As I write this, I haven't -actually- gotten the shiny Platinum trophy for the game just yet, but it's finally well within my grasp and it's only a matter of a handful of hours before it's actually mine. The heavy lifting has been finished - it's just the repetitive, grindy bit that's left that I have to get into and finish. Yesterday, I achieved the actual "Way of the Samurai" trophy which only dings after you experience all 21 proper endings, which doesn't count the extra-secret special 22nd ending, probably because the 22nd ending entails you murdering every single person in Amana. As appropriate as that would be for my character now, I'm not going to take the massive Samurai Point hit just to find out something that I can just as easily Youtube since there's absolutely nothing tying me to do it in -my- game. In fact, it's every bit a better idea that I simply -do not- do it, which is why I will not.
The last ending that I got for the game was titled "Denouement" which was extremely appropriate not only for the game itself, but my involvement with it. Denouement, if you're not aware (as I was not) is a term used for when the strands of a plot come together and resolve, and that's just what Ending One, the True Ending of the game, does. All the little plot points here and there are fully expounded upon and brought to a natural conclusion and while it gets a bit silly (as your Samurai basically becomes the greatest man anyone can ever know and everybody wants him) it's nice nonetheless. Of course, it also speaks for my resolving of the game itself as, while I said I'm not there yet, I am on the cusp of it. The precipice of victory, and it is sweet, sweet stuff. It's all too soon.
To reiterate, all that's left to me now are the Stance Mastery trophies. To get these, I have to have every weapon of every stance and master every skill of them. All of them contribute to the greater movepool of things that I -know- and can eventually place on weapons I create myself (which I won't need to be doing) and build up rather quickly. The only issue is tedium, as it takes a little bit to get into the game itself, not to mention to get to the necessary day (Day 5 to 9) so that I can purchase all the scrolls that I need to with the mountains of money I'm sitting on. You can, as previously stated, only get ten and I have no access to my weapon safe in the area where I buy scrolls....unless I recruit Yukino as a partner and bring her along. Son of a bitch.
Anyway, the idea is that you buy the scrolls and then kill the merchant for your money back so you can do it again. Now with this new step that I have just now stumbled across, I can buy scrolls that I need only (instead of just getting to 10 of all of them), use them on weapons I get from Yukino, toss them back int he box and repeat until I'm out of money....which then prompts me to kill the shopkeep and do it all over again. It's cruel, of course, but it's just the way things have to be - I need to finish this game and there's about 750 skills across 102 weapons in the entire game and when you can only carry 10 of an item at a time (especially Basic Scrolls since that's what gets used most..) it gets a little silly. It doesn't help that some of these swords have been a pain in the ass to get and some still remain as such - I need around 8 more blades before I've got the full arsenal and precisely one of them is a cut-and-dry "This person has it" deal. The rest are rare spawns on the higher difficulties (some say Hard, but I'm trying Instant Kill for convenience) and as we all know, the RNG is a fickle mistress no matter what the game.
However, that's simply the end of it. That is the end of the road and it is clearly in visible sight. I believe the hardest thing at this point will simply be getting one of the swords and by hardest thing, I mean the most time-consuming as I'll have to earn the trust of all four job brokers over the course of about six missions each...which is not great, as you might assume. All of that just to make one person appear whom I can simply murder for her sword. It's a little uneven and annoying to say the least, but that's just the method to it and were there any other way, I would undoubtedly try it first. The rest just involve indiscriminate killings of a certain group of people in the game and, hell, I can do that. I can do that easily and happily. And I will! I will have all of the swords and I will master them all and that will be the end of it. I will be finished, through, and a shiny trophy will be my reward for all of it.
And...then I'll move on to the next game, presumably for the same sort of trinket.
I will love doing it, too, but I don't know what game to move onto next
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