Jan 10, 2020
306
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Forgot about that one.
see, that's what i'm saying...b/c it's in the backstory timeline, i think it's forgettable to majority of players, for those who even bother w/the backstory instead of ignoring it. but i'm glad 2 see this many responses 2 the rape tag, i can only hope BlueCat or whoever his go-between is on this site (since his profile seems 2 have disappeared here) notices how many of us want more of this tag...like they say, for every 1 person that voices an opinion, there's at least 10 more who feel the same way
 
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Jan 10, 2020
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I'm not pushing for more or less rape, but I think if we're going to have it, it should carry more weight than it currently does. Crazy Nurse robbing any scene of it's narrative weight is my issue.
agreed...girls need 2 remember what happened 2 them so they can have appropriate reactions when it happens 2 them again, n eventually succumb 2 their carnal needs, n help the MC recruit more girls into his harem by doing the same thing 2 them (w/some help from Fuyu n Tomoe of course :devilish: )
 

Smarmint

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
1,222
4,855
The merge addresses pretty much every complaint within the game. "File Size, Save Incompatibility" etc...
We knew it was going to take this long as their goal back in June was for this to be released by the end of the year.
I will just say I am highly skeptical. I'll bet after the next release we will still have many menu elements not working, most of the bios blank or missing, and the same problems we have all seen. Is there any reason I should believe what the devs are telling us?

Honestly, looking at other VNs here, ES is a disaster. The content is great, and it is fun to play, but it is a buggy mess. Has anyone here played a game with as many problems as this one? Remember how hard it was to update and get the saves to register the new updates? I had to play the first few days over and over again, just to get the updates to start. I have never had this issue in the 100s of other VNs I have played.

Finally the devs gave up and eliminated all saves between versions. Does anyone know any other game that has done this? Honestly, the devs should be embarrassed. They should scrap 90% of the code and make it a straight VN and just release content. We will all be much happier. What is the point of multiple 1000s of lines of code if it doesn't do anything useful for the player?

The fact of the matter is that ES is a simple straightforward VN, and since it is using Illusion assets, requires no rendering time, so the scenes take about 1/100 the time as a typical VN to produce. This game should be knocking out updates every few weeks. Development was pretty decent at the beginning. The fact that they have added team members, and development has slowed to a crawl, should concern everyone that likes this VN.

Several of my favorite VNs only release every 6 months, so I am used to long delays. However, the devs of those games are active in the forums, honest about what they are doing, and they have months of labor setting up the scenes, perfecting the lighting, and countless hours of rendering, so I get it and am happy to wait patiently. None of this is required in ES. All you need is some quick posing in PH, take a screenshot, and write the dialog, add in some minimal coding, since honestly, the choices are very simple here, and done.

Radio silence of over 30 days, almost 60 days? Completely unacceptable. Unless the entire dev team is in the hospital without internet, it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to log into Patreon and write a quick note "Hey everyone, we are still working on the update and hope for a February release. We are about 60% done, etc., etc." or "Due to unforeseen issues, we will have to delay another month, I hope to have more to say in a few weeks."

Total silence since the end of December? Hmm. Maybe the dev team decided they have better things to do than work on this game.

As I said, proofreading, that is what is taking forever.
Right, proofreading. Is the game written in Navajo? Any competent English / German speaker can proofread the entire dialog in 1 or 2 days. This isn't "War and Peace".
 

Skummy Ecchi

Member
Apr 18, 2019
496
1,351
I will just say I am highly skeptical. I'll bet after the next release we will still have many menu elements not working, most of the bios blank or missing, and the same problems we have all seen. Is there any reason I should believe what the devs are telling us?

Honestly, looking at other VNs here, ES is a disaster. The content is great, and it is fun to play, but it is a buggy mess. Has anyone here played a game with as many problems as this one? Remember how hard it was to update and get the saves to register the new updates? I had to play the first few days over and over again, just to get the updates to start. I have never had this issue in the 100s of other VNs I have played.

Finally the devs gave up and eliminated all saves between versions. Does anyone know any other game that has done this? Honestly, the devs should be embarrassed. They should scrap 90% of the code and make it a straight VN and just release content. We will all be much happier. What is the point of multiple 1000s of lines of code if it doesn't do anything useful for the player?

The fact of the matter is that ES is a simple straightforward VN, and since it is using Illusion assets, requires no rendering time, so the scenes take about 1/100 the time as a typical VN to produce. This game should be knocking out updates every few weeks. Development was pretty decent at the beginning. The fact that they have added team members, and development has slowed to a crawl, should concern everyone that likes this VN.

Several of my favorite VNs only release every 6 months, so I am used to long delays. However, the devs of those games are active in the forums, honest about what they are doing, and they have months of labor setting up the scenes, perfecting the lighting, and countless hours of rendering, so I get it and am happy to wait patiently. None of this is required in ES. All you need is some quick posing in PH, take a screenshot, and write the dialog, add in some minimal coding, since honestly, the choices are very simple here, and done.

Radio silence of over 30 days, almost 60 days? Completely unacceptable. Unless the entire dev team is in the hospital without internet, it doesn't take more than 5 minutes to log into Patreon and write a quick note "Hey everyone, we are still working on the update and hope for a February release. We are about 60% done, etc., etc." or "Due to unforeseen issues, we will have to delay another month, I hope to have more to say in a few weeks."

Total silence since the end of December? Hmm. Maybe the dev team decided they have better things to do than work on this game.



Right, proofreading. Is the game written in Navajo? Any competent English / German speaker can proofread the entire dialog in 1 or 2 days. This isn't "War and Peace".
Did I say dialogue? No, proofreading all the code works and won't be, as you put it, a buggy mess. This is a massive ass bundle of code, they want to go over it to make sure it all functions correctly this time around. Because yes it was a fucking nightmare individually and they're fixing all the known issues all at once, because we as the Patrons told them to do it that way since the beginning. I've been subscribed to this since near to the start, I have always favored them doing all the hard stuff up front and dealing with the pain in one massive pill than spreading it out, as have many others. This is what that choice looks like, crappy but completely acceptable and professional, fulfilling what we told them to do as a whole.

It's fine to have issues with the game, by all means it is your opinion, but there are still plenty of inferior products out there, and potential amazing titles which take a year just to update to add some shitty little bits and pieces. At least this once has a track record of producing, and has am ambitious goal of 365 full in game days, which requires better foundation than the rickety ass shit they were working with.

You don't have to be convinced of jack shit, one way or another the merge will end and shit will resume as normal, this isn't fucking about with content. This is fixing all the major shit that's wrong with the system as a whole, and ensuring it doesn't break the moment a stray gust of wind blows on through. Naturally that's a fair bit harder than playing around with models and lighting, considering when you fix one bug five more take its place.

The silence is a very reasonable answer: There is nothing to say, there is no timeframe, its done when its done. You do not need to be kept abreast of a situation which has two developments: not being done, and then being done.
 

Virulenz

Engaged Member
Sep 27, 2017
2,914
3,685
I'm not a coder, dev or anything. I just made a few batch files and some homepages, so its maybe not the same but...proofreading code? I never did such nonsense. I just started it and looked for any errors. Most errors hint pretty exactly where they are, what is missing, what is wrong linked/named or which command has a typo or is just messed up. You must be pretty insane to proofread code if you get any info you need by just test/play it. Thats at least my train of thoughts on this matter ^^

Smarmint
I played many games with far more bugs than ES...honestly, i dont even remember running into a bug here, except for the sms error (wich could be solved by save and load before checking the phone) and the savegame problems between versions...other than those two i was lucky ^^
Wanna see a really bugged game? Try bastard girls (the first try the dev gave up, not the remake). There are many more, but i dont remember names of games i deleted from my PC, just this one because of the remake ^^

But i agree, the dev should at least give a little hint about any progress, otherwise people might think the 4441,40€ monthly are enough to enjoy the tropical sunset without caring for the game anymore...
 
Apr 19, 2020
250
365
I'm not a coder, dev or anything. I just made a few batch files and some homepages, so its maybe not the same but...proofreading code? I never did such nonsense. I just started it and looked for any errors. Most errors hint pretty exactly where they are, what is missing, what is wrong linked/named or which command has a typo or is just messed up. You must be pretty insane to proofread code if you get any info you need by just test/play it. Thats at least my train of thoughts on this matter ^^

Smarmint
I played many games with far more bugs than ES...honestly, i dont even remember running into a bug here, except for the sms error (wich could be solved by save and load before checking the phone) and the savegame problems between versions...other than those two i was lucky ^^
Wanna see a really bugged game? Try bastard girls (the first try the dev gave up, not the remake). There are many more, but i dont remember names of games i deleted from my PC, just this one because of the remake ^^

But i agree, the dev should at least give a little hint about any progress, otherwise people might think the 4441,40€ monthly are enough to enjoy the tropical sunset without caring for the game anymore...
Personally I'd agree with this. In reality, there's no point releasing the merge as an alpha, beta and then final if they'll spend so long proof reading the entirety of the code, holding everything up. It'll be easier to locate and fix the bugs after the alpha has been released due to people playing it, then they can polish everything off in the final version
Having said that, I doubt there can be much longer left. My hope is that they are nearly done with it
 

Smarmint

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
1,222
4,855
Did I say dialogue? No, proofreading all the code works and won't be, as you put it, a buggy mess.
Proofreading the code, huh. Seriously, if the code is so bad that it takes many months to proofread it, it should be deleted and they should start over with more straightforward and simpler code that is within their technical abilities. ES is not a new game. They have had years to get the code in a mature working state and they haven't done it. Of the 100s of games here, ES is the only game I have played where saves no longer work between versions. And no other game here spends months "merging" between versions, and releases multiple content-free updates. Why bother. Don't release anything until there is something new for the fans to play.

I know the dev loves to brag about his massive amount of code, but RenPy does most of the work for you. All you need is dialog and choices, and some flags. What is he coding that is so complicated? The only non-standard item in the interface that actually functions is the phone, and we saw what happened with that.

Frankly, from the communication from the dev I can't tell if he and his team truly doesn't know what they are doing and are just winging it month to month, or they are actually doing almost nothing and selling us all a bill of goods to keep the Patreon cash coming. Endless claims of "merging", and many updates, including the planned next one, with no new content only annoy your fan base. I code for a living, and merging days of updates into one version, or weeks of updates into a month should not take more than a few days of work. All the assets, dialog, and choices are already done. Just cut and paste into 1 file or a sequence of files, rename some assets, a few days of testing to make sure it all still works, and you are done. While you are at it, run a batch recompression of the assets so the update is reasonable size. There are free tools available that can do all this in the background overnight.

My personal opinion? Since the devs can't use rendering time as an explanation for the long delays like most other devs, they only thing they can fall back on is to claim to be proofreading or fixing the code. We all know that creating scenes is very quick using illusion assets, so they can't claim that creating content is what is taking the time.

It is their game, and they can do what they want. They should just be honest about what they are doing. There are several games I like a lot where the dev says honestly, "I am one person, I have a 8 to 5 job, I have family responsibilities, and I am doing this in my free time, so I can only spend several hours a week on development.", and that is fine. People can choose to support them or not. Personally I support several devs like this, because I know they can use the money, fan support helps give them motivation to continue, and I like what they are doing and their involvement in the community.

There is a lot of good content in ES, at least so far, and like I said, it is a fun game to play. Maybe the dev team will decide that they have bitten off more they can chew and simplify the game so we don't have to hear endless progress updates from the dev over years about how they are "working on the code". Or they can just be straight with us and say we have decided to release one update every 6 months, but with actual content.

But to have update after update where they are just "merging" the game, (which still has non-functioning saves after 2.5 years of development), first from days to weeks, and now from weeks to months, looks like a huge waste of time with no payoff for the fans.

I hope that Bluecat is reading this and rethinks his plan for the game. Simplifying it into a straight VN, and just releasing content on whatever schedule works for him and his team, would do a lot to make ES a better game, and also require less work for the dev team, and less frustration for the fans as well. Also, stop releasing separate individual updates you will merge later. Just add on updates to the game with each release like everyone else. If it gets too big, make it part 1 and part 2, and leave it separated. Who ever heard of releasing separate updates month after month with the intent to merge them later? That is horrible development practice.

(PS. One more month of radio silence, and ES will be marked abandoned here.)
 

fashtar

Member
Mar 23, 2019
286
257
Because they're nice to us like that. Some of us here don't have the income to be proper patrons (given the past year) but we're still fans of the game and we want to see it completed.

If you're just going to whine about the game not being done yet or claim the devs are not paying us any heed, then clearly this game is not for you.
 
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Skode

Well-Known Member
Mar 9, 2020
1,528
2,389
A game is going to be tagged as abandoned when there is no update from the dev for 3 months.
BlueCat made a statement here in January. (That's only one month ago)

Supporters of Ecchi Sensei are aware of what's going on and what is being worked on.

BTW... No dev is obliged to provide updates in a "pirate"-forum.
But BlueCat and other team members still do it from time to time anyways.
Yeah, weekly updates of "still working on it" would never detract the guys who were never gonna back him financially regardless of situation from bitching hes somehow milking patreons anyway. Last time i genuinely think they got under his skin and almost always without even a semblance of self awareness of how entitled they come off as half the time (and moronic for always trying to soap box using OTHER peoples money as the platform to stand on... on a pirate site no less)
 

Virulenz

Engaged Member
Sep 27, 2017
2,914
3,685
Some of us here don't have the income to be proper patrons (given the past year) but we're still fans of the game and we want to see it completed.
I dont want to see it completed...completed games dont get new content and thats what i am waiting for ;)
 

Smarmint

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
1,222
4,855
Because they're nice to us like that. Some of us here don't have the income to be proper patrons (given the past year) but we're still fans of the game and we want to see it completed.

If you're just going to whine about the game not being done yet or claim the devs are not paying us any heed, then clearly this game is not for you.
Call it what you want, but this forum is here to talk about the game and its development. I don't see anywhere in the rules of F95 that only glowing 100% positive comments are allowed in the forums.

If you reread everything I wrote, I gave valid criticisms, backed up by my experience playing the game over the last several years. Nowhere did I say that I want the game to be completed soon, or even that the development should be faster. In fact I would be fine with slower development, as long as the devs were honest with the fans as to what their plans are, and they get their game back on track. ES can't seem to do what every other VN here does, which is release updates with one or max two parts, and allow saves to work between versions. This is a problem that I and many other users have brought up. If you don't personally care that you can't save your game between releases, and that months of dev time are spent just merging existing content, without actually doing anything to improve the game or add content, you are free to say so here.

Whether the devs are paying attention or not, who can say. All I know is the the problems with ES are long-standing over the last 2.5 years, and so far none of them have been fixed, except the issue with the phone. All we get are promises that the next version will fix all the problems, and here we are. Everything is the same, and it looks like it is getting worse with each update. We still can't use our saves between versions, and it seems all the dev's time is spend on pointless merging, rather than doing it correctly from the start. Even the upcoming release, which is supposedly a month, will only include the existing 3 weeks. Why bother. Finish the month and then release, whether it takes 1 month or 6 months.

I enjoy playing the game and want it to succeed. If I didn't enjoy it and think that it had a lot of potential for improvement, I would move on and not make any comments here. But nobody here can point to a successful game which can't even get the basics right, saving and working between versions. I am only making my case that the devs would be better off making it a straight VN, which it already is in every respect from the player's perspective, and just focus on releasing regular content, rather then spend time on useless coding that doesn't do anything for the player, and pointless merging separate releases that should have been combined from the beginning.

PS: It is ironic to say that unless you are a patron, you are not allowed to have an opinion. On F95. On the F95 forums. That is why these forums exist.

I support the games where the dev is honest at what is going on, participates fully in the forums here, is not defensive when constructive criticism is offered, and where the game seems to be progressing in a positive manner. None of these are the case here, at least at the moment.
 
Last edited:

Deleted member 440241

Active Member
Feb 14, 2018
755
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Proofreading the code, huh. Seriously, if the code is so bad that it takes many months to proofread it, it should be deleted and they should start over with more straightforward and simpler code that is within their technical abilities. ES is not a new game. They have had years to get the code in a mature working state and they haven't done it. Of the 100s of games here, ES is the only game I have played where saves no longer work between versions. And no other game here spends months "merging" between versions, and releases multiple content-free updates. Why bother. Don't release anything until there is something new for the fans to play.

I know the dev loves to brag about his massive amount of code, but RenPy does most of the work for you. All you need is dialog and choices, and some flags. What is he coding that is so complicated? The only non-standard item in the interface that actually functions is the phone, and we saw what happened with that.

Frankly, from the communication from the dev I can't tell if he and his team truly doesn't know what they are doing and are just winging it month to month, or they are actually doing almost nothing and selling us all a bill of goods to keep the Patreon cash coming. Endless claims of "merging", and many updates, including the planned next one, with no new content only annoy your fan base. I code for a living, and merging days of updates into one version, or weeks of updates into a month should not take more than a few days of work. All the assets, dialog, and choices are already done. Just cut and paste into 1 file or a sequence of files, rename some assets, a few days of testing to make sure it all still works, and you are done. While you are at it, run a batch recompression of the assets so the update is reasonable size. There are free tools available that can do all this in the background overnight.

My personal opinion? Since the devs can't use rendering time as an explanation for the long delays like most other devs, they only thing they can fall back on is to claim to be proofreading or fixing the code. We all know that creating scenes is very quick using illusion assets, so they can't claim that creating content is what is taking the time.

It is their game, and they can do what they want. They should just be honest about what they are doing. There are several games I like a lot where the dev says honestly, "I am one person, I have a 8 to 5 job, I have family responsibilities, and I am doing this in my free time, so I can only spend several hours a week on development.", and that is fine. People can choose to support them or not. Personally I support several devs like this, because I know they can use the money, fan support helps give them motivation to continue, and I like what they are doing and their involvement in the community.

There is a lot of good content in ES, at least so far, and like I said, it is a fun game to play. Maybe the dev team will decide that they have bitten off more they can chew and simplify the game so we don't have to hear endless progress updates from the dev over years about how they are "working on the code". Or they can just be straight with us and say we have decided to release one update every 6 months, but with actual content.

But to have update after update where they are just "merging" the game, (which still has non-functioning saves after 2.5 years of development), first from days to weeks, and now from weeks to months, looks like a huge waste of time with no payoff for the fans.

I hope that Bluecat is reading this and rethinks his plan for the game. Simplifying it into a straight VN, and just releasing content on whatever schedule works for him and his team, would do a lot to make ES a better game, and also require less work for the dev team, and less frustration for the fans as well. Also, stop releasing separate individual updates you will merge later. Just add on updates to the game with each release like everyone else. If it gets too big, make it part 1 and part 2, and leave it separated. Who ever heard of releasing separate updates month after month with the intent to merge them later? That is horrible development practice.

(PS. One more month of radio silence, and ES will be marked abandoned here.)
This seems like a shit take from someone that hasn't been following the game or the updates on the month 1 merge. And I haven't checked this thread since mid-December, so I've missed a couple updates on the merge myself. First off, saves did work between versions initially. The cell phone was buggy, and abandoning the cell phone caused bugs with transferring saves in the new version, so saves carrying over was temporarily removed. However, part of the month 1 merge is fixing the code so that saves from Month 1 onwards will carry over. You're complaining about a temporary fix that Bluecat put in place so new content could keep being released instead of the long hiatus while code is redone that you're also complaining about.

Second, every single release of this game has been huge. The first day alone was over 2 Gb on initial release, where most completed games at the time were usually closer to 1.5 Gb. Updates of that size have been released fairly regularly since that day 1 launch, and should be released roughly once a month after the month 1 merge is complete. Whining about a lack of content at this point just is absurd.

Third, this is the first project for Bluecat and many of those hired to help make the game. A lot of devs working on much smaller and simpler projects start remaking their first game after about a year only to drop the remake fairly quickly. Ecchi Sensei is already the biggest VN ever made, and the month 1 merge should be nearly complete by now. After which there are 2 updates of new content just waiting to be released. Unlike most projects it's fairly safe to assume that the remake won't be the end of the game. So why not show a little patience for something that truly is exceptional? After all, it's only been 3 months since we got new content even if that content was a holiday side story. How many games have you played where a remake of all available content was done that quickly?
 
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Smarmint

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Mar 23, 2019
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Well, I have explained myself enough. For those of you that think that ES is great like it is, without serious flaws in development and execution. Congrats.
 
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sam1234567

Member
May 5, 2018
203
296
Ecchi Sensei is already the biggest VN ever made,
kinda have to disagree here, in terms of file size i believe they are the biggest visual novel (though considering in its first 4 updates midlife crisis almost beat them with an 1/12 of the content not much of a feat) but in terms of content im pretty sure My New Family, Harem Hotel, Maxs Life, and many other games have them beat
 

RandoCard3

Well-Known Member
Mar 17, 2019
1,170
1,312
kinda have to disagree here, in terms of file size i believe they are the biggest visual novel (though considering in its first 4 updates midlife crisis almost beat them with an 1/12 of the content not much of a feat) but in terms of content im pretty sure My New Family, Harem Hotel, Maxs Life, and many other games have them beat
Yeah, I'm generally arguing in defence of this game and the dev, but this is the one thing I have to to disagree with them on. I at least agree with you on My New Family. Harem Hotel mostly feels longer due to the extra grind, but I think there might be less content if you took all the scenes and had them all play out in a row without all the moving from place to place the play has to do. I haven't played Max's Life so I can't say.

My main issue with the "Biggest VN" statements is that they ultimately don't matter. It's just a sales pitch. All that matters is: Is there a good amount of current content? and is there a lot of planned content? You only need one of these to be worth while. To it's credit, Ecchi Sensei is yes on both counts. No one but the devs really care about the final product though, outside of imagining the potential.
 

cakeny

Well-Known Member
Jul 23, 2020
1,034
825
Yeah, I'm generally arguing in defence of this game and the dev, but this is the one thing I have to to disagree with them on. I at least agree with you on My New Family. Harem Hotel mostly feels longer due to the extra grind, but I think there might be less content if you took all the scenes and had them all play out in a row without all the moving from place to place the play has to do. I haven't played Max's Life so I can't say.

My main issue with the "Biggest VN" statements is that they ultimately don't matter. It's just a sales pitch. All that matters is: Is there a good amount of current content? and is there a lot of planned content? You only need one of these to be worth while. To it's credit, Ecchi Sensei is yes on both counts. No one but the devs really care about the final product though, outside of imagining the potential.
How does it fare in terms of word count? I know Lessons in Love is claimed to be longer then the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
 

sam1234567

Member
May 5, 2018
203
296
How does it fare in terms of word count? I know Lessons in Love is claimed to be longer then the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
best way to describe it it took me almost 3 hours just to skip through it all. the plots not boring or anything is actually pretty interesting though not very serious and there is plenty of sex scenes to get you going but its not the best to play if you dont have alot of time on your hands
Harem Hotel mostly feels longer due to the extra grind, but I think there might be less content if you took all the scenes and had them all play out in a row without all the moving from place to place the play has to do.
Harem Hotel technically doesn't have any grind in it since all of the grinding stuff is optional and not necessary to continue the characters stories (they do however add alternative options to different scenes) if you add them together i would say that ecchi sensei may beat it in terms of length however i do think that quality of content does also matter and to me harem hotel definitely has better quality storytelling and characters than ecchi sensei (at least right now) and in terms of ecchi sensei's quality of content its just seems to be sex scene after sex scene which although great looking there's been no real plot or character development and (excluding Mao) no real story, (what is the main plot of this game right now?) in the last 2 weeks of this game.

i feel like the real reason bluecat is adding the sandbox aspect to this game is because they've made too many characters in the game too quickly and have oversaturated the story and have no real set or even rough plot outline going foward just key events planned for different characters and they've basically just said "fuck it im just gonna make a bunch of different scenes for different characters and you choose whose you wanna see and i'll prioritise whichever ones patreon wants me to"
 
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4.10 star(s) 146 Votes