One of the best parts of playing a game on PlayStation is hearing the sound of that trophy pop up after you beat a difficult boss or complete a rather tough challenge. Most of the time we are rewarded with golden or silver digital bragging rights that we can show off to all of our friends. Yet, sometimes developers just decide to give us a bronze trophy for all of our efforts.
Not only can this deflate any trophy hunter’s ego, but getting a third place reward for going above and beyond is a bit frustrating. It’s a step away from just giving everyone a medal for pressing the start button and hardly gives you any anything to be cocky about. However, there are some bronze trophies that should really be bumped up to gold. As much as we like a good challenge, these 10 bronze trophies have some serious explaining to do.
Benevolent Leader – Fallout 4
Settlers in Fallout 4 are incredibly fickle and needy, always wanting you to stop questing so you can help them. “Oh, we need you to give us clean water, healthy crops, and better defenses,” they groan and cry out. If you want to earn the Benevolent Leader trophy you’ll need to get one of your settlements up to 100% happiness. This is incredibly difficult since even the smallest crack or shift in numbers can skew your chances of getting them beyond the high 80s/low 90s for happiness.
It will take a fair amount of resources and a lot of time in the building menu to get this lowly bronze trophy, which should at least be a silver. Seriously, why can’t these people just be happy?
Platinum! – Bayonetta
Bayonetta is a difficult game thanks to the fast paced combat and powerful enemies that will typically swarm you at once. This makes earning a Platinum medal at the end of each combat section quite hard, since most of the time you need to obliterate your enemies quickly, with multiple combos, and without being hit once. In order to get this trophy you will need to earn Platinum 10 times, across 10 different areas, which is annoying if you aren’t exactly up to par with your moves. Sure you can turn the difficulty down to easy, but that’s’ way too much work for just a bronze trophy.
Lone Survivor – Darkest Dungeon
One of the biggest appeals of Darkest Dungeon is the absurdly challenging and completely relentless mechanics. It’s very easy to die or lose an entire party in this game, but that’s usually because you’ve had terrible luck with the fights. Yet, if you want to get the Lone Survivor trophy, you need to defeat a boss… with one member in your party still alive. Did we mention when a party member dies they are gone for good? So basically this bronze trophy is asking you to kill off your hard work for a meager reward.
Seriously, would it have killed them to give us a gold or at least silver for our trouble? Our fallen comrades aren’t exactly going to feel honored if all we get is a humble brown medal with “just good enough” stamped across the front.
Abstergo Employee of the Month – Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood
Online trophies are the worst, but Abstergo Employee of the Month just feels like a slap in the face to any respectable trophy hunter. In order to unlock this you need to get every single online bonus at least once while playing, which means you are going to need to do some serious grinding just to get this reward. The amount of time you will invest is certainly not worth the size of the trophy, especially since AC Brotherhood’s multiplayer wasn’t exactly balanced. Come on now, Abstergo is a high-end company; certainly they could afford a few extra gold trophies for us.
Crush Them With One Swift Stroke… – Star Wars Battlefront
Do you know what’s worse than an online trophy? One that makes you go out of your way to do some complete nonsense that will, inevitably, cost your team the match. In order to nab this trophy, you need to trample 25 Rebels with an AT-ST walker in a single round. In case you’re unaware, the AT-ST is not exactly the stealthiest of vehicles and can be heard a mile away by anyone remotely paying attention. If you want us to go through the trouble of using a giant death machine incorrectly, then we better get a silver trophy out of this.
One-Winged Angel – Kingdom Hearts Final Remix HD
Most boss fights in video games are fairly balanced and really rely on the player’s understanding the mechanics of a fight and exploiting them. Then there are boss fights that are completely one sided and make you feel like you’re hitting the enemy with a toy sword. The secret boss Sephiroth in the first Kingdom Hearts is a prime example of this, as his abilities are downright broken.
Not only can he instantly knock you down to 1 HP, but this guy leaves almost no windows for you to attack him. A fight like this can take upwards of 40 minutes, so why they thought it would be a good idea to give players a bronze trophy for defeating him is beyond us.
Social Lubricant – Watch Dogs
This trophy basically requires you to complete level 10 in the three different drinking games scattered throughout the city. It doesn’t sound particularly difficult, but trying to hit all the buttons in a quick succession while your screen blurs out isn’t exactly nuanced. On top of that, you will have to consistently out drink your opponents, as the challenge racks up with each successive win. This makes getting a bronze quite a buzzkill (See what I did there?) since it could take you dozens of tries before you eventually best your opponent. Your liver may hate you, but at least you got a third place trophy, right?
Close Shave – Grand Theft Auto V
The amount of time you need to invest into this bronze trophy is absurd, especially if you aren’t using Trevor as your pilot. Not only do you basically need to complete every class at the Los Santos Flight School, but you will then need to maneuver your plane underneath every single bridge in the game. Now this would be easy if that didn’t include ones that were barely a few feet off the ground, forcing players to have perfect precision in order to fly under them successfully. Unless you really want to 100% GTA V, this trophy is really more trouble than it’s worth, especially if you aren’t the best at flying to begin with.
Don’t Get Cocky, Kid – Dead Space
Dead Space is perhaps one of the best horror games to enter modern gaming, as the tense atmosphere and unique approach to combat made it a truly memorable experience. However, what wasn’t memorable was the terrible turret section that was borderline unfair and just frustrating to complete. There’s no part of Dead Space that screams, “We need a turret defense sequence,” which means the ADS cannon section may throw off quite a few players.
What’s worse is if you want to earn the bronze trophy for this you’ll need to finish with your ship’s hull integrity above 50%. Given Dead Space is scarce on save points to begin with, this means you will have to run all the way back to this area if you fail. We can only appreciate the Star Wars references so much, Dead Space. Maybe next time make it worth our while with a silver trophy.
Almost Every Hero Trophy – Overwatch
As much fun as Overwatch can be, trying to get some of the character specific trophies can be stupidly difficult. For almost every single hero, they have a trophy that requires you to kill four opponents with one ultimate (which is harder than it sounds) or to have luck completely play in your favor. Winston’s Mine Sweeper stands out, as it requires you to destroy 10 turrets in one life, which can be nearly impossible if your opponents aren’t running a Symmetra. Then there’s Rapid Dischord, a trophy so obscenely based on luck that it’s nearly impossible to unlock without help.
Then there are trophies that are purely based off the skill of a player such as the Smooth as Silk trophy, which requires Widowmaker to get a scoped headshot while jumping. It takes a lot of time and patience to unlock many of these, so the fact that they are all bronze is quite annoying. Also, some of the best sprays in the game are tied to unlocking these trophies, so good luck trying to unlock the 8-bit Zenyatta if you can’t land your Dischord Orbs fast enough.
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