Well all that's left of Project root are normal difficult and hard difficulty trophies. Unfortunately nothing stacks. Upgrades from a previous difficulty do not transfer over so you have to start from scratch. The difficulty trophies also do not stack so even if you muscle through hard difficulty you'd still have to replay normal. The hardest part of the game is pretty much the beginning since your ship starts underpowered. Lesser firepower is one thing, but the unupgraded ship is too slow to maneuver around / outrun certain gunfire. Finding extra lives (which can be the difference between failing a LOOOONG mission and succeeding in harder difficulties) are dropped entirely by luck.
To discourage grinding on earlier levels you get XP rewards for killing enemies and completing objectives, but you get a one-time set bonus the first time completing the level that is roughly 10X the value of redoing a mission. Which means if you want to grind out upgrades on easier missions it is an incredibly slow process. They are also extremely stingy with upgrade points for the first few levels. Once you finish level 4 or 5 you will have enough to close to max your guns and speed which means the last half of the game is easier than the first half. The only reason I failed to complete a mission in a later part of the game is because either the game crashed or there was a timed segment.
There are sub-objectives you can optionally complete for extra XP but good luck finding them. You have to stumble upon them on the map, but because there is no mini-map, just a short-range radar, it is really difficult to keep your bearings enough in order to do a methodical search of the level. Even if there was a mini-map that didn't feature any terrain, just a black square with a dot to show your relative position on the world map, that would have been incredibly helpful in the search for sub-objectives. Pressing circle could have toggled between radar (which takes up the lower left corner of the screen) and a mini-map. It doesn't help matters that there are invisible walls that block sections of the map until certain primary objectives are complete.
It looks like their next game DOGOS is going to be a similar style of shooter, hopefully they take the criticism of reviewers to heart and iron out the kinks. If you want a Strike series style game I would recommend skipping Project Root and waiting to see if the follow-up is improved.
this day....I'm going home.
