Persona 5 | Insomniac Nightmares

The hunt continues. It’s endless, really. A constant war against the unachieved, the uncounted, the rare beasties hiding in the already-too-long list of games I’ve played.

I’ve been told it’s pointless, that I should give up… but I can’t. It may be unhealthy, but a significant portion of my pride and joy is wrapped up in earning these little meaningless shinies, and damnit, I’m going to keep doing it.

This last week has been slow, but somewhat fruitful. Persona 5 will fall before my blade. I’d already done the Royal reissue, and had come back to clean up the regular version, but for a while it was touch and go. One trophy, “Passionate Listener” required me to hear 250 lines of dialogue from one particular party member. The problem is, a lot of those lines basically come from getting your ass kicked, and given that I’ve played and finished all the Personas – and a few other Shin Megami Tensei games as well – I kind of already know how it works. My experience with Royal only taught me more about this specific entry.

I had reached the last boss, the final chance to earn Passionate Listener, and did not yet have it. Most enemies had been steamrolled, and by the time I realized I needed to lose a bit more, to suffer from ailments, to deliberately cast ineffective spells, I was already so overpowered that most enemies ran from me and those that were left died too quickly.

Then it happened. The final boss hit me with a status effect. Then another. And another. The whole party was incapacitated. The talkative one went nuts, reeling off line after line of how so-and-so was out of it, their defense was lowered, they couldn’t hit anything. Grinning, I swapped out some members, and let it happen again. And again.

The ding as the trophy popped just as my last member recovered automatically from the bad status was more satisfying than unloading all the skills I’d been holding back on his stupid face and blowing a Godzilla sized hole in his skull. If you’ve finished either version of Persona 5, you know.

So the plat is going to happen. I just have to start New Game+, work my way through the first month of the game, fuse the ultimate Persona and kick the hell out of the optional boss. I’m not stressing any of that. Just dreading the three hours it’ll take to get there (which is funny, since between the two versions I’ve already put 200+ hours into Persona 5. Another 3 is really just a drop in the pool.) After that, a fresh shiny platinum will be mine.

Other games being worked on are Death Mark, which is a breeze that I just need to sit down and do; I’ve already beaten it on Vita, and am only playing the PS4 version for the additional case. It’s realistically just an hour of two of fast forward, followed by another hour or so to solve the bonus case, but between Persona, the heat, and general malaise I just haven’t done it yet.

Also on the blotter is Assassin’s Creed III, in my quest to finish all of the extant games before Valhalla drops. Haven’t gotten far, but it’s nothing special. There’s also Kawaii Deathu Desu, which is a very bizarre little offering. Basically, Death and several other monsters have decided they want to be Japanese idols. The problem? Legions of rabid fans trying to interrupt their concerts! The solution? Slay them and collect their souls, of course! It’s fast, it’s mindless, and it’s fun. The trophies are a little glitchy, but rebooting seems to fix it every time, so no worries there… and it makes for a nice palate cleanser after the slog and seriousness of most of my library the last couple of weeks.

What about all of you? What are you playing, what trophies have you earned that give you pride and fulfillment, which ones are torturing you to no end? Let us know down below!

Trophy hunting is still a thing, despite not having had any updates in a while. I managed to pull to level 52 on PSN, for whatever that may be worth.

Since it would be excessive, and probably almost impossible to sort out, listing everything since the last one of these updates isn’t going to be the idea; instead you get a quick peek at what I’m currently working on. There’s four games I want to touch on today.

First up, Persona 5. Yes, it’s old. Yes, I recently coaxed the platinum from its upgraded cousin, Persona 5 Royal. But given that it’s been sitting on my shelf since release – it was picked up shortly before moving, and got lost in the shuffle – I figured I might as well go back and finish this one. It’s JRPG goodness to the core, with the typical ultra-hard, heavily reliant on weaknesses and stat buffs and debuffs combat that all Shin Megami Tensei games are known for, with an excellent plot and great characters. Well, except for Haru. She still sucks. The trophy list in the original version is a bit more painful than the Royal update, however; the worst offender – and the one I’m most concerned about causing me to miss the Platinum – is to hear 250 of Futaba’s “Navigation” lines.

Basically what that entails is making sure in every combat you try every spell and attack type. Hope you get plenty of crits and reflects. Let your party members get their asses kicked, by suffering criticals and weakness attacks themselves. Let your party members rot with no health. Make sure they miss a few attacks, and let them die a few times. Make sure you try every form of negotiation on most enemy types. Baton pass constantly, swap Joker’s Persona far more often than you need to. It makes combat go from rapid fire win-or-loss affairs into clunky slogs where a spreadsheet can be your friend… and then she repeats lines half the time. Ugh.

The rest of the game is pretty standard; max out your Social Links, fuse all the Personae, beat the game and get the true ending, kill the optional bosses. All doable, and fun enough. But that one Futaba trophy…

Next is sort of a double header; Dragon Quest Heroes, both 1 and 2. They’re made by Omega Force, the folks behind Dynasty Warriors and its eight million spinoffs, which means they should be right up my alley. It’s not.

The first game is far worse than the second, but combat is slow and clunky, with frequent enemies who have 10k+ HP – while you do an average of 100 damage per swing, if you’re lucky. The boss monsters are even worse, and the “optional” veteran bosses are in the hundreds of thousands of HP with plenty of one-hit kills… and they’re all required for the Platinum. But that’s not the worst of it.

The Puff-Puffs. Oooooh, the Puff-Puffs. See, after a battle, there’s a chance your party members will give you a Puff-Puff. What precisely that entails varies by the character, but it’s totally random if you get one or not. It’s also random which character will give you one. The possibility of it happening is extremely low. I had 1 by the time the main story was done. There are twelve party members. As I write this, with hundreds of missions and repeats under my belt, I’m still only to 10/12. I hate RNG trophies, and I especially hate ones that have low rates of success. This one layers both of those multiple times.

Then there’s the enemies and their crowd control. Almost every enemy can stun you. Most of them have sweeping attacks that fling you into the air, or freeze you, or put you to sleep. This means you spend a significant amount of time mashing the dodge button and crossing your fingers, or sitting there twiddling your thumbs while enemies beat the everloving crap out of you and you can do nothing about it. At all. Awesome.

DQH2 is better in a lot of respects – combat is faster, more akin to a standard Musou game, fewer crowd controlling enemies, a nice almost open world design – but the trophy list still includes the Puff-Puffs and an almost ridiculous amount of grinding. We’ll see if I can endure it.

Lastly is Spirit Hunter: Death Mark. Now, yes, I did already do that one on Vita, and normally I object to stacking. But the PS4 version includes an additional case, and damnit, I love the game. I want to see everything it has to offer. So thanks to the wonders of GameFly, I’m doing it again, with the new ghost to fight.

Final opinions? Persona 5, if you haven’t already played it, is wonderful… just be wary of keeping Futaba happy. I’d recommend skipping it in favor of the Royal version, though. Dragon Quest Heroes? Don’t even start it. The sequel? More fun, but expect a hundred hours of grinding if you open that door. Death Mark? Even if you don’t normally like VNs or adventure games, I heartily recommend it – and its sequel, NG, though Death Mark is still the better of the two in my opinion.

Until next week, folks, happy hunting!