Hogwarts Legacy PS5 PlayStation 5 Platinum Trophy 1
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PlayStation Trophies have been around for about 15 years now, and developers have a couple of generations of experience under their belts. While not everyone cares for the virtual gongs, a lot of players derive plenty of pleasure out of completing their games and earning Platinum pots, showcasing their fandom for particular releases.

In the early days, developers had very little experience with the system, and the gongs could include some outrageous requirements. We specifically remember Resistance 2 on the PS3, which required you to get 10,000 kills in online competitive modes – a Trophy which just 0.6% of owners would bother to unlock in the end.

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More recently, Trophies have got a lot better, respecting the time of players while still providing plenty to do. But Hogwarts Legacy, the open world Harry Potter game from Avalanche, throws out all recent learning for one of the most irritating Platinums from a major mainstream game in quite some time. It’s not that the Trophies are difficult per se, they’re just thoughtlessly designed.

For starters, you’ll need to find every collectible in the game – an outrageous 603 items, to be clear. While a lot of these are relatively simple to locate, and your map includes plenty of checklists, it’s a ridiculous number – and to add insult to injury, the Trophy is a bit buggy, meaning it’s possible to end your campaign missing one or two items.

Games like Days Gone have allowed you to settle for 75 per cent of the collectibles when the numbers are this large, and we think the same should have applied here. The release also requires you to interact with all of its open world bloat: there are a mind-blowing 95 Merlin Trials to complete, but they all subscribe to the same four or five solutions.

And then there’s the real kicker: the game forces you to play through the first five or six hours of the campaign with each individual house, repeating mostly the same quests four different times. Again, none of this is difficult, but its tiresome and tedious – the kind of Trophy design we figured was far behind us.

Considering the audience for Hogwarts Legacy, we think a more straightforward, achievable Platinum Trophy would have been appreciated here. As it happens, Avalanche has fallen into some pretty avoidable pitfalls. If you’re still eager to unlock it, you can refer to our Trophy guide as part of our Hogwarts Legacy guide. But let’s hope a hypothetical sequel is a little more forgiving of the player’s time.