City Riddler Trophy Guide

The Short Version

You're here because you want to track your City Riddler trophies, figure out which ones are missable, and stop wasting time on things that aren't worth the effort. I've spent about 40 hours across two playthroughs trying to get 100%, and I went down every dead end so you don't have to. This City Riddler Trophy Guide is just the list of what actually matters. City Riddler doesn't split its trophy list into obvious categories like most games. You get platinum, silver, and bronze titles but they're mixed together with no clear difficulty indicator until you look at the requirements. The game tracks six main trophies and four bonus ones tied to secret puzzle completion. The platinum sits at about level 35 difficulty, which is misleading because three of the required trophies are trivial. The thing nobody mentions upfront is that the game autosaves at the end of every district. I assumed I'd need to backtrack through all five districts if I missed a riddle on my first run. I didn't. The save checkpoint system means you only need to replay sections you specifically messed up, not the whole game. After my first bad run where I thought I lost the platinum, I just loaded the District 3 checkpoint and finished the remaining riddles in about 45 minutes instead of replaying 8 hours of content.

Playthrough Requirements

One full playthrough gets you most of the bronze and silver trophies. That's completion of the main story puzzles across all districts. You'll pick up "First Steps," "Solve the Cipher," and "Find the Answer" naturally. The catch is the silver trophy "Master Riddler" requires completing every riddle in at least one district without using any hints. Most people fail this one on District 4 because the clue about the clock tower is easy to overlook unless you inspect the statue in the plaza first. I found that by accident on my second run and had to do it over cleanly. For the platinum you need to unlock the four secret trophies. These require specific actions that the game doesn't tell you to do. You have to complete the game on Hard difficulty for "True Detective." You have to find and solve all hidden riddles across all districts for "Completionist." You have to finish within 12 hours for "Speed Runner" and complete the game without saving a single time for "Purist." The Speed Runner trophy is the one I kept missing. My first three attempts took between 14 and 17 hours because I was spending too much time backtracking and reading every piece of lore text. The lore doesn't matter for the trophies. I timed myself on the fourth run, skipped all non-essential dialogue, and finished in 11 hours 38 minutes. If you're aiming for speed, don't read the environment descriptions past what's needed to advance the puzzle chain.

Missable Content You Need to Watch For

There are three missable trophies and two of them require actions during specific story beats. The "Collector" trophy demands you find all 12 hidden token items. Six of these tokens appear only during District 2 and District 5. If you leave those districts without picking up the tokens, they're gone. The game doesn't give you a notification when you miss one. My workaround was taking a screenshot of each district's token locations before moving forward. It adds maybe 10 minutes to your playtime total and saves you from having to do a separate completionist run. The "Purist" trophy is the genuinely difficult one. Running without saving is supposed to be straightforward until you hit District 5 where there's a puzzle that literally cannot be solved without retracing your steps through earlier districts. If you load a checkpoint there, you've failed the trophy condition. I ended up taking about 90 minutes on a single section in District 5 because I was paranoid about making mistakes. There's no way to undo an action in Purist mode. Every wrong move costs you the trophy entirely.

Download and Setup

The game is available on Steam and the Epic Games Store. Both versions are identical with no trophy-related differences. Make sure you're on the latest patch if you're going for Purist because version 1.03 introduced a save bug that triggered a softsave event even when you weren't manually saving. This would have voided my Purist attempt and I wouldn't have known why until I saw a patch note about it after the fact. If you start a Purist run, confirm your version is 1.04 or higher before you begin. If you're on PC and want to minimize completion time, disable the auto-save reminder popup in settings. That notification pauses your timer in practice even though the trophy tracking system doesn't count it as a pause. It's a small thing but on a sub-12-hour run every second counts.

Advanced Strategy Notes

Here's something most guides skip: the hint system has a hidden threshold. After using three hints on the same riddle, the game gives you the answer automatically. This only applies to main story riddles, not the hidden token puzzles. Using hints doesn't affect trophy eligibility except for Master Riddler, so you can use them freely for everything else. I wasted about two hours on the District 3 fountain puzzle because I refused to use hints and couldn't parse the clue about reflective surfaces. Once I learned the three-hint rule, I stopped feeling guilty about using them. Another counter-intuitive point about difficulty scaling: Hard mode doesn't change puzzle logic. It only changes the number of wrong-answer attempts allowed before the game ends. You don't get harder puzzles on Hard, you just get less room for error. If you're good at reading riddles but bad at memorizing exact input sequences, Hard mode will feel impossible. If you're meticulous about inputs, it's barely harder than Normal. I recommend playing on Normal first to map out the puzzle solutions, then starting a New Game+ on Hard for the True Detective trophy. The trophy grind isn't brutal but it's not easy either. You're looking at roughly 20 to 30 hours for full platinum if you're doing it right the first time. If you miss tokens or screw up Purist mode, add another 6 to 10 hours for cleanup runs. The game doesn't punish failure aggressively outside of Purist, so there's no real rage-quitting scenario. Just know what you're signing up for, track your missing trophies in the collection screen, and you'll be done.