With so many games and so many Achievements to do, the Tales Series is notorious for having at least three of these in each game. And most of them require multiple playthroughs.
Tales of Symphonia
- Lloyd's titles and Achievements
- Gung Ho involves fighting Rodyle on the Island Human Ranch with a party-combined level below 145. It only counts the four active party members and not all eight of them, thankfully, but this still means your party must be Level 35 at the most to get the title. And Rodyle isn't fought very early on. In the Gamecube version, he was the third-to-last boss on Disc 1. For the updated versions, that's beyond the halfway point of the game and getting close to the final third.
- Also his Eternal Apprentice title. To earn this, Lloyd needs to never change his initially equipped weapon, the Wooden Blade, until the player has defeated Kilia in Palmacosta. Since Palmacosta is usually a location and story event that happens somewhat early on, within the first 5 hours of playing, this isn't too bad... let's just hope you didn't accidentally end up on the 'Hard Path' of the game that leaves you to do the events in the north of Sylvarant first, leaving Kilia for much, much later in the game.
- The Berserker title is, thankfully, not a difficult achievement to get. Merely requires winning 256 battles on Hard or Mania difficulty. Not difficult (just fight low-level enemies), but tedious to do.
- Brave Soul, obtained by not running away from any battle, until you have defeated Yuan and Botta. About halfway through the game. Joy, because this includes dungeons where the paths are narrow and it's difficult to avoid battles, even with Holy Bottles. Also, just to be confusing, the Hopeless Boss Fight that is a mandatory part of the story before this point needs to be lost, because surviving until it ends automatically counts as running away.
- His Combo titles, in general. Getting a 10-Hit Combo is pretty easy. The 30-Hit Combo takes a bit more work, but with a full party and some nice timing, it can be done. It gets tricky with the 60-Hit Combo title, but can be done with a nice combo first and then a good, hit-filled Unison Attack. But the final combo title requires a minimum of a 100-Hit Combo, which is downright frustrating to work on, because the enemy may die before you manage to get to a hundred hits. And you need to control Lloyd for this, one of the two characters in the game (the other being Presea) who doesn't have an infinite combo.
- Sheena's titles and Achievements:
- The Treasure Hunter title and trophy. To obtain this title, the player needs to open every single treasure chest in the entire game. That already is a pretty annoying task to complete. It gets worse with the knowledge that proceeding through the game leaves several areas to be inaccessible. note The Katz Guild has a service that has information on any missed treasure chests and sending a Katz out to grab them for the player, but the Katz are known to be completely unreliable. The only upside is, that there is a certain Katz that will tell Sheena the percentage of completion on treasure chests, if she talks to him. Except he's in an optional area, not accessible until pretty late in the game and doesn't tell you where you missed anything... Grab a guide and tick everything off meticulously.
- The Party Comboist and Combo Conductor. The former requires the player to control her and use two Unison Attacks in one battle, which is more difficult than it sounds, unless you have the "Lucky Unison" EX Skill on her and got lucky, leaving the bar filled after starting one Unison Attack. The latter is achieved by using only Unison Attacks to win a battle. (Hint: Prism Stars is the most powerful Unison Attack in the game and hits everywhere. Go into a battle with low-level enemies with a full Unison Attack bar, start up a Unison Attack and finish with Prism Stars to hopefully wipe out everything.)
- Colette's titles and Achievements
- The Friendship First title is obtained by having no KOs in your game, until you defeat Iubaris. And while the Light Seal can be done a bit earlier than usual, it also counts as the 'Hard Path' of the game, so it balances out the advantage of doing it early.
- There's also Colette's Dog Lover Achievement. In order to get this title, Colette needs to be your on-screen character and she needs to talk and give a name to every dog in the game. Sounds easy enough, except some cities become inaccessible. And one of them is locked behind a lengthy, expensive sidequest. And there's a segment of the game where Colette can't name dogs.
- Genis' titles and Achievements
- I Hate Gels! will be so annoying to players, you will want to rename it to I Hate This Achievement. In order to obtain this title, the player needs to go through every battle up to fighting Pronyma on the Fooji Mountains without using ANY gels during battle! And Pronyma is fought after a good chunk of the first arc is over, so you need to make it through quite a lot of difficult boss battles without relying on them. This means that essentially the only way you can heal in battle is either with healing spells or Life Bottles.
- Dependent for him, too. The player needs to control Genis for one battle and not do anything. No attacking, no blocking, no moving, no using items, no getting hit, nothing. Either try to get this early on with enemies who aren't the Ladybugs that like to fly across the field and dive-bomb onto him or wait until much later in the game and go back to the first area and have your overpowered party deal with weak enemies in two seconds.
- Item Collector means you need to fill the Collector's Book to 100% in every category. This includes doing sidequests that give you exclusive weapons, the colosseum for each character and at least three separate playthroughs, to obtain the route-exclusive items that three characters give you. And don't forget to carry over your book's completion.
- The Figurine Collector is similar, but worse. While the figurines can be created late in the game, they can all be done in one playthrough. But you need to craft every single Figurine, which means grinding for specific Pellet drops from enemies and some of them are rare to obtain.
- Raine's titles and Achievements
- Monster Collector, which requires at least two separate playthroughs, because one split in routes in the game results in route-exclusive bosses. And this includes doing the Bonus Dungeon for its bosses.
- She also can get Survivor if she's the last surviving member for a battle.
- Zelos' titles and Achievements
- Gigolo is similar to Colette's. In order to obtain it, Zelos needs to be your on-screen character and he needs to talk to every female NPC in the entire game with his "Personal" EX skill equipped. Same problem as above, except some women do not appear in cities until after a certain point in the story. And others disappear. Grab a guide... or make use of a bug where you leave the penultimate dungeon after defeating certain bosses, but before obtaining a necessary item, and backtrack to Zelos' home and talk to his butler, gaining the title the cheat-easy way.
- Loudmouth for Zelos is tedious, at most. He needs to talk a lot during one battle (50 times, in fact). Thank goodness for EX Skills like Taunt or changing strategies.
- Gilgamesh requires you to complete several difficult sidequests and get a potentially missable item all within one playthrough. To get the title, you need to finish a battle with a very specific set of gear equipped. Of the items you need, two can only be obtained as drops from one of the game's hardest Superbosses, two are in treasure chests in the final dungeon, one requires you to complete the Advanced level of the Coliseum as Zelos, and one (the Golden Armor) can only be bought from an NPC at the very end of the game for a hefty amount of Gald, but only if you gave a different item to said NPC before a point fairly early in the story.
- Presea's titles and Achievements
- Empty Soul title. You need to defeat Abyssion. As the game's superboss, he is not easy.
- Her Grown-Up Kid title, which involves an obscure sidequest with a very precise and easy-to-miss beginning phase.
- The Collosseum's Advanced Rank titles for each of the characters, simply because doing it with each character ranges from tedious to annoying, because you need to solo the rank with each character. This includes Genis, Raine and Colette.
- The skit-based titles, because several of them are easy to miss because they don't appear, unless you stay in a specific location long enough. This includes Idiot Chosen for Zelos, Paw Mania for Presea and Paw Dandy for Regal. The only one that is kind about this is a title for Kratos (Dad), which is automatically obtained after he joins your party a third and final time on his route.
Tales of Vesperia
- The Secret Missions stands out, especially if they involve fighting a boss a certain way. The first few are not that difficult, you probably get the first one by accident... and then there's the 17th one (18th in the Definitive Edition), which has difficult timing. You need to use a Guard Breaker arte after a certain point in the battle, watch for the animation, then switch to the character with a certain arte and use it, all within a very short span of time.
- And Yuri's True Knight costume title is terrible, because it involves doing every Secret Mission in the game. In one playthrough, mind you.
Tales of Graces
- Several of the Time Attack trophies for bosses. Can you defeat the Big Bad or That One Boss within 60 seconds on Unknown?
- Mixer Maxed, which requires you to max out your Eleth Mixer's capacity at 9999. This one isn't reviled for its difficulty, but just for its sheer length. Eleth grinding is a major slog and even if you religiously use it from the moment you get it AND use the New Game+ perk that makes the job faster, it's not uncommon to have beaten the game multiple times and unlocked every other trophy and still not even be halfway to completing this one.
Tales of Xillia
- The Achievements of getting every character to Level 99 and complete the Lillium Orb. Requires a lot of grinding, though Elize can obtain a skill that makes this a bit easier for her, by increasing EXP for her based on how much she healed in a battle.
- The Achievement for completing a total of 90 subevents, out of a total of 102. Doesn't sound too difficult, but some of them are route-exclusive or become inaccessible very fast.
- Special mention goes to Milla's three exclusive Within A Dream subevents, which takes place after her sacrifice, when she's in the Spirit Realm. In order to even start the first one, the player needs to go the completely opposite direction of where the game tells them to go.
- Let's couple the Obsessive Skit Viewer Achievement into that, too. This Achievement is unlocked if the player has viewed 220 skits in total. Putting it with the subevents is important, though, because some skits do not unlock unless the player waits a specific amount of time, before completing a subevent. And this one is extra difficult to unlock on Milla's route, because her route has less exclusive skits than Jude's.
- This Achievement becomes a lot easier to obtain if the player purchased 'Unlock Skits' from the Grade Shop during a New Game Plus playthrough which instantly unlocks all the skits for the player to view.
- Item Fanatic, an Achievement by having Item Data of 700 items. This includes majority of equipment, so the player needs to increase the various shop levels and buy one of each piece of equipment, to get its data.
- The Achievements for upgrading every Shop's Level to 100. Requires lots of grinding for resources in the fields and more grinding, if the game decides to not be nice and give you a triple experience bonus in the shop you need to upgrade. And if one doesn't want to rely on randomized boni, the player will need to grind the Bonus Dungeon several times for specific drops that give good experience for the shops, but never get a bonus.
Tales of Xillia 2
- Getting the Perfect Body trophy. This comes from a scene unlocked only if the player manages to pay off Ludger's debt in one playthrough. This means a lot of money-managing and lots of grinding through job requests and Elite Monster fighting, in order to scrape enough together to pay off that huge debt of 20 Million Gald.
- The Codependency Achievement revolves around clearing the Bonus Dungeon, which is in and of itself a major undertaking, and then winning the Cameo Battle in the Battle Arena. The final bosses in the bonus dungeon are Level 140, so the player needs to be pretty high in levels to get through it to begin with.
- The Achievement for using Ludger's Chromatus transformation a total of 450 times. Annoying to complete because he can only transform if the Chromatus gauge in the lower right corner is filled to at least Level 1, and there are moments in the game where the player cannot use Chromatus due to plot-events. Also, using it too many times between Chapter 13 to Chapter 15 results in losing out on the possibility of earning the Chromatus Control Achievement detailed below.
- The Chromatus Control Achievement can only be obtained if the player makes it through Chapter 13 to Chapter 15 without using the Chromatus more than 50 times. May sound like a big number, but Chromatus is a very helpful ability and there's a related achievement for using it 450 times. There's also plot-mandatory moments where Ludger will transform. Worst part is, nothing in the game tells you that this somehow affects a title. Luckily, you can get the "bad ending" of the game which happens much earlier than the real ending (and allows you to return to that save file at the point where you went down the bad-ending story path, to continue for the real ending), allowing you to easily get this achievement since you technically met the requirement.
- The Blood Brothers title, obtained by going through the Bad Ending. It's the earliest 'Game Ending' the player can obtain, but it involves a pretty difficult boss fight against multiple opponents and soloing it with Ludger.
- The Strongest, a trophy unlocked once you manage to get at least one party member to the maximum Level of 200.
- The Forever Besties trophy, a trophy only unlocked if all of the Xillia cast has maximum Affinity with Ludger and all their Character Episodes have been completed. Since even using a guide to always give the right answers during skits and their Character Episodes often leaves the character with 6 out of 10 Affinity, this either means the player needs to grind the debt repayment rewards or Poker for Friendship Potions to get those last levels together or will need to wait until New Game Plus and carry over Affinity to get max Affinity, which means having to redo the Character Episodes. Either option is infuriatingly grindy.
Tales of Zestiria
- The aptly named Dietician's Nightmare, for making all 36 snacks in the game. Finding snacks in the various treasure chests doesn't count, it has to be made by a party member. The final snack, Marron Glacé, can only be made having a maxed out Snack Preparation skill, only Sorey, Rose, and Mikleo can make it, and there's not much you can do to influence or increase the chances of the Marron Glacé getting made.
Tales of Berseria
- The achievement/trophy "Witness to the Mystic", which involves seeing every Mystic Arte in the game. At first, it doesn't sound so bad because you can activate your party members' Mystic Artes at any time once they've learned them, provided that you do the right requirements. But then you realize that it also takes into account the Mystic Artes from the bosses as well, and these are the ones that are beyond your control because they activate at random. If you're really good at the battle system, sometimes you can go an entire boss fight without the boss having a chance to activate his/her Mystic Arte, which can rob you of the opportunity to get this achievement/trophy. Basically, it just comes down to pure luck, and any missed Mystic Artes will mean it's back to the last save point for you. To top it off, some bosses like Phoenix, have two Mystic Artes to watch out for, and you'll likely not know about their second Mystic Artes unless you look up a guide.
- Almost as bad is Item Collector. This requires 100% Completion of all items and equipment lists. The rub here is that every enemy in the game has a unique equipment drop, and there's no easy way to tell which Mooks you have and haven't gotten a unique drop from.
