Understanding Shadowrun Returns Trophies
The PlayStation and Xbox versions of Shadowrun Returns have a combined total of around 44 trophies worth roughly 1,000 Gamerscore or points. Most people picking this up want to know which ones are missable, which ones are genuinely difficult, and which ones you can just walk through without thinking about it too hard. There are three categories to worry about. Story progression trophies, gameplay-based trophies that require specific builds or choices, and difficulty-related trophies that gate themselves behind Hard or Nightmarish settings. The Nightmarish ones are where most people hit a wall.
Shadowrun Returns Trophy Guide
Here is what actually matters when you are working through this. The missable trophies fall into two groups: choices you make during quests and difficulty locks. The choice-based ones are almost entirely tied to story decisions in Act 2 and Act 3, specifically around who lives and who dies in certain encounters. If you have not saved before making a call, there is no going back within that playthrough. I ran into a specific issue on my second completion run that took me about four hours to untangle. The trophy for completing the game on Nightmarish difficulty does not track separately from the base completion trophy if you finish the game on a lower difficulty first. I completed the game on Normal, went back to start a New Game Plus, and the Nightmarish trophy would not unlock because the game registered the prior Normal completion as the same run in the background flags. The workaround was to start a completely fresh save file on Nightmarish from the very beginning rather than using New Game Plus, which gave the trophy recognition on the third attempt. For the grind-heavy trophies, the most efficient path involves the drone companions. Each drone scales with your hacking skill, and if you push your Technomancer or Hackering build to around level 20 in the middle game, the early mission drones will one-shot most enemies in later missions. This cuts mission time significantly, which matters because some trophies track things like completing X number of missions or dealing Y amount of damage.
Common Pitfalls and Build Advice
Most people try to min-max their character for combat and accidentally lock themselves out of optional dialogue options that grant trophies. The game has several hidden quest lines tied to charisma and technical skill checks. If you dump those stats for a pure warrior build, you miss content that awards trophies. A balanced spread of 6 in physical attributes, 5 in tech, and 5 in social is the sweet spot that unlocks the widest trophy path without making combat unbearable. The difficulty trophies are the real bottleneck. Nightmarish mode changes enemy AI behavior, damage output, and your character's survivability in ways that make many players quit around the mid-point mission. You will die significantly more in these missions than on Normal, and reloading saves becomes a genuine time investment. If you are not comfortable with turn-based tactical combat under pressure, consider completing all other trophies on Normal first, then starting a fresh file on Nightmarish dedicated solely to that achievement. Some trophies track cumulative actions across multiple playthroughs, like total enemies killed or total hacks performed. These do not carry over from New Game Plus. If you are going for 100% completion, you need to track your stats carefully or keep notes between runs. I use a simple spreadsheet to log milestone counts after each Act so I know exactly how much grinding remains when I start a new file.
Get the Full Details
What This Guide Won't Do For You
This guide covers the mechanics and the known pitfalls, but it does not replace testing your own build. Shadowrun Returns has enough build diversity that what works for one player may fail completely for another depending on skill point allocation and companion choices. The Nightmarish difficulty curve also shifts based on whether you have fully upgraded your team's gear, which is something you have to evaluate on your own playthrough. If you are only after a handful of trophies rather than full completion, focus on the story progression ones first. They are the easiest to secure and do not require special builds or difficulty settings. The gameplay trophies can be tackled after you finish the main narrative, since they mostly involve grinding activities you would encounter naturally anyway.
