The Glitch Guide!
This guide is for those that have tried to obtain this trophy, but have been unsuccessful due to the, now well established, Mafia glitch - for those of you who think you might have just done something wrong, you probably haven’t - this is a well known glitch (as also referenced in Baldozerr’s comment) and confirmed by the support team at 2K.
I did a lot of research on how to obtain this trophy following my first failed attempt, as it was the last one I needed to get the platinum, and I’ve read a lot of theories as to what causes it to glitch in the first place - many seem to believe it’s when the game crashes (which it did a lot to me during my first attempt). I do not know the exact cause, but I thought I’d share how I obtained this elusive trophy in the hope it’ll help others.
I started by following most of the advice in Baldozerr’s post, i.e. I deleted my copy of the game and all of the DLC - what I didn’t do was delete my save data, as I’d read that some people received the trophy half way through their next playthrough (which suggests the game retains some of the kills). So, I reinstalled the game and started a new playthrough, but with my save data still in the background (I didn’t download the DLC again though). Quite early on, after I had killed the first 2 racket bosses, my game didn’t allow me to proceed with the story, i.e. a scene where I had to hold down the square button disappeared preventing me from progressing. I ultimately had to quit to the main title screen and reload - this worried me, but not as much as a few hours later into the game (after my 5th racket boss) when I died and the game completely crashed (whilst reloading the checkpoint) sending me back to the PS4 home screen with an error message. The reason I persevered without deleting and starting again is because I still had my collectables. To explain my rationale… on my previous playthrough where I didn’t obtain the trophy, I realised that halfway through the game, a number of collectables (i.e. magazines, posters etc.) that I had collected had disappeared - I believe this is when the game reset my counter and thus didn’t give me the trophy after killing the final racket boss. I’m not sure if I’m right, however, I would suggest anyone playing to keep an eye on their collectables, and if you still have them after the game crashes or if you have to restart for some other reason, then everything might just be okay. Of course, I could be wrong and I may have just been lucky, but I’ve obtained the trophy today after killing my 18th (and final) racket boss, and that’s following the issues already described.
If you’re after some tips on the quickest way to obtain this trophy, I would first say that you need at least 8-10 hours free. For me, I avoided all side quests and skipped all cut scenes, I also didn’t wiretap anywhere with the exception of the one time the game makes you. I rushed through killing the first 6 racket bosses to establish all of the underbosses, I then killed the following 6 racket bosses and then realised I had to kill their respective leaders to reveal the final racket boss missions. I didn’t, however, kill any of the leaders in the last portion of my game, only concentrating on killing the final 6 racket bosses. I also didn’t use the money glitch as, to be honest, getting money in this game is easy even when you’re not trying (IMO).
For those who have tried and failed, I wish you luck if you find the strength to try again - I almost gave up and was going to just delete the game, but being so close to the platinum (and feeling robbed) pushed me to attempt it one last time. I would urge anyone with issues to log these with 2k Support - they are a really friendly team, but they do fob you off with the ‘we’re aware of the issue and our developers are looking into this’ - given the glitch has hit so many people and has been around for at least 3 years (following numerous updates) I’m not sure they really are looking into it. That being said, the more people who raise this with them, the more they might be motivated to sort it out.
If you have any other specific questions on how I obtained this, or if something has happened in your game and you’re worried that this might prevent you getting the trophy, then please don’t hesitate to ask me - I’ll help if I can.