Platinum Personae

Once again, it's Platinum Trophy time here at Brendan's Blatherings! 2020 was the Year of Persona, and I earned platinum trophies for both Persona 4 Golden and Persona 5 Royal.

 

P5R is a much easier game to 100% than P4G, and the statistics bear this out.

To my surprise, the platinum trophy for P5R is only "Rare," with a completion rate of 16.7%. It looks like the goal of whoever designed the trophy list was to prioritize the player seeing all of the additions made to the Royal edition, rather than presenting any sort of real challenge. There are trophies for things like going to the jazz club and the lounge, but none for say, defeating Caroline and Justine or completing the Persona Compendium. The hard challenges appear as goals in the Thieves' Den, but these have no impact on the trophy list. As P4G doesn't have any Thieves' Den equivalent, that game puts them all in the trophy list, with the result that less than 3% of players have finished it. Clearly, anyone who's completed all of the Social Links and defeated Margaret will have no trouble with P5R.

Even the fearsome Reaper wasn't much of a threat. Although I had read that it was best to wait until level 60 before challenging him, I took him out at around level 45 (in New Game+) on my first try. All you have to do is let him ambush you, then use Makarakarn on your first turn. This will restrict him to one attack per turn and lock his AI into a loop of alternating between Concentrate and Megidolaon, since he's programmed never to let his attacks be reflected. As long as Megidolaon doesn't one-hit-kill you, you basically can't lose. (Compare this to P4G's Reaper, who spams full-party instant-KO attacks and will easily wipe you unless you've got high-level Social Links and the Trumpeter persona!) Because of my low level, most of my attacks were doing scratch damage, so the fight mostly revolved around healing and poking at him until a Showtime attack triggered.

GET REAPED

The 100% challenge in P5R may have been an easy one, but there's something to be said for a more relaxed experience. In fact, P5R is probably a great place to start if you've never gotten a platinum trophy before. (Bloodborne and Nioh... not so much.)

What would we do without you, Atlus?