Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
44 Achievements
60-80h
Complete Mastery
Collect all badges.
0.4%
How to unlock the Complete Mastery achievement in Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun - Definitive Guide
There's a total of 117 badges to collect, nine in each mission. Due to the fact that some of these badges conflict with each other, you will have to play through each mission twice.
Every mission has a badge for completing it on hardcore difficulty, but all other badges can be collected on normal difficulty. (Note: You cannot earn badges on beginner difficulty!)
Aside from hardcore difficulty, you will also need to speedrun each mission. This is actually not as difficult as it sounds, but it requires you to be familiar with each mission and the game/controls.
The biggest nuisance about the speedruns is that if you fail and need to reload, you should quit out to the main menu before doing so. The reason for this is that the time keeps ticking. (e.g.: You've spent 3 minutes in a mission and save your game. You then continue for 30 seconds, but mess up and need to reload your last save. If you reload without quitting back to the main menu, the timer will be at 3 minutes and 30 seconds! By going back to the main menu before reloading however, the game's timer will be back to 3 minutes.)
For those who dislike speedruns, I do have good news though. There is an exploit which allows you to fool the in-game timer and earn these badges without any stress. Details on how to perform this exploit can be found below. (Please note that I've done all speedruns myself, and thus never tried this exploit.)
Quote by LD2013:
1. Start a mission.
2. Create a manual save data at beginning of the mission. (The timer should be at 1 or 2 seconds.)
3. Play the mission until you almost reach the time limit. (i.e.: If the time limit is 15 minutes, just play the mission until you reach 14m30s or so, but do not reach 15 minutes.)
4. Save (auto or manual) before reaching the time limit (such as 14m30s).
5. Restart the mission.
6. Load the first manual save data (1-2 seconds).
7. Load the latest save data (auto/manual save). The timer should now be at 1 or 2 seconds again.
Repeat step 3 to 7 if necessary.
The rest of the badges are earned by performing a variety of tasks. Some of these can be very insignificant, while others will restrict you in some way (i.e.: no kills) or require you to finish the mission using different methods.
General Tips:
- Badges cannot be earned on Beginner difficulty!
- Once you've unlocked a badge the game will remember this, regardless of whether or not you quit or reload afterwards.
- To check the status of a badge during a mission press , then or until you reach the tab "Badges". Some badges won't unlock before finishing the mission, however a badge will immediately be crossed out should you fail mid-game.
- Hiding a knocked out enemy in a wooden well or barrel will remove them from the game without killing them. This can be useful for the no kill badges. Other spots can either kill them (throwing them off cliffs) or give them the opportunity to wake up after a while (hiding them in houses).
Speedrun Tips:
- You will want to quit to the main menu before reloading a previous save if you mess up during your speedrun.
- Generally speaking you want to leave bodies where they are to win time, but occasionally you might have to move one. Hold during a melee kill to immediately pick up the body.
- When moving characters across a wire, like during mission 11, you can have one character push the other one(s). This is useful since you can't move multiple characters on the PS4 version without the use of shadow mode.
Check the forum guide here: https://www.playstationtrophies.org/forum/shadow-tactics-blades-of-the-shogun/325900-shadow-tactics-blades-shogun-road-map-trophy-guide.html for a complete overview and guide to all mission badges in the game.
Note that my speedrun videos of mission 10 through 13 are the recordings of when I first attempted these missions. Due to this they might be a bit sloppy here and there. If I feel it's necessary I'll update these videos, that being said I would most likely follow the same strategy even on hardcore difficulty.
The 11th mission with its 9 minutes was especially distinguished here. The trick is that everything is decided already at the 7th minute, because if you don’t intercept the NPC in the yard at this moment, it will be almost impossible to keep up. I have reviewed a lot of guides, but they are all designed for the PC version and are almost impossible to repeat, since you fail with the timing of the NPC you need to steal. Only 1 guide helped me, since it contains an extremely unusual, but very effective and fast method of abduction, and the route to the goal was chosen just perfectly. In fact, if you manage to realize this ending, then the stripe is yours. But most likely you will have to replay it more than a dozen times and in the end the count will be in seconds. I did it almost by accident and not exactly like in the video, but in the end there was a margin of 40 seconds at the end. Here is the video.
But don't think that only mission 11 is a problem. You will have to replay more than half of the levels more than once. It will take a lot of patience, endurance and ingenuity. I couldn’t complete about 4 missions for a while without guides from a PC, and although they were completed 2+ times faster than the timer, I completed them in the last minutes, the rest I figured out myself how to quickly complete. And a small spoon of honey in all this is the last mission. It would seem that it would be hell, but there is a trick there that looks like an Easter egg and is almost impossible to discover by yourself logically or by chance. The trick is that when Noboru enters the shooting range, if at that moment you throw a blinding grenade as a spy at the named NPC through the wall from the roof, then he will accidentally shoot at the mission target and kill him! And so you will get stripes in 2 minutes for a 30 minute timer and pass this most difficult level without killing anyone! But this is the only easing in the game...
PS I think a slightly cheating bypass of the timer was found. See the addition to the tip.
Method to bypass the timer:
1. Start any mission, after the introductory cutscene, immediately press Options and save, but not using a QUICK save, but in a REGULAR save cell.
2. We play for fun, but carefully monitor the timer so that the speedrun badge does not fall off, I left one or two minutes before the test fails. NOW ATTENTION!!!!!! Make a QUICK save and exit to the main menu.
3. Load the REGULAR save that you made at the beginning of this mission. Check the time counter, there should be 2-3 seconds from the start of the level.
4.Now we simply load our last QUICK save, made 1-2 minutes before losing the speedrun stripe.
5.After all the manipulations have been performed, open the menu, look at the zeroed sensor and calmly continue to go through the mission. If we still fail, repeat steps 2 to 4.
This manipulation can be carried out as many times as you like, the main thing is to have time to make a QUICK save before the stripe disappears, otherwise you will have to start the mission over again and repeat all the above instructions again.
PS The most interesting thing is that I was able to complete some missions faster than in the PC guides. Didn't use glitch for a while