Trophy Hunters – Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate

For my newest project/experiment I thought it would be interesting to play an agreed upon game with the intent of getting every trophy/achievement and writing a blog post about it. This was coming from equal parts: an interest to see the differences in approach regarding trophy hunting and my latest excuse to write about whatever games I’ve been playing. I’m not usually one to spend too much time chasing every trophy/achievement in games, save for a few that I really, really enjoy(God of War, Horizon Zero Dawn, Spider-Man, etc.). However, after spending a fair amount of time talking about trophy hunting in Discord and across various Twitch streams, I was inspired to choose a specific game that I would dedicate an extra effort toward getting that platinum trophy. I shared the idea in the Later Levels server a couple months ago and trophy hunter extraordinaire, Solarayo from Ace Asunder decided to join me in documenting the journey to a shiny new platinum trophy, with the possibility of a few other bloggers joining along the way. I intend to post a weekly update as I progress through, similar to what others have done with games like Animal Crossing, Civilization VI, or Dark Souls.

The Rules:

Complete all achievements or trophy requirements in the specified game and write about it, whether a single post afterwards or a series of updates. That’s it.

The Game:

The first step would be to decide on which game to attempt first, looking for something a little more middle-of-the-road in terms of difficulty than Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus or The Last of Us Remastered. After some (very brief)brainstorming, we settled on Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, a game I had been meaning to play for a while. As with the other recent AC games, the path to getting the platinum is primarily playing through the main story, grabbing all the collectibles, and performing a few assorted tasks along the way.

I began playing Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate last Wednesday and I can confidently say I’m really enjoying it so far; I love the Victorian London setting and twin assassins Jacob and Evie Frye. The controls, while still that of the “traditional” Assassin’s Creed games, work well. My only complaint so far would be I’ve run into a few bugs/glitches and a few areas where the game doesn’t want to run as smoothly as other times, but nothing for me to dislike the game this early on. I also refuse to NOT mention the fact your gauntlet is equipped with a grappling hook, making traversal through the streets of London a bit more stylish and fun.

Taking a quick look at the trophy information on my PS4 shows a 2.2% completion rate for AC: Syndicate, making this the rarest platinum trophy in my collection once completed. The next lowest completion rates seem to be for the two trophies: ‘You Wouldn’t Steal a Policeman’s Helmet’ which requires you to hijack a police carriage 20 times(2.8% completion) and Without a Grudge – destroy 5000 destructibles with your carriage. Keeping some of the requirements in mind while playing through the main story will definitely make for less post-game trophy cleanup.

I’m currently in the middle of Sequence 4 of the main story and have gotten off to a good start in completing the ‘Needle in a Haystack’ trophy which you must kill 5 enemies from within the same haystack to attain, and ‘WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU’ – a trophy for flipping five vehicles by shooting the horses pulling them…I wanted to get that unpleasant one out of the way quickly. As long as I grab all the collectibles on my way through the main story and get the trophy for 100% synchronization, I’m pretty optimistic I can have another platinum trophy to add to my meager PSN profile.

If anyone else would like to join the trophy hunt, let me know. I’ll be back this time next week with another update. Thanks for reading!