The Platinum Road #2 - Good Soldiers Disobey Orders (I Am Your Beast)
This isn’t going back to a game for a Platinum in the traditional sense. I played the game originally on PC, now I’m playing it from scratch to Platinum on the PS5.
I am your Beast is a fantastic game so going back to play it was a joy to do. The games level based nature means this trophy playthrough is going to be easier than a 100 hour long RPG. Easier should be in quotes since this is going to be a difficult, difficult platinum.
Step 1: I’m not going back, General
For 26 of the 31 trophies, all you have to do is complete the main campaign. Each stage has a ranking and two optional objectives to complete but there are only a handful of stages that require which does require some of that extra level completion.
There are no trophies for the getting all of the bonus objectives, but both those and the S ranks are required to unlock the challenge stages so they’ll be getting done anyways.
For this playthrough, I had 3/26 S-Ranks and (Forgot to check lol) bonus objectives completed. For reference, my PC save had (Couldn’t be bothered to check) S Ranks and bonus objectives completed.
S-Ranks were glitched from launch, being patched on the 7/8 or 8/8, I didn’t return to the game until 17/8, which is when the rest of this article is from.
Step 2: Alphonse Harding, Ex COI
So from there was getting the rest of the S Ranks in the campaign. These were surprisingly quite fun and varied in difficulty - some were a couple attempts some took upwards of 45 minutes. I alternated between using a guide and kind of finding things out on my own. I attempted each level without a guide for a few attempts, only going for the guide if I was getting close and needed some optimizations or I just wasn’t getting anywhere fast. Game knowledge is one half of the battle and learning the maps is the other half. I will say the games slight inconsistencies annoyed me at the time but I think helps make the game feel even better to beat - things are like 90% the same and muscle memory but the other 10% is adapting to slight AI differences and changing strategy on the fly.
Having knowledge of the the base game, a further 5 hours and 10 minutes for the 23 remaining S Ranks. Add that to the 2:55 it took me to beat the game (with cutscenes) originally for a total of 8 hours 5 minutes. I moved onto the Challenge levels, of which there are 12 - less than half the main game. My time for completion and S Ranks was 6:25. These challenge levels are no joke. and this was my first time seeing these levels.
There’s no trophy for just beating the challenge levels, but there is one for the S Rank, bringing us to 27.
Step 3: I am your Fear
An underrated aspect of IAYB is the story in the game and the voice acting to go alongside it. The COI Support group missions were added in an update (on PC, part of the game on Playstation) and come with a story of a group of surviving COI members discuss their experience with Harding throughout his campaign. The levels then are a bit more extreme than the main game given the nature of these being PTSD based memories of events that happened. In terms of levels, each level is themed around a specific mechanic - Bee hives, rocket launchers, trip wires etc so each level feels like a challenge in the mastery of these mechanics. Master them you will since these are harder again than even the challenge ones. Only 9 levels here (with cutscenes) also took me 6:25 which is quite amusing.
Unlike the Challenge Maps, there’s a trophy for completion and for S Rank, bringing our total to 29 of the 31 we need.
Step 4: I am your Remix
Finally we reach Cold Sweat, a set of 9 levels again that are completely different than the levels that came before. Thankfully you don’t need S Ranks for these levels, you just have to beat them for the trophy. This is good since if you’re following along, these levels are once again the hardest again.
These levels are dreamlike in presentation, with random assets strewn around, objectives rapidly updating and enemies spawning out of thin air. I had trouble with the first level so I moved onto the later ones before doubling back to try the first one again. There was no S ranks here obviously, but there was a mix of A and B ranks with the first level being my only C rank. Cold Sweat took just under an hour at 0:55 but I reckon S ranks would have taken me to a much higher time.
Completion of Cold Sweat Level 1 - Limbo gets us our last trophy and our platinum trophy - Good Job, Babe!
Total playtime for the Platinum is 21:50 which isn’t too bad but that was a very intensive 22 hours. Hard to learn, harder to master but I’m really glad I did it, an incredibly fun and satisfying game amped up to 11 when you’re going for S. Not my rarest platinum - Crash Team Racing Nitro Fueled takes that title somehow but I think this may be my hardest and proudest Platinum. Good Job, Babe!
