Ben 10 Galactic Racing Vita Platinum

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Ben 10 Galactic Racing on the Vita and wish to talk about it.

 

 

Overall, a somewhat tedious if easy Platinum. The only reason I felt like I could do this one is that it's the only Vita game I've encountered that has a built in Trophy Tracker that counts individual things you need to do and how much you've already done. Seriously, why don't other games do this?

 

A quick word on the gameplay: This plays like your standard Kart Racer. The only difference are the game's offensive and defensive powers. When going off ramps, you can flick the Right Stick to do tricks/stunts and this charges your Offensive Power. When the meter is full, Press Square and your character will send a powerful shockwave ahead that will spinout racers ahead of you. When doing drifts, you charge your Defensive Power. When this Meter is full, press O and you will get a shield that blocks you from almost every stage and player hazard. Including other Offensive Powers.

 

I will comment that this is probably the only racing game I've played where you can't reverse or brake. Likely because every button on the Vita is taken. R Aceelerates. L iniates Drift. X uses items. Square for Offensive Power. O for Defensive Power. Triangle for Look Back. Left Stick and Dpad for Steering. Right Stick for Stunts/Tricks. The Touch Screen and Rear Touch pad are unused. Fortunatly, the game seems to account for this and crashing into walls will usually knock and turn you back a fair bit to compensate. So not a complaint but something I found a bit funny.

 

The most tedious trophies in the game are "Not Even a Scratch - Block/avoid 100 attacks using your Defensive Power in Single Player mode." and "Outta My Way!!!!!
Successfully bump 100 karts in Single Player mode." When I completed the game's main content, I had done about 25/100 Defensive Power Blocks and 5/100 Bumps. Defensive Power Blocks are tedious to farm because it only counts attacks from other Karts, not Stage Hazards. The game does notify you if an opponent is launching an item at you with a Flashing Red Exclamation Mark but not when an opponent has launched their Offensive Power. I missed so many Offensive Attacks I could have blocked had I been  notified. I found myself using Triangle to look behind me during races to see if someone was doing their Offensive Power which helped block about 10 more. I feel this trophy would be a lot less tedious if it was 50 Max and also counted both Stage Hazards and using Items to block attacks. Like throwing the equivalent of a Green Shell Behind you to block an opponent's Red Shell. Now the player has multiple ways of naturally getting this as they play the game and only a bit more to farm if they missed it.

 

Bumping Karts is a bit misleading. I assumed this meant "crashing your kart into another kart". But no, it means "physically crashing your kart into another that causes them to spin-out".  There's a few ways to do these. You can land on top of another kart, use the game's equivalant to the Bullet-Bill Powerup to and smack people in your way, or use your Defensive Power. The main issue here is that these are rare events. I think I landed on another kart like, 2 times total. The Bullet Bill, even when I tried using it to farm Bumps, would often "miss" as the CPUs weren't perfectly lined up. I usually saved my Defensive Power for actually blocking Kart and Stage Hazards. I feel this should have been 50 Max. Both this and "Not Even a Scratch" required me to keep replaying the final Track in the game, Azmuth's Forge, over and over again since it took an average of 5 minutes to clear and gave around 3-6 counts for either Trophy.

 

Another Tedious Trophy was  "Shattered - Destroy 10 Shard Mines using the EMP power-up in Single Player mode." I did 1/10 in my entire main campaign run. The best way to farm this is to load up the game's Battle Mode, set the timer to 9 minutes and just keep running through item boxes until you get the EMP Power up. For some reason, this was crazy rare. I'd get like 1-2 per game!

 "Omni-Node Master - Pick up 8 different Omni-Node types in each of 10 different races in Single Player mode" requires intentionally dropping back to different positions and hope the RNG gives you different items. 

 

"Tag! We're It! - Win 10 Team Omni-Tag showdowns in Single Player mode." and "Tag! I'm It! - Win 10 individual Omni-Tag showdowns in Single Player mode." require you to grind 20 Battle Modes at 1 minute each on the smallest map. Not too bad but I was constantly checking the clock. 5 is probably better.

"Omni-Trickster - Complete 10 4X stunt combos while racing in Single Player mode.", "Triple Threat - Complete 10 3X stunt combos while racing in Single Player mode." and "Double Trouble - Complete 10 2X stunt combos while racing in Single Player mode." require grinding the same track, Highway Havoc because Air tricks don't stack and Highway is the only track with a jump large enough to barely do 4x tricks and one for 3x. I got 2x naturally while playing but had to spend several runs grinding this out.

 

"Kart Collector - Unlock all karts in the game." was interesting. There's like 6 extra unlockable Karts that require you to beat the time trial times on 6 tracks. Which means that by beating the Grand Prix Cups and these 6 Time Trials, you essentially get 100% completion according to your save file lol.

 

The trophies I enjoyed getting were "Prime Drifter - Execute a 750-meter drift in a race in Single Player mode" (it was fun finding a track with a circular ring and just lapping it while drifting. Ended it with a 3000m drift lol), "Got Skillz - Beat the Track Best time in a Time Trial on any track by 10 seconds or more." (Galvan Gorge was a fun track to repeat to get that ace time), "Kineceleration - Execute a continuous boost of 8 seconds or more in a race in Single Player mode." (had to switch to Fourarms for this one due to his top speed and replay Codon Coldera's opening in Time Trials to hit the Boost Pads with my Drift and Boost Item) and "Unstoppable! - Win a race by tumbling or spinning over the finish line in Single Player mode." (just do a trick that messes up over the finish line).

 

Overall, I feel this game's platinum list is a bit of a missed opportunity. Rather than wasting time farming the same repetitive actions, I'd have preferred more mini-challenges in races, or just more Time Trial Trophies. Again, technically, of the 25 tracks in this game, only 6-7 require doing a corresponding Time Trial for a trophy. I'd have gladly traded several of the more grindy/farming trophies in exchange.

 

Moving on from the trophies and talking about the game itself, it's .... fine? Like, it's a solid C tier game. Maybe B- if I am feeling extra generous. The actual racing and driving is solid. The graphics are really good for a Vita Racer. I like the offensive/defensive power system. The side modes are fun. But everything around the game is questionable.

 

Galactic Racing doesn't have CCs like in Mario Kart, instead having a difficulty toggle in the Main Menu. It says "easy and hard" but really it should be "hard and extra hard". Almost every race, I was fighting and clawing for first place even on Easy. The CPU Drivers are crazy fast, recover quickly and if someone gets to pull ahead, it's almost impossible to reign them in. I've had a few Grand Prix Tournaments where I breathed a sigh of relief when one of my rivals got hit and finished in 3rd or 4th because it gave me more of a fighting chance.

 

My advice is to go with SpiderMonkey and his Light Kart or  unlock the Kinecelerator Kart as that will give you the best shot but you still need to put in the work. While I enjoyed the challenge, Kart Racers like this are typically made to also accommodate younger or newer players. Mario Kart is successful because less experienced players can start out in 50CC and work their way up. Ben 10 Galactic Racing asks you to start at 150CC.

The bigger issue is that, if you're not a Ben 10 fan, this game will do very little to sway you. It doesn't really put its best foot forward. Like, say what you will about Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing (also on the Vita), but that game went all out with spectacle and stages and highlighting the characters so that even if you weren't a Sega fan, it was hard not to be like "hey, this character or thing is pretty cool/interesting".

 

For example, take the tracks. Galactic Racing has 25 tracks across 5 Planets. But those 25 tracks aren't unique. Tracks set on the same planet share a lot of the same assets, textures and some even share the same set pieces and sections. I got Deja Vu racing on new tracks in later Grand Prix cups because they reused so much from previous tracks.

 

Moreover, very few tracks feel novel or have any spectacle or represent what's cool about Ben 10. Some tracks shift on the final lap and change how you proceed. But like, ok.  One of the 5 Planets is Kylmyys. It's covered entirely in ice and snow and is the home to the Necrofriggians. The lore says this planet is so incredibly cold that nothing corporeal can even live on it. Which is why the Necrofriggians evolved their Ghost powers. This planet never shows up in any Ben 10 show ever. Ben 10 Ultimate Alien instead showcased the planet Mikd'lty. This planet is tidally locked so one half is a fireball and one half is frozen solid. There's "a twilight zone" in between them, aurora boreialis in the sky, a temple which Pligrms visit with Death Traps etc. Some Necrofriggians also live here because they're the only Alien Species that can survive such extreme temperatures.

 

Galactic Racing opts to choose the Planet that's 100% Ice with no cool structures or lore over the one in the show with far more interesting topography or structures. Kylmyys visually looks no different to any Ice Worlds in any other Video Game. So it's disappointing for both Ben 10 fans (since the cool stuff from the show isn't there) and for newbies (since the scenery won't impress them into checking out Ben 10).

 

It's a similar case for the planet Piscciss. This one actually showed up in an episode once and is 99% water. This planet isn't the most notable or important in the show but has 5 tracks dedicated to it in the game. While some of the tracks do look cool, the game does little to make it stand out. There's no section where you drive underwater and see more of the sealife. You don't even see the main species, Piscciss Volanns, on the tracks.

 

The planet Vulpin ..... is an interesting choice. The lore describes it "a pitch black planet on the edge of the galaxy whose ecosystem has been poisoned by the hazardous materials that have been dumped on the planet. Living in the dark caves beneath the surface, Vulpimancers have no need for eyes and use their amazing sense of smell to "see"... Part penal colony, part toxic waste dump, Vulpin has long served as a dumping ground for hazardous materials far too dangerous for other worlds. The little that was once natural here long ago became corrupted by dangerous outside influences....Whatever life does manage to survive among Vulpin's subzero temperatures and the poisoned forests must learn to adapt to the harshest of climates".

That actually sounds cool but the game gives it 5 tracks set in garbage processing and industrial areas that all blend together. You're not going to come away thinking this is an interesting planet.

 

The 2 remaining planets, The Null Void (which isn't a planet but a separate dimension) and Primus are the most novel choices. Null Void in the lore is this alternate dimension used as a pocket prison dimension filled with dangerous monsters, penal facilities, sub-planets and debris etc. Some inhabitants have established permanent living areas in this place. The game does a .... passable job representing this setting. It feels treacherous, like an "evil Rainbow Road". But little representation of the culture. Like, this is the bare minimum I'd want for every track in the game.

 

Primus is a giant organic machine that looks like a jungle-like planet full of vegetation and various fauna. The main creatures on Primus are Volaticus Biopsis, mosquito/wasp-like robots created to scour the universe to collect DNA samples to the Codon Stream. A river/ocean/liquid database containing the DNA of of 1,000,910. Primus/The Codon Stream also "powers" the Omnitrix/Ultimatrix Ben uses in the show.  Think of The Codon Stream as like, Spotify and Ben's Omnitrix/Ultimatrix as your phone you use to stream a handful of songs/aliens. The game does a decent job in representing Primus but a new player is unlikely to get why this place is a big deal and would probably see it as another planet. 

 

There are so many potentially interesting and unique track settings for a Ben 10 Kart Racer. I already mentioned Mykdl'dy but others could be a circus themed track around Zombozo from the Classic Series,  A track based on Los Soledad where you race through some warehouses that then transform into a portal or is mid-HighBreed Invasion so you're racing through a fantasy Alien warzone. A track based on the Forge of Creation as you're racing across a nebula while giant Celestialsapiens ominously look down on you. A Track based on the Peraheadron. A giant planet sized cube maze/labyrinth with shifting rooms and death traps. And that's just some examples from the shows. The game can even choose planets and settings we haven't seen.

Galactic Racing as a whole does very little to showcase Ben 10 lore either directly or as unlockables. You don't get Profiles/Bios on the Aliens or Locations. You don't get alternate costumes or kart customization. This is a shame. Like, one of the racers is Ultimate Cannonbolt with his dull Grey design. You can't unlock an alternate skin of him with his regular white and gold design. Big Chill is represented as just Big Chill. No option to unlock his Red Ultimate Design. Fourarms is limited to just his Ultimate Alien design with no option for his Classic Version. Imagine how cool it would be to like, do races as Big Chill, you get an unlockable telling you facts about him or his species and you unlock his Ultimate Skin. 

 

The character selection in this game is....a bit questionable. A lot of the popular Ben 10 characters and aliens are here like  Ben, Kevin, Vilgax, Ghostfreak, Ultimate Humungousaur, Rath , Heatblast, Big Chill, Ultimate Cannonbolt, Ultimate Echo Echo, Fasttrack (who was created specifically for this game and then showed up in the show), Spidermonkey, Swampfire, Ampfibian and Fourarms. But no Gwen or Max? Imagine a Mario Kart without Luigi or Sonic Racer without Tails. At least the Alien selection is solid.

I think that's my biggest complaint against Galactic Racing as a Ben 10 fan. In theory, you could reskin this game to work for any other IP and it would "work" because the game doesn't incorporate a lot of Ben 10 specifics. You can't really "reskin Mario Kart DS" because a lot of the tracks pull directly from previous Mario games. 

 

The Game does seem to use the same voice actors from the show. So all the Aliens and characters sound legit. The game has the Vreedle Brothers on commentary and.... I find some of their track introductions a bit humorous but find their race commentary grating.  Aside from getting repetitive very quickly, Octagon's mannerisms (e.g "What you might call...") got especially annoying for me. These guys are fine in the show because they have relatively minor roles. But in the game, they have the most lines and dialogue. The story as a whole is silly, nonsensical and non-canon so I am not docking any marks for that. 

In closing, Ben 10 Galactic Racing is a fine kart racer and an easy but tedious platinum. There are better Kart Racers on Vita (only just Sonic). As a Ben 10 game, this doesn't do the best job in celebrating and showcasing what's cool about Ben 10.

Arknights Endfield Platinum

 Hello everyone. I recently platinummed Arknights Endfield and want to talk about it.

 

Originally, I had no interest in this game but my friend who is addicted to only playing Gacha games triple dog dared me and I could not let that slide 😤️. She was already ahead of me so I vowed to beat her at her own game or die trying!

 

One advantage of these gacha games is cross-progression across PC/PS5/Mobile. So I could chip away at the game on my phone during my commutes and on my laptop during boring work meetings.  Endfield is a lot more Linux friendly than the Hoyoverse games so Heroic + Dw-Proton could make the dream work on Pop!_OS (as long as I disabled FPS display and MangoHud. That crashed the game. Bazzite ran it better on both PC and ROG Ally for some reason).

 

For those unfamiliar with the game, Endfield has a lot of different gameplay systems. The bulk of the game kinda resembles a version of Genshin Impact. You control 4 characters (though they all physically show up in the world) and can switch between them on the fly as you explore open world maps. You can jump but you can't climb or swim.

 

Combat has you controlling 1 character at a time while the other 3 "try" to do minimal damage and draw aggro. Holding Square does your attack string. O lets you dodge. Dodging through an attack gives you iframes and bonus Energy (called SP) for special attacks. L1 + a face button lets you spend energy/SP to have a character do a special move. L1 + Holding a Face Button lets you do an ultimate attack if it's charged up for that character.

 

Characters also have "combo attacks". A sequence of tag attacks/moves 2 or more characters can pull off if you trigger the correct condition and seem to have a cooldown. For example, if you have the character Perlica on your team, if your controlled character does a full attack string on an enemy by holding Square, the game then prompts you to press R1 to have Perlica come in and hit the enemy with a lighting strike. Or the character Endmin has a Combo Attack where they'll do a physical attack if someone else does a Combo Attack or Skill first. If you have both Endmin and Perlica on your team, you can do a full attack string with Endmin, triggers Perlica's Combo Attack, which then triggers Endmin's.

 

Some Combo Attacks are contextual. Like Snowshine dropping an emergency heal if your controlled character's hp drops below 60%. Combo Attacks, Special Attacks and Ultimates also serve another purpose, they can interrupt certain strong enemy attacks (indicated by a red glowing ring) which can give you more chances to attack (which is important for endgame). Combat is a mix of attacking and dodging to generate SP and trigger Combo Attacks, cycle through special moves and resource management. On controller, I found it a bit too basic but it's about what can be reasonably done on a touchscreen.

 

The other gameplay element is exploration/building. Endfield wants you to explore the open world maps, manually place down relay towers to transmit power and signals, manually place down mining machines to mine resources and set it back to your storage. Then, at your home bases, use those resources to build factories similar to games like Factorio. I admit I got addicted to this aspect specifically. I'd spend hours just trying to set up and optimize my factories to produce more with less or waste less time waiting for other machines to process materials even when it wasn't neccessary for a quest or getting the platinum. It honestly makes me want to purchase Factorio and play it lol. One of the memes I saw on the game complained "there is a waifu gacha mode in my Factory Game". Even the Gamepad Controls aren't bad.

I will complain there's no automatic "undo/redo" command when building. So when I messed something up, it was so much work to go back and try to fix it that I generally avoided editing stuff I already made and tried to build stuff around it which often ended up making these spegetti-fied monstrosities.

 

Factory Gameplay also feeds into Outpost Management and the in-game Stock Market. You have to build products residents of outposts want like batteries which you can sell to them for "Stock Bills". Stock Bills can be used to upgrade certain elements of your factories and logistics, and purchase certain upgrade items and currency outright (at very steep costs). Trading with outposts also levels up outposts which increases the amount of stuff they can buy.

 

Endfield has a lot of "Death Stranding/Souls Social features".  Ziplines, defense towers, message beacons placed by other players can also show up in your game and you have to repair them to keep them around. But it doesn't seem either they or you benefit when others use it. There's no "like system" or "here's a reward because someone used your thing". A shame because I was often grateful to find a spare zipline and wished I could reward the guy who made it. Stock Trading and Visiting Friends actually does benefit both players. You can visit your friend's ships and sell your stock at their prices. This saved me a lot of time as I'd buy 300 units of  I had at its lowest price and sell it to my friend's stock depot at a higher price every day and also give their facilities a short boost.

 

With all that game info said, back to the trophies, Endfield being such a new gacha game meant guides were a bit more fragmented than I would have liked and the game doesn't shower you with goodies to get you up to speed like Honkai Star Rail did. But it was overall an easy platinum. I was rushing to flex but you can casually beat this in 1-2 months even as a F2P player. The endgame required for the Platinum can technically be beaten with certain underlevelled 1 characters instead of a full 4 man team if you're skilled enough. And is really easy if you have a full 4 man squad of level 90s with decent weapons and gear. And about moderately challenging but still doable with a good Level 80 Character as your main and 3 underlevelled support options. More on this later.

 

One issue I ran into was that in the early-mid game, you don't have a reason to spend your stamina (called Sanity in this game) on farming for character upgrade items since most story quests aren't too demanding and don't have frequent jumps. Moreover, the game gives Sanity restoring items that will expire in several days. As a result, I let a lot of my Sanity go to waste as I played the game with full Sanity and a lot of expired consumables.  So when it came time to prep for the Endgame, I was short of a lot of resources and sitting around waiting for stuff to replenish. I got so impatient that I started burning the premium currency reserved for pulling characters to give me more Sanity.

 

My advice for anyone going for the platinum (and to my past self) is to pick which 4 characters you want to build early and look ahead to what you need to max them out and try stockpilling stuff for that. For example, to get Endmin from Level 80 to 90, you first need to "promote" them so they can then be upgraded after Level 80. So you level them to Level 80, then you  need 100,000 T-credits, 8 Blood Cap Mushrooms (around 10 are available in the second region but then 2 grow per day once they're picked. And trying to grow more takes 80 real time hours), 36 Protosets (a Level 80 farm tends to give 7-8 and can eat up to 80 Stamina per farm), 20 Metadiastima Photoemission Tubes  (a Level 80 farm tends to give 7-8 and can eat up to 80 Stamina per farm). Mind you, at that point, I had a max cap of 300-ish Sanity and it took around 2-3 days to completely refill. 

 

And mind you, this just "unlocks the ability to upgrade Endmin to  level 90". You still need like 50,000 more T Credits, 30+ Character Upgrade Chips etc to actually get them to Level 90. And if you want to upgrade their skills to Level 9, that's around 30,000 Credits, 30 Protoprisms, 20 Vitrodendras etc. Repeat if you also want to upgrade their weapon.

 

My point is that I wished I looked ahead and started stockpiling at least T-Credits, ProtoSets and Upgrade Chips etc when I had more spare Sanity in reserve to save myself needing to wait later. There's so many Character Progression Bottlenecks 😭️!

Unlike other Gacha Games, you can get the platinum which just 1 team and even one that's not fully levelled. I went with this F2P Squad:

Main DPS: Endmin. The MC. Their gimmick is decent damage with physical attacks and can throw rocks at people which can stack and do more damage.

 

Ranged: Perlica. I sometimes switched to deal with certain annoying and ranged enemies that weren't fun or too risky to fight in melee range.

 

Secondary DPS: Chen. I slept on Chen big time. This game should be called "Arknights Chenfield".

 

Support/Heal: Snowshine. I mentioned her 60% heal ability but she also had a special move where she could time a counter attack and do a lot of physical damage to stun/stagger foes.

One of my biggest mistakes was that I did 99% of my playthrough and upgrades with Endmin and Perlica so Chen and Snowshine were underlevelled with fewer upgrades. So when I was doing the Endgame with a Level 90 and nearly maxed out Endmin and Perlica, and level 70 Chen and Snowshine, I was struggling so hard 😭️. I was legitimately like "everyone is saying Endgame is easy but I am suffering!".

Lets talk about the Endgame. The rarest trophy in this game is "Le Monument C'est Moi - Complete all [Umbral Monument] stages under "Inorganic Construct" and "Those Forsaken by the Land" in agony difficulty" with a 13.37% rarity on PSNProfiles and 4.0 Rarity on PSN. The endgame consists of 6 challenge maps that require you to defeat all enemies under a 10 minute time limit and with some additional constraint.

 

Lets take "Inorganic Construct - Rock Solid" as an example, in this map, you face this giant rock monster thing that reminds me of the Spiderants from Borderlands. Its front is armoured and its back is kinda exposed. But on Agony Difficulty, it moves faster and deals more damage, has more health, recovers way faster from being stunned, takes longer to stun, and gets an Attack Buff if its not stunned fast enough which can stack. In addition, you can no longer bring in healing items (meaning if you want healing, you need a dedicated healing character) and your stamina is cut to what feels like a quarter and recharges super slowly so you can do 1-2 dodges max at any given time if you're lucky.

 

I tried so hard and threw so many attempts at this thing. But by the 8 minute mark, 3 of my 4 characters would die and poor Endmin didn't have the DPS to clutch it out before the timer expired. I was frustrated like "Do I really need to get everyone to Level 90 with maxed out weapons and level 9 skills and level 70 Gear just to stand a chance?" I couldn't believe people were saying "Endgame is easy. You can beat it with level 70s".

 

Then on a whim I tried out Chen since I messed up a dodge and Endmin died early and I didn't feel like resetting. And Chen, despite being level 70 instead of 90, despite having a blue level 70 weapon, despite not even having her skills at level 9,  made more progress than I ever had with Endmin! I stopped levelling up Perlica's weapons and prioritized Chen's upgrades. I remember that day clearly, I spent that day at work burning all of my Sanity Restoring Items to get Chen to Level 80. Then on my commute back, I grinded that challenge map over and over again on my phone. Over time I learned this monster's attack patterns. I learned its tells and could spend my limited dodges perfectly. It honestly wasn't as bad as I felt first fighting this thing.

 

But the key was Chen. I don't know what her deal is but her basic attacks did more damage and stagger than Endmin. I also learned Snowshine's special move which counters enemy attacks that I had been using was worthless here.  I just need Chen, Endmin and occasionally Perlica’s Special Moves. After several attempts, I beat this monster on the train on my phone and couldn’t believe it. The platinum was finally within reach and this fight was actually fun!

Only for “Those Forsaken by the Land - Unorthodox Tactics” to smack me back down to earth. The gimmick here is that you have to beat 13 archers then 3 worm things in waves. They can’t move around but can use ranged and melee attacks that do extra damage. Your operators can’t use healing items but at least have regular stamina.

I hated this one. I could never keep an eye on every archer and their red flash so I’d keep taking hits which would burn my hp. Even Chen struggled here. I felt like I was running around. Landing 1-2 hits and forced to dodge to keep alive rather than make progress. Once I took out 13 archers, 3 worm monsters would spawn that were very tanky and did insane damage with their ranged slime attacks. It wasn’t long before I was down to just Perlica to 1v3 some damaged worms. I wish I had the recording of it because I never felt so locked in. I had to get as close as possible with Perlica so her ranged attacks could do more damage but that gave me less time to react to their slime attacks. I had to intentionally dodge into their slime attacks to generate SP fast enough for Perlica to do her Special Attacks. My eyes would bounce between Perlica, her damage numbers, her health, her SP Meter. The Worms, and the timer etc. every mistake hurting me to my soul. I didn’t want to play this again.

I let out the biggest sigh of my life when I had 0:02 left on the clock when Perlica’s final combo move took down the work.

 

I wish Endfield had some kind of command system you could issue to control your CPU teammates. I’d have  killed foran option like “I don’t care if you guys do zero damage. Just draw aggro! Please!”.

“Inorganic Construct - Rampaging Shields” was one I completed before discovering the light of the Goddess Chen. The gimmick in this one is that this 4ft tall Rock Rhino spawns and you have to defeat it. At around 50% HP, a second will spawn and you have to defeat both of them. However, when you kill one, the other gets a massive boost to their attack and defence. The trick is to damage both Rhinos to as close to zero as possible, then kill one then quickly kill the other.

The main issue here is that these rhinos keep trying to do charging attacks which do massive damage. They’ll also pursue your character specifically so your squad mates are terrible at drawing agro. I wish the game let me switch characters like in FF7R where the camera switches to them instead of the typical gacha way of transforming your character so I’d at least get some breathing room. I kept getting overwhelmed and had to bite the bullet to do attacks or something.

Their charging also takes them out of the way so I’m wasting time trying to pursue them to land a few hits in. It would seesaw between me getting overwhelmed by getting charged by both at once so I could properly attack or they’d charge out of range so I’d be wasting time.

Perlica shined in this one. She could do ranged attacks so I’d at least keep getting some chip damage in. And Snowshine’s counter attack could stop a charge and even freeze or stagger them if I was lucky. It took a lot of attempts but I was able to clear this one.

“Those Forsaken by the Land - Ballista and Axe” was one I was initially dreading. You fight a 12ft tall absolute unit with a giant axe while his twin and/or lover shoots at you with a giant crossbow. Once you defeat axe boi, he tags out with Crossbow boi and throws rocks from offstage. Defeating crossbow boi has them both come in at the same time.

However, I attempted this one after learning about Chen and this ended up legitimately being one of the more fun fights in the entire game. It was this dance of dodging, attacking and shifting targets. I always felt like I had options and was never scrambling and could always read the enemies. I recall finishing this with 4 minutes to spare.

 

“Those Forsaken by the Land - Survive The Gas” was arguably the hardest one and legitimately made be question if I could platinum this game. The gimmick is that the arena is covered in this toxic gas that drains Operator HP every second. The only solace is that any healing your controller character gets, your squad mates also get 50% of that healing. Moreso than the other challenges, you’re even more on the clock. Any mistakes or damage taken are more fatal since you might not have the HP to spare. Depending on your team comp, you might only have 4-7 minutes to complete this instead of the usual 10.

I kinda messed up because I built Snowshine as my healer instead of Ardellia. Ardellia can heal on demand with her special move and with her Ultimate (which you can bank as an emergency heal). Her combo move also coats enemies with a poison that increases the damage they take from operator attacks at no extra charge.

Snowshine in contrast, aside from being ranked C tier in the meta, lacks on demand healing. She can only heal with her combo move when your HP reaches 60% and this ability is on a cooldown and there’s no way to bank or store it. You can’t be like “I don’t need healing now, do it later” or “I need 2 stacks of healing right now in exchange for more of some resource now”.

Sbowshine’s combat prowess is also lacking. I already didn’t upgrade her weapon past level 60 so her raw DPS is quite low. Her Special Attack isn’t worth using given the time pressure. Moreover, she’s a melee fighter which means she’s always close to enemies which means more chances for her to get hit and die early. Leaving me without a healer for the rest of the fight.

I did try building Ardellia up to take Snowshine’s place. But she needs to be level 70-ish minimum to have the HP required to not immediately die with the first few minutes. And I already burned much of my resources upgrading Chen to level 85. My options were:

-1- spend time upgrading Chen more so she’d have more DPS.

-2- upgrade Snowshine more so she can survive longer and provide more healing.

-3- upgrade Ardellia for the same effect.

I was preparing to go for options 1 and 3 until I saw a YouTube video of someone doing this mission with just a level 70 Chen in under 3 minutes. That inspired me. If it’s possible to beat this with an even worse Chen solo, surely my team could do this? For better or worse, Snowshine was gonna have to carry this team or die trying.

I spent what felt like 3-4 hours doing attempt after attempt at this. This challenge felt a lot more RNG Dependent than the others. The challenge consisted of 6 weak foot soldiers and dogs, then 5 sword ninjas, then finally a giant boss with explosive shotgun gauntlets with dogs as ads. The Strat was to try bunching up enemies and hit them with Chen, Admin and Perlica’s Special Moves to kill as many enemies as quickly as possible. I’d have attempts where enemies would refuse to bunch up so I’d burn too much health and time on killing individual enemies so I’d be fighting the boss at 40-50% HP. I’d have attempts where my squad mates would get unlucky and take too much damage early thereby causing them to fail early.

Eventually, after a few upgrades to Snowshine’s healing move, I started seeing promising attempts. I was in the zone. Maybe my luck improved but my squad mates weren’t taking as many hits so they lasted longer which meant they could stick around to deal damage but also Snowshine could keep the squad topped up around 50-60%. I’d get to the boss with 6-7 minutes left on the clock. And die with him only having 50% left.

My hands were legitimately hurting. Is this what it feels like to be an unc? I started another attempt.  The same opening I always do. Switch to Chen, rush in. L1 + O -> R1 -> L1+ Square. This fills up the stagger meter on hopefully 1-2 enemies so Chen can do a "Finisher" Type move to deal bonus damage. I messed up. 1 Dog got launched too far so he took minimal damage and his friend still had 25% HP left after the combo. I sighed as I went in for a regular attack string. Occassionally switching targets due to the auto-lock on and just rolling with it to avoid wasting time. Weaving in Chen's L1+O and Endmin's R1s to try stacking damage.

 

Minute 9, I briefly Switched to Endmin since she had 55-ish% HP. After a few seconds, Snowshine noticed that and dropped a heal. I switched back to Chen. The idea being that if anyone dropped low, I could briefly switch to them to jostle Snowshine into healing early to keep everyone topped up for longer. 

 

 As I fought, I was mashing R1 with my Index Finger the whole time. Praying that the exact frame I met the trigger for a Combo Attack, it would happen. Because every Combo Attack did more damage than basic attack strings or it would trigger Snowshine to heal early.

 

 At 8:15, Only 4/11 enemies were down but Endmin was at 60% but Perlica was at 45%, Chen at 30% and Snowshine at 25%. By some miracle, Snowshine locked in and offered another heal. This got the squad to about 80/70/55/55 respectively.

 

I already blew at the HP at 7:50 because I took some stray ranged hits. Squad was down to about 60/40/20/30 when Snowshine kept the run going with another heal.  We were back to about 70/65/55/55 and 8/11 enemies killed.

 

07:10, I noticed Snowshine's Ultimate was charged up. I deployed it. The raw damage wasn't as important as the fact it had the Freeze Status condition. Frozen Enemies took extra damage from Endmin's L1+Square. And somehow, Snowhine dropped another heal.

 

07:04. 10/11 enemies killed. The Boss spawned.  One of my slower runs to get to this point. My squad were all around the 60% HP range. Not great but I had to continue. 

 

06:25. My luck is terrible. I already took extra hits from the boss. Worse, I deployed, Chen's ultimate. The boss has a move where he enters a blocking state. If you attack him head on, his gauntlets absorb the bulk of the damage and throw out grenades. Chen's Ult is a series of super quick attacks and I deployed it right when the boss started blocking. I watched in horror as my Ult did zero damage and flooded the arena with grenades that would surely KO my own teammates 💀️. The only solace is that Snowshine remembered to drop a heal a few seconds later. Boss was at 80% HP while my squad was barely in their 60s.

 

 05:48. For a moment, I had hope this could be the run. Snowshine had dropped another heal. The squad were back up to 60-70% while the boss was at 60%. Maybe it was doable! I felt my heart rate rising a few seconds later when I was able to drop Perlica and Endmin's Ults on him bringing him down to 52%.

 

04:53. Snowshine dropped what could be her last heal and Ult. She was at like 10% HP while the rest of the squad were in their 60s.  Unfortunately, this Heal was cut short. The Squad were at about 40/20/60/20.

 

04:27. The boss did one of their charged aerial ground pound attacks. Snowshine took the brunt of it and went down. No more healing. The squad could now never go above 40/20/60/0. At this point, Perlica would have a minute tops assuming she didn't take another scratch. Endmin maybe 2-3 minutes if I was lucky. Chen would go down before the timer. The boss had around 40% HP left.

 

03:55. Perlica dropped one final Ult and combo Attack before going down. Endmin was at 10%, Chen at 40%. The boss at 20%.  With Perlica down, the Team's DPS took a hit. No Perlica means fewer Combo Strikes and no Ranged Special Attacks to Knock the Boss out of certain attacks. The dog ads the Boss Spawns were now more dangerous as there was less to take agro.

03:32. Endmin went down. Chen was at 25%. Boss at what felt like 5%. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't choke on this. I played safer. I avoided dodges that would have awarded extra SP. My eyes darted around keeping an eye on the dog ads. I didn't know if I could do it at this point.

 

03:16. I let out a squeak. With exactly 4.06% HP left, I used one final special move to topple the beast. I stood there for minutes at the Mission Complete Screen. I did it.

Yeah. That was the hardest challenge in the game. Nothing else comes close.

“Fully Rigged and Digging - Place mining rigs on every mining spot of Valley IV, and keep all mining rigs in a state of production"  was interesting. It asks you to place mining units on every ore deposit in each of the 5 open world zones in the Valley IV region. I expected this would be a late game trophy where I’d unlock a new base or outpost in each map I’d use to start building. But completing the main story and side missions didn’t unlock any new outposts. I was confused…. Until I took a break and started working on “Valley Crate Master - Open 270 Valley IV storage crates”.

My mind was blown when the YouTube guide I was following carried a Relay Tower/Line from one map to another 🤯! Turns out, I incorrectly assumed each map was separated from each other via loading screens or something like Borderlands 2 or Batman Arkham Asylum. Turns out, they’re all connected to each via the same paths and tunnels you access them during the main story. You have no reason to use these paths ever again since you can just fast travel between the maps. But these were the key. The map works more like Dark Souls 2/3 or Jak 2!

It was long and tedious to get the chests and mining spots because I missed a few or a few were not partially active so they weren’t marked on the GPS, or required doing a side quest first to fully unlock the side areas hosting them. I’m glad the videos pointed out which side quests you had to complete (or at least partially progress and could then leave hanging) to complete this.

My last trophy for the platinum was “Valley Investigator - Gather 1 investigation report in Valley IV". This requires you find collectibles to complete a set and has a 20% PSN Rarity and a 31% PSNProfiles Rarity. I completed one….. in the Wulling Region which didn’t count 💀.

There was one partially completed one in my Inventory at 3/4 pieces. I figured I could do this one and get the platinum but the guides I saw all said “You need to upgrade one of your outposts to level 4 to get the 4th and final piece”. I was so annoyed that I would have had to force my other factories to produce Batteries and drugs for IRL Days to sell to these refugees just to level them up 😤”. But I luckily googled all investigations and found there was one you could complete instantly by just buying the 4 pieces from the stock market store at a perpetual 30% discount. Could have saved myself so much time there 💀.

That's all the trophy stuff. While I'm here, I might as well review other aspects of the game.

 

-Production Values:

 

The game's menus, sound, music, graphics, UI and artstyle are quite cool and slick. The main menu alone looks especially rad. The PS5 version has 2 graphics options: Quality and Performance and I couldn't tell the difference between them so I left it on Performance.

 I will comment that funnily, the game might look "too good". On my iPhone 13 when I set everything to the lowest settings and my old GTX 1060 gaming laptop on everything very low minus resolution, the game was still taking "50-60%" load according to its in-game profiler. Plus, even on the lowest graphical settings the game still looks good. Like, if I didn't know any better and you showed me the game on very low, I'd assume it was on medium. Character models still look really detailed. The environment still retains a lot of seemingly high detailed textures. It just looks slightly blurry in places.

 

I don't play a lot of PC games (My most played Steam games are Assassin's Creed 1, Splinter Cell Blacklist, Eternal Card Game and Batman Arkham City) so I could be off but I was under the assumption that "very low" settings make a game look super muddy and blurry to be able to run better on underpowered hardware or take up less resources in general.

 

Worse is the resolution settings. In every other PC game I have ever played (granted, that's not a lot), you can maintain the game at fullscreen mode while knocking down the resolution. Endfield PC has it where you can either have the game at fullscreen at native resolution, but any resolution less throws the game into Windowed Mode. So on my desktop where I was running Radeon 780M Integrated Graphics, I had to play on about 60% of my monitor to get like 720p. On my spare Gaming Laptop with an RTX 4060, I did have an option for DLSS which significantly dropped Device load down to 20-30% when enabled which was cool. 

 

-The Story.

 

Can't say much here because I skipped every cutscene in order to beat my friend. She wasted time soaking in the story and exploring every cutscene while I zoomed ahead (I think this is the 4th game I've platinummed while skipping any and all story content?).

 

My friend says the story is actually interesting since it actually explores memories about the PC and mentioned she was sad at a few character deaths. So uh.... take that for what its worth.

 

All I got from the story was that you play as a future Jeff Bezos with Amnesia and Rock Powers and an Anime Harem selling Super Asbestos to refugees on a faraway Moon.

 

In Closing: 

If Chen has a million fans, then I am one of them. 

 

If Chen has ten fans, then I am one of them. 

 

If Chen has only one fan then that is me. 

 

If Chen has no fans, then that means I am no longer on earth.

 

 If the world is against Arknights ChenField, then I am against the world.