Horizon Zero Dawn

MavericK said:
It's so weird how different an experience we had...I didn't feel it was grindy at all. If you try to just power through the main storyline I could see how you might hit a wall eventually, but doing all of the side quests and whatnot I never felt that underpowered, nor did I feel like I had to grind for XP or anything.
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So you didn't have to collect herbs for half an hour after every damn encounter? I'm level 46, all my skills are maxed out except the forager branch, and the game is no easier than it was on level 1, sometimes it's borderline impossible. I had to reduce difficulty to story a few times otherwise I felt I'd either break the controller into a thousand pieces or throw out the ps4 trough the closed window. Especially in the frozen wilds. The game is really unbalanced. I started on normal difficulty and done about a third of it that way, it wasn't easy but wasn't impossible either. But it's just all over the place difficulty wise, one encounter feels too easy, then a next one is like: WTF how the hell am I supposed to do that? The biggest problem to me is that some machines are impervious to all type of attacks except for one specific elemental, and if you don't have enough of that type of ammo, or none at all, then you're basically fucked. Like when it sends not one, but two daemonic frostclaws at you. After I used up all my health potions, all my ammo for any and all weapon I was carrying, including their crafting materials, and they still had more than half their hp, and on easy difficulty no less. Well then I say the game is fucked up badly balance wise.

And no, I wasn't just doing the main quest, quite the opposite in fact, I was doing almost all sidequests and errands, except for most of the collection quests like collecting pigment for the painter, or the figurines.

And we seem to have a different concept of a grind. A game is not just grindy when you repeat a task to acquire xp. It is grindy when it makes you repeat tasks all over during quests already, without any particular reward. If it had 40:60 exploration and fighting it would be great. But the parts with exploration are just a few main quests missions while in between you do the boring go here fight off 12 machines then go back here get a stupid lootbox quests sometimes for 4-5 hours without any real reward.
 
M76 said:
So you didn't have to collect herbs for half an hour after every damn encounter? I'm level 46, all my skills are maxed out except the forager branch, and the game is no easier than it was on level 1, sometimes it's borderline impossible. I had to reduce difficulty to story a few times otherwise I felt I'd either break the controller into a thousand pieces or throw out the ps4 trough the closed window. Especially in the frozen wilds. The game is really unbalanced. I started on normal difficulty and done about a third of it that way, it wasn't easy but wasn't impossible either. But it's just all over the place difficulty wise, one encounter feels too easy, then a next one is like: WTF how the hell am I supposed to do that? The biggest problem to me is that some machines are impervious to all type of attacks except for one specific elemental, and if you don't have enough of that type of ammo, or none at all, then you're basically fucked. Like when it sends not one, but two daemonic frostclaws at you. After I used up all my health potions, all my ammo for any and all weapon I was carrying, including their crafting materials, and they still had more than half their hp, and on easy difficulty no less. Well then I say the game is fucked up badly balance wise.

And no, I wasn't just doing the main quest, quite the opposite in fact, I was doing almost all sidequests and errands, except for most of the collection quests like collecting pigment for the painter, or the figurines.

And we seem to have a different concept of a grind. A game is not just grindy when you repeat a task to acquire xp. It is grindy when it makes you repeat tasks all over during quests already, without any particular reward. If it had 40:60 exploration and fighting it would be great. But the parts with exploration are just a few main quests missions while in between you do the boring go here fight off 12 machines then go back here get a stupid lootbox quests sometimes for 4-5 hours without any real reward.
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I guess no, I didn't have to do that. Generally there were enough herbs around that I could just collect them while moving to the next objective, or replenish my health potions (which, if you max out your pouches, you should have a LOT of. Most of the time I didn't even need to use them). The only time I felt it was grindy a bit was the RNG element of animal parts.

For the tougher fights, don't be afraid to disengage and go hide for a bit to regain health or just break line of sight for a breather. The daemonic machines and especially the Frost/Fireclaws are a pain in the butt for sure, probably the hardest enemies in the game. It's just all about weak point exploitation and using the right ammo types. I never felt like I was going to run out of any particular ammo because I had a TON of Blaze/Chillwater/etc. at all times, I rarely if ever sold any of that stuff because of someone's recommendation earlier in the thread that you need a lot of it later on for ammo.
 
MavericK said:
I guess no, I didn't have to do that. Generally there were enough herbs around that I could just collect them while moving to the next objective, or replenish my health potions (which, if you max out your pouches, you should have a LOT of. Most of the time I didn't even need to use them). The only time I felt it was grindy a bit was the RNG element of animal parts.

For the tougher fights, don't be afraid to disengage and go hide for a bit to regain health or just break line of sight for a breather. The daemonic machines and especially the Frost/Fireclaws are a pain in the butt for sure, probably the hardest enemies in the game. It's just all about weak point exploitation and using the right ammo types. I never felt like I was going to run out of any particular ammo because I had a TON of Blaze/Chillwater/etc. at all times, I rarely if ever sold any of that stuff because of someone's recommendation earlier in the thread that you need a lot of it later on for ammo.
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I collected herbs on the way as well, but when you're on a mount it's really hard to pick them up without slowing down at least. I'd definitely could1ve done without that part of the game. If at least there was an alternative to it like buying herbs from merchants to instantly replenish your cache. This is like a fetch-quest extended into infinity.

As for disengaging I tried that. The game re-spawned the monsters if I retreated outside their range. Then I was standing there with half my resources gone, and the frostclaws were brand new.

But the disengage tactic doesn't work in cauldrons at all anyway. The fireclaw in the frozen wilds cauldron was impossible to defeat. No matter what I did. I mean I couldn't even get it's hp to half on easy. The only way I wouldn't die instantly if I was running around without stopping. But as soon as I stopped and turned it was either on top of me before I even aimed my weapon at it, or hit me whit a fire projectile. I don't know how is that defeatable even on easy. One hit from it took about 400hp on freakin easy.
 
M76 said:
I collected herbs on the way as well, but when you're on a mount it's really hard to pick them up without slowing down at least. I'd definitely could1ve done without that part of the game. If at least there was an alternative to it like buying herbs from merchants to instantly replenish your cache. This is like a fetch-quest extended into infinity.

As for disengaging I tried that. The game re-spawned the monsters if I retreated outside their range. Then I was standing there with half my resources gone, and the frostclaws were brand new.

But the disengage tactic doesn't work in cauldrons at all anyway. The fireclaw in the frozen wilds cauldron was impossible to defeat. No matter what I did. I mean I couldn't even get it's hp to half on easy. The only way I wouldn't die instantly if I was running around without stopping. But as soon as I stopped and turned it was either on top of me before I even aimed my weapon at it, or hit me whit a fire projectile. I don't know how is that defeatable even on easy. One hit from it took about 400hp on freakin easy.
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Yeah, fair enough about the pouch stuff. I too wish there was a way to just buy a refill for it, for areas where herbs were sparse. I honestly barely used a mount in the game (either on-foot or fast-travel) so I didn't experience that too much.

Usually, you can get out of their visual/aggro range but have them not respawn if you invest in some of the stealth skills and maybe throw on Stealth armor. You can sprint away and slide into some long grass and generally they will lose track of you, or at least enough for you to regain some health.

Obviously the above doesn't help you for Cauldrons but they are meant to be hard. The override ability can be massive when you come up against two or more larger enemies and you can just turn them on each other.
 
MavericK said:
Obviously the above doesn't help you for Cauldrons but they are meant to be hard. The override ability can be massive when you come up against two or more larger enemies and you can just turn them on each other.
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Yeah but you need stealth to be able to override already hostile machines. They seemed to know exactly where I was even when I was behind a mountain. They'd still hit me with that ice grows out the ground shit.

But the main thing is,it seems to be very limited what you can do effectively. You can't play to brute force even if you max out the skills that supposed to do that.
 
M76 said:
Yeah but you need stealth to be able to override already hostile machines. They seemed to know exactly where I was even when I was behind a mountain. They'd still hit me with that ice grows out the ground shit.

But the main thing is,it seems to be very limited what you can do effectively. You can't play to brute force even if you max out the skills that supposed to do that.
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If you want to try to brute force you have to use status effects like freezing with the Sling Bomb or something. Otherwise yeah, you take on a Frostclaw point-blank and you are getting destroyed.
 
I didn't find the game grindy or really hard at all on normal. Never ran out of anything and didn't have much trouble aside from stormbirds and rockbreakers at first. Until you learn to exploit them then it's easy.
 
I bet if I could play with KB+Mouse, the game wouldn't feel hard at all. I always hated controllers, never could play anything effectively with them, it's just a giant compromise. I wish sony would follow suit and allow kb+mouse controls as ms does.
 
The game would be a cakewalk with KB&M for sure. The hardest part for me is just aiming at the weak spots using a controller.
 
MavericK said:
The game would be a cakewalk with KB&M for sure. The hardest part for me is just aiming at the weak spots using a controller.
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I can barely hit the machines themselves unless they're standing still, I can't even hope to aim at weakspots while they're moving. Sometimes I get lucky and can defeat bigger machines quickly, other times it's just a giant exercise in frustration. Especially with glinthawks.
I know I can one shot kill them, if I hit them at the right place. But I can't even move the crosshair as fast as they're moving. They always fly above me and it seems like an eternety by the time I turn around while aiming, but if I stop aiming it's even worse because then it takes an eternity to draw the bow again, especially the one that builds of power the longer you hold it. I always get interrupted before I could even let off a single aimed shot. It's really really frustrating regardless of the difficulty setting. And since you can't make a tank specialization, there is no alternative to this exercise in utter frustration.
 
Glinthawks I just use a buffed fire arrow and usually one or two of those will bring them to the ground...then you can run up and spear bash them to death, typically.

I assume you are utilizing slow-mo but if not, that is a definite plus to upgrade skill-wise. Especially the last rank where it lasts longer.
 
MavericK said:
Glinthawks I just use a buffed fire arrow and usually one or two of those will bring them to the ground...then you can run up and spear bash them to death, typically.

I assume you are utilizing slow-mo but if not, that is a definite plus to upgrade skill-wise. Especially the last rank where it lasts longer.
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As I've mentioned I maxed out all the skills by now even remotely related to combat. I didn't notice an advantage in slomo with the last upgrade. Generally because I could get off a single shot already without it already. And more than one shot is still beyond the realm of possibility even with the quick reload skill. So it is of no benefit to me.

Don't even mention spear bashing, that's another frustration of mine. OK it's knocked down, but usually I Have no hope of reaching it before the knock out effect wears off. And if I do reach it 4 out of 10 times the damn prompt for critical hit just doesn't appear. And this is true for any other machine not just glinthawks, depending on the terrain the prompt just won't appear. And I'm running around it like crazy until it gets up again. What's even worse is for some reason when I can admininster the critical hit, the game refuses to allow me to hit it again with the spear until it gets up. It won't do anything either to heavy or light attacks.
 
I'm not really seeing these issues, If you're not getting there in time for knockdown effect or status effect then you're shooting from to far away.

Critical hit is distance limited I don't even see it half the time and administer critical hits.
 
M76 said:
But the main thing is,it seems to be very limited what you can do effectively. You can't play to brute force even if you max out the skills that supposed to do that.
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Definitely not true. If you go back and read some of my tips to Maverick when he started playing, it will help you a lot. But I'll recap here quickly;

- Learn to jump and shoot a lot with the jumping slo-mo ability. This helps tons with hitting soft spots or just spamming explosive bombs.

- When all else fails, use explosives with mostly damage mods and maybe one handling mod (preferably mods that have both damage and handling traits though). You can take down pretty much everything this way with either the tripcaster (most damage of all explosives, but of course slower and more awkward to use) or the blast sling with either sticky or standard bombs. Of course this is even more effective though if you freeze or burn the enemy before blowing them up, esp. if they're weak to said elements. This is why I said to always save blaze early in the game because it becomes much more useful for explosive ammo later in the game.

- Notch 3 arrows as much as you can and keep mostly damage mods on your bows. This helps tons, esp with the adept Banuk bows or whatever they're called that you can buy in the Frozen Wilds area. Because the charge shot on those bows is very OP with 3 arrows nocked, even when I was playing on Ultra hard, I was taking down pretty much anything with relative ease, even the Frost Claws (Fire claws, not so much, they're a bitch no matter what, hah).

I'll leave you with this vid showing this guy doing the absolute hardest hunting ground trial in the game on Ultra hard difficulty using the key strats I listed above. I was able to replicate this and complete this hunting ground on Ultra hard as well. This shows that you can absolutely brute force through most enemies, including 2 Frost Claws at the same time and within a minute or so.

 
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T4rd said:
Definitely not true. If you go back and read some of my tips to Maverick when he started playing, it will help you a lot. But I'll recap here quickly;

- Learn to jump and shoot a lot with the jumping slo-mo ability. This helps tons with hitting soft spots or just spamming explosive bombs.

- When all else fails, use explosives with mostly damage mods and maybe one handling mod (preferably mods that have both damage and handling traits though). You can take down pretty much everything this way with either the tripcaster (most damage of all explosives, but of course slower and more awkward to use) or the blast sling with either sticky or standard bombs. Of course this is even more effective though if you freeze or burn the enemy before blowing them up, esp. if they're weak to said elements. This is why I said to always save blaze early in the game because it becomes much more useful for explosive ammo later in the game.

- Notch 3 arrows as much as you can and keep mostly damage mods on your bows. This helps tons, esp with the adept Banuk bows or whatever they're called that you can buy in the Frozen Wilds area. Because the charge shot on those bows is very OP with 3 arrows nocked, even when I was playing on Ultra hard, I was taking down pretty much anything with relative ease, even the Frost Claws (Fire claws, not so much, they're a bitch no matter what, hah).

I'll leave you with this vid showing this guy doing the absolute hardest hunting ground trial in the game on Ultra hard difficulty using the key strats I listed above. I was able to replicate this and complete this hunting ground on Ultra hard as well. This shows that you can absolutely brute force through most enemies, including 2 Frost Claws at the same time and within a minute or so.

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You must be a brilliant player with a controller, because I can barely take down anything bigger on easy, even with the banuk powershot bow that can be charged with 50+% damage and handling mods, and three arrows notched. The only technique I'm not using is the ropecaster. Explosives do one thing for me, they knock down enemies but otherwise were very ineffective as they caused little damage.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is impossible for me. I grew up playing on a keyboard, and no matter how much I play with a controller I'm not getting any better, I hate it more and more every time. It's a great game that I have no choice but hate because of this handicap.

I don't understand the video, how is this possible? Level 18 and 800 health? I'm around level 50 and only have 650 I think.
And I swear I have never seen this jumping slomo skill, is there a second page of skills hidden somewhere that I completely missed?
 
M76 said:
You must be a brilliant player with a controller, because I can barely take down anything bigger on easy, even with the banuk powershot bow that can be charged with 50+% damage and handling mods, and three arrows notched. The only technique I'm not using is the ropecaster. Explosives do one thing for me, they knock down enemies but otherwise were very ineffective as they caused little damage.
I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is impossible for me. I grew up playing on a keyboard, and no matter how much I play with a controller I'm not getting any better, I hate it more and more every time. It's a great game that I have no choice but hate because of this handicap.

I don't understand the video, how is this possible? Level 18 and 800 health? I'm around level 50 and only have 650 I think.
And I swear I have never seen this jumping slomo skill, is there a second page of skills hidden somewhere that I completely missed?
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Yeah, I guess you'll just have to chalk it up to your controller handicap then. I'm not claiming to be one of the best with controllers either, but with the slo-mo skills, I don't see how you really have to be. To be honest though, the only enemy that really gave me a hard time either on normal or ultra hard was the Storm Birds and Fire Claw (which I've only fought on ultra hard). I only played the Frozen Wilds on ultra hard since I had already replayed through the main game on ultra hard with NG+ by the time the DLC came out and it doesn't let you switch off of UH once you're on it. I planned on platinum'ing the game anyways though (one and only game I've done this with so far), so I went ahead and continued my NG+ on UH to do the DLC on.

Once you go past level 50 (or maybe 60 I think with the DLC), you kinda start on a new "ghost level" tier that starts over if I remember right. I don't remember or didn't notice any stat increases with any leveling over 50/60 though. I'll bet you've already unlocked this humping slomo skill though, as it's one of the first/cheapest skills you can unlock, called the "Hunters Reflex" skill. You probably haven't noticed it because you have to be aiming while jumping/sliding in order for it to activate. I put this first above because it's probably the most helpful skill to use in the game and as shown in that video above, it makes things much easier, esp. for those hunting trials where time is a factor.

Edit: Also, I said tripcaster, not ropecaster. Not sure if you just got their names mixed up or not, but there's a big difference between them. I hardly ever used the ropecaster; which really only seemed effective on the Storm Birds to me. But you can see how effective explosives are right there in the vid I posted. Note that the sticky bombs do a bit more damage than the standard bombs that explode on contact, but the tripcaster with explosive ammo is the most powerful from what I remember.
 
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The Ropecaster is really good for immobilizing a machine when you are facing 2+ of difficult enemies. With upgraded Ropecaster bolts it actually holds them for quite a long time, pretty much making them harmless until you kill the other one.
 
You can be pretty creative talking down machines by the time you get near level 40 I used to run in fear now I just run around and take out anything. Thunderjaw and stormbird are the hardest along with rock breakers.
 
Rockbreakers are a pain in the ass until you break their legs. Then...well, they're still kind of a pain because they do that slide charge thing, but it's far easier to take them down after that.
 
how is the audio in this game?...reason I'm asking is that I'm thinking about getting a PS4 Pro...I have a 2017 LG C7 OLED but I don't yet have a 4K receiver (or 4K Blu-ray player)...I'm still using my Denon receiver that I was using with my previous 1080p plasma (I also have a dedicated 5.1 speaker system)...if I get the PS4 Pro I would have to connect it directly to my TV/cable box to get the 4K but I would have to use the built in TV speakers

am I missing much with the audio?...I'm guessing the 4K visuals are much more impressive then the audio...in an ideal world having both would be prefect but I'm going to have to roll with this for now...
 
That sounds complicated. I just go optical out from Ps4p into my preamp. Stereo only for me though.
 
polonyc2 said:
how is the audio in this game?...reason I'm asking is that I'm thinking about getting a PS4 Pro...I have a 2017 LG C7 OLED but I don't yet have a 4K receiver (or 4K Blu-ray player)...I'm still using my Denon receiver that I was using with my previous 1080p plasma (I also have a dedicated 5.1 speaker system)...if I get the PS4 Pro I would have to connect it directly to my TV/cable box to get the 4K but I would have to use the built in TV speakers

am I missing much with the audio?...I'm guessing the 4K visuals are much more impressive then the audio...in an ideal world having both would be prefect but I'm going to have to roll with this for now...
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I find the audio to be pretty solid. You can't use an optical out from the TV?
 
ReaperX22 said:
I find the audio to be pretty solid. You can't use an optical out from the TV?
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If your receiver is not that old ( less than 8 years I would imagine ), then I think you can have the audio go back through the HDMI to the receiver and play audio through receiver. I believe it has to be on the ARC, I could be wrong. But when plugin HDMI or watch TV (antenna) from my TV it relays the audio back through the HDMI to the receiver.

"In theory, ARC is supposed to let you have one connection between your TV and whatever you use to create sound: a receiver or a sound bar . You send video to the TV with an HDMI cable, and that same HDMI cable sends audio from the TV back down the same cable."
 
polonyc2 said:
how is the audio in this game?...reason I'm asking is that I'm thinking about getting a PS4 Pro...I have a 2017 LG C7 OLED but I don't yet have a 4K receiver (or 4K Blu-ray player)...I'm still using my Denon receiver that I was using with my previous 1080p plasma (I also have a dedicated 5.1 speaker system)...if I get the PS4 Pro I would have to connect it directly to my TV/cable box to get the 4K but I would have to use the built in TV speakers

am I missing much with the audio?...I'm guessing the 4K visuals are much more impressive then the audio...in an ideal world having both would be prefect but I'm going to have to roll with this for now...
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The sound is pretty good from what I remember. Though the center channel implementation is odd, like sometimes a character will be in the middle of the screen but the voice comes out the left speaker or something. It's annoying. I don't know if they fixed it from any of the patches post launch when I played it. You could get an HDMI matrix switch and send one off to the TV for 4K and the other to the receiver for surround sound.
 
polonyc2 said:
how is the audio in this game?...reason I'm asking is that I'm thinking about getting a PS4 Pro...I have a 2017 LG C7 OLED but I don't yet have a 4K receiver (or 4K Blu-ray player)...I'm still using my Denon receiver that I was using with my previous 1080p plasma (I also have a dedicated 5.1 speaker system)...if I get the PS4 Pro I would have to connect it directly to my TV/cable box to get the 4K but I would have to use the built in TV speakers

am I missing much with the audio?...I'm guessing the 4K visuals are much more impressive then the audio...in an ideal world having both would be prefect but I'm going to have to roll with this for now...
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Audio was fantastic for me. I have my Pro on my computer desk with my 4K TV/monitor and have optical out from the TV going to my ol'Z5500 5.1 speakers. Surround sound was great and made it that much more immersive.

|Tch0rT| said:
The sound is pretty good from what I remember. Though the center channel implementation is odd, like sometimes a character will be in the middle of the screen but the voice comes out the left speaker or something. It's annoying. I don't know if they fixed it from any of the patches post launch when I played it. You could get an HDMI matrix switch and send one off to the TV for 4K and the other to the receiver for surround sound.
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Not sure I ever noticed that while I was playing on my Z5500s.
 
Visually, this game is one of THE best looking game (if not the best) I've seen to date. It's amazing what a talented developer can pull off from a fixed/closed hardware platform. This level of visual quality and optimization seem never possible on similar spec'ed PC.
 
Selena Anderson said:
How is the game? I have been listening about this game from my friends. I am eager to know how is its lore and gameplay?
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Well there are 13 pages of thread for you to browse through for that answer. ;)

Short answer is: It's great, play it.
 
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Rattle said:
So ng+ UH first or frozen wilds first ?
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I assume you're planning a NG+ UH play through anyways, so I'd do NG+ UH so you can do the Frozen Wilds on UH as well (which I think is a trophy if you care about it), which is what I did.. but had already played through NG+ UH before the DLC dropped anyways too. Plus you can go ahead and do the Frozen Wilds DLC just a few hours into your NG+ if you want too since you're already leveled enough and have the gear for it by that point.
 
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This game is awesome!
The actual gameplay/ combat doesn't get enough credit IMO.
The different strategies for taking down each different species keeps it fun and from becoming repetitive. (like how Far Cry becomes repetitive after liberating the 100th base.)
And i thought the story was excellent too.

If you dont already own a PS4, then this game is a good reason to buy one IMO.
 
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Armenius said:
Currently unavailable. It's on sale for slightly more at $14.99 on PSN right now, if I'm not mistaken.
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:( Just seen that, I believe greenmangaming also has it for $9 but I can't verify as I'm Canadian and it's region restricted lol
 
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