Hello everyone. Recently I’ve platinummed TLOU2 as well as getting the DLC trophies for completing the game on Grounded Difficulty and Permadeath mode. And I want to talk about the experience.
In terms of getting the Platinum, TLOU2 was mostly straightforward. The trophy list is a lot more “streamlined” compared to both TLOU1 and Uncharted games. In the base game, there are no trophies for completing the game on any specific difficulty modes or using any of the game’s accessibility or assist modes. No significant “missable” challenges or requirements. There are only like 28 trophies.
I feel the game has 4 kinds of trophies.
The first group are the standard story based ones. Except unlike other games, there’s only really one for this category: “What I had to do- Complete the story” which is sitting at a 57.6% completion on PSN. It is weird for there to only be one story trophy. Typically, games like this would have a trophy per act or chapter or something. I like these kinds of trophies as you can use them to see where players stopped playing or how many made it to a certain part.
The second group are what I call the “standard collectibles”. These are the typical collectibles that don’t reward the player and are either there to add lore or context or to be regular collectibles. Stuff like artifacts (notes from other people. Interesting for lore.), superhero trading cards (which honestly were quite cool) and state quarters (definitely more on the boring side). There are also "secret collectibles" that give a trophy like the Precursor Egg that's been a secret collectible in every Uncharted and TLOU game so far. And Nathan Drake's ring.
There are a few positives I can say for these collectibles. The first is that the game's level select keeps track of how collectibles you have collected per area. Making it easier to know where you have to look (granted, you can't access this when in a level which is a bummer). The accessibility menu have the option for collectibles in the area to ping when you use listen mode and for them to show up yellow in High Contrast Mode and for collectibles you've already collected to be highlighted differently.
The second is that there are no "conversations" to collect like there were in TLOU1 and Uncharted 4. I am not fond of these since these depend more on your AI partner to be in specific positions and states. And it is possible to accidentally make your AI partner either skip or never enter a correct state for a conversation to trigger. I remember back in TLOU1, there were some rather annoying conversations that took some finessing to trigger.
But personally, I am not fond of these kinds of trophies where they ask you to collect all 100% of things. I guess they encourage the player to explore more and perhaps even get some benefit out of it but it can make the experience rather tedious as eventually, players resort to using guides to find the last remaining collectibles in hidden areas. I've always felt it would have been better if such trophies only asked you to find 70-80% of collectibles rather than 100%. That way, you still have to put in some effort but the wiggle room allows you to miss some of the trickier ones and still get the trophy.
Another suggestion is that once you beat the game, you unlock some kind of optional power up or ability to flag collectibles in an area. I am also platinumming Sly 4 at the moment and really appreciate such a feature and wish more games had that.
The third group of trophies are what I call "Useful Collectibles". These are collectibles that give some sort of tangible reward that it may be worth seeking them out even on repeat playthroughs to help you out.
I'll put the trophies for getting every safe, weapon, player and weapon upgrade, workbench and training manuals here. One thing to note is that some of these you cannot get in a single playthrough. There simply aren't enough weapon parts and supplements to max out all upgrades in one run. That's what NG+ is for. The amount of parts and supplements are fixed regardless of difficulty and run and all your progress is saved per save files. Meaning you can keep doing NG+ until you get everything you need. Though, in my case, it only took around "4 Seattle Days" per character to max them out. The game is kind enough to then stop spawning parts and supplements once you max them out so they no longer clutter the environment or waste your time which is nice.
I'm more favourable towards these collectibles because they encourage you to get powered up and you can use the knowledge from these for future playthroughs even if you have the trophies. Such as knowing where all the safes are and how to open them helps in getting resources you'll always want.
The fourth kind of trophies are what I call "miscellaneous activities". These are trophies for one off or specific challenges in certain levels. The game has the following: "Sightseer - Visit every location in downtown Seattle", "Looks Good On You - Put a hat on your companion" , "Sharpshooter - Win the marksmanship competition", and "Put My Name Up - Earn the high score in the archery game".
These generally feel like fun side quests or diversions during the main story. I kinda wish there were more of these that revolved around using some of the game's features and systems. For example, how about something like "have a clicker kill an Infected" by doing kneecapping an infected and getting a Clicker to attack you? Or completing certain encounters without killing anyone or using a specific weapon or getting hurt? Or for messing around with the renders and extras. Imagine a trophy for completing a chapter using mirror world or having certain cheats on or unlocking all the concept art and models? Uncharted had quite a few of these and I remember them being quite fun. Or a trophy for playing certain songs on the guitar? I am also disappointed there are no alternate costumes to unlock 😭.
So yeah, all you need to do to platinum the game is essentially beat it once, grab all the collectibles and then get all the upgrades in NG+. The game leaves it you with how you do it as there no specific difficulty or missable trophies. Which is nice.
There is one issue I feel really drags down the experience.
So, my original plan for this game was to do a casual playthrough on hard and get a sense of how it works and enjoy the story and gameplay. Then, Step 2 was to use the chapter select to mop up any collectibles and get the platinum. Then Step 3 was to do a Permadeath Run using my Hard playthrough's NG+ but with a custom difficulty of everything on Hard except resources on Grounded to prepare for Grounded. Step 4 was to do the dreaded Grounded Mode.
Now, normally, when you use a game's level select feature, you expect that it still remembers that fact you have completed the chapters after it. But TLOU2 does it weird. The game ties your completion to the autosave file it creates. Meaning if you say, complete the game all the way up Ellie Seattle Day 3 then use the level select to go to Ellie Seattle Day 1, the game "forgets" you completed the game up to Seattle Day 3. Unless you have a manual save to get your progress back, you have to replay the game to get back to where you were.
This left me in an odd place. I had 2 options. Either "replay the game backwards" and select chapters from the end of the game and work backwards to collect the collectibles, save and then quit out and select the next previous chapter. Or do a regular playthrough and collect the collectibles normally. I was worried about my progress being overwritten or missing a collectible so I decided to kill 2 clickers with one shiv and combine steps 2 and 3 together. I was going to do a hard NG+ permadeath playthrough while still getting all the collectibles.
The permadeath mode comes in 3 flavours and can be applied to any new playthrough of the game. Whole game (if you die you have to restart the entire game from scratch), Per Act (if you die, you have to restart the game from the last act you completed. Acts are typically around 3-6 hours long in a regular playthrough) and per chapter (chapters are typically around 30-60 minutes). I choose per chapter.
Permadeath mode makes a few other changes. You can't use any cheats or reload prior checkpoints. If you close the game or exit to the main menu when in proximity to enemies, the game counts it as a death and you have to reset. And once you turn on permadeath, you cannot then turn it off or change any aspect of the difficulty like you could with a casual playthrough. You're locked into this wild ride until you finish it or die trying.
It was....rough. Hard Mode is still sorta forgiving. Yeah, enemies hit hard, are pretty alert and the added Grounded option for resources did make them quite scarce. But since my characters had all the upgrades, I was bulky enough to make quite a few mistakes in combat and still make it through. Stealth was useful in sneaking past or onto certain enemies and knowing which enemies to ignore. Plus, I was familiar enough with the game by this point to know where most resources were so I knew which areas to save up resources for and which to ignore since I had already gotten the collectibles there. Most of my deaths were in the following places:
Hillcrest Ellie Seattle Day 2. The game throws lots of human enemies at you that are quite accurate with their shots. I was rushing through this area to nab the collectibles and then get out. So I often took a few shots and didn't bother healing them. Later on, there's this enemy that can grab you if try to avoid fighting them. Since I had so little health, their choke hold killed me and cost me 20 minutes.
Abby Seattle Day 1: There's this fight in a weird warehouse looking area with no lights where you must survive against a wave of infected on your own until help arrives. The game throws lots of infected at you. Including multiple Runners, Clickers and Shamblers from all sides. If you aren't aware of where they spawn and which order they come in and don't kill them quickly enough, you can get overwhelmed. I messed up here lots of times. Usually a clicker would nab me from behind while I was fighting a runner or trying to avoid a Shambler's acid bombs.
I also lost 2 runs to the start of Abby Day 1 to the Home Depot fight.
Abby Seattle Day 2: This is more embarrassing actually. For some reason, I can't jump properly in this game on Permadeath mode. I'm fine when playing normally. I tend to either press X to early so my character jumps off the ledge and can't make the jump and falls to their death. Or I press X but my character is stuck to the ledge and then falls off. I think the pressure to make these jumps in Permadeath made me worse at doing them. I lost 3 runs here. The point of TLOU2's story is to come to understand the perspectives of all the characters and walk a mile in their shoes. I didn't expect to also get Abby's fear of heights from my playthrough as well lol.
I also lost 1 run to the Rat King.
Abby Seattle Day 3: The fight with Ellie is rough. She's a psychic and can hear you super well and can quick turn around really fast (hey, just like the player. So it feels like you're fighting another main character with the same OP-ness as you). Lost a few runs here.
Aside from these, permadeath was mostly straightforward. The unskippable cutscenes and slow walking sections were a chore to have to replay. And the trophy is a bronze! It should be at least a Gold! Why is beating the game without dying worth 2 tiers below beating the game normally!
When that was done, it was onto Grounded. Grounded is whack. You no longer have a HUD so you can't see how much health you have left or how much ammo is in your current magazine. You can still use the weapon select menu to see how much ammo you have total at least. Listen Mode is gone meaning you can't pinpoint enemies through walls. You die very quickly. Resources are extremely scarce. There were times when I had a couple bullets in my main guns for entire stretches of the game. Enemies are much more alert. The tactic of "walking while aiming to not make any sound" no longer works. If you want to stealth near an enemy, you better be moving at a snail's pace. Hell, even reloading or crafting stuff makes noise which enemies can now hear. If you ever try to sprint, it will alert everyone around you in less than a second. I honestly wished I had the sound meter from Splinter Cell so I could see how loud I was being and how close I was to being spotted. But I guess since Grounded takes away your HUD it wouldn't have helped much anyway.
My only solace were my NG++ characters that had all the upgrades at least. But I did have one trick up my sleeve, Anthony Caliber's speedruns. Watching his work and noting down some strats helped me bypassing some of the challenges. For example, I learned how you can run past certain encounters and avoid them entirely. So whenever I got stuck on an encounter, I would sneak until I was around halfway through and then book it to the exit. If you are relatively far from enemies and running away from them, they get a penalty to their accuracy. I exploited that a lot. It was funny as sometimes, I'd get shot partway through a level and I'd refuse to heal up since I need to save resources. Poor Ellie and Abby would be clutching their sides until they could get to the end of the day to sleep and get a free heal. I kept thinking of that one meme that was like "in order to save money, just don't eat food and sleep longer".
Resources were scarce. So you want to avoid engaging with enemies as much as possible as doing so will drain what you have. And you need whatever you can get for the bosses and mandatory fights. But not engaging with enemies and skipping past them means you don't get the resources that they were guarding. Fortunately for me, since I knew where all the collectibles and safes were, I could use them to get enough resources to usually get by without needing to engage with enemies. I also learned a few tricks for dealing with enemies. The big one is stunning them. If you shoot then in the leg and then melee them, this can kill many enemies quickly and only require one shot. This is great for enemies like Clickers which can take multiple body and headshots to go down.
One tip that really helped me for the boss fights were that, just like in real life, enemies that are on fire take double damage from bullets. When I first fought the Rat King (also called Kevin in speedruns for some reason), I had to use most of my ammo on him and felt like I barely made it through. On my grounded playthrough, I beat him surprisingly quickly by repeatedly setting him on fire and shooting with my hunting pistol and shotguns. I didn't even have to bring out my regular rifle this time.
I do feel Ellie's sections are significantly easier than Abby's for a few reasons. NG+ Ellie has a permanent switchblade which can quickly finish off stunned opponents and clickers without consuming additional resources. NG+ Ellie also has 3 weapons that can be silenced. The pistol, bow and silenced SMG. The SMG can be hard to aim from longer ranges but it can do wonders in dealing with some enemies without alerting others. Ellie can also craft silenced arrows. Making it easier to stealth through areas. She also has smoke bombs which can stun armed humans without taking away resources from your offensive arsenal and craft trip mines. These would be helpful when needing to defend against waves of infected as you can plant them beforehand. Ellie has molotovs which explode on impact and spread fire everywhere instead of being on a delay which make them easier to aim and use. Ellie also has an upgrade called Endure which allows her to survive a fatal blow if she is over a certain percantage of health.
Ellie's sections also don't have as much mandatory and extended combat scenarios that drain your ammo.
In contrast, Abby has to use her fists for melee and craft shivs to deal with Clickers. Cutting into other resources. Abby only has the pistol and crossbow as silenced weapons which give less uses to stealthily kill enemies. Abby doesn't have any equivalent to a silenced SMG or the ability to craft arrows. Abby also only has pipe bombs as throwable weapons which don't explode immediately. Abby also doesn't have any smoke bombs or trip bombs. Which would have been way more handy in her sections given how more combat focused her sections are.
So sections that were rough on my permadeath run were more challenging with how easy it now was to die. At least the checkpoints were better. That is one thing TLOU2 grounded helps you more with. In TLOU1, Grounded Mode had fewer checkpoints. So you'd often have to play through 3-4 encounters or over 30 minutes of progress before getting a checkpoint. TLOU2 does the opposite. You often get a checkpoint for killing certain enemies so you can get multiple checkpoints per encounter. Making it more feasible to brute force your way past certain encounters if you need to.
Still, I also now died more to sections like the Stalker ambush in the forest, or the Seraphites in Abby Day 3 as ambushes are much harder to deal with. But with enough speedrun strats of "running away from everything", I could do it. And even had a respectable time of 8 hours 22 minutes and 5 seconds. If I were to submit this time to the speedrunning leaderboards for the Grounded Glitchless NG+ Main Game category, I'd even get a 3rd place spot. My biggest criticism is the fact this trophy is a Silver! This honestly should have been a second platinum!
So, how was the experience overall? Honestly, I really enjoyed it. If you remove all the standard collectible trophies and improve the chapter select system, then I'd say this was a great experience with no real flaws.
As for the game itself, I really loved it. The gameplay is so much more improved and fleshed out over the original that I can't ever go back to TLOU1 without being able to dodge and fight so well. The human enemy AI are some of the best I've seen since MGSV and really put up an amazing fight. The story is also great. I love how it explores the consequences of violence and asks the player to critically think about the characters they play as rather than just working with an assumed protagonist centred morality.
Normally for these trophy reviews, I usually write a long and excessively detailed review on the games themselves. Going into depth on all their functions and parts. And I was planning on doing that for TLOU2, but I found that Girlfriend Reviews and Mightynifty already covered what I would have said but far better. So I'll just shout them out here instead.
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