Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Saints Row 4 Relected and all its DLC.
While overall a pretty straightforward and seemingly fun platinum to get, I found it got rather tedious and grindy by the end.
Firstly, there are only 2 missable trophies in the entire game. The first is " You Chose... Poorly - Surrender when given the chance." During the mission "Matt's Back" (which also gives you the "Didn't Need to See Him Naked" trophy), the main villain Zinyak gives you the choice between 2 doors, a blue one to continue the mission, and a red one to surrender. If you choose the Red One, the credits roll. Skipping the credits then has a "mission failed restart checkpoint screen" which gives you the trophy.
The second missable trophy is "Saints & Sensibility - Complete 'Grand Finale' after completing all Homie missions." This trophy is for the "good" ending for the game. Even Kinzie tells you before you start the final mission that in order to get the good ending, you should complete all the loyalty missions first. You don't need to complete the open world activities themselves though. Meaning that before you start the final mission, you have to make sure you have the following trophies beforehand: "The Full Kinzie, Paranormal Bromance, The Face of the Saints, The Two Shaundis, Machine Man, On Her Saint's Secret Service, Benjamin [CENSORED] King, Actor-Turned-Politician, Bouncin' with an Old Friend". I do find it odd that all these trophies are bronze. Except for Johnny Gat who has a silver one.
Technically, there is a 3rd missable trophy and this is due to a bug that was never patched even from the original PS3 version. "Where's My Cape? - Purchase all Super Power upgrades." If you purchase all of the superpower upgrades for even a single superpower set before you complete the mission "The Kinzie Gambit", this trophy will glitch on you and not pop. The main way to avoid this glitch is to avoid upgrading any of your superpowers and speedrun the story missions until you complete the "The Kinzie Gambit" + a few extra missions after it. Then you can hopefully purchase all the upgrades.
This glitch is particularly insidious because you won't know if you have triggered it or not until you purchase the final upgrade. Which requires you be max level and have collected most of the Data Clusters that are used to purchase upgrades. I was fortunate enough to not have had this happen to me but I definitely would not have been willing to replay the game from scratch if it did.
Every other trophy can technically be obtained whenever and you do not lock yourself out of them depending on your playthrough. On paper, I like it when a game is set up like that. It makes it more appealing to play it casually and then go for the platinum afterwards rather than need to plan a platinum playthrough beforehand. However, if you do not plan a platinum playthrough beforehand for this game, expect a lot of grinding.
The bulk of the most time consuming trophies are both the "in-game challenge trophies" and the "trophy challenge trophies" (that's what I refer to them as). The game has a menu in the quests tab that lists 66 in-game challenges. Upon completion of these gives you "The Challenge King - Complete ALL of the Challenges." These include challenges for getting a gold medal on the various side activities like destruction, races and insurance frauds but also getting x number of kills against certain enemies or using certain weapons. Such as getting 150 kills with the Dubstep gun. These "get kills" challenges are really grindy and get tedious after a while but at least you can always see your progress with the in-game tracker in the Quest Menu.
The "trophy challenge trophies" are an entirely separate list of challenges that award a trophy but may overlap in a few places but aren't tracked in-game. For example, there's a trophy "Zoo Keeper - Kill 25 Wardens". And an in-game challenge to kill 30 wardens. It's annoying because Wardens only spawn in specific scripted missions or when you reach a max 6 notoriety. There are only like 8 Wardens in scripted missions. But there's also stuff like "Bringin' the Heat - Kill 100 Aliens using the Fire Buff Super Power.". The in-game challenge version only asks you to kill 10 and doesn't count any kills past that. Sometimes, you do get a popup while playing telling you the progress on some of these "extra challenges" but you can't access these popups or lists in-game. It's confusing.
I genuinely feel the game would be better off removing the extra challenge trophies or only tying these trophies to the in-game challenges as those can be better tracked and are usually less excessive (something SR4's follow up, GAT Out of Hell, sorta does and even includes a tracker function for challenges). Of course, that is assuming these grind kills trophies are even worth it. I do feel they aren't. Even when I planned my platinum playthrough to maximize my kills with all the required weapons, I still completed the game with several of these to go. At least for the weapon and superpower ones, I could replay the Hard Fight Club Activity or the second mission from the "Enter the Dominatrix DLC" as those have endlessly respawning enemies that count for kills.
The "worst" of these was "Fourth and Forty- Spend over 40 hours in the Simulation." Generally, you will be able to complete everything in both the base game and DLC by around 30 hours max and there's very little to do afterwards. You can't toggle many open world activities to respawn like in games like Far Cry and Watch Dogs. You can't replay missions (except for the short DLCs) and there is no NG+ mode. This game simply wasn't made to be played for that long. I found by the 32 hour mark that it was better to just leave the game running for several hours while I played The Walking Dead Season 2 on my VITA. You need to be careful not to let your PS4/PS5 enter sleep mode or be disconnected from PSN as that apparently stops the timer for some reason.
Funnily, I found the trophies in the DLCs to be more fun than in the base game. The "Enter The Dominatrix" DLC has 2 "missable" trophies that I actually missed the first time around. But it wasn't a huge issue since you can replay the DLC missions. They were "Health Inspector - Destroy all the green polyps inside Paul in 'Pop His Top'." and "Rigging the Race - Destroy all the rival pony carts in 'At the Races'. " That last one was embarrassing because I did only have 1 cart left on my first playthrough but I decided to spare them since the finish line was right in front of me and he couldn't have won anyway. Oops.
But the more important thing here is that rather than asking the player to grind 100s of kills (which the DLC still does anyway), having the missions be replayable means the game can have optional objectives within the missions and tie the trophies to that. I found it was way more fun to destroy all the Polyps and Carts rather than grind 100s of kills. I wish the base game had a mission replay system and optional objectives/trophies instead. Kinda like what the early Assassin's Creed games had. Even SR4's side activities, which are already pretty fun, were more fun to get gold medals on by getting the highest scores since it involved really min-maxing and playing the activity hard rather than mindlessly grinding kills.
The only challenge trophy I truly enjoyed in the base game was "Epic Jump Quest - Jump from the roof of 3 Count to the Nuke Plant, without touching the ground or other rooftops" as it was a fun challenge to try gliding and wall-running across nearly the entire map. I wish there was more challenges like that instead. Hell, that could have been a series of side activities. I remember that was one in Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and was really fun there. SR4 could have had a series of jumping challenges in the open world that tasked you to get from point to point as quickly as possible by gliding and running alongside buildings to get points. Points would be deducted by taking too long or by touching flat ground. That would be so cool.
Finally, lets talk about the mandatory story ones. Funnily, only around 88% of players finished the first mission which dropped to around 54.5% by the time you get your first superpowers. Which is odd because you think everyone would be sticking around to at least get the whole selling point of the game. Perhaps the opening missions were rather dry. Finally, the final mission only has a 14.3% completion. I guess most players got their fill well before that.
So overall, the trophies in Saints Row 4 aren't bad, but they can get rather tedious. Especially if you haven't planned for them beforehand as you'll then have to do a lot of grinding afterwards. The game is better when it asks for more specific challenges in replayable missions which is a small percentage of its trophies.
As for the game itself and ignoring all the trophies, I really enjoyed it.
To me, Saints Row 4 feels like that one Onion Article about the 6 year old making up a wild and imaginative play session with his toys but translated into a video game (albeit with more violence and sexual content). The game's main goal is to keep you entertained and amused and it does so to a fault. Often tripping up in the process.
There's the gameplay where in addition to the open world GTA inspired gameplay of Saints Row 3, you now have Superpowers that once upgraded, make you feel like you're playing with Cheat Codes (which the game also has anyway). You can run across streets and water with super speed and create a tornado of destruction as you run. You can jump over buildings, freeze/fire/explode enemies in front of you, create earthquakes, grab and throw enemies and objects via telekinesis etc. The Aliens can throw tanks, UFOs and all manner of laser weaponry at you and you can still hold your own against them (with only Wardens coming close to being a decent challenge and keeping up with you). The game kinda throws away any semblance of challenge and progression for the sake of giving you a good time. And it's still a good time, don't get me wrong (maybe not for 40 hours tho). It does feel rather odd because you still have many of the systems from Saints Row 3 still present here like weapon and car customization and upgrading and recruiting gang members as backup that doesn't feel like they matter since you have superpowers but at least it's more content to mess around with.
I do feel the new super speed, jumping and gliding combo do feel a bit.....basic. Like I wasn't particularly excited nor bored when using them. Funnily, I did play a bit of GAT Out of Hell, SR4's sorta DLC/Standalone expansion released in 2015, after completing SR4 and man, I love the flying system there. In GOOH, you have wings that allow you to glide and flap to gain height and speed. But unlike SR4's gliding, GOOH is far more momentum based and feels closer to something like Gliding in the Arkham games. You can't keep going up as you'll lose too much speed, stall and then fall. You can dive to gain speed. And you can get some insane speed. It's a rush to dive and then zoom past obstacles. Collecting the Soul Clusters at high speeds while flying/gliding in GOOH was really fun. Early on, there was this nice sweet spot where I had only few upgrades to flying so I could only flap a few times and it still consumed a fair amount of stamina so maximizing my speed or distance or traversal was a really fun challenge and process. I loved it. When I eventually unlocked all the upgrades, it did make it too easy and I longer had to worry about properly managing my momentum and could essentially fly everywhere. But I still chose to avoid using the additional flaps and try to manage momentum because it was that fun. I honestly feel you could have made an entire game out of just this system. Like a Spider-Man game but with this really fun gliding/flying system. Maybe with more moves like using the super speed to help build momentum so you could do things like drop the ground while gliding in a seamless way to build up speed before taking off. Or if you're flying near a building, you can position yourself to run along the building with your wings out. Like, I now wish SR4 was delayed to 2014 or 2015 so GOOH's version of flying/gliding was implemented into SR4 because it would have improved SR4 so much!
Back to SR4, the story and missions, rather than putting you into novel or challenging scenarios and asking you to make the most of your powers, tend to rely more on "gimmicks, set pieces and comedy" to carry the experience. Whether it be a "Streets of Rage" style minigame, a mission dedicated to sneaking around and shooting lights and hiding in a Cardboard Box like Solid Snake, or even standard "go here and kill everything" missions but peppered with humorous dialogue, the game is more concerned with making sure it's always funny. And generally it is with its 2012 humour and references.
The side missions/activities were some of the most fun I've had in the game. I loved stuff like Insurance Fraud, the Races, the platforming challenges and even the Genki telekinesis challenges because they challenged your skills in the activity itself to get the gold. I honestly wish there were more of these kinds of activities because there are only really 3 of each kind of activity.
When I was first playing the game and saw there was tension between the squad like when they wanted to rescue Gat, I wondered if the game was going to take a page from Borderlands 2 where it starts out seemingly lighthearted albeit with some dark undertones before flipping the script and getting serious and highlighting how intense the situation truly is. But no. This game is earnest in that it wants to be a fun cheesy romp. I feel this is most evident in the side missions with Benjamin King. He wants you to go do random stuff for him as inspiration for the book he's writing as he wants his book to be perfect. The Boss even points out at this book will only be read by like 10 people max since that's all of humanity that is left. The game isn't taking its premise seriously in any way and more as an excuse for more comedy which I am down for.
Funnily, I do feel the story of the "Enter the Dominatrix DLC" was more enjoyable than the base game because you have these 2 "layers". The first is the "in-story" stuff where the squad do the story to take on the Dominatrix but the second layer is that this DLC is apparently a cancelled project so you have the Saints give their "behind the scenes" commentary alongside the comedy of the story. You have stuff like in-story Boss being annoyed why he has to go turn off generators while Behind the Scenes Boss and Kinzie talk about how dumb that section was. There's way more banter between the characters. Even Zinyak is far more entertaining as this hammy "chew the scenery" "actor" who complains about how his bossfight is so demeaning with the QTEs. I honestly wish this premise was also applied to the base game.
A part of me does wonder if, in an alternate timeline, what if Saints Row 4 did take more cues from Borderlands and had a more serious story. Maybe an analogue for escapism as while the Saints are superpowered in the simulation and want to take down Zinyak, it's rather hollow when the real world is destroyed. Could have been an interesting take.
I'm going to be rambling a bit so feel free to skip this entire next section if you want.
[Start Ramble]
One thing I do find interesting is just how drastically SR4 changes from its series in both gameplay and tone. A common meme/line I often heard about this game was "remember when SR was about gangsters?". SR3 was already pretty wacky but SR4 cranks it up past 11. Imagine going back in time and telling someone playing SR1 that by the 4th game, you'd be fighting aliens as the President with Superpowers and a Dubstep gun. They'd think it was a joke.
I find it fascinating how just about everything from SR3's gameplay is still in SR4 but now it feels vestigial next to SR4's superpowers. Like, you can still hijack cars, take them to a garage to get fixed/modded, purchase weapons and upgraded, recruit homies off the street etc (stuff the early missions make you do). But by a couple ways into the game, they become unnecessary. You don't need to ever hijack cars or helicopters when you can literally run/jump at super speed past any obstacle and even run/jump up buildings. It even feels rather awkward when the game does occasionally ask you to drive a car since most of your time was spent not needing to do that. For combat, eventually your powers and arsenal become so powerful that you can take on what feels like an alien army. So using regular pistols, trying to shoot from cover and do stuff like taking human shields also feels awkward as a result. This is highlighted in missions that take place in The Real World or ones that temporarily disable your powers.
I remember SR4 being compared to Assassin's Creed Odyssey by its detractors as examples of games that "abandoned what made their series unique by making the main character a Superpowered God". While, I find that comparison interesting, I disagree. In the case of Odyssey, while it's true the main character there also has superpowers, the powers don't make the traditional AC gameplay vestigial. Instead, the powers seem to be integrated to feel more like enhancements. Like, in Ody during combat, you have powers that let you do things like slam the ground with a powerful energy blast and knock enemies away but you still need to fight using regular melee weapons like swords to charge up that ability. The ability doesn't take away the need to fight traditionally. Or how about for stealth, you have abilities that let you fire arrows throw walls, or turn invisible, or teleport between enemies and shank them, but you need to perform regular stealth takedowns to charge up a few uses of those powers. In addition, the game's RPG systems mean you can't ever be amazing at both combat and stealth at the same time. You can specialize at only one at a time which, on harder difficulties against higher levelled opponents, can actually be a signficant weakness. Oh, and traversal/navigation has no powers. If anything it's actually a step back from prior ACs since parkour is downgraded with fewer moves, reducing it to just basic climbing and jumping.
My point is that if SR4's powers were designed the same way Ody's were, then this version of SR4 wouldn't have super speed, gliding and wall running so traversal would require using cars. But combat would instead feel closer to something like Destiny where your primary tools are RPG loot style guns with perks and mods, and you have abilities like enhanced movement, magic grenades and blasts etc. Wheras in current SR4, the powers often override the need for cars and most guns (barring maybe certain lasers, Rocket launchers and other powerful heavy weapons). I wonder if this hypothetical version of SR4 might have felt more in line with SR since now the powers augment the core gameplay rather than replace it.
I don't know much about SR4's development aside from it was perhaps intended to be a DLC for SR3 called "Enter the Dominatrix" before being turned into a full game. I could be 100% wrong here so someone correct me but if I had to hazard a guess, I think it's because THQ/Volition/Deep Silver wanted a SR game out by 2013 as prior SR games were released 2-3 years apart (even GAT out of Hell released 2 years after SR4). But by 2011, GTA V's announcement and 2013 release was known about to some extent. THQ/Volition/Deep Silver likely knew that a more traditional SR4 made off the gameplay, assets, engine and even map of SR3 wouldn't stand much of a chance against GTA V and likely underperform (see Titanfall 2 releasing between Battlefield and COD). And given THQ's state at the time, it probably wasn't feasible to fund a full on "built from the ground up Next Gen SR4 to compete with GTA V" in time. So making SR4 this more wacky Superhero game while still retaining SR3's traditional gameplay (albeit in a vestigial context) would make SR4 more likely to not compete entirely with GTA V. From what I hear, SR4 did sell quite well so mission accomplished?
[End Ramble]
In closing, SR4 was a fun time and I enjoyed it.....except for all the grinding I had to do for the platinum. I wouldn't advice doing that. I won't platinum Gat out of Hell as it has Online Trophies and I'm not looking forward to its grind. The 2022 SR reboot looks interesting, I do hope to check it out at some point.
My next plat post will be on all the Telltale games on PS VITA. Until then, take care everyone
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