Rance Series

[KingDoofus]

Ready thy shit gentlemen. Mangagamer just announced that Rance Quest Magnum is going to be released February 25th. Pre-orders (at a small discount) are on sale now on their website.

 

[Nostaljaded]

Unless ENG version adds in QOL keyboard shortcuts/controller support for combat, your wrist might suffer from hundreds of point-and-clicks as it's much more and over a bigger region, as compared to Rance VI which I've switched to controller after a few maps.

Like Rance IX, it's the story and characters' development that propelled me to their canon game end.

 

[Reinhardt]

Time to farm dem cockroaches again.

 

[Jaedar]

Ready thy shit gentlemen. Mangagamer just announced that Rance Quest Magnum is going to be released February 25th. Pre-orders (at a small discount) are on sale now on their website.

Looks at calendar.

That's really soon. of mangagamer. I hope the game is good. 40 USD is a bit pricy.

 

[Terra]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

 

[Jason Liang]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

It's relatively short, compared to VI and Sengoku.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

There is a lot of grinding, so even if you control-skip it's going to take some time.

 

[minakami]

Maybe the most grindy Rance game. I don't like it for that reason but the writing is decent.

 

[Jaedar]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

There is a lot of grinding, so even if you control-skip it's going to take some time.

Hmm. Hopefully it can be mitigated with cheat engine. I did beat 02 with no grinding/cheats and VI with no xp grinding (but some sphere grinding, after a while I hacked those instead). How much worse is Quest?

 

[Jason Liang]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

There is a lot of grinding, so even if you control-skip it's going to take some time.

Hmm. Hopefully it can be mitigated with cheat engine. I did beat 02 with no grinding/cheats and VI with no xp grinding (but some sphere grinding, after a while I hacked those instead). How much worse is Quest?

If you just want to get to the ending of first world, not much unless you have autistic goals like maxing out Emi's hp.

You get a huge roster to manage but you don't need to develop everyone.

 

[Jaedar]

How long of a game is Rance Quest compared to other entries, assuming you want to do everything except anything that requires stupid amounts of grinding?

There is a lot of grinding, so even if you control-skip it's going to take some time.

Hmm. Hopefully it can be mitigated with cheat engine. I did beat 02 with no grinding/cheats and VI with no xp grinding (but some sphere grinding, after a while I hacked those instead). How much worse is Quest?

If you just want to get to the ending of first world, not much unless you have autistic goals like maxing out Emi's hp.

You get a huge roster to manage but you don't need to develop everyone.

I assume I will want to see the true ending or whatever. Killing the "secret" final boss of VI was sorta worth it.

Huge roster sounds like it might be fun, although I guess it's like sengoku where there is a huge overlap between characters with the same 'class'.

 

[Reinhardt]

At last she's finished. Maybe i'll even play DD again sometime.

 

[distant]

Feeling a bit burned by Rance 01/02. Is Quest worth the hype? (VI/VII tier)

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Feeling a bit burned by Rance 01/02. Is Quest worth the hype? (VI/VII tier)

Do you like grinding and overall a weaker story?

 

[distant]

Feeling a bit burned by Rance 01/02. Is Quest worth the hype? (VI/VII tier)

Do you like grinding and overall a weaker story?

Fair enough. If the gameplay's solid but might just wait and see on this one.

 

[Jason Liang]

Quest has some good characters though.

It's also the only game where Lia gets to go on the adventure with Rance (it doesn't really feel like Lia is there in Rance X). Also you get to spend more time with Suzume.

 

[Terra]

Right, finally, Rance IV is finished, few notes/remarks on this one.

- Enemy battle starting positions being randomised can be pretty bullshit. The Ralga (succubus from R2) fights stand out as particular offenders - she can start out right in the corner behind her minions and good luck getting to her before she's blasted you with various all-targetting spells OR she can spawn right near you and render the battle trivial. This is definitely a very rough edge to this game's battle system.

- Athena 2.0 introduction was neat. Rance's attempts to fuck her were funny. Not a huge amount of development of her character in this game (which is odd, given that's she quite chatty + prominent in 5D).

- Sanakia intro likewise, nice to see her origin point in the series, seems one of the follow up events is missable events though, she popped up in town saying she'd duel me but I missed any follow up events.

- Sill in mourning if Rance dies in battle (game over screen) was particularly funny for some reason lol, probably because Shizuka (and a fair few others) spends much of the game actively hating him by contrast.

- A few characters had... weirder names than usual - Bitch, Freak, etc. Not sure of the rationale behind it, if any?

- A mechanic exists to warp you out of the dungeon when time hits 8PM and (optionally) return you back there after resting. Why on earth is this tied to current time instead of just being a thing you can make use of, this is tied in with:
- One of the two main foibles that keep recurring in Rance are irritating chains of go to X, now go back to Y, now go back to X, back to Y. Looking at the Athena 2.0 recruitment event here. I ended up just running in circles until 8PM so i could warp back to town and back to the tower rather than go through the whole thing several times to talk to Frostvine. Similar sort of thing happened at the end of Rance 6 where you are sent back to the start of the last dungeon a couple of times, just feels like needless padding.
-The other recurring series foible is late game difficulty spikes/enemy HP bloat, and in series tradition, the final stretch of this game is populated with MANY Stone Guardian encounters with high HP... As with previous games, these enemies aren't really a threat at this stage, and you're almost certainly on auto-battle anyway, just means you're waiting longer for the battle to resolve in your favour though. Like in prior games, they were unescapable encounters too. It's like someone at Alicesoft just doesn't want people to finish their games and elects to enter a battle of attrition with the player in the final stretch. I'm really hoping Rance decides to try to fuck one of these Stone Guardians in a future title just so they'll fuck off for a bit, lol. The sheer number of encounters with these dudes in the late game is off the charts..

- Auto battle AI can get you through most of the game, care still needs to be taken though as the AI isn't smart enough to path around other units particularly effectively, so you can end up with your tanks sat behind ranged units skipping turns because they aren't smart enough to walk a little bit further over two turns to reach the free spot on the other side of the enemy. If there are a lot of enemies, take direct control or the AI will pull some dumb shit and get you killed.

-Shops being stuck in the middle of a spiders web of dungeon corridors; really wasn't a fan of this. Nothing super critical in them though I guess.

- I enjoyed the appearance of the "Save Rance/Sill Team" and getting to play as them. The simultaneous developments and twist with Io was neat and pulled off pretty well.

- Maybe it's because Rance IV is much closer to a traditional JRPG, but I really started to feel some of the irritating aspects of menu navigation in this game; I was craving the ability to buy healing items in quantities above one , misclicking on the wrong item in the inventory resulted in a repeatable exchange between Rance & Sill I could have done without. Just a little bit more polish/reworking of menu UI would work wonders.

Spoiler

- Nice scene where Kanami attempts to assassinate Sill. Kanami also got some more good development in this entry, definitely shaping up to be one of the more developed characters.

- I thought Rance was gonna screw up another of Shizuka's attempts to get more power, lol. Shizuka's motivations started to form a more complete, rounded picture with the additions of this game, I think, ultimately joining up with R6's events.

-Favourite part was probably when Io had Rance mind controlled; brought a nice change to the established party dynamic and was funny to see what new cruelty Io had inflicted on Sill after a scene fade. Sill's "death" at the end was nicely done too.

I'd be interested what form a remake of this game would take. When I first fired up the game and saw the initial cutscene with the Helman team, I was pretty surprised; did they actually make a full on rpg with exploration with these sprites, that'd be cool. But that wasn't the case, dungeon navigation rendered you a map icon, probably for the best and it does make dungeon exploration snappier but it did make me wonder, there are a few moments with some really nice and unexpectedly detailed sprite animations.

Anyway, I'll move right onto 4.1, hopefully 4.1/4.2 are short outings that I can blast through quickly so I move onto Quest soon. Rance IV was a good game, some nice character developments and backstory delivered throughout it too, conversations were notably more fleshed out than in Rance III and it was definitely worth a playthrough.

 

[thesecret1]

Sill in mourning if Rance dies in battle (game over screen) was particularly funny for some reason lol, probably because Shizuka (and a fair few others) spends much of the game actively hating him by contrast.

Shizuka's just an extreme tsundere.

Rance IV was a good game, some nice character developments and backstory delivered throughout it too, conversations were notably more fleshed out than in Rance III and it was definitely worth a playthrough.

It's the first "bigger" Rance game, that's for sure, and it has a lot more polish than the previous originals. Really, you can see how Alicesoft grew more skilled and adventurous as their experience mounted. Later games (save for 5D) feature much better combat systems (then again, none of the currently translated ones are a by the book JRPG)

hopefully 4.1/4.2 are short outings that I can blast through quickly

They are, but they are still awesome.

 

[Tyrr]

Out of context Rance.

 

[Terra]

As expected.

 

[CyberModuled]

Still surprised they even tried at all. Aside from Evenicle 1 releasing within that small time window on Steam where they weren't curating porn stuff so hard, Rance 5D+VI bundle not being approved years ago should've been the warning sign. Still though, hope they can move on and recover from it. It'd really fucking suck to see an eroge company's first attempt at trying to have an official English release go up in flames.

 

[Maxie]

Good a non Steam release will be easier to pirate

 

[Maxie]

Black regardless of how much I and many other players like the series it's not something I'd like to have even remotely near my bank statement or any traceable account

 

[Black]

Embrace your smut.

 

[Jaedar]

Black regardless of how much I and many other players like the series it's not something I'd like to have even remotely near my bank statement or any traceable account

Get a prepaid credit card that can be used for online purchases. It's not available everywhere though.

Also Steam releases being hard to pirate . Admittedly I am not sure I would want to own an alicesoft game on steam, since everyone you friend can see what you own.