake, and never do.
The offending title that's been driving me up the wall this time is Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom, a game that received positive attention at release, but some players (such as myself) always felt it was completely sanded of the personality of the last game. Ni No Kuni: Wrath Of The White Witch is a stellar game, one with a demanding Platinum trophy that I was overjoyed to earn.
Revenant Kingdom bored me from hour one, and its Platinum wasn't worthy of an emotional response from me. I was, however, driven to anger by trying to earn the trophies for the DLC. My problem is severe enough that I found myself buying DLC for a game I didn't even enjoy, and now I'm paying for it by being constantly stonewalled by the Solosseum Slog.
All I need to do is finish the 30 rounds of the Solosseum at S-rank, but the game does a very poor job of preparing you for the specific way it wants you to beat the challenges (poor explanation of combat was also a problem with the main game), throws a damn timer at you that you have to beat to earn the S-ranks, and even worse, has completely awful drop rates that mean you will more than likely not earn good enough gear to finish later challenges.
Those drop rates are so bad that advice I found online said to instead farm for equipment in the previous DLC, even though that DLC features monsters at a lower maximum level cap. The drop rate is just that bad; you're better off not going for the best, because you'll be there far too long. Alongside how to spam the best spells, there was only one other piece of advice I saw repeated: Don't buy the DLC.
It's a nicer reaction than you see for trophy enthusiasts, frankly, as my addiction to earning every trophy is usually fully encouraged. Who cares if the game sucks? You earned a trophy, so you have to keep going until you get them all. I recognize I have an obsession, but seeing other people talk about actually finishing games makes me wish PlayStation and Xbox would let you delete achievements from your history. Let them erase a mistake you've yet to commit.
A big reason I just can't stop does have to do with how trophies work over achievements, as while it's easier to say "Well, it added to my gamerscore, good enough," PlayStation trophies just don't feel finished until each one is added. The progression bar stares back at me like the void it is.
And when it comes to games I don't even like, I end up repeating this feeling of "Once it's over, I never have to play the game again," as if I somehow owe the game the benefit of the doubt or that I might miss the one part I'll like. This part of me is bad enough that it won't matter the platform, but those juicy Platinums are easily the most common offenders.
When it comes to a game I already have Platinum in, and I'm just finishing the final gauntlet of a poorly implemented slog, why am I still having this fake conversation between myself and the game? I know it's crap, and I know the game won't ever win me over. I know I'm wasting the only time I've been granted. And yet here I am all over again.
Recently, while working on this very article, I finally bought a PlayStation 5. I selected which game saves to carry over and was so tempted to leave Revenant Kingdoms behind. "Oh, whoops! Look at that! I forgot. Guess I won't finish it now!" Smartest thing I didn't end up doing. There were games I loved on PS4 whose saves remained on PS4, but I had to keep this horrific trophy run alive.
Because I always go back. I have a short list of games in which "I'll never earn all the trophies," and that list gets shorter every year. I always change my mind about at least one of the games on it. Sometimes, it's even worth it.
Getting Platinum in games I enjoy is a wonderful thing, but I wish I could only stick to the good ones.