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Finished Aria of Sorrow. I can see why people really liked the game. The weapons all have different graphics, areas of effect, and speed, so they feel and look different when used. That's a nice touch and means that they're more than just a boring stat boost. -A good balance on the fast travel warp points, so going back to look at areas with new abilities didn't feel like a waste of time -The enemy soul system is a neat way to make fighting enemies engaging. I didn't bother grinding for them but I got a good number and it was fun testing out different weird powers. -The game wasn't afraid of letting you break down basic assumptions of the early gameplay (like not having easy healing between savepoints, or being limited in jump height) at your endgame power level. Being able to nope out of all the platforming that you've already done a couple times definitely makes your character feel a lot stronger EDIT: Oh, this is the dragging down thread. Whoops. Um, it looks like getting 100% on souls would be a pain in the rear end (especially because the +chance to get enemy souls item costs 10 times as much as my final gold count in the game), and I missed 0.8% map completion and have no idea what I missed. Also, a lot of early souls are just 'throw a different knife', and more variety with projectiles early game would have been nice. Tunicate has a new favorite as of 09:23 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 08:13
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Tunicate posted:Well, I've gotten to the point in Harmony of Dissonance where exploration is too much of a chore to keep playing. Once I finish Dread I'll probably get the collection and revisit it, maybe I'll gain a more positive outlook on it, but my hopes aren't high.
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Oct 15, 2021 08:58
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This Shivers check in Disco Elysium is hot garbage and single handedly derailing the game for me. Like, I will not be replaying this game ever kind of bad. I would not recommend soul grinding in Aria of Sorrow or Dawn of Sorrow. The luck stat is functionally worthless, in AoS its at max about a .3% increase in your drop chances and in DoS its like .01% increase at max luck. The ring does, admittedly, more than double your odds but going from a .2% to .5% still feels bad, man.
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Oct 15, 2021 09:38
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However if you really liked the soul mechanic and really do want to soul grind I highly recommend Bloodstained! It's basically just an entirely new castlevania game built on the soul system from Aria under a different name.
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Oct 15, 2021 09:53
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Riftbreaker finally came out today and while by and large I really enjoy it, I absolutely despise meteor showers and hailstorms. Both deal damage to large swaths of the map, in a game about building gigantic bases. So afterwards you have to go around repairing every drat building because they've all taken at least a bit. It's especially bad because the power connectors and pipelines to keep your bases running have relatively little HP, so if you ignore them the next one will probably take them out.
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Oct 15, 2021 10:40
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Barudak posted:This Shivers check in Disco Elysium is hot garbage and single handedly derailing the game for me. Like, I will not be replaying this game ever kind of bad. You're tyring to get up the ladder, aren't you? Can't speak about the Director's Cut but in the original release there are points where its possible to soft-lock the game.
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Oct 15, 2021 12:45
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Tunicate posted:Well, I've gotten to the point in Harmony of Dissonance where exploration is too much of a chore to keep playing. Harmony of Dissonance was definitely a cut below the other GBA Castlevanias. I haven't played it since it was released but it felt pretty phoned in compared to the others.
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Oct 15, 2021 13:03
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I have been looking for a Turbo CD port of Rondo of Blood for years and lo and behold once I got a PS5, there it was. Turns out it’s really loving hard and I can’t get past stage 2.
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Oct 15, 2021 13:32
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The Moon Monster posted:Harmony of Dissonance was definitely a cut below the other GBA Castlevanias. I haven't played it since it was released but it felt pretty phoned in compared to the others. I still think Circle of the Moon is the worst. Even slower traversal than HoD. At least in Harmony, your base "walk" speed is already faster, CoD you need to get the dash ability early on and then are constantly double-tapping the arrow button to move at a decent speed. Plus you start off with a dash similar to Alucard's from SotN, and you get an even faster low dash about 1/3 into the game, I also really liked the spell system. Similar concept of the DSS (two things mashed together for different effects,) but less random since it doesn't rely on drops. Five spellbooks, and the 6 subweapons, so 30 possible combos.
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Oct 15, 2021 14:30
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Simply Simon posted:I played HoD quite a while ago so grain of salt, but that was my takeaway as well - it's just boring to move around in the game, and it requires a lot of it. So many flavorless corridors with nothing enemies, and then you get to the big surprise thing and it's just more corridors. I did finish it but don't remember a single fun thing about it, just mediocre boredom. I just finished Dissonance and you're correct on all accounts. One thing that is particularly bad about it on top of all of that is that proper teleport rooms are pretty much not a thing at all until you're in the last third of the game or so. Having to run back and forth through the castle winds up being beyond tedious since the game isn't very good at pushing you in the right direction and it's not at all difficult to inadvertently miss something earlier in the castle and have to trek all the way back to get it. I was stuck for a while and my god did the game drag. Also the soundtrack is godawful. I still wound up liking the game overall but it definitely feels like a lower tier metroidvania. Also wrt to Aria, can confirm that Bloodstained is a very good successor to the game and is probably my personal favorite metroidvania. It's still got a couple iffy parts in terms of progression (water mobility, bypassing spikes) but beyond that it's pretty much exceptional in most respects, so long as it's not the Switch version. The randomizer alone adds so much to the game.
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Oct 15, 2021 14:33
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HoD also suffers from certain progression abilities being pieces of equipment you have to remember to put on. There's no reason the charge attack, night vision goggles, and crush boots shouldn't just be always-on relics. If you aren't the type to regularly check your equipment and actually read the flavor instead of glancing at the stats, it's possible to overlook them entirely. Aria does this too a bit, but at least the souls that unlock progression are always recovered from those urn things and give you a description on pickup so you know they're important and what they do. And Aria's map is just plain laid out better. SkeletonHero has a new favorite as of 15:04 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 15:01
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DrBouvenstein posted:I still think Circle of the Moon is the worst. Even slower traversal than HoD. At least in Harmony, your base "walk" speed is already faster, CoD you need to get the dash ability early on and then are constantly double-tapping the arrow button to move at a decent speed. Plus you start off with a dash similar to Alucard's from SotN, and you get an even faster low dash about 1/3 into the game, Circle of the Moon was less in the SotN vein than others, so I get not liking it, but I think they did a way better job of making the game they were trying to make than they did with Harmony.
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Oct 15, 2021 15:06
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Barudak posted:This Shivers check in Disco Elysium is hot garbage and single handedly derailing the game for me. Like, I will not be replaying this game ever kind of bad. i never put points into Shivers, so I am curious: what's so bad about it?
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Oct 15, 2021 15:21
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The Moon Monster posted:Circle of the Moon was less in the SotN vein than others, so I get not liking it, but I think they did a way better job of making the game they were trying to make than they did with Harmony. You're probably right. I really want to enjoy Circle of the Moon but the difficulty just feels cruel. I don't mind harder games but some of the bosses feel overtuned and are frequently a slog.
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Oct 15, 2021 16:50
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Little thing dragging CotM down: the game named "circle of the moon" isn't the one about the eclipse.
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Oct 15, 2021 16:54
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Sally posted:i never put points into Shivers, so I am curious: what's so bad about it? it's a mandatory check whose win percentage increases as you complete major story events (with further bonuses if you fail the check itself a couple of times) barudak tried to speedrun the game and deliberately missed or failed every sidequest so he's stamping his foot at having to savescum for it
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Oct 15, 2021 17:32
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I'm... a little torn on how Metroid Dread does their ending rewards. In principle I agree with it, but it just doesn't quite feel right. There's two different slates of reward images that are just neat splash screens: one of classic 2D Metroid art from completing under a certain time, one of new art for getting all the items in a region. Which is all neat, but it's all basically just 'bonus stuff' after all the game's ending stuff wraps, after you see your completion time and percentage. I get that they didn't want to do the 'Samus outside the suit in some state of undress as congratulations', and I think that's probably the right call, but not doing that robs it of the capstone where you have your time and completion percent over an image that basically exists to commemorate how good a job you did. And it's not like they didn't end up doing the 'suitless Samus as congratulations' anyway, since the hardest art to unlock is of zero suit Samus.
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Oct 15, 2021 17:46
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CotM: the whip hitbox is a very precise line straight ahead, so when you whip you don't hit things back behind your shoulders like in previous games, and even in front of you the sprite doesn't match the hitbox.
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Oct 15, 2021 20:05
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Ok I'm playing Actraiser Renaissance and I'm stuck. I think the game is bugged? I started the 2nd area and am now at the world building segment. The game gave me quest to seal a monster lair, but the one that unlocked is not the one in the NW of the village. Instead, it unsealed the lair across the water south of the temple and I can't loving get to it because I can't build bridges yet (which is apparently the quest reward). I'm seriously stumped. Every time try to direct the village idiots to open the monster lair to the NW, the stupid angel yells at me. Edit: OK no idea what happened but it let me do it now. I have no idea why it decided to let me all of a sudden. So far I'm liking the game with the exception of waiting around forever to get mana potions and having fields just keep pooping out health I don't need. Double Edit: Now I'm stuck because the population quit increasing. Frank Frank has a new favorite as of 23:06 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 22:46
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Far Cry 6: for someone who was supposed to be in the army and be this big badass the main character can’t run for poo poo and has zero stamina.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:29
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Oxxidation posted:it's a mandatory check whose win percentage increases as you complete major story events (with further bonuses if you fail the check itself a couple of times) I did absolutely nothing intentionally. I played the game without a guide because everyone and their mother was like "don't use a guide its so reactive and cool!" and it turns out there are unlabeled "you get no credit for doing this sidequest and its permanently gone" outcomes to the quests tied to making that mandatory shivers check easier and I've hit absolutely all of them possible for this point in the game. I'm not even speed-running, I've done literally every possible sidequest at this juncture in the game. If I had played with a guide I'd still be complaining, because my complaint would be "oof this shivers check doesn't need to be mandatory like this and also it seems kind of rude that you can without any warning fail to get any bonuses to it, thus effectively soft locking you behind a very low RNG chance". You also must pass the check, and RNG to progress is always bad, its like the most basic of instructions to starting Game Masters in role playing games. Barudak has a new favorite as of 02:43 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 02:34
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Joey Freshwater posted:Far Cry 6: for someone who was supposed to be in the army and be this big badass the main character can’t run for poo poo and has zero stamina. Well, they are lugging infinity rockets around on their back... CordlessPen has a new favorite as of 02:46 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 02:43
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Joey Freshwater posted:Far Cry 6: for someone who was supposed to be in the army and be this big badass the main character can’t run for poo poo and has zero stamina. God, running stamina sucks, it should be outlawed for game development. I just replayed MGSV and one of my favorite things is that you can just run at full speed across all of Afghanistan without even breaking a sweat, and it just makes the player experience so much better.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:47
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Captain DIEgiene posted:God, running stamina sucks, it should be outlawed for game development. I just replayed MGSV and one of my favorite things is that you can just run at full speed across all of Afghanistan without even breaking a sweat, and it just makes the player experience so much better. Stamina feels like one of those things where it was in some popular games and nobody really thought to question if their game actually needed it. One of the stupidest implementations is FFXV where if you just retap the sprint button during a certain point in the animation the character fully recovers and can go another sprint distance. This isn't a glitch, its built into the game, why did you make it busy work if you knew the sprint gauge was tedious? It gets dumber too because they realized this, too, was a problem so they... made an equipable item which removes stamina entirely but again, it competes with one of you very limited slots so why not just patch the drat game to remove it generally???
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Oct 16, 2021 02:50
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Barudak posted:One of the stupidest implementations is FFXV where if you just retap the sprint button during a certain point in the animation the character fully recovers and can go another sprint distance. This isn't a glitch, its built into the game, why did you make it busy work if you knew the sprint gauge was tedious? It gets dumber too because they realized this, too, was a problem so they... made an equipable item which removes stamina entirely but again, it competes with one of you very limited slots so why not just patch the drat game to remove it generally??? Just because something is in FFXV the whole time, or even was added in a patch, doesn't mean it was intended to be in FFXV. That's one of the most bafflingly sloppily-designed games I've ever seen.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:07
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ffxv went though intense devhell for 10 years
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Oct 16, 2021 03:24
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Barudak posted:Stamina feels like one of those things where it was in some popular games and nobody really thought to question if their game actually needed it. Ghost of Tsushima has something similar. While you’re running Jin eventually runs out of his invisible stamina bar and has to go down to a slow jog, but if you hit the dodge button he’s back to full steam instantly. It feels like a total last minute change.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:48
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Wasn’t it either GTA or Saints row or one like it where when you started out your stamina wasn’t great but the more you rub around the better it gets and it finally gets to a point where you just never run out
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Oct 16, 2021 05:49
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Ok weird tip for people that are playing the new Actraiser: Maybe I’m just an idiot, but early on, the game will force you to accept quests from the temple without explicitly telling you that you need to do that. After the first level, it doesn’t do that anymore so you can get stuck wondering what the hell is going on until you go back to the temple on your own and manually accept each quest. This includes stuff like “reveal the monster lair” and if you don’t accept the quest, the game just flat won’t let you do it even though you have the means to do so. Not the best game design there.
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Oct 16, 2021 05:53
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Joey Freshwater posted:Wasn’t it either GTA or Saints row or one like it where when you started out your stamina wasn’t great but the more you rub around the better it gets and it finally gets to a point where you just never run out I believe both of them did that. GTA: San Andreas at least had it be a purely 'increased with use' thing, while Saints' Row has it be an unlockable; in 2 from completing a minigame, in later games from just getting to a high enough level and buying it.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:22
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The jump in Genshin Impact is one of the worst feeling jumps I’ve encountered in a game in a long time.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:38
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Joey Freshwater posted:Wasn’t it either GTA or Saints row or one like it where when you started out your stamina wasn’t great but the more you rub around the better it gets and it finally gets to a point where you just never run out I know this is supposed to say "run" but I really like the version of reality where it wasn't a typo.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:41
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Captain DIEgiene posted:God, running stamina sucks, it should be outlawed for game development. I just replayed MGSV and one of my favorite things is that you can just run at full speed across all of Afghanistan without even breaking a sweat, and it just makes the player experience so much better. It can lead to interesting combat decisions (is a speed boost worth the resource or opportunity cost?) but it's not generally fun for traversal
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Oct 16, 2021 07:54
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marshmallow creep posted:Yeah. I learned to deal with the Tower Defense, but there is a whole lot of it.  Once you beat all the tower sequences, then you can grid up.quote:Another problem is it can be very hard to tell why your community isn't growing. I know that I need to use acts of God to destroy old fashioned architecture and poo poo so they build bigger and better stuff, but I'm in the desert land now and everything I can see they've built looks like its the highest tier they've unlocked but for some reason they won't grow their population and the game can't continue until they do. You can also force them to build further out by building gatehouses and towers close to your temple (they tend to build close to it and then radiate outward), especially when you can build a tower that destroys multiple houses that also isn't in a work space. Basically what you want is for them to build enough to raise the cap, then move/remove your towers to allow them to build closer to the temple. That's the only way to get 500+ in Aitos because they won't build up at the north lake otherwise.
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Oct 16, 2021 09:27
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Bussamove posted:Riftbreaker finally came out today and while by and large I really enjoy it, I absolutely despise meteor showers and hailstorms. Both deal damage to large swaths of the map, in a game about building gigantic bases. So afterwards you have to go around repairing every drat building because they've all taken at least a bit. It's especially bad because the power connectors and pipelines to keep your bases running have relatively little HP, so if you ignore them the next one will probably take them out. It looked like a cool game but I was worried that it looks like it's trying to do be like 4 games at once
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Oct 16, 2021 16:53
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Joey Freshwater posted:Wasn’t it either GTA or Saints row or one like it where when you started out your stamina wasn’t great but the more you rub around the better it gets and it finally gets to a point where you just never run out It was San Andreas, and also it had Infinite Sprint as a reward for a very early side-mission, so you could just rush for that if you didn't want to deal with it.
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Oct 16, 2021 17:04
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Saints 2 also has infinite sprint for an early activity
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Oct 16, 2021 17:16
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Only thing worse than limited sprint is when you have unlimited sprint but your character sounds like they are about to die the whole time.
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Oct 16, 2021 17:33
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Doctor Spaceman posted:It can lead to interesting combat decisions (is a speed boost worth the resource or opportunity cost?) but it's not generally fun for traversal That was basically the argument I came up with for Breath of the Wild, I think it would play much better if it popped online when you were engaged in a fight but not when you're just running around the map.
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Oct 16, 2021 18:46
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I think if a game has climbing mechanics like BoTW then I think having stamina makes sense for that. I also liked Death Stranding’s stamina system where you could chug Monster energy to increase it while you equip different exo-skeletons based on where and what you deliver. If you don’t outfit yourself right your total stamina tanks quick because you’re trying to lug 100kg worth of stuff through waist high snow, of course that’s going to exhaust the hell out of you, but if you take a smart path or use special equipment you can minimize those effects.
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Oct 16, 2021 19:06
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