Overview
-Estimated Achievement Difficulty: 5/10
-Number of Offline Achievements: 50 (1000G)
-Number of Online Achievements: 0
-Approximate Time to 1000: 10-20 hours
-Minimum Number of Playthroughs: 2 (+6 Stage Select Missions)
-Number of Missable Achievements: 0
-Does difficulty affect achievements?: Yes (20, 10 for normal, 10 for hard; unstackable)
-Glitched Achievements: None
Anarchy Reigns is Platinum Games’ newest game. Unfortunately, SEGA has delayed this game until approximately March 2013, so it has yet to be released outside of Japan. Fortunately for fans of Platinum’s work, Anarchy Reigns follows in Bayonetta’s and Vanquish’s footsteps of being completely finished in English while being region-free. As a bonus for those who speak other languages, the game also has complete Spanish, French, and Italian text and audio. As far as achievements are concerned, the only one which may prove problematic is completing the game on Hard mode. Max Anarchy may seem hard as it requires a no-death run, but this is surprisingly much easier than expected, especially since you can do it on any difficulty setting.
Roadmap
While there are multiple different ways to tackle the game, my roadmap is but a suggestion. If you wish to start on White/Black, Easy/Normal/Hard, you can do whichever you want. The point of my roadmap is to set people on the right track and possibly slightly vary their way of doing things from mine if they desire.
STEP 1: Start on Black Side, Hard Mode
During this step I recommend to start on Hard mode, Black Side to get the hardest part of the game out of the way. It will have a rough learning curve, but once you finish it you’ll never have to deal with it again. It will also prepare you for your no-death run due to its extreme difficulty. To make things easier on yourself, you may want to kill 20 enemies during Street Brawl to change the environment to rainy where a special enemy will spawn. Kill him, and afterwards an enemy carrying an item box will appear. If you kill the enemy holding the item box you’ll get a random item which may help you during missions. For more help with Hard mode, refer toAnarchy Reigns is an Oxymoron. During this playthrough you may want to get started on Burnt Out Anarchyand Anarchy’s Executioner which require you to defeat every boss during rampage and with a killer weapon. To do so, you’ll need to keep track of each and every boss. Refer to the aforementioned achievements for details. Do, however, keep in mind that you can finish up these achievements at any time, so don’t fret if you need to simply kill a boss if you’re having a hard time. After this step, you’ll have unlocked all the hard mode achievements except for clearing the White Side campaign on Hard. After completing the game once, your Stage Select screen will look like this (for hard mode):
STEP 2: Start on White Side, Normal Mode Without Dying
As you may have noticed after completing Black Side, you cannot play every stage in stage select. To do so, you must also complete the game on White Side. During this step, you’ll have the gameplay experience gained from Hard mode to help you get through Normal mode without dying. This playthrough will be much easier and quicker than your Hard mode playthrough, but be sure to pick Retire from the start menu or return to the main menu if you happen to die by chance. During this step, you may also want to aim for Burnt Out Anarchy andAnarchy’s Executioner by defeating each boss with the opposite kill you did not perform during your Hard Mode playthrough.
STEP 3: Complete White Side 4-3 Hard, White Side Red Side Hard, Black Side 4-3 Normal, Black Side Red Side Normal in Stage Select
This step is by far the easiest step so far. After completing the game starting on both White Side and Black Side, you’ll have every stage available in Stage Select. To unlock the other campaign clear achievements, simply finish up the remaining missions you don’t have completed in Stage Select.
STEP 4: Wrap-Up
By now you’ll likely have every achievement in the game bar a few. Now is the time to finish up those silly achievements you didn’t bother going for earlier and killing every boss with rampage and your killer weapon. To finish up, the last achievements you’ll probably need to unlock are Massage with an Anarchy Ending, Burnt Out Anarchy, and Anarchy's Executioner.
Overall, Anarchy Reigns isn’t a particularly tasking 1000 gamerscore, but it will require a small amount of perseverance to handle hard mode and playing your no-deaths run. Best of all, however, is Platinum delivers another fantastic gem that North America definitely won’t want to miss! (and let’s hope they don’t!)
[x360a would like to thank iNf3Rn0 Lan for this Roadmap]