We all like a challenge when playing games. That’s the reason most people play them after all, which is why the Trophy system on Sony’s PlayStation consoles is so engaging for so many people. Sure, Microsoft did beat them to the punch with Achievements, but there’s something more satisfying about getting a Platinum Trophy than just a higher number. That digital trophy proves that you mastered the game, conquered all the challenges the developers put before you, and know the game inside and out.
Every game has its own set of requirements to earn the coveted Platinum Trophy, but there are a few standard tasks you can expect out of most games. You’ll likely need to beat the game on the hardest difficulty, collect all the little do-dads, perform some specific actions a number of times, and things of that nature. And sure, no Platinum Trophy is meant to be easy to get, but there are some games where the developers went way too far. These are the games where you’ll either need to reach near-perfect execution, dedicate dozens or hundreds of hours, or both if you want to add that Platinum to your trophy collection. Not counting any games where the Platinum is literally impossible to get anymore, such as due to shut down or dead multiplayer modes, here are some of the hardest Platinum Trophies to get on the PS4.
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Crypt of the NecroDancer
What do you get when you combine a rogue-like and a rhythm game? A fantastic game with a nearly impossible Platinum trophy, apparently. Crypt of the NecroDancer has become somewhat notorious among trophy hunters for just how insanely difficult the requirements are for the coveted Plat. According to PSN Profiles, a site that tracks all registered users’ trophies, only seven people have managed to complete it. Granted not every PS4 player in the world is tracked on this site, but if only seven people who are active and dedicated trophy hunters have it, we can’t imagine there being many more out there who achieved it.
So, what’s the big deal? What makes this such a difficult Trophy list to complete? Aside from the game itself being brutal, as most rogue-likes are, you will have to beat the game at least 50 times. This includes using different characters you have to unlock, facing harder difficulties, and playing with ridiculous restrictions. Even that could be manageable, given enough time, but the real killer is the Lowest of the Low trophy. This one requires you to beat the game with each of the nine playable characters, without picking up any items, using any shrines, and only using only your starting gear. Oh, and did we mention this all has to be done in one continuous run where a single death at any point voids the trophy? Yeah, there’s that too. Anyone who earns this Plat deserves a real trophy.
Super Meat Boy
Another indie title, but certainly not the last on the list of crushingly hard Platinum Trophies, is one of the first to break out in the mainstream: Super Meat Boy. This tough as nails 2D platformer rose to fame partly because of how hard the later levels became, but also how addictive the precise controls were and how quickly you could try again after a death. Unlike Crypt, however, SMB has no random elements to it. Given enough time, you can learn how to beat every level. However, that doesn’t mean it will be that easy.
Platting SMB means accomplishing a few things that may sound easy to anyone unfamiliar with the game. If you are, then you already know that you’re in for around 100 hours of watching your little meat boy get sawed, exploded, and otherwise eviscerated before reaching the end. First, you need to beat all the Light World levels with an A+ rank to unlock the Dark World and Cotton Alley while grabbing all the collectibles. Okay, hard but doable so far. Then comes the no death runs. You need to beat every world, Light and Dark, without dying a single time. With each world having around 20 stages of increasing difficulty, that’s about 240 levels you need to do perfectly. Godspeed, Meat Boy.
The Elder Scrolls Online
It should come as no surprise that an MMO, especially one based on the Elder Scrolls series, would have one of the rarest Platinum Trophies out there. These games are designed to suck as much of your life away as possible through any means necessary, and man oh man if they didn’t see the opportunity to leverage Trophies into that equation and take it. Perhaps they tried a little too hard considering just how ridiculous one specific trophy is to earn. Most are not that bad, at least for MMO standards. You’ll need to beat the main quest, discover and explore just about every location in the game, and plenty of other things that, given enough time, are more than doable.
And then there’s the Emperor! trophy. This one only just makes the cut as qualifying for this list since it is on the razor’s edge of being unobtainable. In short, this trophy requires you to be at the top of your server’s leaderboard. Right off the bat, servers have thousands of players on them who have probably been playing the game way longer, and more often, than you. There can only be one person at the top at any time, and the peak will only rise as time goes on so anyone looking to start now is going to be looking at a long, long journey to grab this Plat.
Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus
Arguably one of the biggest profile games on this list is the second game in the rebooted Wolfenstein series, Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus. Now, as one of the pioneers of the FPS general as a whole, the Wolfenstein and Doom series have both gone through a lot of evolution in the decades they’ve been around, but they’ve never been easy. Heck, even the difficulty names say it all, going from “Can I play, Daddy?” and “Don’t hurt me” up to “I am death incarnate!” and “Mein Leben!” This title was already seen as a major step up in difficulty compared to the last few games, even on lower settings, but the Platinum would still be on the table if not for one controller-breaking trophy.
Mein Leben, named after the difficulty, is the one that should come with a health warning attached. First, you have to beat the game on “I am death incarnate!” to even unlock it, which is already a feat in and of itself, but completing the game on “Mein Leben!” is just masochistic. First, the game is as hard as it can be. Enemies will rip you apart like a wet tissue if they get the slightest opportunity while soaking up your shots like you’re tickling them with flower petals. But here’s the real kicker: “Mein Leben!” mode has permadeath. That’s right. If you die at any point during the entire campaign, your save is wiped and you go back to the start of the entire game. No reloading saves, no checkpoints, nothing.
Injustice: Gods Among Us
Fighting games might seem like a genre that wouldn’t be all that hard to do everything in. You might expect to unlock all the characters, beat their arcade modes, and maybe do a bunch of special moves and things like that. All that’s true for Injustice: Gods Among Us, the DC hero fighter, but that’s just where this game gets started. The developers put in a lot, and we mean a lot, of extras into this game and boy do they expect you to do it all if you want this Platinum Trophy. First off you will need to earn three stars, the maximum ranking, in all the game’s S.T.A.R Lab Missions. How many missions are there? Oh, you know, just 240. That’s daunting enough, but consider that these missions are spread across every character in the game, meaning you’ll need to get good with the entire roster to hit the max rankings.
Toss in the Ultimate Battler trophy for beating the battle mode and this game becomes a grueling grind for even the most dedicated fighting game fan. Battle mode, for those unaware, is a series of 20 matches you need to win in a row with different conditions set at every level, plus a constantly increasing difficulty level. You’ll really need superhuman levels of skill and patience to fight your way to this Plat.
Star Ocean: The Last Hope
When there’s a minimum of five playthroughs required to Platinum an RPG you know something’s wrong. When you see that the difficulty is often rated a 9/10, you know something is very wrong. When the estimated time to finally earn that Platinum Trophy is over 400 hours you just throw your hands up and walk away. That’s what most people say when considering going for the Platinum Trophy in Star Ocean: The Last Hope. Just imagine all the worst trophies a game can have, minus online required ones, stuff them into a giant RPG, and you might have an idea of how tedious and arduous this trophy list is.
Feel free to peruse the list for yourself, but some highlights are tons of missable trophies for treasure chests, errands, creating items, collecting monster data, endings, battle trophies, events, and more. Following a guide is mandatory here unless you want that 400 hours to go even higher. Oh, and those battle trophies? Yeah, you’ll need to not only beat 30,000 enemies with two different characters, but also 55 of one called a Grigori. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well considering there are only six in the main game, you start to see the problem. Then there are the five mandatory playthroughs as you unlock harder ones for each previous difficulty. This game should be called the last nope because there’s no hope for getting this Plat.
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