Have you ever complained about something being hard to do, only for the local know-it-all to claim that you’re just bad at the game? This probably happens way more online than in-person, but we’ve probably all been there at some point.
There may be some truth in it from time to time; there are absolutely video games in which you simply need to “get good” to unlock the platinum trophy. However, let’s be honest here: the player isn’t always the problem. Sometimes, a game can simply have a bad platinum trophy.
In this article, we will have a nuanced discussion about what it means for a platinum trophy to be hard and what it means for a platinum trophy to be bad, citing relevant examples to highlight the differences. Sometimes, a game can even fit into both categories depending on its unique trophy set!
Table of Contents
What Makes a Platinum Trophy Hard?
The concept of difficulty is almost certainly a known quality to everyone reading this post. A hard game is obvious in how much it asks of its player. If you need to play well in order to proceed, it is a hard game. The genre doesn’t determine a game’s difficulty, but there can certainly be some correlation. For example, soulslike games are much more likely to be hard games than non-soulslike games by virtue.
But what about trophy hunts?
A hard trophy hunt can be had even from easy games, if the requirements are obscene enough. Conversely, a hard game can also have an easy trophy hunt if the requirements are simple enough. (We love those situations, by the way.) A trophy hunt can also be made hard simply because it is attached to a hard game.
If you boil it down to its most basic parts, a hard platinum can only be completed with a high level of skill expression or time investment. Whether it is because of the game itself, its associated trophy set, or some combination thereof does not matter.
What makes a platinum hard but not bad is this: hard platinums are still rewarding in some way. Players do not feel like they’ve wasted their time by the end of the trophy hunt. Furthermore, hard platinum trophies are not hard by virtue of bad programming, bugs, glitches, or unreasonable amounts of missables.
Examples
There is no end to examples of hard platinum trophies. There are many trophy hunters that live and breathe by that difficulty number and will only attempt runs against games above a certain threshold. If you don’t have any platinum trophies above an 8/10 difficulty on your list, you may as well be a scrub to these players.
Of course there are many developers who have resolved to answer the wish of hardcore players. Even better, there are tons of titles that have done so with an actually rewarding gameplay experience, not just a slog masquerading as the ideal trophy hunt. Let’s dive in and explore a few.
- Catherine: Full Body
Catherine: Full Body is a quirky game from the same studio that brought us the Persona series and, later, Metaphor: ReFantazio. This particular title includes a day and night cycle with very different styles of gameplay.
By day, you are a man in your 30’s named Vincent, making important choices that will dictate your life path and potential lover(s); by night, you are one sheep among many that must scale vast towers in engaging 3D puzzle gameplay. If you fail, you don’t just die in the dream—you also die in the real world!
The night sections are of the utmost interest to hardcore trophy hunters. These sections on higher difficulties can be rather difficult. This is even more so when you realize you must reach the top of the Tower of Babel, the game’s ultimate challenge that makes everything from the story seem paltry by comparison.
The trophy for scaling the final stage of Babel, “Legendary Climber,” is baffling in the fact that it is only a silver tier trophy. It is generally recommended to play this mode in co-op, even if that means playing alone but with two controllers.
When a trophy guide starts suggesting whipping out multiple controllers for things, that’s when you know you’re in trouble.
PSN Profiles has Catherine: Full Body rated as a 7/10 difficulty and 75 hours to complete. I played for 110 hours to get the platinum trophy, but I did read everything in the other routes and did a couple of extra runs to show friends the game. I’d say the guide is more accurate for most players. - Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty
Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty is a remaster of an older PlayStation 1 game that kept many young gamers on their toes. In the story, you are a factory worker who has learned a dangerous secret: your people are about to be turned into food! Obviously, you must set out to free everyone you can, before they meet a terrible fate. But don’t think for one second you won’t be challenged…
This side-scrolling adventure game requires a great deal of finesse in even its most basic gameplay. You need spot-on timing to defuse bombs, fast reaction times to get past traps, and you need to have the grit not to freak out when a beast charges at you at Mach 9 speed.
This is a case where the trophy hunt would most likely be difficult simply because the game itself is difficult. That is true, but Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty goes one step further. The trophy set is actually very challenging in its own right.
To get the platinum trophy in this title, you must do several complete runs of the game. For one, you must kill a large number of your people; for another, you must save all of your people. There is also a hard mode trophy, a speedrun trophy, and a dozen other special trophies that aren’t exactly free unlocks. This game is absolutely brutal.
Importantly, for all its difficulty, the game is still (mostly) fair. When you fail a section, it is usually very obvious what you have done wrong. The game is also quick to reload, giving you a chance to start again. No sweat.
PSN Profiles rates Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty as a 6/10 difficulty with 17 hours to complete. I think this is way too generous. I played for 46 hours before I got the platinum trophy, and I’d suspect that most players need more than 17 hours to get a handle on this one. - The Last of Us Remastered
The Last of Us is a video game series that has gained so much popularity that it received its very own television adaptation. The first game in the series has been remastered, then later remade. For this point, we will discuss the remaster, although the points made here are still relevant to the original title, as the trophy lists are very similar.
The plot of this series is deceptively simple: zombies. Sorry, infected. You play as Joel, a middle-aged man, as he travels across the country in order to make a delivery that could change the world.
The game itself is not difficult until you start cranking up the difficulty. Once you reach Grounded difficulty, you lose several important functions. The HUD is no longer displayed and you lose listen mode, for example. While this difficulty is not required for the platinum trophy, it is if you want the 100%.
In addition, there are many trophies related to an online mode called Factions, some of which are required for the platinum trophy. These require dozens of matches to be played, and it is possible to lose all of your progress such that you need to start over.
In other words, there are a lot of trap falls to beware of for this game. PSN Profiles only rates the DLC stack as a 6/10 difficulty. Between the main game and DLC stacks, PSN Profiles estimates a combined 75 hours for completion. I have 182 hours recorded for The Last of Us Remastered personally, although I have played several times just for fun. - Destiny
Any title from Bungie is topical at the moment, given the large amount of layoffs happening. It’s a shame for those of us who have had good memories with the Destiny series, although it hasn’t received the greatest care in recent years.
I, for one, am very nostalgic for Destiny. My very first PlayStation trophy ever was from the original Destiny. It was the first game I played on my PlayStation 4 all the way back in 2014. That’s why the latest news has been particularly sad in my neck of the woods.
Destiny is a first-person shooter with a sci-fi story. The most important thing about the gameplay loop is that you find gear, increase your power level, play harder missions, get more gear, rinse and repeat.
The trophy list is not terrible for this style of game. You do have to make three separate characters, one for each class of Hunter, Titan, and Warlock. You also need to level them up significantly for their particular subclass trophies. You also need to engage with both the PvP and PvE content. More, if you want all the DLC trophies as well.
The most difficult content in Destiny are the raids. These require six players to play together for several hours to complete a mini-campaign. Finding the time for that many skilled players to meet up is its own battle. Never mind the fact that everyone must play well to succeed. Also, if you don’t complete the raid within the week before the next reset, there goes all your progress! You’ll have to start over next week.
PSN Profiles has the original Destiny rated at a 7/10 difficulty with 100 hours to complete. There are two DLC stacks as well, for the Rise of Iron and the Taken King. The former is rated at a 6/10 difficulty with 30 hours to complete. The latter is rated at a 8/10 difficulty with 70 hours to complete. Altogether, that’s 200 hours. I personally played 355 hours, but I spent a great deal of time simply having fun, not optimizing the experience.
What Makes a Platinum Trophy Bad?
Unlike hard platinums, bad platinums are disrespectful of a player’s time. They ask players to spend incredible amounts of time on the most mundane tasks. Not because it shows any amount of skill, but simply because they can. It’s almost like the developers of these games do not test their trophy set, or simply chose to be cruel by design.
These trophies may also include excessive amounts of missables, buggy/glitchy trophies, or deceptive tactics that artificially increase difficulty. That means a bad platinum can be either intentional or unintentional by the creators.
A less common example of a bad platinum could even be the opposite: when the developers don’t even try with their trophy set, and it is so mind-numbingly boring and easy that it can be completed without care. If you don’t even have to beat the game to get the trophies, it is probably a bad platinum.
Tedious and repetitive gameplay does not make something harder, it makes it worse. We want skill expression, not an unholy grind. Give us a break.
Examples
In the same way that there were tons of examples of hard platinum trophies to pull from, so too are there bad platinums. Without further ado, let’s go ahead and take a look!
- Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Call of Duty is a series that needs no introduction. These games are first-person shooters, usually with either sci-fi or historical elements. These games generally have both single-player and multiplayer components, both of which are significant for completionists.
Black Ops III in particular has a trophy set that requires mastery of every single game mode it has. That means you must interact with the online competitive multiplayer, cooperative zombies mode, and campaign. There are many stacks of DLC trophies in Black Ops III, all of which are related to newer zombies map releases.
This guide by Archavia on PlayStation Trophies is incredibly informative for those curious about the requirements for Black Ops III’s trophy set. Of note, there are almost 18,000 kills needed to unlock every weapon camo, which is only one piece of the overarching “Personal Decorator” trophy.
And that’s just one aspect of the trophy list. You also need to reach the highest level in the online PvP mode, which at this point is inundated with invisible cheaters that make it an awful experience for real players.
The zombies DLC trophies all require successful completion of the various Easter Eggs, the hardest possible things you can do in the game that require perfect execution and occasionally four players to even attempt. These are incredibly difficult. Attempting an Easter Egg in Call of Duty feels like you’re studying a subject in school. Are you learning how to build and upgrade the KT-4, or learning Taylor series expansion in Calculus II coursework? Same amount of brain power!
PSN Profiles has Call of Duty: Black Ops III rated as an 8/10 difficulty with 100 hours to complete. There is no telling how long the DLC stacks truly take, since it is so highly skill-based.
If you assume each map takes 20 hours to complete, you’re looking at an additional 100 or so hours on top of that. During my time playing so far, I’ve amassed 430 hours in the game. I am about 90% of the way through the trophy set at this time. I also do generally play this game with friends and family on a regular basis. - The Evil Within
The Evil Within was a 2014 game produced by Tango Studios, the game developer behind the popular Hi-Fi Rush title who was nearly made defunct by Microsoft in 2024 and was instead, gratefully, acquired by Krafton. Whew, that was a lot.
The Evil Within was the studio’s very first project, and with that, it had some issues. The game was a third-person survival horror experience following the story of police detective Sebastian as he is pulled into otherworldly jams against “The Haunted,” AKA zombies, and more often than not perfectly placed traps and poor game design.
The game itself is gritty in its story and execution. Once you get comfortable with the controls and game mechanics, you can do pretty well for yourself. Well, that is until you realize the trophy set requires you to play on the hardest difficulty setting: Akumu.
On this difficulty, one hit is enough to end you. More often than not, it is better to beeline it to the goal and avoid exploring for resources, lest you run into any hazards along the way. As you can see from my screenshot above, I died 400 times over 16 hours on my way to completing this difficulty.
If that weren’t hard enough, The Evil Within also comes packed with collectible trophies, special encounter trophies, and of course a speedrun trophy. There are also DLC stack trophies that are more of what you’d expect from a game like this.
The PSN Profiles trophy guide has this game sitting at a mean 9/10 difficulty rating with 50 hours to complete. I played the game for 112 hours on my way toward the 100%. - Digimon World: Next Order
The Digimon series is fairly well-known amongst those born in the 90’s and earlier. Digimon was a direct competitor to Pokémon in these early days, although nowadays they’ve more or less carved out their own niche with a more hardcore fanbase.
Digimon World: Next Order is one such title in the series that was intended to be like a remake or reboot of the very first Digimon World game. This is one line of games in the Digimon series that has many die-hard fans. The other side being the Digimon Story fans. And the third base with the fighting games, well… We won’t talk about those fans.
In Digimon World: Next Order, you play as a human who has found themselves lost in the DigiWorld. You are now the proud companion to two Digimon partners, whom fight on your behalf. The game plays in a very unique way; it is a story-driven, base-building RPG with a catch. You do not have control in battles—your Digimon fight of their own volition.
That means you are often stuck watching your beloved (or despised) dummies flounder in the face of certain death. Or, in my case, sometimes watch them do literally nothing for several minutes as neither friend nor foe makes any moves. Oof.
This is a case in which the game itself makes a case for a “bad” platinum. The core mechanics have many issues, unfortunately. As a longtime Digimon fan with every platinum trophy in the series, I wish I could say otherwise.
However, the trophy set makes the situation even worse. I will specifically point out the “Card Master!” trophy, which is completed by finding all DigiCards in the DigiWorld. There are 540 of these scattered across the world, which must be collected by interacting with glowing spots you encounter in the various biomes.
Because this is heavily RNG-reliant, it can take ages to find all 540 DigiCards you need. It is also an absurd amount of things to collect in such an un-fun way. It is incredibly tedious to walk around and grab these resources points.
And the worst part? You can’t even interact with these DigiCards you’ve spent so long collecting in any meaningful way. You can “view” them in the Museum in Floatia, as you can see in the screenshot above. However, they are minimized and cannot be expanded. No information is given about the Digimon, no cool facts, no bigger pictures, nothing. What a waste.
PSN Profiles has Digimon World: Next Order listed as a 5/10 difficulty with 100 hours to complete. During my time with the game, I played for 104 hours. - Naughty Bear
Naughty Bear is perhaps the most unique title on this list. It is a PlayStation 3 game that may best be described as an arcade game. You play as lovable teddy bear Naughty, whom wishes to punishes all the other bears on his island for excluding him from a birthday party bash.
Practically speaking, that means you run around, set up traps, scare the other bears, and attack them in third-person view in order to rack up as many points as possible. Get a good enough score and you earn an in-game trophy!
The game is hilarious and full of great moments. I am nostalgic for it and loved the game when I received it at a young age. I even wrote a trophy guide to help others avoid the same mistakes I made.
That said, I wish I could say only good things about this title. Unfortunately, I cannot. The game has atrocious performance on PlayStation 3. It would chug anytime I ran or spun the camera, making it incredibly difficult to do required challenge runs. In addition, there are only three real zones to explore and only a handful of real game modes, making gameplay very repetitive after the first few hours.
Not to mention the trophy requirements. You need to get platinum score trophies on a large number of stages in order to get the actual platinum trophy in the game. Getting high enough scores for a platinum rating requires perfect execution and consistent performance in many cases. A lot of times, it is out of your control.
On top of that, Naughty Bear actually has multiplayer trophies in its DLC trophy stacks. It is virtually impossible to achieve this naturally anymore, so you will almost certainly need to find three other nutters to boost with you. Even posting in forums, it may be difficult to get hits, so be patient. Naughty Bear is an older game that doesn’t get much action nowadays.
PSN Profiles has Naughty Bear listed as a 6/10 difficulty with 40 hours to complete. This seems like a very generous rating in both categories in my opinion. There are also two DLC stacks, which accumulate to an additional 15 hours according to their respective guides. While I cannot verify my actual played hours on a PlayStation 3 title, I would guess that my time was more like 65-70 hours.
Conclusion
A platinum can be both hard and bad, neither hard nor bad, or one but not the other. It is important for trophy hunters to know the difference. Being able to distinguish between hard platinums and bad platinums will help you avoid the worst trophy hunting experiences, while still finding value in ones that challenge you.
What is a platinum trophy others say is hard, but you secretly think is just bad? Are any of our picks controversial? Let us know in the comments below!
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