Is the Saros Platinum Worth It?

Everyone’s talking about Saros right now. Whether it’s about how hard it is, how good the gameplay is, what’s the story like? I had a different question though. How’s the platinum?

Well, after countless runs through Carcosa, I’ve finally unlocked it and wanted to give my thoughts. For reference, this isn’t a review of Saros but a look over its trophies and whether I think you should try to add this platinum to your collection.

Similar gameplay, different trophies

When you think about the platinum for Housemarque’s previous game, Returnal. Trophy hunters around the globe will likely let out a loud groan. What appears to be a fairly simple trophy list becomes a nightmare with the introduction of collectible trophies.

By the time you beat Returnal, you’d have the vast majority of trophies but (at launch) would be required to do a good 20-30 hours worth of searching for RNG collectibles. Doesn’t sound like fun does it? Well thankfully Saros is a completely different experience.

Saros goes away with collectibles and decided to prioritise miscellaneous trophies you can unlock through different tasks. There’s a wide range of these which include doing certain feats with each weapon type, like hitting 3 enemies with one use of your crossbow or defeat 5 enemies at once with one of your certain power weapons.

The new trophies make is so that each run you’re actively trying to experiment with each weapon type, trying to see how the work and whether they fit into your play style. By the time you’re done with them all you might come out with some new favourites, I know I did.

Cycle after Cycle

As is the norm for most games nowadays, you’ll have a bit of grind in order to complete this trophy list, don’t worry though it’s nothing like Returnal’s.

You’ll find a few trophies like “Kill 1995 hostile” or “Absorb 2021 bullets with the shield”. You’re almost guaranteed this by the time you roll credits. That’s not where the grind starts.

You’ll find one trophy called “Full Arsenal” this is a trophy you want to be working on from the second you start playing Saros. To unlock this you need 25 kills with each standard and power weapon. That’s 475 kills. Unfortunately you’ll soon realise there’s no good way of tracking this except seeing if that total has gone up at all. my recommendation? Use each new weapon solely until you hit 25 kills with it, even if it results in a death or two. You’ll thank me later.

There’s also a trophy, “Carcosan Cartographer”, to survive 33 expeditions (Get it?) with at least one Carcosan Modifier equipped. If you’re unaware of these, they act as positive or negative perks like bonus damage or less defence, and you can equip each run. You need to complete 33 biomes with one or more of these equipped. Sounds daunting, doesn’t it? The best way I found was to repeat biome 3 (Shattered Descent) and return to the passage after killing the boss. This might take you about an hour, but during your progress, you can work on the various other trophies.

Cranking down the difficulty

Returnal was seen as a pretty hard platinum to many, while I thought it was fairly manageable I can see the frustration some had. Saros changes this by giving you the opportunity to make it as easy as you like.

The Carcosan modifiers I earlier described can be used to make you almost overpowered; you can turn on accessibility options to give you as much usage as you want, and can get through the whole game just fine, so long as you aren’t just running into bullets. This might be heartbreaking for some players. I, too, wanted an even harder platinum for Saros. But thankfully, it is fully optional; if you want, you can make the game even harder with these modifiers.

I say this to note that even if you’re a newbie to Roguelikes, you’ll be able to get through this relatively fine. There are a few trophies that may seem overly daunting, like having to complete a fully biome with no damage. If you wish, you can use these modifiers to breeze through the previously mentioned Shattered Descent and turn it into a cake walk.

Should you platinum Saros?

The Saros platinum is a no-brainer to me. Some may dislike the easier platinum, but at the end of the day, Saros is an excellent package that’s a fantastic time to play. Even if it may be easy, it’s some damn good fun.

Due to the fact that most of these trophies can be done during your playthrough, and ones you don’t can easily be farmed out in a few hours after the final credits roll, I highly recommend you complete that trophy list and platinum Saros.