Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the 2024 game Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League and wanted to talk about it. Spoilers ahead.
While I understand it now (kinda) I found this was a really confusing game to Platinum because there's essentially 2 games here and some conflicting information and I wasted a fair amount of time "doing the wrong thing and wondering why I wasn't progressing".
There's "the main campaign and open world" that has its own set of trophies. And there's the postgame grind and live service content which has its own set of trophies some of which overlap and ended up affecting the former. As a result, some of the online guides I found had conflicting and unclear information. For example, take "Blaze of Glory - Achieve 39 Stars in Riddler AR Challenges". At one point this trophy seemed to have been bugged because Rocksteady added additional Riddler AR challenges as part of content updates and expansions and the trophy now required you to do all added challenges in addition to the base game ones. So many older guides from the time mention that this trophy is bugged and you need to do all Added Challenges. However, Rocksteady patched this and it is explicitly mentioned in their patch notes. You only need to do the base game ones.
The more confusing thing for me was how the endgame trophies worked due to a combination of bugs, patches, and the game's own descriptions being unclear, how the game works now may not be reflected in how some guides write about it. But in order to explain my confusion, I need to first give a crash course on how the endgame works:
So the base game has 3 difficulty levels: Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard). These are the options the game gives you when you first boot up the campaign and can change at any point. The Higher Difficulties also increase EXP and Loot you earn.
Once you beat the main campaign, a sort of separate but still connected new difficulty system opens up called "Mastery Levels". So when you start up a postgame activity, the game asks you "what difficulty do you want? Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard), Mastery 1 (harder than Sweating Bullets and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Sweating Bullets difficulty), Mastery 2 (harder than Mastery 1 and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Mastery 1 difficulty), Mastery 3 etc". All the way up to Mastery 60 or something. Later Mastery Level Difficulties are locked until you complete certain activities on the previous Mastery Level Difficulty.
You can apply these Mastery Difficulty options to content in the main open world as well as specific endgame activities and depending on the activity, the difficulties are "tracked separately". This confused me when I first played the game because most guides said some variation of "difficulty doesn't matter for your playthrough.... difficulty matters for endgame so make sure you play on the highest difficulty possible". I was like "wait, so which one is it? Does Difficulty matter or doesn't it? Can't I just grind for a few extra hours on the lowest difficulty and eventually get the Platinum?" The truth is that for the base game/campaign, difficulty doesn't matter. You can play on whatever. But for endgame, you have to play on the highest difficulty possible to unlock the next highest difficulty and keep progressing.
For the purposes of the Platinum Trophy, this matters for 3 specific trophies: "The Venom Connection - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 1 Bane Infamy Set", "All Sorts of Fun - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 2 Bane Infamy Set", and " The Reaper - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 3 Bane Infamy Set". I feel these are the hardest and most demanding trophies in the game. You get these and everything else is an easy clean up.
To get the platinum, you need to get at least 3 drops of Bane's Tier 1 set, 3 drops of Bane's Tier 2 Set and 3 drops of Bane's Tier 3 set. How do you do that? There's 2 parts to the equation that determines which loot gets dropped.
The first is that there's 3 specific missions that open up in the endgame called "Incursion Missions". These missions are "World’s Un-Fair" (and tends to drop Bane Shields and Grenades as loot), "Sending a Signal" (Tends to Drop Bane Guns), and "Invasive Species" (tends to drop Bane Neck Bomb Mods and Lucky Charm Drops). These missions require a currency called Promethium (around 250-1000 per player per mission) to attempt.
The second part of the equation is something called "The Finite Crisis Rank". The rank is determined by adding up the Mastery Levels of highest completions of the 3 Incursion Missions. So for example, if I do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 3, "Sending a Signal" at Mastery Rank 2 and "Invasive Species" at Mastery Rank 1, my Finite Crisis Rank will be 3+2+1 = 6. Your Finite Crisis Rank will not decrease even if you decide to go back and do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 1 or something.
Specific Tier Bane Gear will be added to the pool of rewards you can get based on what Mastery Level you complete an Incursion Mission at, and what your Finite Crisis Rank is. For example, Tier 3 Bane loot requires playing an Incursion Mission at Mastery Level 24 or higher while your Finite Crisis Rank is at least 6o. The thresholds are about "Mastery Levels 1-9 and Finite Crisis Rank 1+" for Tier 1 Bane Gear, "Mastery Levels 10-24 and Finite Crisis Rank 30+" for Tier 2 Bane gear and "Mastery Levels 24+ and Finite Crisis Rank 60+" for Tier 3 Bane Gear.
This is where one of the first confusions I ran into. Turns out, upon the game's release, these loot drops were bugged and ended up dropping at earlier levels than intended. Many guides used that info to say Tier 3 Loot dropped after Mastery Levels 20. When instead, they should have dropped after Mastery Level 24+ (and this is something Rocksteady's patch notes explicitly noted was an issue and has since been corrected). I wasted a lot of time grinding at Mastery Level 20 missions and was so confused because "my Finite Crisis Rank is 64 and I am doing a Mastery Level 20 mission. What gives? Where's my Tier 3 loot?". Even online, I can't find any guide that has the corrected info. The game technically does tell you the correct Mastery Levels required but it's easy to gloss over and it instead highlights the Finite Crisis rank requirement more so. So uh.... ooops on me.
Moreover, in earlier versions of the game, the game would sometimes "take away" these main 3 Incursion Missions and instead ask you to play another Incursion Mission (usually a Horde survival mode or a repeat of the final campaign mission at a higher difficulty) as a combination of "Break from the grinding" and "test to see if you're ready to continue grinding". Many guides and videos I watched do mention this. However, in the current patch, the game will only do this once or twice and then leave you free to grind the main 3 Incursion Missions as long or as many times as you want.
I will note this grind for Tier 3 Loot was challenging. By Mastery Level 15, I was getting Smacked around hard that I actually had to dig in and start sorta buildcrafting. Something I am terrible at in every RPG/Looter shooter/MMO I have ever played. My main approach was Deadshot and giving him Bane's Tier 1 and 2 gear I had collected. Bane's gear tends to synergize with a status condition called "Frenzy" which makes enemies temporarily ignore the player and start attacking each other at the cost of taking reduced damage from your own attacks and being harder to drain Shield/HP from. I also had a bug? I think where if enough enemies around me were frenzied, their models would disappear and be replaced by a giant green swirling cloud of light which it impossible to tell what that enemy was even if they weren't frenzied anymore. I ended up getting sucker punched a lot by that.
However, it was still worth it because the rest of my build synergized well with Frenzy. I got gear that increased my damage on Frenzied enemies, a sniper that could Frenzy enemies on Critical Hits (and eating 10% of my Shield when this happened), and a perk that made Frenzied Enemies do more damage to each other. I also dumped Overflow points into "Doing 8% bonus damage to enemies while airbourne" and "Bonus 3% Shield Capacity". Both helped me because I needed to hover close to enemies as Deadshot. It was only barely enough to squeak by and I was sometimes failing Incursion Missions as my DPS wasn't enough and if enemies KO-ed me, I'd lose precious time on the clock. On one attempt, I literally ran out of time, the Timer went away and the game was doing the mission fail dialogue when I just barely killed the final enemy so the game awkwardly continued the next phase of the mission despite telling me I just failed.
This is why I said these were hardest trophies in the game. The rising difficulty levels do not mess around and you may have to grind Overflow Levels just to stand a chance. Every victory I had made me feel worse because it meant I had a higher Difficulty Level to go through. When I reached Mastery Level 24 and started doing attempts, it felt so discouraging to not get a single Tier 3 Drop. I was begging the game "please, I just need 1 shield/grenade and any weapon. I don't even want to use it. I don't even care if the perks are trash. Just give me this so I can be done with this!". I felt the game mocked me when it dropped 2 Tier 3 Grenades I already had. When it finally dropped the Tier 3 Sniper Rifle, the high was greater than that of Walter White's finest meth.
Onto more mundane stuff, another example of a trophy I found whose guides were somewhat inaccurate now was " Number the Dead - Defeat 10 Raising Hell Hit Squads". Upon launch of the game, the way this works is that the game gives you 5 random challenges you can see on the map and have to do in the open world. These can range from "kill x enemies in y location" to "Afflict X enemies with a Status Condition" and everything in between. Completing these 5 challenges raises a notoriety level and sends a "Hit squad" after you of harder enemies. If you leave the immediate area, the Hit Squad also disappears and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad to Appear. Killing all the Hit Squad Members also ends their pursuit and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad after you. This trophy requires you to kill 10 Hit Squads.
However, this Hit Squad System has been updated. For one, it's 3 challenges now, not 5. Plus, there is an Incursion Mission called "Killing Time" that throws you into a survival mode where killing enemies raises your Mastery Level and gives you more time. The goal of this mission is to survive as long as possible and then extract safely without dying or running out of time in order to keep your loot. However, every few Mastery Levels, the game might spawn a Hit Squad even if you didn't do any Raising Hell Challenges. So I was able to do 6 of my 10 Hit Squads in this mission and the remaining 4 in the open world. This mission is a godsend and saved me so much time.
And that's mostly all for the trophy side. While I am here, I might as well review the game itself.
As for the game itself, I am.... mixed on the game. Like I said earlier, there's 2 games here. The Story/Main Campaign/Open World side, and the post game grind side.
Starting with the postgame, it's.... fine. I am historically not a fan of live service type games. And the whole reason why I even I went for the platinum was because SSKTJL was free on PS+, and PSNProfiles said it was a brisk 50 hours total and a 4/10 difficulty to platinum the game. I had already finished the main story, saw there were no unmissable trophies and figured it wouldn't be too bad to go for the platinum. And it... wasn't too bad but I do feel it was kinda repetitive. Grinding the same 3 missions over and over again for a few days, for loot I wasn't interested in, while the story froze and no longer progressed. I was listening to YouTube videos on the side which helped. And the combat wasn't mindless as the increased difficulty meant I was always under pressure to keep moving and performing to my best. I can't say the experience was 100% mindless but I will note that if the game was Mastery Level 25 or higher to unlock Tier 3 loot, I would probably have stopped playing. At Mastery Level 24, I often had a 70% success rate on my attempts. I was lucky the game showered me with Promethium so I never had to grind more. I think in total. I must have done at least 40-50 attempts total before getting 3 Tier 3s.
I suppose this is the norm for this Looter shooter/Live Service Endgames. Repeatedly doing the the same few missions to unlock harder runs for better gear. I will comment that at least the way SSKTJL handles its loot is a lot less "arbitrary" in a sense. In something like Borderlands, a weapon drop's quality is in part dictated by the level you get it at. So a Level 20 version of a gun is going to be way stronger than a level 10 version of a gun and there's no way to bring up a Level 10 up to a 20 or reroll or tune its perks.
SSKTJL operates a bit differently. Loot is mostly static and disconnected from level. So a Notorious Drop you get in like chapter 3 of the main story is just as capable as an endgame drop. The exact perks may not line up but by and large, you're not forced to have to keep equipping newer and higher levelled gear. If you find a set or loadout you are happy with, the game lets that you roll with that. There are NPCs that can help reroll perks or upgrade status on the weapon to improve it slightly at least.
I do wanna highlight some little things I liked about the game before moving onto the main campaign. I love the use of the Dualsense’s features. The R2 adaptive trigger being harder to use when melee-ing was a great way of reminding me I was overextending my characters. I loved the lights indicating my health, weapon and character. I love the use of the speakers for radio transmissions and wished more games (including the Arkham ones) did that. I love the extended database/codex complete with voice acted audiologs that can play in the background. Aesthetically and graphically, I felt the game and map looked cool
Now, as for the main story/campaign/open world, I may hurt my credibility with this review (as if I had any left) but I really enjoyed the first 80% of the campaign's story.
Like, I would have expected a Suicide Squad game to "play it safe" where Task Force X would have a "side mission" far from any actual heroes and certainly wouldn't kill any mainline Justice League members. But no. The game goes all in on its premise. It really does have the Squad kill off most of the Justice League. It doesn't "coddle" or "protect" the League. The end result for me at least is a way more interesting and novel story. I know this game is very controversial for its story but like, I felt it commits and does a great job with it.
I feel the story does a great job in characterizing the Squad. I flip flopped between "God! These are absoluty despicable heels" and "Golly gee, I feel kinda bad for these guys. Maybe they don't deserve this suffering. Maybe there is some humanity in them".
Like, when the Squad kills Flash, Boomerang prepares his whole speech. That's expected of him. He is an egotistical villain that gets off on hating Flash. But when he begins to desecrate Flash's corpse, at first Deadshot holds him and berates him like "Man, this is the Flash, what are you doing...." but when he sees Boomerang's junk, the whole squad turns around and praises him. It's this switch between "Hey maybe the Squad aren't bad people" to "God, these guys are monsters" that I find so interesting in the story.
I like the arc of the characters. They start out barely tolerating each other, forced to work together because of their internal bombs. And by Batman's mission when hit with fear toxin, they've worked together enough that they are able to pull through as a team and counter Batman despite the fear toxin really pull at the Squad's insecurities and pushing them to cut and run. Whereas Batman would have expected them to easily fall apart like any other group of disorganized and distrustful criminals.
Moreover, I just love the dialogue and production value in the game. Between Batman's Radio Dialogue, the news broadcasts, the Squad's own quips, Brainiac's performance. It's legit good stuff.
I feel my biggest complaint is the fact this game is/was a live service game (Ironic given the first half of this post). It bleeds into the story. The game can't start with the squad truly hating each other and being dysfunctional like in other SS media because you need the 4 Squad Members kitted and functional by like Hour 2 for coop and Seasonal Events. The game can't have more handcrafted set piece like missions (like the past Arkham Games) because it needs to accommodate multiple players (potentially different characters depending on what players chose or even if there are multiple players).
For example, there's 2 missions in the game where the Squad are being hunted by Batman. They feel like they're from a horror game where you're on your own, using your flashlight to peek around while Batman leaves traps and occasionally ambushes you. It's really cool. But these sections have basic gameplay and don't go really far with how you respond against Batman.
Another casualty is the final 20% of the story. The squad kill Superman and are celebrating when Brainiac freezes them and brings teleports them on his ship. Brainiac has been built up this entire game. You don't hear or see him. And now here he is. He speaks in this eloquent way. He prepares his brainwashing machines while telling the Squad he will "give them everything they could ever want" and plays to their insecurities. Lex 2 Teleports the Squad last second off the ship and to Lexcorp. The squad try to catch their breath after what happens. And Boomerang even drops a rather funny "wait, I wanted to hear Brainiac out".
It feels like the game is shaping up for the final fight against Brainiac. Maybe the Squad could lose here or betray each other. Hell, you could even have a sequence where the character you were controlling when the mission starts eventually gets brainwashed by Brainiac and the remaining 3 Squad members have to kill him and then Brainiac to end the game in this bitersweet moment. Or hell, you could have a moment where the Squad embrace the end and let their neck bombs go off to save the world to end the game.
But the story has Lex 2 tell you "well actually, there are 13 Brainiacs across different dimensions/Elseworlds. You need to do some grinding to take on this one first". And now the story loses its momentum. It doesn't feel like I am preparing for a final battle against Brainiac. It feels like I am grinding to do a mission. And now I know the Squad will beat Brainiac and it devalues Brainiac because now the Squad will also have to challenge and beat the other 12 in post game live service updates.
I also feel it "devalues" the premise of the Squad and their accomplishments. What makes SS/Task Force X interesting, especially in this game, is the fact they're the longshots. The fact they've made it 30 minutes without failing or dying is a miracle. Every hero underestimates them. Waller even picks this group because "they are C-D tier villains. Nobody expects them to truly succeed so when they fail/die, it's no huge loss". The actual Justice League couldn't take down Brainiac. The fact the Squad are being sent in isn't because they actually are the substitutes but because they're the desperate "we got nothing to lose" option.
But if the Squad are now grinding to take on Brainiac, and also are aware of the 12 other ones coming in live service updates. All of that changes. Braniac no longer feels like such an insurmountable task, but like, another villain and one the Squad doesn't have to worry too much on. It feels now like any group could have done this and devalues the fact that the Justice League failed to stop him.
The gameplay also suffers. I already mentioned some main missions were limited but also, a lot of missions are "kill x number of enemies an arbitrary number of times". The game has to do this rather than more specific scenarios since that would require scripting unique sequences and enforce structure on the player. But the game can't guarantee what squad member you are playing at, what gear they have, and what other players are active so it needs this more generic mission template to accommodate that.
Even the boss fights against the other JL members showcase this. How do you beat Flash? You wait for him to run around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. How do you beat Green Lantern? You shoot his green constructs, counter shoot him to render him vulnerable then shoot him with your regular attacks. How do you beat Superman? You wait for him to fly around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. The animations of the hero changes but not the "flow of the fight".
The only boss fight that is unique is Batman's because it can only be played solo and it dictates your character selection to some extent. So it can have a Horror game sequence beforehand where Batman douses the squad with Fear Toxin. And the Boss fight itself is against a Giant hallucination of a Demon Batman with custom attacks you have to jump over and shoot. It's still somewhat basic from gameplay but more unique compared to Flash, Supes and Hal. Even the Brainiac Boss fight has Brainiac turn himself into Flash and repeats the Flash boss fight but with more minions.
The open world also suffers here. Prior Arkham games also had relatively static open worlds to some extent (Arkham City and Knight took place across a single night after all). However, in Arkham City, as you played through the main story, the progression of the turf war between Joker, Penguin and Two Face occasionally intersects with Batman's story in a way that's simultaneously in the background but also influencing the story in way that makes replays so much more interesting as you can see the puzzle pieces moving in real time.
For example, in Arkham City, the villains have established clear territories: Two-Face in Park Row (Solomon Wayne Courthouse), Joker in the Industrial District (Steel Mill), and Penguin in the Bowery (Museum). Rumors spread that Joker is dying. This looming power vacuum motivates Penguin and Two-Face to plan their moves, while Joker's crew becomes increasingly desperate and divided. Penguin uses his influence to distract Joker's crew at the GCPD building while secretly holding Mr. Freeze in his museum. He further escalates the war by destroying bridges to isolate the Industrial District. Once Batman defeats Penguin, the Bowery falls into chaos. Two-Face capitalizes on this, seizing control of the Bowery and absorbing many of Penguin's men.
You can see the progression of this as you play with the thugs doing makeshift alterations to their uniforms, their dialogue and even where they are located. And they end up as obstacles to Batman not because Batman is directly involved in their turf war but because they happened to be in his way to his own separate objectives. Batman doesn't take out Penguin and Joker's men in the subway because he wants to disrupt their turf war but because they're on the way to Wonder City and as a result, learns more about their conflict. It makes the story and world feel so much richer.
SSKTJL can't really do this. The map is mostly static at the start of the game as it is by the end barring more destruction and surface level collateral. The early chapters had cutscenes showing Brainiac's forces capturing civilians and transforming them but they're not present during gameplay. Instead just wandering around or holding down territory. You don’t get side stories from other heroes or villains surviving the onslaught. Yo don’t see the progression of the war. It’s like time freezes when the game starts. Metropolis trapped in a perpetual live service limbo.
In another timeline, SSKTJL was a 8-10 hour singleplayer game that was able to make a more story focussed one and done game that didn't have to be completeable by different players and support years worth of live service content. It may even help its legacy over time as a bold new and risky game. But instead, even though its servers are still up, even though it technically has an offline mode now, I worry this game wouldn't be around long enough for future players to appreciate any of its positives.
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