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DicktheCat posted:Do any of you know of a game that hits similar notes in tone to the original Axiom Verge?
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Sep 29, 2023 02:20
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In preparation for Timspinner 2, I actually played Timespinner and I think that "a solid metroidvania" undersells it a little bit? It doesn't have any brand new, amazing movement tech but the Orb system for attacks was interesting enough that I always felt like I was trying out new things and putting together new combos, until the very end when I finally decided on a combination of stuff as "the overpowered endgame gear" combination for killing the true final boss. I think if you examine each part individually you would describe something that sounds pretty samey, but the game as a whole is greater than the sum of its parts, would really recommend. I think two big things I liked about it that I was originally worried about were a Time Travel plot (kept it pretty loose, time travel has no strict consequences until it finally does and you punch god in his dumb face) and the gameplay doesn't over-rely on time shenanigans (the only "time" power you get is "Chrono Trigger time travel" and "stop time so I can jump on poo poo")
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Sep 30, 2023 05:45
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Also on the list of "games I never beat so I should really do that before the sequel comes out" is Lone Fungus, and holy gently caress.  This game was basically tailor-made for me.Whoever made this basically just made a Metroidvania so that they could hide their 30-level-long Precision Platformer game someplace. They could've released just the Astral Gates as a game and I would've spent 5 bucks on it. This is excessive.
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Sep 30, 2023 18:59
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I'm very happy that you can choose to skip every single challenge room in Lone Fungus if you so desire. The actual puzzle platforming _required_ for beating the game is very doable, and that's really how it should be - if you are good, you can skip stuff, do extra challenge, etc. but don't make that stuff required, that's what crashed Grime for me and I stopped playing somewhere after 3/4th of the game, I think. It also helps that Lone Fungus is absolutely beautiful and adorable, a very good entry in the genre. I can't wait for the sequel, there is still room for improvement and the dev seems like they are taking the feedback.
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Sep 30, 2023 20:41
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Lone Fungus is pretty neat, but it does feel kinda like two games stapled together. You've got the precision platformer sections with minimal rewards, which turn off half your abilities (but still leave a fairly technical platformer moveset, though it never asks that much of you). And you've got the metroidvania, which obviously takes a lot from Hollow Knight but is structurally quite Metroid. After the first boss you can tackle most of the map in any order, depending on your dedication. The first spell allows for what are essentially bombjumps to skip many ability gates with some finesse, but even without anything particularly tricky there often isn't a fixed order to the areas. And, like Metroid, the combat is just kinda there and the bosses are generally quite poor (the final boss was decent, though).
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Sep 30, 2023 21:15
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This sounds very much my jam. So sequence breaking is built into the game? I really liked Haak for being so open to rewarding exploration but it still had some pretty clear “you need this upgrade too bad” stuff like the gas mask.
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Sep 30, 2023 22:31
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Velius posted:This sounds very much my jam. So sequence breaking is built into the game? I really liked Haak for being so open to rewarding exploration but it still had some pretty clear “you need this upgrade too bad” stuff like the gas mask. The first ability you get besides "sword/pogo" is essentially a zero-MP pogo bomb jump, and then the next one I found after that was basically "an even more insane vertical bomb jump, but you have to be more precise and you only get a limited amount of these until your MP refills" You can absolutely sequence break if you've got the patience and the skill, although there are still some places that I've made a note of where it's just simply not possible unless there's a really neat trick to the bomb jump that I'm missing. There's just also a ton of stuff going on. I'm sitting a little over 30% completed, been playing for half the day today and I keep finding little nooks and crannies with badges and secrets inside of them. e: there's also two kinds of "movement" upgrades for generally getting around, there's the strict "this is just a flat movement boost" type of upgrade and then there's various spells, which the harder platforming challenge rooms will prevent you form using by having you be inflicted with Silence. So in generally getting around, you can do some stupid poo poo with spells if you practice. There's effectively a triple-jump-speed-boost that you can piecemeal together with three different abilities. bawk fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Sep 30, 2023 |
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Sep 30, 2023 23:12
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I liked Lone Fungus. I think the precision challenges are dumb but they are very optional. My two bigger complaints are 1. there are a ton of bosses, but many (most?) of them aren't interesting and are just Big Regular Enemy, and 2. you have a lot of movement abilities and they are sometimes required for navigating the non-challenge areas. Mostly the latter isn't too bad but you definitely get overwhelmed occasionally trying to remember what combination of things does what.
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Oct 1, 2023 01:59
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Velius posted:This sounds very much my jam. So sequence breaking is built into the game? I really liked Haak for being so open to rewarding exploration but it still had some pretty clear “you need this upgrade too bad” stuff like the gas mask. I remember getting a rare achievement for beating a boss without a gas mask, so you absolutely can sequence break in Haak.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:07
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I just cleared one of the hardest rooms I've ever had to do in platforming in Lone Fungus. For anybody who has played, it's the one in the Acid Dungeon toward the top right corner with the bouncejumps. Holy poo poo this makes Aeterna Noctis look like a walk in the park.
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Oct 1, 2023 02:20
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I beat Timespinner some time ago on the vita, and man I could not tell you a solitary thing about that game beyond the general graphic style and...I think you were in like a tribe of people that watched over a time portal or....something? Probably wrong. Everything from mechanics to plot has completely left me.
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Oct 1, 2023 05:54
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The only thing I remember about Timespinner is that every character except for one in the game is LGBTQ+, and that one is a white dude and the true final boss. The rest of the game was more or less a by the numbers More-Vania-Than-Metroid-Metroidvania.
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Oct 1, 2023 06:19
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I liked Lone Fungus. Even if it wasn't for me, it went its own way in the genre full of copycats. It might be a bit simplistic (more Haiku than Hollow Knight (although to be fair, not much is on HK's level)) but what it does, it does well. I've completed most of the map, but couldn't find what to do in a few rooms, so I just gave up and settled with only one ending.
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Oct 1, 2023 08:59
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bawk posted:I just cleared one of the hardest rooms I've ever had to do in platforming in Lone Fungus. For anybody who has played, it's the one in the Acid Dungeon toward the top right corner with the bouncejumps. Holy poo poo this makes Aeterna Noctis look like a walk in the park.
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Oct 1, 2023 09:29
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Alright, stupid question about Blasphemous: How do I scroll the text in the inventory?  Because I can't see the final line here, and I think it might be important.
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Oct 1, 2023 13:31
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Looks like space bar?
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Oct 1, 2023 13:37
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It’s I and K for some reason.
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Oct 1, 2023 14:01
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Dr. Clockwork posted:It’s I and K for some reason. I tried these, but no effect. So ended up just trying everything, and apparently it's Y/H for me. Don't know why - I did some rebinding, but I never bound anything to these, and I didn't rebind the Inventory key. K is apparently still the key for approving sword upgrades, with no rebind option.
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Oct 1, 2023 15:55
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That game really doesn't like the idea of playing with mouse and keyboard. It's gamepad or two hands on the keyboard and when you change bindings to use your mouse it goofs a lot of things up, I found.
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Oct 1, 2023 16:45
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Kurui Reiten posted:The only thing I remember about Timespinner is that every character except for one in the game is LGBTQ+, and that one is a white dude and the true final boss. The rest of the game was more or less a by the numbers More-Vania-Than-Metroid-Metroidvania.   KNR posted:That was probably the hardest room for me, but I definitely had a tougher time in many places in AN. I think in large part because Fungus mostly drew on my existing Hollow Knight and Celeste skills, where AN's teleport arrows and cosmos required more learning. I've been having no problems with most other rooms because of what you said, yeah. That one was an all-timer for having to save a double-jump when I was convinced I needed one. It's one reason i am very bad at Celeste  The swinging mace challenges in the Underground hit that perfect point of "how the gently caress do I do this" to eventually "fully in the zone just bouncing like a maniac but everything perfectly timed and intnetional" that I love about these kinds of challenges Then I found out, at 75% completion, there's a teleport wand 
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Oct 1, 2023 20:21
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KNR posted:And, like Metroid, the combat is just kinda there and the bosses are generally quite poor
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Oct 2, 2023 01:22
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sudonim posted:Which Metroid game are you thinking of here, genuinely curious. Super Metroid had some great bosses, including the second Ridley fight which is the player character and a space dragon locked in a small room for a slugfest battle to the death, it rules.
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Oct 2, 2023 09:21
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That is very different from my experience. I never really had flickering or slowdown on any Super Metroid boss. The big plant boss, yeah, that one is easy. Kraid is an extremely impressive fight, visually, that surprises you the first time through, and you have to learn to trigger and then exploit his vulnerability. Beating Crocomire requires an unorthodox strategy that made him very difficult for me when I didn't know what to do. Whatever the Wrecked Ship boss is really messes with your expectations; while I don't think the bosses are all that hard, for the most part, that one can be dicey even if you know what you're doing. I forget the Maridia boss' name but it has a secret easy mode way to beat him that is really cool and if you do it normally it can be pretty hard. Ridley I actually think is a boring DPS race that hasn't changed all that much from the original Metroid, that one I think is disappointing. The last boss subverts expectations and has a cinematic story tie-in, though it's not all that difficult.
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Oct 2, 2023 10:19
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Fusion feels like a better version of Super in that respect, enemy attacks are less muddy but hit alot harder so you do have to learn the dance of the fights. And they just own in Samus Returns and Dread but I guess they do start to feel like a departure from the style of the 90s/00s games?
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Oct 2, 2023 10:20
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KNR posted:Super, mostly. Every boss was a spammy, flickering mess dps race I still beat the first try because the game is balanced to be very easy unless you're going for low %. I played it for the first time in mid-2000s and the bosses felt extremely unimpressive then, unlike the map design and mobility. Which version of Super were you playing, because that's literally only one boss (Ridley) and the rest have pretty nuanced strategies to them for a game made in 1992.
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Oct 2, 2023 11:21
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Fusion gets no credit with me for absolutely anything; locking the player into sectors that had to be solved corridor-style-linearly is the antithesis of why I play Metroid, and the awkward love story was just salt on the wound.
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Oct 2, 2023 11:43
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Serephina posted:Fusion gets no credit with me for absolutely anything; locking the player into sectors that had to be solved corridor-style-linearly is the antithesis of why I play Metroid, and the awkward love story was just salt on the wound. Okay but the fights are good, which is what are talking about
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Oct 2, 2023 11:49
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They very may have well been! But I can't recall any of that, as all the good had been soured and overruled by the overall experience. I know it's a pretty pretentious thing to call stuff "ruined", but sometimes things are more or less than the sum of their parts. A an example of this going the other way was Zero Mission, which had a much-lambasted stealth section at the end, which didn't bother me as it was five minutes long in an otherwise amazing game and liberating epilogue.
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Oct 2, 2023 11:58
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Serephina posted:Fusion gets no credit with me for absolutely anything; locking the player into sectors that had to be solved corridor-style-linearly is the antithesis of why I play Metroid, and the awkward love story was just salt on the wound. Serephina posted:They very may have well been! But I can't recall any of that, as all the good had been soured and overruled by the overall experience. I know it's a pretty pretentious thing to call stuff "ruined", but sometimes things are more or less than the sum of their parts. Nah, I agree with you 100%. I'm even a STORY IN VIDEO GAMES nerd who will often let dull or repetitive gameplay get a pass if the story is really drat good (looking at you, Legacy of Kain series), but everything about all of what you said is why I really couldn't get behind Fusion. The SA-X chases were cool, too, but the overall experience was still marred, at least they learned from the misstep in Dread.
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Oct 2, 2023 13:23
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fusion's a pretty good game
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Oct 2, 2023 14:11
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Fuzz posted:Nah, I agree with you 100%. I'm even a STORY IN VIDEO GAMES nerd who will often let dull or repetitive gameplay get a pass if the story is really drat good (looking at you, Legacy of Kain series), but everything about all of what you said is why I really couldn't get behind Fusion. The SA-X chases were cool, too, but the overall experience was still marred, at least they learned from the misstep in Dread. I have pretty much the opposite view on Dread. I loved the parts that felt like Metroid, but it's perma-shelved because of the EMMI chases. They're an annoying gimmick/gate between me and the exploration powerups that I don't have the patience to redo on subsequent playthroughs when theres other Metroid games which will scratch that itch of "playing a capital-M Metroid game instead of a Metroidvania." It definitely has the best boss fights in recent memory, though. I can see myself loading my save just to go do the final boss again.
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Oct 2, 2023 15:02
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Dread's bosses were cool (I think Hollow Knight had better, but 5-6 years might not count as recent memory), but the exploration was awful. Not only do the emmi sections break up the map and largely suck (the later ones that are more pure chases are just a bit of platforming, but the various stealth gimmicks got tiring really fast), but the game keeps silently locking doors and blocking passages behind you on random story triggers. It was annoying enough I ended up just not doing any exploration until right before the final boss. I did like the mulitroom shinespark puzzles I found then, tbf.Fuzz posted:Which version of Super were you playing, because that's literally only one boss (Ridley) and the rest have pretty nuanced strategies to them for a game made in 1992.
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Oct 2, 2023 17:04
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Yeah the EMMIs and the weird arbitary lockouts lower the game to only good when it could be great, but the fundamentals are fantastic and I'd love to see MercuryStream have a third go at the series with a modern Super Metroid style world. They're like 80% of the way to making an all-time metroidvania, a better map and a less hosed development which doesn't lead to a ton of cut bosses is really all they need
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Oct 2, 2023 17:09
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Super Metroid came out in 1994 actually
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Oct 2, 2023 17:12
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KNR posted:Dread's bosses were cool (I think Hollow Knight had better, but 5-6 years might not count as recent memory), but the exploration was awful. Not only do the emmi sections break up the map and largely suck (the later ones that are more pure chases are just a bit of platforming, but the various stealth gimmicks got tiring really fast), but the game keeps silently locking doors and blocking passages behind you on random story triggers. It was annoying enough I ended up just not doing any exploration until right before the final boss. I did like the mulitroom shinespark puzzles I found then, tbf. Yeah, there was one point about midway through where the game literally just turns the EMMIs off and you can freely explore a ton of stuff, but it still drastically limits what you can and can't do in a disappointingly linear way. The shinespark puzzles were awesome though, I think that's one reason I'm liking Lone Fungus as much as I am. Dread gives you four or five shinespark puzzles that really require thought and execution, and you don't get them until the end of the game, while LF has one room in particular that I could probably have solved 8 hours ago but I've been so busy solving all it's other interesting and difficult platforming puzzles that I haven't spent time trying to solve it for one singular MP upgrade and the secret ending I'm guessing is just beyond a hidden door next to it
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Oct 2, 2023 17:46
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Rusted Moss is… well, it’s neat, but the combat is just one layer too many for me. The grappling and obstacle evasion is already a lot to deal with, let alone enemies that deal huge damage to you and a heal that is extremely weak and can only be used once before it has to refill from you dealing damage. You also have to aim the gun, so they put jump on the left shoulder button, grapple on right shoulder and gun fire on right bumper. I know the game recommends mouse & keyboard but this is kind of silly!! Non-Metroidvania Gravity Circuit handles this way better by having your combat be melee oriented and special moves bound to a macro with a direction on the dpad, so there’s no cumbersome controls and your right thumb isn’t forced to be on the right stick. The grapple’s a lot better in Gravity Circuit too because, well, it just works. It’s not concerned with being a realistic physics simulation, it just works like most grapple hooks worked in 8bit/16bit games. I spent like 90 minutes trying to beat a very difficult boss last night before giving up.
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Oct 5, 2023 20:18
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I've gotten the first two endings in Blasphemous. Haven't tried for the DLC ending yet, but apparently I'm locked out of that one after killing the penultimate boss. Not sure if I would have tried for it anyway - the bosses you have to fight to ulock it seem significantly harder than the ones in the base game, which were already kicking my rear end a bit. I checked out the wiki after the getting the first ending, and I don't think there's any way I would have figured out how to unlock the second ending on my own. Deliberately breaking the statues that have a beneficial gameplay purpose is not something I would have tried to do. Apparently there is quite a few things in the game that are permanently missable, which I don't really like in a Metroidvania. These include a min-boss that only appears once, and several sidequests that you fail if you kill some specific bosses before completing them. Although apart from the DLC ending, these mainly amount to missable achievements, you still get the items from the guy who is slowly turning into a tree even if you bring the item he asked for too late. My main annoyances: There are quite a few breakable walls and floors hiding important upgrades, and I never really saw a recognizable tell for most of them. Limiting you to only equipping 3 relics at a time feels unneccessary. You can swap them at will, it is always obvious where they have a benefit, and it's not like you'd gain an unfair advantage by equpping more - they only affect platforming. Switching between them mainly feels like busywork. The most clever thing the game does traversal-wise is giving you a relic that lets you jump into "bottomless" pits, which makes the dump you on the next area below instead. This opens up some new areas in a way you'd never think to look for beforehand, and I think it's cool when a game amanges to do that. Of course, this can also get you killed if you unequip the relix and forget you did. Final note: There is a dog, and you can indeed pet it.
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Oct 7, 2023 20:01
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Nostalgamus posted:
That may be a you issue. I'm surprised anyone could go through the whole game without attempting to hit those things at least once.
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Oct 7, 2023 20:51
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I beat the poo poo out of those statues because when a game lets you break stuff, I break it. Only found out later they had a purpose.
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Oct 7, 2023 20:55
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I figured you could break them but didn't because who knows if it's good or bad in that type of game
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Oct 7, 2023 22:05
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