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There's no shame in dropping the difficulty for the first battle and ramping it back up when you've got your NG+ party on its feet, either.
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# ? May 31, 2022 21:29 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 20:13 |
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Yeah, the only reason not to drop the difficulty is if you're playing on Hard and you want that title screen crown. Since you said you're on Normal, if the first battle's really rough, just drop the difficulty and get past it to the fun part.
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# ? May 31, 2022 21:39 |
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Yeah, to be clear, the first battle on NG+ is very difficult, even on normal.
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# ? May 31, 2022 21:55 |
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I finally cleared it yesterday, had to use a semi-cheese strat have Serenoa, Geela, Frederica and Benedict down in the water next to the doc so that only Trish can attack the middle two, and hope that Trish's AI breaks so you can take down everyone else with Fire Shield and Serenoa's counter attacks while continually refreshing Dragon Shield. I kept Roland back where he starts and kept baiting Travis into getting pushed off the riser, though it did take a resurrection ring and Roland still fell.
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# ? May 31, 2022 22:17 |
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I really lucked out on my current Hard mode run. I did basically the strategy Epi Lepi posted, except Roland got evaporated on like the third turn because I misplayed. But I got lucky and both bosses' AI seemed to get confused by Roland's sudden explosion so they just milled about on the shore while I cleaned up most of the normal enemies. If you have Geela and Benedict's weapon skills they're both extremely useful to increase your team's overall tankiness.
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# ? May 31, 2022 23:46 |
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Does anyone know if Exotic Flower drops anywhere? I accidentally sold the ones I bought from the sundry shop and now I might be locked out of Milo’s ultimate weapon. I’m on chapter 15 of my final playthrough on Hard so I’m not playing through again. If it drops from a story mission or mental mock battle I’m okay but I don’t know if it does.
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# ? Jun 18, 2022 22:02 |
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Don't the shops restock every other chapter? Anyway chapter 15 should leave plenty of time for you to be able to buy it again.
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# ? Jun 18, 2022 23:20 |
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The Sundry shop does not restock it appears. It does at the beginning of New Game Plus, but it hasn't at all so far.
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# ? Jun 19, 2022 01:20 |
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The Sundry shop does restock at some point during NG+. I was able to max out everyone's weapons without even buying all of the items the Sundry shop sells. And by NG++, there's no real limit on how much you can buy of anything anymore.
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# ? Jun 19, 2022 02:33 |
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One of my favorite things to do when I can swing it (chapter 15 morality spoilers): It's not looking so good for you buddy...
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# ? Jun 19, 2022 21:00 |
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The sequel to this game will be called Square Strategy and it will be a business management tycoon game where you are the CEO of Square Enix and you have to go around persuading the board members to vote against selling off all the western game studios so they can get into NFTs.
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# ? Jun 20, 2022 18:52 |
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Golden Route Spoilers, looking for assistance: Can anyone give me some advice for Roland's battle in Chapter 18 on Hard? My units are Roland, Maxwell, Narve, Hughette, Avlora, Cordelia, Decimal, Julio and Flanagan. I did not do enough playthroughs to get both Trish and Travis so this is the regiment where I am not at full strength. All of my resurrection earrings are on other units as well which is rough. I failed 3 or 4 times last night and I never really make any headway to be honest. Once Gustadolph decides to enter the fray I'm quickly hosed by his blizzard spells and I can't get to the healers without going through pretty much the whole rest of the army. Svarog has been useless, his pathing is bizarre, he just keeps running back and forth up on the platform where he starts.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 16:38 |
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That battle was insanely hard and took me several tries. I wish I could remember how I ultimately ended up beating it. You might have to use Narve to melt some snow to protect your units from the boss’s insane attack that hits anyone on frozen panels. I feel like I drew a bunch of enemies out to take them out one-by-one then rushed the boss with several strong units at once.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 16:44 |
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I used a similar party and this is how I finally beat it: instead of rushing through the gates, I sent all my units on a long slow climb up the empty side of the hill next to the gate, eventually amassing behind the tower (near Svarog's starting point) and forcing most enemy units to cluster on the stairs. There's a single corner tile that leads around the tower, which can be held by shuffling tanky units like Maxwell and Flanagan, and the enemies that go around the other side are sparse enough to be managable. Eventually Gusty made it to the front of the stair shuffle and I could wedge Flanagan behind him. This let me lure him alone around the corner, making it a 1v8 fight. You only have to take out Gustadolph to win. It still took a couple tries and a bit of luck to get right, but I think it's the safest strategy. Zulily Zoetrope fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jun 21, 2022 |
# ? Jun 21, 2022 17:08 |
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Epi Lepi posted:Golden Route Spoilers, looking for assistance: It's really unfortunate that you don't have Jens on this fight since my strategy was burning ladder to get up the back of the wall and then chokepoint the enemy force down whilst Hughette peppered them with arrows. The map only requires a kill on Gustadolph though so you have some lattitude there. If you turtle for a few turns to get Maxwell's high jump ready and use haste items to compress your turns then you should be able to use warp to teleport a unit (ideally Avlora) next to him as well as Flanagan and Hughette's movement to get them in on him as well. Then hopefully you can DPS him down before the healers do anything.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 17:35 |
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Epi Lepi posted:Golden Route Spoilers, looking for assistance: I pulled my units back to try to pick them off one by one and sent Anna to the right side to stealth and bait some units.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 18:29 |
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Natural 20 posted:The map only requires a kill on Gustadolph though so you have some lattitude there. If you turtle for a few turns to get Maxwell's high jump ready and use haste items to compress your turns then you should be able to use warp to teleport a unit (ideally Avlora) next to him as well as Flanagan and Hughette's movement to get them in on him as well. Then hopefully you can DPS him down before the healers do anything. This is pretty much what I did. I moved all my units up onto the tower with Svarog and then damaged a few of the units as they came up the stairs which then triggered the healers to stay at the bottom of their side and heal those units. Gustadolph charged up and I threw everything at him until he fell. It was incredibly lucky in some ways and I don't know I could replicate it but maybe the strategy can work for you since you have Hughette who could would be great at delaying stuff on those stairs.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 18:59 |
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I am only on chapter 7 but the enemy AI seems kind of disappointing, in the sense that if you group your whole force in the same place it seems like they will only try to go down the one most direct route to you even if there is another route available. I ended up with Avlora pacing around behind a mass of enemy units that were stuck trying to walk up a 2 tile wide alleyway blocked off by 2 of my guys even though I had nobody defending the other street leading up there, which gave me plenty of time to slowly plink away at them with ranged attacks and take care of the reinforcements in other areas. I guess it only stands out since it was intended to be a challenging boss encounter and encourage you to resort to burning the houses. It's kind of funny she was really talked up to be a ruthless general but can't figure out how to walk to the other side of a city block. I guess I feel like I was able to cheese it pretty easily rather than have had any kind of tense battle or clever strategy. I know it's hard to program good AI but I feel like if this was XCOM maybe the enemies would be making more of an effort to try to flank your position.
Item Getter fucked around with this message at 19:22 on Jun 21, 2022 |
# ? Jun 21, 2022 19:17 |
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I used a similar party and this is how I finally beat it: instead of rushing through the gates, I sent all my units on a long slow climb up the empty side of the hill next to the gate, eventually amassing behind the tower (near Svarog's starting point) and forcing most enemy units to cluster on the stairs. There's a single corner tile that leads around the tower, which can be held by shuffling tanky units like Maxwell and Flanagan, and the enemies that go around the other side are sparse enough to be managable. Eventually Gusty made it to the front of the stair shuffle and I could wedge Flanagan behind him. This let me lure him alone around the corner, making it a 1v8 fight. You only have to take out Gustadolph to win. Going up the cliff from behind the gate was the next thing I was going to try hopefully it works out. Blackbelt Bobman posted:That battle was insanely hard and took me several tries. I wish I could remember how I ultimately ended up beating it. You might have to use Narve to melt some snow to protect your units from the boss’s insane attack that hits anyone on frozen panels. I feel like I drew a bunch of enemies out to take them out one-by-one then rushed the boss with several strong units at once. Did not think about Narve melting snow, I'll have to remember that. I realize I hadn't actually looked at how Blizzard works, I just thought it was another cross shaped attack.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 19:19 |
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Item Getter posted:I am only on chapter 7 but the enemy AI seems kind of disappointing, in the sense that if you group your whole force in the same place it seems like they will only try to go down the one most direct route to you even if there is another route available. I ended up with Avlora pacing around behind a mass of enemy units that were stuck trying to walk up a 2 tile wide alleyway blocked off by 2 of my guys even though I had nobody defending the other street leading up there, which gave me plenty of time to slowly plink away at them with ranged attacks and take care of the reinforcements in other areas. I guess it only stands out since it was intended to be a challenging boss encounter and encourage you to resort to burning the houses, but I feel like I was able to cheese it pretty easily rather than have had any kind of tense battle or clever strategy. I know it's hard to program good AI but I feel like if this was XCOM maybe the enemies would be making more of an effort to try to flank your position. Even on Hard I don't think the enemy AI is great at flanking. On Hard they are tanky enough and hit hard enough that sometimes I had to hope that the pathing broke on some of the units so I wouldn't get overwhelmed.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 19:23 |
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That said, the AI does have a much better sense of self preservation than in a lot of SRPGs, and generally won't send units blindly charging into your killbox for no reason. Honestly the two things are probably related, since they both stem from the AI playing much more cautiously when there aren't any targets immediately in range.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 19:41 |
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Zulily Zoetrope posted:I used a similar party and this is how I finally beat it: instead of rushing through the gates, I sent all my units on a long slow climb up the empty side of the hill next to the gate, eventually amassing behind the tower (near Svarog's starting point) and forcing most enemy units to cluster on the stairs. There's a single corner tile that leads around the tower, which can be held by shuffling tanky units like Maxwell and Flanagan, and the enemies that go around the other side are sparse enough to be managable. Eventually Gusty made it to the front of the stair shuffle and I could wedge Flanagan behind him. This let me lure him alone around the corner, making it a 1v8 fight. You only have to take out Gustadolph to win. This is about what I did last night, but one extra thing: I believe in the power of love ie I had milo ult squares of people and let them kill each other
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 21:50 |
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Cattail Prophet posted:That said, the AI does have a much better sense of self preservation than in a lot of SRPGs, and generally won't send units blindly charging into your killbox for no reason. Honestly the two things are probably related, since they both stem from the AI playing much more cautiously when there aren't any targets immediately in range. I have noticed that units will retreat towards the healers to get topped off which annoys the poo poo out of me.
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# ? Jun 21, 2022 23:51 |
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Epi Lepi posted:I have noticed that units will retreat towards the healers to get topped off which annoys the poo poo out of me. I've come to appreciate it as forcing me to consider turn orders and securing kills, or at least forcing a unit to withdraw from the front. It at least makes sense, unlike Final Fantasy Tactics where a unit on low hp would retreat to the corners even if that served no tactical utility and forced you to waste several turns chasing them down.
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# ? Jun 22, 2022 09:27 |
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It took a few more tries but going up the cliff behind the gate ended up being the way to go. I now have just the last battle of Golden Route left to do. Any advice for Hard mode? Just from set up it looks like a doozy, no real way to funnel or block off the enemies. I can also confirm that the Sundry Shop does not restock during NG+ and only at the beginning so RIP me seeing Milo's third tier. It's also kind of a bummer that I won't see the Golden Route exclusive recruit's full side story without starting a new game.
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# ? Jun 24, 2022 19:29 |
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Epi Lepi posted:It took a few more tries but going up the cliff behind the gate ended up being the way to go. I found having Flanagan to lower the damage people took helped me a lot. That, and having a really long-ranged party member like Archibald. You're going to need to keep up the damage pressure on the boss and having someone who can poke from across the arena is a big help. What I did was clear out some of the initial wave of enemies, then just started pushing forward to take out the boss, since as you can probably tell from reading the enemies' abilities, they can always summon more.
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# ? Jun 24, 2022 19:34 |
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My strategy was pretty similar. I focused on playing keep away at the start while whittling down the numbers on one side of the map. Hit and run roland, anna, ranged hawk dive serenoa, and archibald helped with this, as well as clown girl items and decoy. I made sure to keep everyone's tp under 3 and to stay completely out of range of the final boss. Once the numbers were manageable (about 2-3 hanging around the final boss plus the other one) and with a turn order I liked I sent time boy on a suicide swap mission to put the final boss in serenoa/avlora/anna/roland jail, burned a stop quietus on him, then persona all out attacked him to death with 2x turns on anna opposite serenoa for the 4x followup damage. He pretty much melted instantly before the dolls could do anything.
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# ? Jun 24, 2022 19:52 |
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Epi Lepi posted:It's also kind of a bummer that I won't see the Golden Route exclusive recruit's full side story without starting a new game. You can if you do a bunch of tavern battles with them. Just be warned that they have the late recruit quality of only having two parts to their story.
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# ? Jun 25, 2022 00:29 |
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The writing in the cutscene immediately after choosing the Roland path is up there for one of my favorite scenes in JRPGs. It's so good.
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# ? Jun 29, 2022 04:31 |
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It's a bit silly how they put in a side story where Corentin invents a magical form of refrigeration and it's just kind of laughed off when it could really have massive political implications for reducing the world's dependency on the Hyzantian salt monopoly. Though not sure if there are any more scenes in his story after that.
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# ? Jul 6, 2022 08:43 |
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Is it feasible to recruit everyone the first way through? And does the game keep track of what you do or don't do? I only went through the first choice at the moment, but I wonder if I should keep a document to allow myself to more easily follow different paths. Also, I totally didn't force my friends to do what I wanted, since I wanted to see what everyone's conversation was like lol. Probably not the idea, but still, I'm enjoying the rather toned down writing at the moment.
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# ? Jul 6, 2022 11:38 |
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Is it feasible to recruit everyone the first way through? And does the game keep track of what you do or don't do? It’s literally impossible to recruit every character in fewer than four playthroughs.
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# ? Jul 6, 2022 11:51 |
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You can recruit most characters in two playthroughs but you need four to recruit everyone. After one playthrough you can recruit about 2/3rds of the roster. In later playthroughs you will get more details about how unlocks work etc. I wouldn't advise trying to optimise the first time round. Just play how you feel is appropriate. Fangz fucked around with this message at 11:54 on Jul 6, 2022 |
# ? Jul 6, 2022 11:51 |
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Is it feasible to recruit everyone the first way through? And does the game keep track of what you do or don't do? There's a tab in the journal labeled "war chronicle" or "paths traveled" or something that visually lays out all the chapters you've played through and divides them by plotline branches. This carries over into new game plus. Also do not worry about recruitment. The game is literally designed to ensure that all player choices lead to the same amount of options and recruits down the line, and if you beat it and want to give another go, new game plus then lays the mechanics bare for you in case you want to get completionist.
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# ? Jul 6, 2022 12:25 |
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Great. I'm going to be at it for a while. I'll probably maximize dialogue options for the time being because it's neat, unless I really care about a choice. And yeah! Thanks everyone!
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# ? Jul 6, 2022 13:20 |
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So, what's the deal with dying? Do characters get benched or nothing happens? Should I then just take bigger risks and throw them into dangerous positions to trade a kill for a kill? I guess it just means that character won't get anymore xp in the fight. Also, the spoils. Do you only get them if you land on them with a unit, or do you collect any that are remaining on the map automatically. I've been doing the former so far and I feel like I'm wasting turns for things that are maybe not worth it? Are they worth it? And I found the story map which is cool, but does the game keep track of recruitable characters ever? Or should I eventually make my own list so I can at least see everyone once in action over multiple playthroughs?
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# ? Jul 8, 2022 20:09 |
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There is no permadeath.
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# ? Jul 8, 2022 20:10 |
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100YrsofAttitude posted:So, what's the deal with dying? Do characters get benched or nothing happens? Should I then just take bigger risks and throw them into dangerous positions to trade a kill for a kill? I guess it just means that character won't get anymore xp in the fight. There's no permadeath. If someone's taken out in a fight, all you lose is the ability to use them for the rest of the fight and whatever EXP they would've gained if they stayed alive. There's a Quietus you can get that can also revive an ally, but it's pretty costly to use. You do have to stand on spoils to actually pick them up, yes. NG+ gives you a way to track most recruitable characters, but not the story path ones I don't think. If you want, I can give you a detail-free/spoiler-light list of which chapters have recruitable characters that differ based on path.
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# ? Jul 8, 2022 20:11 |
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Edit: Thanks for the clarifications.
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# ? Jul 8, 2022 20:11 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 20:13 |
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Recruitment stuff (no character names or story details here, just chapter numbers): Chapter 3 - You get a different character in each route through this chapter. Chapter 15 - There are three routes through this chapter, and four different recruitable characters. The Liberty choice in this chapter has two possible recruits, and which one you get depends on which choice you made in Chapter 11. So if you want to recruit everyone, you'll need to do the Liberty choice in Chapter 15 twice on two different playthroughs, one with one Chapter 11 choice and one with the other. Finally, there's one more recruit on one of the ending paths. If you're doing all of the endings, you'll get them eventually. Aside from that, all the recruits are either guaranteed by the story or gained by increasing your convictions, and NG+ will give you a list of conviction recruits and their requirements.
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# ? Jul 8, 2022 20:16 |