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Mangagamer hired "Toufu Guy" (one of the people who made the "Darkness Hero" Rance mod and I think another mod) to work on the coding for Rance Quest. You can follow him on twitter! Maria's done with the translation (probably for a long time). Toufu periodically reports on his coding progress - apparently it's a pain in the ass. I guess a 10 year old game made in Japan doesn't have the simplest coding to alter. He makes out like he's nearing the end but he's fairly upfront that random bullshit pops up that keeps him from completing. My guess is 3-6 months. My source: my ass.
Mangagamer hired "Toufu Guy" (one of the people who made the "Darkness Hero" Rance mod and I think another mod) to work on the coding for Rance Quest. You can follow him on twitter! Maria's done with the translation (probably for a long time). Toufu periodically reports on his coding progress - apparently it's a pain in the ass. I guess a 10 year old game made in Japan doesn't have the simplest coding to alter. He makes out like he's nearing the end but he's fairly upfront that random bullshit pops up that keeps him from completing. My guess is 3-6 months. My source: my ass.
The mangagamer webpage states that rance quest is "out of beta". So I'm fairly certain MG could release it tomorrow if they felt like it.
But you know, they already released two rance games just a few months ago, and rereleased sengoku. They couldn't possibly release it now without hurting their own sales....
MG seem to like releasing rance games in autumn/winter so that is my guess for when RQ will get released. The more interesting question is if it will be released alone or bundled with something (rance 9? rance 3?).
Also iirc MG have said before that they don't really have access to the original source, so they're basically "hacking" all the improvements into the games. Which does make their dedication to fixing even minor issues quite impressive.
And just finished Rance 5D, pretty short but fun overall and worth playing through.
Wasn't a huge fan of the randomisation aspects, well sometimes it was a little fun, not so much during some of the battles where its literally down to rng. There were certainly some annoying aspects to randomising so much of the game though; Sill's staff broke pretty early on and I couldn't get a new one to drop for ages. Exploring the areas of the game (including via the roulette mechanics) and gathering clues on how to proceed was fun, a nice change of pace from R6 at least. Some nice bits of music when exploring Genbu Castle + the desert.
I enjoyed getting more of the backstory on Rizna, supplementing what I know from R6+7, she was way different in this game to later entries in terms of trying to trick Rance, lol, but I liked the setup of her and the little hanny trying to deceive Rance. That reminds me; when does Rizna get her medicine that suppresses her libido or w/e (that Rance steals in Sengoku), does it happen between games? Didn't see anything about it in R6 either as I recall, maybe it was mentioned in a conversation with her in Sengoku that I'm forgetting.
First time encountering Athena 2.0, though she'd been referenced in later games. She had a few humourous moments throughout the game too. Seeing where Lil Avenger came from was neat too. Copandon sady continues her trend from R6 of not drawing much interest from me as a character.
Overall, 5D was a fun little diversion, but definitely short enough that it needed to be bundled with something meatier, I'd almost classify it as a DLC type product. From what I read online there were three prior failed attempts to make a fifth Rance game before finishing 5D, did any information on the cancelled games ever come to light?
I'm thinking the Rance 01/02 remakes are next on the cards for me, then I'll see if I can make it through the older Rance 3/4 entries. I'd prefer to wait for the 03 remake in english, but based on Mangagamer's current rate of progression, it'll probably be a decade or more before that makes it over. Definitely want to get onto Kichikou too, though the art style doesn't have the same appeal to me as the more modern titles, I definitely need to give it a shot while I wait for the newer titles to make it over. Onto the next game!
I'm thinking the Rance 01/02 remakes are next on the cards for me, then I'll see if I can make it through the older Rance 3/4 entries. I'd prefer to wait for the 03 remake in english, but based on Mangagamer's current rate of progression, it'll probably be a decade or more before that makes it over. Definitely want to get onto Kichikou too, though the art style doesn't have the same appeal to me as the more modern titles, I definitely need to give it a shot while I wait for the newer titles to make it over. Onto the next game!
Sure you can make it through the older entries, they all have an excellent writing that carries you over the shitty gameplay (which, however, gets better with each iteration) and aren't even too long. Rance 6 is the first one that takes a million hours to finish. Also don't forget to play Rance 4.1 and 4.2.
Kichikou is easily the best one of them all, even though it is not canon. You see a lot of the ideas in it was later recycled and redone in later games, as well as loads of refferences to the older titles, and the game is really great, with a lot of content you can only find on multiple playthroughs, etc. I think you should have played them all in order (save perhaps Sengoku, which really can be played independently), as a lot of the things you encounter in 6 seem to be fairly random otherwise (Who's Ferris? Who's Maria and Shizuka and why are they so strong? What do you mean a pricess is in love with Rance? etc.). Word of caution though, when playing these older titles, you shouldn't take too long a break between them, because they expect you to be well versed in your lore and do not do any recaps or flashbacks or whatever whatsoever. If you see the end of one game and start the next one, there is virtually no "break" between them. They are also shameless in referrencing old stuff. They'll jump a character that you last saw three installments ago and won't even bother to introduce him, you are just expected to know your shit.
Eeeeeeh... I saw the OVA, and while it is more or less faithful, it makes references to shit you actually do in the game (and which thus make little sense if you haven't played it), leaves out some fairly important details, and feels like it's paced too fast. It is pretty fun to watch once you've played the game, but I wouldn't really recommend watching it instead of playing it, unless you really hate the gameplay.
Eeeeeeh... I saw the OVA, and while it is more or less faithful, it makes references to shit you actually do in the game (and which thus make little sense if you haven't played it), leaves out some fairly important details, and feels like it's paced too fast. It is pretty fun to watch once you've played the game, but I wouldn't really recommend watching it instead of playing it, unless you really hate the gameplay.
Eeeeeeh... I saw the OVA, and while it is more or less faithful, it makes references to shit you actually do in the game (and which thus make little sense if you haven't played it), leaves out some fairly important details, and feels like it's paced too fast. It is pretty fun to watch once you've played the game, but I wouldn't really recommend watching it instead of playing it, unless you really hate the gameplay.
Yes, MG released it a few months back. Yes, I thought so, but the gameplay is rather casual, so don't expect something deep. I definitely enjoyed it more than 5D and unlike VI the game isn't long enough that the gameplay overstays its welcome.
Early Rance games are really casual, but keep that great and fun writing that you see throughout the series and, most interestingly, I swear all the entries are different genres Rance 1 was incredibly like a goddamn text adventure/RPG hybrid, 02 (I did not manage to get a translated original) was a JRPG like you'd expect, 3 is a fucking tactics game where you move troops on a grid and everything, 4 is also a tactics game with with entirely different mechanics, kichikuou is a goddamn grand strategy game, 5 is some unholy RNG thing, 6 is a blobber, Sengoku is a GSG again... I don't know of any game series that would be as varied as this. Just genre jumping all around the place like nobody's business, trying new things... It must've been really fun to work on this series, you'd have tried your hand at so many different things.
Finished Rance 01. This game kind of reminded me of some of the older h-games I played way back such as Season of Sakura, Runaway City and the like; lots of running around town and talking to people, hitting all the triggers to advance the main plotline (or failing to do so because you missed one little thing), decent amount of dialogue with each of the characters and some nice, small-scale plot developments and twists'n'turns. I really liked it overall.
On consulting the wiki walkthrough and referencing my fairly sparsely filled CG Gallery, it turns out there are quite a few missables throughout the game. Some weird/obscure triggers on some of them such as kicking off Pulptenks event chain or making sure you can get a positive outcome to Yulan's- it's quite easy to miss or lock yourself out of events just playing through the game naturally.
The good:
- Graphically, very pleasing to the eye across the board, Rance looks good, Sill looks gorgeous, great across the board in the aesthetics department.
- The h-scenes seemed to have a greater focus in this one over any of the other Rance games I've played. The text descriptions are much more descriptive and in line with other typical games in the genre. Definitely seems to be a greater push into titillation when compared with titles like Sengoku where they seemed to lean into humour more.
- Interface & general UI - I found the UI to be quite slick and easy to work with. The message log was easy to access and navigate, handy for when you misclick and skip a line by accident.
- Battles & dungeon exploration was solid overall.
- Delivery of the story and events seemed very organic, I kept bumping into new events when going back and forth between dungeons and the city.
- Characters; great again, this seems to be the main draw and consistently the strongest aspect of these games. While a fine entry to the series, I'd say Sengoku is still a better series entry point to get yourself hooked. I liked Kanami's introduction and development. The Rance/Miki interaction was a fun series of events.
So Lia was basically a bit of a irredeemable nutcase until very late on when a bit of explanation was given for her actions. Will be interesting to see how she is developed moving forwards. It was funny seeing her show up at the end.
The bad:
- Game's still in 4:3 aspect ratio despite this being a remake? Is there some dedicated sect of visual novel aficionados clinging onto their 17" CRTs from 20 years ago. Granted I've not really kept up with the genre for many years but I'd imagined they'd have adopted a widescreen resolution by now as standard.
- Music was just... there, I guess. Not many tracks really stood out to me, Sengoku has great tracks such as its rendition of My Glorious Days and even 5D had some memorable tracks. Audibly, everything feels more... subdued, I guess, Willis's theme definitely lacked the punch it had in R6. Maybe this is by design but it definitely felt like a weaker area.
-Had a weird bug where the closet/shelf graphic kept being shown during character fade in/outs, persisted with the save file and game relaunches too. Annoying but not a dealbreaker.
Overall a good game and certainly more appealing than playing the original incarnation, enjoyed my time with the game. Rance02 next!
You're missing out on some late 80's magic. While the gameplay was pretty shitty, I found the original to be pretty interesting (and oftentimes hilarious) especially from the artwork standpoint.
Still, I genuinely envy you being able to play the Rance games for the first time, it's great fun all throughout. I always tell people to not skip out on the older titles, but they usually limit themselves to Sengoku, the fools.
Finished Rance 02 (Kai). Like 01, it was short, but not too short. It's a slow starter but picks up fairly early on.
I think Rance 01's story came together better towards the end, here Shizuka just sort of briefly alludes to her ultimate motivations and it gets quickly swept under the rug without any real resolution. I mean, attempting to travel back in time to change the past seems like it should be quite a major event with a bit more exposition after the fact but Rance pretty much just shrugs it all off in one line. Maybe it gets revisited/built on more in later games that serves as a better bridge towards R6, but at least as far as this game went, Shizuka's arc definitely felt a bit rushed at the end.
Saw the Ragisis twist coming.
Dungeon exploration was entertaining enough.
Town music for Custom was quite catchy.
The talking mirror scenes with Maria were very funny, with the escalation of the mirror's demands.
Feliss made her first appearance here, I like her but she hasn't had much screentime in the games I've played so far; R2, R5, R6 have all been very minor, brief appearances for her, maybe she has a larger role in future games?
Shizuka's first appearance here too but she was barely in the game and didn't really get much dialogue, especially in contrast to Maria, who was considerably more developed here by comparison.
No opportunity to interact with Kanami even when she was stood right there with Lia & Maris... Feels weird given how many interactions/dialogue she had in R6/7.
I liked the party splitting up as the chapters progressed, with you controlling Rance & Sill as separate parties, helped develop Sill & Bird a lot.
Combat was very easy throughout, with the exception of a few battles, there was very little direct effort required.
CheatEngine'd my way to lvl 40 to get the Willis scene at the very end because fuck wasting time grinding for that.
Despite the game's shortcomings, it was certainly worth a playthrough and I enjoyed my time with it, even though I think I preferred Rance 01 overall. Moving onto Rance III next.
But what is the difference between mangagamer having rights and mangagamer not using their rights? Fairly minor.
Besides, with alicesoft apparantly going into the english release scene themselves with evenicle 2, they might just release 03 themselves too. A man can dream.
Ok, I finished Rance III, my notes & impressions are below, somewhat more detailed than before in case anyone is on the fence about diving into the older titles and wants the perspective of fresh eyes on an old game.
General thoughts:
- First off, for anyone interested in giving Rance III a shot, it turns out there are two versions of the english fan translation out in the wild, an older version (buggy, some untranslated images) and a newer version with some improvements/bugfixes, so make sure you're using the newer one if you plan to play, listed here: https://alicesoft.fandom.com/wiki/Rance_III:_The_Fall_of_Leazas#Patches
-Localisation differences - Master Rance is now "Rance-sama", etc. I was not a fan of the honorifics used everywhere in the Rance III fan translation, at least in the "official" translations of other Rance titles, only characters from Japan seem to use them like 3G (if memory serves at least), here in Rance III, it's everywhere, and it is initially kinda distracting to parse through the multitude of Rance-sama/dono every other line after getting used to the non-honorific standard established in the previous games I played. You do get used to mentally substituting in "Master Rance" for Sill's lines, for example, but coming from the Mangagamer translations it's a minor distraction as you read through the text. A few other classic h-game "japan-isms" crop up on occasion too; salaryman for instance, stuff that'll probably be edited out in an 03 translation. You can certainly tell what side of the fence the translators/editors come down on, at least. That's not to say it's a bad translation, nor is it overly literal, far from it, it's very good overall but I think these choices will definitely stick out to anyone playing this after any of the Mangagamer translations. Oh yeah, quite a few characters refer to themselves in the third person too, which I also wasn't a fan of.
-Rance's home in Ice didn't feature at all in the 01/02 remakes (I think it was at least briefly shown in the original Rance 1), so it was nice to finally get a chance to spend time at home base as Rance.
-There is no text message log, gotta be careful of missed dialogue cause pretty much every key advances the text.
- The game is far less clunky than it may appear from screenshots/videos. If you played any games like this back in the day, you can get through this quite easily, its fairly streamlined. You move about the game world at a quick pace, battles are resolved nice and quickly, there are no Phantasy Star 2-esque labyrinths, etc. Although it may appear so from screenshots, it's not an unassailable, archaic game that will have you tearing your hair out. It's easy and despite it being a somewhat grander tale than R1 & 2, it's still quite short.
-Adjusting from the more modern Rance art style takes some getting used to for some characters. Kanami is the most affected by this by some measure. Kanami bears only a passing resemblance to her later game appearance in some of her artwork (mainly portraits used the game UI, where she has blue/indigo hair for some reason, yet she has pink hair in CG scenes... no idea why). Some weird palette limitation of the time maybe, I dunno. Aesthetically, the game reminded me a little of an old japanese ero-RPG I stumbled through many years ago, Dragon Knight 4, also Knights of Xentar. Rance does have some funny portraits whenever he's trying to persuade/trick/beg women to sleep with him. On the whole, the art is serviceable, but I have taken a look at the Rance 03 remake artwork and oh man, what a fucking upgrade that looks to be.
-Dungeon navigation is performed either through keyboard or mouse, right click investigates tiles, switches doors, etc. I liked not being restricted to purely the keyboard and so was pleased the mouse could be used instead.
- The UI is functional and gets the job done, it's not clunky either. One gripe I had was that there are no details about each savegame displayed as you hover over each one, they're just numbered sequentially and you'd need to load a save to figure out where you were up to in the game. Minor, but not ideal. If you've banked enough EXP for multiple level ups, Willis won't do them in one go, gotta call her again for each successive level up.
-H-scenes set a new low for failing to be erotic, lol. To be expected I guess, most scenes are mercifully VERY brief, often comprising of "I fucked X and came 4 times, the end". Mosaics are present as expected.
Very minor Lia/Maris spoiler
-Bit more respect for Lia now for not selling out Rance under torture. She and Maris don't have a great time of it in this game.
-So this was Patton's first appearance and Hunty Kalar too, neither has any direct contact with Rance though so their development was limited beyond brief interludes spread across the game.
-Minor bug - music can occasionally fail to play which can lead to some moments of silence, followed by a nice error messagebox (usually complains about the CMIDIStreamCore stop function, it's an older japanese h-game, so MIDI related errors were fairly common as time rolled on) before the music starts up again. At least the game engine handles it gracefully enough.
-Game economy and balance - I was able to afford the best purchasable weapon for Rance sold by stores early on for 5k, didn't seem to be any point going for the lower tier stuff.
-Feliss returns again and this time she's a pretty powerful summonable unit in battle. Again, minimal plot involvement though.
-Shizuka gets more screentime this time and became a more rounded out character. Milli returns and is pretty much the same as she was in R2.
-This is Sel's first appearance and Chaos's too, Rance's acquisition of Chaos and the scenes following it are quite amusing and worth watching.
- First appearance of Leila, remember her appearing in Sengoku as a reinforcement unit and h-scene/event chain. Not a huge amount of development of her character through the game to be honest.
- This is Rick Addison's first appearance too, he only appears very late on though. Not much dialogue, like Leila.
A lot of characters get introduced in this game, will be interesting to see how Rance IV develops them.
So my conclusions on Rance III:
- Rance III is a fairly basic tactical rpg, but you only directly control Rance, everyone else is AI-controlled. Most of the time auto battle will suffice to get you through, Sill will do a decent enough job of keeping you alive. That said, not all encounters are pushovers, some can and do hit pretty hard and if Rance's HP has gone below 50% you can quickly be staring at a game over screen, and if you've forgotten to save recently, you may lose a chunk of progress, so save often. Auto battling will continue while you alt-tab to other apps, so you can do other things while the game resolves minor battles for you.
- Looking at a few videos on youtube, it looks like 03 was remade in the same style as Rance 01 and the remake eschews the tactical rpg elements, so I'm very much looking forward to the opportunity to play that in english...at some point in my lifetime. It looks to retain the gorgeous art of Rance 01 at the very least, which is great, though I hear it also features voice acting, so it may be impossible to escape an onslaught of "Rance-sama" whatever version of Rance 3 you play.
- As I play and finish more of the series, I'm definitely starting to notice the separation of the series with Rance 6 acting as the dividing line; production values were upped and scales increased dramatically. Although Rance III features a grander scale type plot where Rance commands an army and must liberate a country, it's far more... whimsical/lackadaisical in its execution when compared to its more famous sequel where Rance commands an army. This is still definitely an entry worth playing, but you can certainly see and appreciate how things become more refined and nuanced as the series progresses, very much so with R6 & 7.
- At some points during the game, it almost feels like I'm playing a cliff-notes version of something that was originally intended to be more detailed. Let me give an example - late in the game, after beating Minerva in single combat there is a girl tied up (looks like Yulan, the arena champion, from Rance 01) but after beating her the game immediately jumped to a scene showing Rance and Sill talking about attacking Leazas castle... https://alicesoft.fandom.com/wiki/Yulang_Mirage
This page shows it is indeed her, so why after beating Minerva is there no dialogue, no remarks from Rance about either Yulan/Minerva? While I have little basis for the assumption, having not played the 03 remake, this is one of a few instances where they could and indeed should add more detail/dialogue since Rance III is oft a little too fond of brevity. There's a fair few such odd... omissions, I guess throughout Rance III, where dialogue or a scene's denouement is surprisingly brief. At least coming hot off of Rance 01/02 remakes, which feel far more wordy by comparison, this aspect of Rance III really stuck out to me.
Maybe this is an unfair comparison to make, I guess storage space was a consideration back when this released - were we still predominantly on floppies back then, I honestly can't remember. I haven't played the Rance 1/2 originals, were the remake scripts significantly beefed up for both games compared to their original incarnations? But it is what it is, after playing those remakes, and then the original Rance III, I have a feeling there will probably be more meat on the bone in terms of dialogue and characterisation across the board in the 03 remake.
All that said, I think Rance III is fair game to blast through in order to bolster your backstory knowledge of Rance while we wait for Quest and beyond. I don't regret giving it a shot, it is worth a playthrough if you liked other games in the series and it certainly didn't take up any more of my time than the 01/02 remakes did.
Ending thoughts
Well, the ending with the dimensional rift obviously leads right into sequel bait territory and served its purpose very well - it made me want to play the next game immediately, lol. You'd think Rance would grow a little more wary of situations like Gele's invitation, but we'll see how things progress moving forwards.
Onto Rance IV next then.
Random tips if anyone fancies giving the game a try:
- Bug fight in the HyperBuilding is a bit of a difficulty spike, don't auto battle it as the bugs can easily rip through everyone except Rance, it's easiest to summon Feliss since she can take a beating and can dish out the punishment.
- You'll want to have the map from the wiki handy for the Forest of the Lost.
- The final dungeon is somewhat obnoxious and annoying with a high encounter rate. Luckily most encounters can be escaped from 100% without penalty. There's lots of busywork going back and forth between different towers and the main castle keep, this becomes somewhat annoying when you just want to finish up the game. Deep into the dungeon there are regular inescapable battles against stone guardians and you must navigate through a maze of corridors to press buttons to open up secret passages to reach other buttons in order to ultimately reach the final set of stairs. Yeah, Leazas Castle is just long for the sake of being long. Enemies can't hurt you by this point, so its largely just pointless padding by the 6th floor and my patience was starting to wane at this point.
As I play and finish more of the series, I'm definitely starting to notice the separation of the series with Rance 6 acting as the dividing line; production values were upped and scales increased dramatically.
It was actually Rance 5D that was the dividing line, it's just not apparent because the game went through incredible development hell to the point they just decided to make something short that they could finally release, no matter what. Still, it was the first game with a modern style and budget, polished and everything. This is because Alicesoft actually came close to bankrupcy after Rance IV (not to imply Rance IV was bad, but the money was just tight) so they went for their last hurrah with Kichikuou Rance, where they basically crammed every idea they had for the Rance series, in order to make sure they give the entire tale some manner of a conclusion (you definitely should play Kichikuou after Rance IV instead of going straight to 5D because of this.). Kichikuou ended up being a massive hit, one of the most successful eroge games of all time, which put Alicesoft back into green numbers and allowed them to continue the Rance series with a proper budget. Of course, as a sad consequence, they had to make Kichikuou non-canon, as it would be impossible to continue in the series after Kichikuou resolved all the loose ends and exhausted all their ideas. You'll frequently see ideas from Kichikuou recycled and redone in later titles, though.
Maybe this is an unfair comparison to make, I guess storage space was a consideration back when this released - were we still predominantly on floppies back then, I honestly can't remember. I haven't played the Rance 1/2 originals, were the remake scripts significantly beefed up for both games compared to their original incarnations?
I played the Rance 1 original, and it was often fairly brief about things – not that it was lacking in info, but it was far more to the point than the Rance 2 remake, for example.
All that said, I think Rance III is fair game to blast through in order to bolster your backstory knowledge of Rance while we wait for Quest and beyond. I don't regret giving it a shot, it is worth a playthrough if you liked other games in the series and it certainly didn't take up any more of my time than the 01/02 remakes did.
Rance III was fun, but one of the more forgettable entries in the series, in my opinion. Fairly short too, as you say. If memory serves, though, Rance IV quite different on that regard – it's been a while since I played it, but I remember sinking a lot more time into it than into the previous entries. There's a lot more character development too, especially for Leila and Rick.
As I play and finish more of the series, I'm definitely starting to notice the separation of the series with Rance 6 acting as the dividing line; production values were upped and scales increased dramatically.
It was actually Rance 5D that was the dividing line, it's just not apparent because the game went through incredible development hell to the point they just decided to make something short that they could finally release, no matter what. Still, it was the first game with a modern style and budget, polished and everything. This is because Alicesoft actually came close to bankrupcy after Rance IV (not to imply Rance IV was bad, but the money was just tight) so they went for their last hurrah with Kichikuou Rance, where they basically crammed every idea they had for the Rance series, in order to make sure they give the entire tale some manner of a conclusion (you definitely should play Kichikuou after Rance IV instead of going straight to 5D because of this.). Kichikuou ended up being a massive hit, one of the most successful eroge games of all time, which put Alicesoft back into green numbers and allowed them to continue the Rance series with a proper budget. Of course, as a sad consequence, they had to make Kichikuou non-canon, as it would be impossible to continue in the series after Kichikuou resolved all the loose ends and exhausted all their ideas. You'll frequently see ideas from Kichikuou recycled and redone in later titles, though.
Yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting to Kichikuou, after reading up about it previously, I guess I sort of view it as a proto-Rance V-X rolled into one. It definitely looks like a really ambitious game and there's not many companies that stuffed all their remaining ideas into one final game, somehow struck paydirt and eventually managed to get into a position to be able revisit those ideas again in the future. I'm excited to see how Kichikuou wraps up some of the plotlines and then (eventually) learn how everything canonically wraps up in Rance X by comparison. And hell, I guess Kichikuou will be closest we'll get to a conclusion for some time based on current translation progress.
Already blasted through Rance IV's first chapter and I'm liking it a lot; definitely a step up from III, and the visuals have certainly held up well across the board, in-dungeon character spritework especially is much a higher caliber than I expected. I'll probably end up taking a little break after I finish Rance IV, simply because I've now played 6, 5D, 1, 2, III and soon IV pretty much back to back and I don't want to burn out on it. I'm hoping by the time I finish Kichikuou we might have some sign of Quest on the horizon in english.
Already blasted through Rance IV's first chapter and I'm liking it a lot; definitely a step up from III, and the visuals have certainly held up well across the board, in-dungeon character spritework especially is much a higher caliber than I expected. I'll probably end up taking a little break after I finish Rance IV, simply because I've now played 6, 5D, 1, 2, III and soon IV pretty much back to back and I don't want to burn out on it. I'm hoping by the time I finish Kichikuou we might have some sign of Quest on the horizon in english.
Yeah, Rance IV was a major step up in many ways from the previous titles. Make sure you don't forget to play Rance 4.1 and 4.2 – they might be short, but they're still very fun.
4 is the closest to a full blown old skool jRPG rance games are. It's all set in one huge dungeon, the flying "island" shown at the end of 3. It brings quite a lot of backstory to the setting. My favorite of the old games.
It's also the first to offer some decent challenge, specially at the beginning. Last boss figth is cool if you are not overleveled.
Rance 1 was incredibly like a goddamn text adventure/RPG hybrid, 02 (I did not manage to get a translated original) was a JRPG like you'd expect, 3 is a fucking tactics game where you move troops on a grid and everything, 4 is also a tactics game with with entirely different mechanics, kichikuou is a goddamn grand strategy game, 5 is some unholy RNG thing, 6 is a blobber, Sengoku is a GSG again... I don't know of any game series that would be as varied as this. Just genre jumping all around the place like nobody's business, trying new things... It must've been really fun to work on this series, you'd have tried your hand at so many different things.
