Rance Series

[Nirvash]

Ok i'm a massive idiot, i always donated the +5lv cap as i believed those just wasted the absorption item thing...

The problem is capturing the damn valk and note at the other dungeon exit room, insane.

Yeah, those are really difficult. You need to luck out on a good encounter there. I advise taking a brawler with you that has the skill to prolong the battle, so that you have enough time to catch em

Problem is the encounters are rare as fuck.
If you get the note+2 valk that's game over, helm thing + note you need to luck out with the stuns.

2 valk + battle note is actually the easiest formation to catch the Battle Note. Anyway as I noted earlier, you want to try to capture Battle Note with capture rope (I tried at least 10 times with Noir and all failed), and kill everyone else except the Battle Note, then dismiss everyone except the character with the Rope so you get multiple tries to rope her.

i don't even care about the note, i want the valks...

 

[Nostaljaded]

Was doing file directory cleanup and found this.

Rance Quest Magnum v2.082 Jap version self-made character stats and notes:
(comma-delimited format; 1. copy to a text editor (e.g. Notepad) first 2. Copy within the text editor and then paste in Cal/Excel/Sheets 3. (if need to) Use 'Text to Columns' function; the last 'Outstanding' column is meant for own notes)

Data

Name,,Class,Lv,Slot,Hp,Attack,Defense,M Attack,M Defense,Hp Growth,Attack Growth,Defense Growth,M Attack Growth,M Defense Growth,Accuracy,Evasion,Stun,Resist,Critical,Speed,Comments,Outstanding
Rance,ランス,Fighter,-,6,57,24,8,6,8,28,7,2,0,2,130,0,0,0,20,20,,
Sachiko Senters,サチコ・センターズ,Guard,49,4,48,5,12,6,12,24,1,4,0,4,100,0,0,0,0,18,Hp Regeneration 20%; Unremovable Item,
Suzume,鈴女,Ranger,49,5,32,14,8,7,8,16,4,2,0,2,120,30,0,0,0,28,Poison Immunity; Ghost Form; Assassination; 1-time Morurun. Trap,
Prima Honnoman,プリマ・ホノノマン,Civilian,22,3,16,8,8,6,8,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Poisoned with Megadeth,
Mahoko P. Masai,マホコ・P・マサイ,Sorcerer,25,3,24,8,8,20,8,12,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,1-Star; Fire Mastery; Light; Dark,
Megadeth Moromy,メガデス・モロミ,Gunner,18,3,32,15,8,6,8,16,4,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,18,Self Attack Buff with Prima; Volley,
Cessna Benville,セスナ・ベンビール,Fighter,18,3,48,17,8,6,8,24,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,10,20,Critical +60%; Accuracy -30%; No Efficient Action,
Sel Catchgolf,セル・カーチゴルフ,Healer,44,3,36,8,8,16,8,18,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,,
Bernard Ceramite,バーナード・セラミテ,Fighter,25,4,48,16,8,6,9,24,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,80,0,20,Gd Resist; Attack 1 x12. Hammer,
Merim Z?lle,メリム・ツェール,Civilian,23,3,16,8,8,6,8,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Hidden Movement; Handy; Ultimate Identify; Targeted; Unremovable Item,
Masou Shizuka,魔想 志津香,Sorcerer,61,5,21,8,8,25,8,10,1,2,7,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,2-Star Fire; Light; Dark Mastery,
Kuma,クマ,Sparta,66,3,32,28,8,6,8,16,9,2,0,2,140,20,0,0,20,22,Weakening; Shoulder Throw; No Counter as Easily Stunned,
Alexander,アレキサンダー,Sparta,77,3,64,20,8,6,8,32,7,2,0,2,100,20,0,0,20,22,,
Yuzuhara Yuzumi,柚原 柚美,Gunner,38,3,28,14,6,6,5,14,4,1,0,1,140,0,0,0,0,18,Snipe; 1-Shot Cannon. Less Enemy,
Kapalla ??d?,カパーラ・ウーチ,Sorcerer,24,3,24,8,8,15,8,12,1,2,4,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Water; Fire; Light,
Alcott Marius,アールコート・マリウス,Civilian,43,3,16,8,8,6,8,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,20,Premptive Attack Mastered; Tactician; Learnable Buffs; Targeted,
Alkanese Rize,アルカネーゼ・ライズ,Fighter,60,4,57,17,9,6,9,28,5,2,0,2,140,0,0,0,0,20,Hammer; No Efficient Action,
Crook Morphus,クルックー・モフス,Healer,50,3,36,8,9,16,9,18,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Stealth Movement; Shoulder Throw; Alice Protection; Start with More Healing ,
Aegis Kalar,イージス・カラー,Gunner,50,5,32,16,9,16,8,16,4,2,5,2,125,0,0,0,0,18,Elemental Basic Att; Kalar Curse; Magic User,
Aten Gnu,アテン・ヌー,Sorcerer,48,5,24,8,9,20,8,12,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,1-Star; Fire Mastery; Dark; Light; Slime Freeze; 20% Retreat,
Noa Hakobune,ノア・ハコブネ,Healer,33,5,36,9,8,16,8,18,1,2,5,2,115,0,0,0,0,15,All Blessing,
Copandon Dotto,コパンドン・ドット,Civilian,37,3,16,8,8,6,8,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Att All 0-5x; Gold x2,
Tama,タマ,Sparta,22,4,64,18,8,6,12,32,7,2,0,2,100,20,0,0,20,22,Shortened; Elemental Punch; Weakening,
Frostbine,フロストバイン,Healer,20,4,7,8,8,16,9,3,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Weakness Search x5; HP -80%,
Tomato Pur?e,トマト・ピューレ,Fighter,37,3,45,15,9,6,9,22,4,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Treasure Chest Attraction & Monster Capture; Basic Attack require 1 more pt. Hammer,
Uesugi Kenshin,上杉 謙信,Fighter,70,5,48,23,8,6,8,24,6,2,0,2,110,15,20,0,20,25,Suppression; Cartwheel; Sword,
Kouhime / Oda Kou,香姫 / 織田 香,Guard,40,4,38,8,12,5,12,19,1,4,0,4,100,0,0,0,0,18,Tactician; Learnable Buffs; Poisoned Weapon,
Atago McCart,アタゴ・マカット,Civilian,10,3,16,8,9,6,9,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Skill Restoration; Handy,
Lia Para-Para Leazas,リア・Ｐ・リーザス,Civilian,20,5,16,8,9,6,9,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Physical-Thunder Att All; Fame Advertisement; Unremovable Item,
Noir,ノワール,Fighter,50,4,62,17,8,6,8,31,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,All Debuff x1; Normal Attack Enemy Evasion 0%; Magic Weakness - 1.5x; Unremovable Item; Basic Attack require 1 more pt. Hammer; Efficient Action,
Kaloria Cricket,カロリア・クリケット,Guard,42,6,48,10,12,6,12,24,2,4,0,4,100,0,0,0,0,18,Shower Needle (Stun); Attack-based Flame; Hardened x5; Passive Guard Start,
Elenoa Ran,エレノア・ラン,Fighter,30,3,48,14,8,17,8,24,4,2,5,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Stun x5; Magic User - Comes with many single use elements,
Rocky Bank,ロッキー・パンク,Guard,19,3,48,10,12,6,12,24,2,4,0,4,100,0,0,0,0,18,,
Wichita Skate,ウィチタ・スケート,Fighter,35,4,48,16,8,17,9,24,5,2,5,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Flame Blade; Center Front Row Att Buff; Men's Weakness (+50% Crit); Sword,
Emmy Alphone,エミ・アルフォーヌ,Sorcerer,25,3,28,8,8,17,9,14,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Thunder; Water; Light; Phoenix; Targeted. Damage Limit Up,
Uesugi Katsuko,上杉 勝子,Fighter,35,5,48,17,9,6,8,24,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Full Hp Recovery with Kenshin; Exp x2 with Torako. Spear,
Uesugi Torako,上杉 虎子,Sorcerer,35,4,24,8,8,20,9,12,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,1-Star; Non-Elemental M.Att;Full Hp Recovery with Kenshin; Exp x2 with Katsuko,
Okita Nozomi,沖田 のぞみ,Fighter,59,4,43,19,8,6,8,21,5,2,0,2,130,0,0,0,0,25,Weak Train Slash x2; Poisoned; Hanny Attraction.,
Kibako,キバ子,Sparta,45,4,76,20,9,6,8,38,7,2,0,2,100,40,0,0,20,22,Suppression; Elemental Punch Mastered. Weakening; Armor Breaking; No Counter.,
Tillday Shape,チルディ・シャープ,Fighter,44,5,45,17,8,6,9,22,6,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,20,23,Attack +1; Exp x1.5; High Speed. Fire; Thunder; Dark Resistance,
Crane,クレイン,Ranger,38,4,32,15,8,7,8,16,4,2,0,2,120,20,0,0,0,25,Escape Artist; Auto Stealth; High Starting Hidden Movement; No Assassinate Knowledge. Trap,
Shitomone Chappie,シトモネ・チャッピー,Sorcerer,30,3,24,8,8,21,8,12,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,1-Star. Fire; Water Mastery; Light; Opened Locked Chests x2,
Yuran Mirage,ユラン・ミラージュ,Fighter,27,3,48,17,8,6,8,24,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,2.5x Attack x3 on Bosses; 0.4x Attack-all; Sword,
Mouri Teru,毛利 てる,Guard,47,3,48,10,12,6,2,24,2,4,0,0,100,0,0,0,0,18,Counter; Passive Guard Start; Weak Magic Growth,
Zima Bakasko,ジーマ・バカスコ,Gunner,48,5,32,17,4,8,4,16,5,1,0,1,88,0,20,0,0,18,Learnable Strong Bow; Attack-focused; Evade Penalty. Multiple Shot; First Strike,
Mill Yorks,ミル・ヨークス,Sorcerer,34,5,24,8,8,16,9,12,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Thunder; Water; Light; Physical Hit All x50 - Low Level Grinding Gd; Not Matured Removable. Damage Limit Up,
Athena 2.0,あてな2号,Gunner,1,3,-,-,-,-,-,+,+,0,0,0,+,0,0,0,+,+,No Defence; Evasion & easily stunned. Skills & HP replenished on every battle,
Megu Makibano,牧場野・メグ,Civilian,8,3,16,8,8,6,9,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Handy; Relax; 20% Quest Failed on Map Transition,
Magic the Gandhi,マジック・ガンジー,Sorcerer,69,4,24,8,8,23,9,12,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,2-Star; Thunder; Water; Light Mastery; Magic Barrier Mastered; 80% Light Resist,
Urza Planais,ウルザ・プラナアイス,Gunner,75,5,32,17,9,6,8,16,4,2,0,2,130,0,0,0,0,18,Tactician; Learnable Buffs. Att Buff; Def Buff; Remove Buff,
Kaoru Quincy Kagura,カオル・クインシー・神楽,Sparta,38,5,64,20,8,6,8,32,7,2,0,2,100,20,0,0,20,22,Shoulder Throw; Hanging On; Center Front Row Def Buff. Shortened; Weakening,
Karma Atlanger,カーマ・アトランジャ,Ranger,29,4,25,13,9,5,8,12,3,2,0,2,120,20,0,0,0,25,Ancient Increased Damage; Increased Speed in Water Areas. Chest,
Maria Custard,マリア・カスタード,Gunner,40,3,32,15,8,6,8,16,4,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,18,Explosive; Cannon; Basic Attack require 1 more pt,
Biscuitta Berns,ビスケッタ・ベルンズ,Sparta,38,4,64,20,8,6,8,32,7,2,0,2,100,20,0,55,20,22,High Resist; Dungeon Cleansing; 2x Attack x1. Shortened; Shoulder Throw; Weakening,
Rizna Lanfebit,リズナ・ランフビット,Fighter,42,5,48,17,4,16,8,24,5,1,5,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Magic Immunity; Male Party Buff; Hanny Attraction; Debuff; Magic User; Wild Dance (Naginata-specific). Spear,
Onoha Mespos,オノハ・メスポス,Civilian,45,6,12,7,8,5,8,6,0,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Monster Handling Mastered; Male Monsters Weakened,
Kentou Kanami,見当 ・かなみ,Ranger,40,3,32,15,8,7,8,16,4,2,0,2,120,20,0,0,0,25,Attack 25% Up; No Assassinate Knowledge. Dagger,
Arms Arc,アームズ・アーク,Fighter,47,4,48,22,9,6,10,24,6,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,20,20,Solo Fighter; Spear; No Efficient Action,
Maris Amaryllis,マリス・アマリリス,Healer,67,6,39,9,9,18,9,19,1,2,5,2,100,0,20,0,0,15,Holy Decomposition Wave,
Hikari Mi Blanc,ヒカリ・ミ・ブラン,Healer,38,6,36,9,9,18,9,18,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,0,0,15,Weakness Search x5,
Matilda Machiuri,マチルダ・マテウリ,Sparta,55,5,70,24,8,7,8,35,8,2,0,2,110,20,10,0,30,22,Counter 2-star. Lengthened; Armor Breaking; Weakening,
Kafe Artfull,カフェ・アートフル,Healer,66,6,36,8,8,21,8,18,1,2,6,2,100,0,0,0,0,20,All Blessing; After Battle Recovery; 5 S-Item Absorbed; Cannot M.,
Kobayakawa Chinu,小早川 ちぬ,Healer,50,5,28,8,8,16,9,14,1,2,5,2,100,0,0,100,0,15,Front Row (Poison); No Full Revival; No After Battle Recovery,
Kikkawa Kiku,吉川 きく,Ranger,42,6,32,15,8,6,8,16,4,2,0,2,120,20,0,0,0,25,Triangle Attack (25% Chinu's Attack x2),
Caroli Mate,キャロリ・メイト,Ranger,36,5,32,14,9,7,9,16,3,2,0,2,120,30,0,0,0,25,Seiirogan Box & Treatment2 Power x2; +1 Basic Attack on Recovery Fountain; No Assassinate. Chest,
Reset Kalar,リセット・カラー,Gunner,-,3,7,11,8,5,8,4,3,2,0,2,120,0,0,0,0,18,50% Light & Dark Resist. Queen Curse; No Stun; 20% Damage Reduction; Sleep. Pathetic HP Growth,
Pastel Kalar,パステル・カラー,Sorcerer,50,6,24,8,8,26,8,12,1,2,7,2,100,0,0,0,0,20,2-Star; Fire; Light; Dark Mastery. Queen Curse; Efficient Action Item. Cannot M.,
Kisara Kopuri,キサラ・コプリ,Sparta,38,5,61,20,8,7,8,30,7,2,5,2,110,20,0,0,20,22,Magic Debuff All; Magic User. Lengthened; Armor Breaking; Weakening,
Rebecca Kopuri,レベッカ・コプリ,Civilian,38,4,16,8,8,6,9,8,1,2,0,2,80,0,0,0,0,12,Weakness Search x5,
Sanakia Drelshkaf,サーナキア・ドレルシュカフ,Fighter,22,4,48,17,8,6,8,24,5,2,0,2,110,0,0,0,0,20,Fire; Ice; Thunder Resistance. Short Sword; Sword; Spear; Hammer.,
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Rick Adisson,リック・アディスン,Fighter,100,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Lost interest back then at World 1, Malgreed Dungeon X Floor 33.


Also, Dohna Dohna Chinese version is out, 4 months after Jap release and priced at more than 30% below Jap price.
https://www.dlsite.com/pro/work/=/product_id/VJ014316.html

 

[Jaedar]

Phew, that final fight was pretty difficult.

Everyone warns that this game is very heavy on the grind, but I kinda want to play more, even after all these hours. It's very good TADA mode exists though, doubt I would have liked it as much with halved xp gain.

Spoiler

RIP suzume

 

[Nirvash]

Ok, almost got the money to buy the damn girls, got copa at 56, 80k more, go go go.
Fucking thief monster ambush made me lose over 200k, at least i got all the posters.

Found some advanced money making strats, pump the healers with max heals/rain, do the all healer quest and that's a fast 5k.

holy damn chappie actually got magic talent+ and i never grinded her, damn the lewd loli and her damn fake attack build.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

What is the easiest way to deal with Kaito? Do I need to level the sausage party to level 50+ ? I have Alex, Rocky and Bear around lvl40 or so.

 

[thesecret1]

What is the easiest way to deal with Kaito?

You are supposed to lose the first couple fights against him.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

What is the easiest way to deal with Kaito?

You are supposed to lose the first couple fights against him.

"Fair and square"

 

[KingDoofus]

Kaito can technically lose that fight but the story will stop and you won't be able to progress (story requires Kaito to be around). At the time you face Kaito it's functionally impossible to win. I wouldn't bother seriously looking at that fight until way into the postgame and even then it's hard - he's immune to fist based attacks so Alexander and Bear are useless (as well as Crook's grappling attacks) so Rance, Rocky, and Burning B are really your only sources of damage, with Rance being the only really good one. Even if you can withstand his damage output the most likely event is that you run out of attacks before brining down his HP. And no, winning the fight doesn't actually unlock anything - it just shows up in the menu as a story element that can go differently if you replay it.

Be a true hero. Take the L.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Yes, found out you can just abandon the mission as soon as the fight starts and actually succed, by having Doctor Rance provide some life saving injection.

 

[Nirvash]

Wait, 01 is also translated? How is it?

I believed to have played it like a billion years ago, but it was 02.

 

[KingDoofus]

Yeah, Maria translated 02 a long time ago and put it out for free. This version is 02 Kai - same gameplay as 02 but with a new script from Alicesoft (and new script from Maria).

Rance 01 is... alright. It's not particularly challenging or engaging. To be honest I found it mostly a good way for people who want to experience the origins of the series but don't want to suffer through a game released in 1989. There's tons of hidden content and it's got a unique (though simple) system to it, but it's mostly for people who already appreciate Rance and wanna kill some time.

 

[Jaedar]

Rance 01 is... alright. It's not particularly challenging or engaging. To be honest I found it mostly a good way for people who want to experience the origins of the series but don't want to suffer through a game released in 1989. There's tons of hidden content and it's got a unique (though simple) system to it, but it's mostly for people who already appreciate Rance and wanna kill some time.

It's not very special, but it's also not a bad game in any way. It's fun. Above average in terms of entertainment. But you'll probably never feel an urge to replay it.

 

[Terra]

Alright, guys, I finished my Kichikuou Rance playthrough, another pretty big game so quite a bit to cover. This is probably the last time I'll make a big Rance post for a while. As before this is basically just a compiled & edited list of my notes, thoughts and highlights on the game.

For reference, I’ve spoilered anything relating to Helman/Monster Realm; ie: content I think will be covered in Rance IX/X. Other, more knowledgeable posters than me are in a better position than I to determine if Kichikiou spoils R9/10, but I've erred on the side of caution. Events having an equivalent from Rance 1-8 won’t necessarily be spoilered, e.g: I’ll talk about Kichikuou’s handling of Sengoku’s events openly, but I will spoiler-warning Helman content. If Kichikuou has a unique event that never happens in the canon timeline (R1-R8), I will spoiler it.

[TIPS/THINGS I WISH I KNEW FIRST TIME THROUGH]
-The AL Church isn't particularly tough, I wish I’d taken them out early and saved some cash.
-Learn the advantages/differences between Plains/City battles early; see the wiki, game doesn’t explain it
-Some units end up feeling like they’re made of paper and are probably not worth investing in long-term
-Beware of permadeath
-Save regularly, use different slots
-Get Chaos asap to unlock Miki & Kentarou and make fighting early-game Fiends manageable
-There are loads of dungeons littering the map that can be explored, game doesn’t indicate they’re clickable elements though
-H Kaoru & Wichita until they become 2 new ninja units for you
-Pluepet’s Mercenary B, Cecil, with 5k troops can be pretty good defensively
-There are many things the game does not explain
- Mages are glass cannons - gotta watch out that enemy archers don't target them and snipe them (permadeath) so deploying them is often risky, they are great at whittling down some enemies though.
- ALL saves only save the game state from the beginning of the current turn, so you can’t do a bunch of stuff in the current turn, save and expect to pick back up from that point, no, the game will put you back at the start of the turn when you reload (and boy, this can result in some major headaches in the endgame)

[NAMING INCONSISTENCIES]
Be prepared for more naming inconsistencies between this and prior game translations:
- Bitch (Rance 4) is now Bicci?
- Sel is now Cell
- Fiend is now Demon
- Archfiend is Demon King
- etc

You’ll quickly adjust to it.

[[THOUGHTS]]
[GENERAL OVERVIEW]
Overall, Kichikuou is proto-Sengoku BUT given it seems to mash Rance 6-10 together into one game, as such it surpasses Sengoku on the story front in terms of the big picture and sheer sense of scale. That said, there is nowhere near the amount of lengthy dialogue/exchanges in Kichikuou compared to Sengoku though, indeed, I sometimes wonder if conversations are/were cut down consciously for brevity in terms of fitting inside the speech dialogue boxes. used for most of Kichikuou's conversations.

Indeed, some of the longest reading sections of the game are it's h-scenes, not that they're particularly long, but they are some of the only scenes to full a full screen width text box so they can fit more text in there I suppose, whereas everywhere else you're struggling to fit a pretty chunky english font into modest sized text boxes with the character portraits taking up a good chunk of space too..

So, if you want a sort of cliff-notes rendition of R6-10 (though that does kinda undersell it I guess) within a strategy setting then it's definitely worth a look. As to whether I'd recommend Kichikuou as a must-play right now, in light of it containing potential R9/10 spoilers. I can't say for sure having not played the last two games, but given the amount of R6/7/8 major events present in this game to some degree, I'm inclined to believe Kichikuou would probably half-spoil certain (possible) events so it might be worth leaving it until after R9/10 gets released. This game does have a bit of a XenoGears disc 2 feel to it in some regards, perhaps not at release, but in light of the canon timeline’s existence, it's difficult to play through Kichikuou without feeling on some level like you're playing a cut-down, streamlined take on some of the key events from the canon timeline. The broad strokes of Rance 6,7,8 are mostly all here to varying degrees, only with the mainline games being FAR more detailed and in-depth.

Truly, it's a weird game with it's non-canon status and yet it so clearly sets a template of sorts for many future series events that the game should probably come with its own spoiler warning. As such, it's difficult to definitively recommend as not only is this game the Rance series' past, but at least to some extent, it seemingly charts its future. One good example would be Fuuka, if you’d played Kichikuou before Sengoku, you could probably take a good guess at what her secret is in Sengoku, even though they go about it in a different way.

And so as I was conquering Helman in this game, I was also getting hyped to see what they've done with Helman in Rance IX, whilst also pondering if I'd maybe spoiled it for myself by playing Kichikuou now instead of waiting it out for Rance IX. At this point in my playthrough I was honestly torn as to whether I wanted to continue playing or not.

But, the game is fun! You're Rance, now married to Lia & forcibly extending Leazas's borders to encompass the known world and it's just so damn satisfying watching your empire grow as old friends rejoin the roster and you slowly beat down all opposition. It really is a great “what-if” story in the Rance universe.

[SENGOKU ON A BUDGET]
In some ways Kichikuou feels like Sengoku done on a budget. whilst also attempting the unenviable task of trying to pack in the events of Rance 6-10 into a single game.

In terms of budget I'm mostly looking at the graphics and animation/presentation in general. When I first played Sengoku my initial thoughts were in some ways it was kinda ballsy to get away with every combat unit having just two battle sprites - idle & attacking (some exceptions such as for Rance Attack but by and large any variations were just a lot of VFX). For whatever reason I was expecting a little bit more animation, couldn't really tell you why, looking back, but there it is. But I quickly adjusted to the game's style and ended up loving the game. Kichikuou takes it to the next level with just one single static sprite for the vast majority of units in battle; their combat/idle pose. Like with Sengoku, this initially drew my eye as a bit of a bit of a shortcoming, obviously much moreso in Kichikuou, but you do fairly quickly get used to it, but it can be initially a bit off putting when two units engage in battle and there’s no animation, its just a couple of sets of numbers switching position on screen. Stick with it and you’ll soon get past any early misgivings.

[PERMADEATH]
Yeah, holy shit, wasn't expecting this to be a thing on my first attempted playthrough. I fielded Rick and then Leila in battle, their units ended up getting wiped out. No biggie, I thought, can probably just let em rest and then rebuild their units. Oh, that's weird I'm now getting an event giving me Julia to replace Leila as Royal Knight captain. Hmm, lemme check the roster, oh Leila and Rick are missing... Oh, Leila and Rick are dead... File>Load Game.
Luckily I found this out early on.

Oh and Kanami/other ninjas can get perma-deathed through their ninja activities too (hope you didn’t save that ninja action till the very end of your turn). There is a purchasable item you can buy to mitigate this, but Pluepet's prices are as extortionate as you'd expect. I also found that my ninja units became useless by the time I was taking on Zeth & Monster Realm, maybe it was just bad RNG luck but, Kanami and co were getting offed with such frequency I just stopped bothering with the ninja mechanic at that point.

Personally I found permadeath in this game to be as annoying if not more so than it would be in early Fire Emblems - not only are you losing a unit, but it's taking away all story events with that character from the rest of the game (I'm guessing) - so it brought out the same behaviour in me from those old Fire Emblems - if someone died, I'd reload. I needed to keep these characters around & alive to see get that story event succor after all.

[LACK OF EXPLANATIONS]
There are lots of things the game doesn't really explain, take the world map for example - there are dungeons littering the map - BUT, there's no visual cue you can click on these to explore them and so they're easily mistaken for scenery to spice up the map's visuals.

[MISSING OLD (NEW) FAVOURITES]
Unavoidable, but some series favourites are missing from proceedings in this game and well, you kinda notice it coming back from the later canon entries - Copandon obviously didn't exist when this game was made and series darling Kenshin is also a no-show.While many later series favourites have some obvious prototypes/precursors in this game, you do miss the presence of certain mainstays of the canon timeline given the scope of the game, which can feel a bit weird. It’s almost like an argument could be made to remake or reimagine Kichikuou now, featuring the entire cast. But maybe Rance X fills that role, I don’t know.

[SHANGRI-LA]
Minor spoiler relating to Kichikuou’s difficulty/sense of urgency

Spoiler

Once you know that Shangri-La is an easy back-door that leads right to Helman & Sill's prison (as well as being an easy way to attack Zeth by bypassing their border fortress) it kinda takes away the sense of urgency you feel at the start of the game to save Sill/Soul.

Even though I was making pretty good progress in my campaign, the prospect of having to fight through the mountain pass to Helman with only one unit or take the extremely long route around west through Zeth and then looping back to southern Helman was very daunting. Both options were enticing long-term goals with negative consequences attached if you don’t make it to the prison on time. I do kind of wish this shortcut through the desert didn’t exist though. I think it makes it a bit too easy to trivialise the time limit aspect to Sill/Soul’s dilemma.

Kich Spoiler

Spoiler

I liked the Shangri-la sequence of events though, with a surprisingly compassionate act from Rance at the end when you find out all the girls were dolls.

[MUSIC]
Music was good on the whole, plenty of alternate takes on tracks from elsewhere in the series. Could maybe have used a few more pieces on the whole though.

[ANNOYANCES]
-Unlike Sengoku, you can only replenish one unit's troops at a time, and even then only once per turn, for the rest of the army you have to rely on natural passive healing of their troops. Like Sengoku, the facility exists to bolster a unit's max troop count (this gets very expensive though) but you can't do that in the same turn as you replenish a unit either. This can put you on the backfoot on occasion if every faction you're up against decides to hit you hard at once, followed up by any special events from the demon faction or an end of turn event forcing an unexpected battle on you.

It's so easy to take a city, and everything seems fine till the end of turn event drops a super-squad on you (hello Mineva) then you either have to retreat or kiss goodbye to a character. Since there's permadeath you can really end up juggling wounded units and I frequently managed to *just* skate by a defensive encounter without permanently losing a character, and for a good portion of the game, I felt like I was just about getting by. For example, in my playthrough, at one point, the battle between the Kaybliss & Hornet factions was seemingly coming to a head, and I still had half of Helman to conquer and Nobunaga being a pest in JAPAN/Nippon. Once I got Kentarou & Miki onside, it became easier to deal with fighting multiple Fiends/Demons at once and start cutting cutting down the Little Princess Capture Squad, who were the 3rd enemy faction nipping at my heels pretty much every turn. And I hadn't even interacted with Zeth at this point. It was sort of like my initial Sengoku run - it felt like I was massively behind where the game wanted/expected me to be by this point. However it all worked out in the end through judicious use of reloading prior saves.

-Events can be randomised when loading saves - this becomes particularly annoying due to the limitations of save games only saving at the start of the turn. So say something went wrong at the end of your previous attempt, you reload, you're annoyed at having to redo the whole turn over again, so you turn "Skip Text" on right after you load your save - and BAM, now you get a different Beginning of Turn event that you haven't seen before instead of the one you were expecting, and now you've skipped it.

-If I had one major complaint about this game, its the unholy union of its shit save system, Skip Text being a piss poor implementation in regards to unseen text, no message log and beginning of turn events being randomised (but not always). The amount of times I ended up redoing a turn 3-4 times, sigh...

-Information isn't particularly well presented in certain sections of the UI - for example, on the subordinate screen, if you want to see the attack/def/level of your units, you have to go into a sub-info screen, but there's freaking loads of empty space this info could be shown in right under their HP/Troop count on the main screen.

[THE BAD]
-During the Monster Realm phase you will be attacked with such frequency that engaging in every battle will deplete your overall troop counts so much as to bring about a death spiral. To avoid this you should (and Maris advises you to) cede some cities to the attacking forces so that you can concentrate on more surgical strikes against the bigger enemy target. This essentially entails you having to let certain enemy armies capture some of your cities in order to allow for certain plot developments to occur, allowing you to defeat some of these adversaries more easily. Unfortunately, to get onto the true ending path, you then need to retake ALL of these lost cities afterwards. These battles are trivial, just 4x monster generals with 500~ troops per unit, but it’s 10-15+ cities you need to retake and since you can only capture one city per turn, that’s 15 extra turns tacked onto the end of the monster realm conquest needlessly. The generic monster armies defending these cities cannot stand against you at this stage and it’s just a colossal waste of the player's time.

• This is also the stage of the game where you'll start to have PTSD flashbacks to Persona 5 when the cat Morgana tells you "you can't do that now, buddy, you need to go to bed", here, Maris will happily inform you that despite the fact you could easily steamroll all 15 cities in one turn, you can't do that, and must instead do one per turn and Rance needs to turn in for the night. Battle Permits, where art thou?

-For all the trouble you have to go through to get/keep some units, they really become unviable in the late game. Milli was out of action for pretty much the whole game for me

Spoiler

, I JUST managed to get her cured one turn before death

but by that point she's not really very useful. Even the likes of Rick & Leila drop off pretty fast. Sill, Soul & Bound are all flat-out useless as battle units outside of the game opening (made more hilarious by how much of a pain it is to get them), god how I wished Sill would just get her butt into Rance's squad and be a healer like in Sengoku but alas it wasn’t to be.

-Exactly how the game was working out damage and particularly how it was determining how Demons/Fiends were/were not damaged remained somewhat opaque to me throughout. I grasped the City/Field battle system and how high troop numbers in a city battle impedes the leader from striking against the enemy Fiend, but then during plains battles, I lost track of how many times Satella/Meglass would be up against a solo Fiend and would just manage to do 0 damage over and over until suddenly they started doing HP damage... for some reason? Rance Attacks and the like more consistently deal some damage, but that value tends to be low.

-Game was maybe a little too heavy on the HCG scenes,especially in terms of how they were implemented via the harem, it started to feel like a chore, unlike Quest which spiced it up with Rance's spell of impotence, here it's pretty much just standard fare "gahahaha, cumming now" for a few paragraphs and the CGs aren't enough to carry it. Some scenes were funny but they definitely started to feel repetitive on the whole..

-The game only saves at the start of each turn, so even if you do a bunch of stuff and then save, all that turn's progress will be gone when you reload. This can be incredibly annoying if you've taken multiple actions that turn, watched lengthy events and completed several battles as you have to do it all over again. Once I did a load of stuff then failed to save Cream/defeat Nero, reloaded, did all the stuff again then Kanami got killed in a failed ninja event, and so on. It’s frustrating that both the RNG and stupid save system work in tandem to fuck you over. You're never out of the woods until the next turn rolls over successfully.

-The game likes to register keypresses when it is not in focus, so don't alt-tab and do other things or you'll come back to find the game may have helpfully skipped through a dialogue sequence in your absence. If you need to alt-tab, bring up the game’s About/version box first.

-No message log feature either, coupled with the skip text deficiencies, this can be infuriating if a new random event happens right after a battle (same problem as in Rance 4.1 & 4.2. I have read that someone made a web-hosted reimplementation of AliceSoft's older engine that can apparently play the older games in a browser and happens to add a message log feature so that might be worth looking into.

[BUGS]
I encountered a couple of dead ends:
-Couldn't finish Martina Curry's Sakura & Pasta sidequest, had 5 different girls challenge her and the option to have Rance challenge her never appeared. Meant I had to take care of Galtia head-on. MAYBE this needed to be progressed/finished before starting to fight the Monster Realm, but I simply could not finish it.
- Mill couldn’t use the spring in the Uncurse dungeon and thus couldn't become an adult again

[KICHIKUOU SPOILING LATER GAMES?]
While I haven't played IX or X and likely won't until they get official localisations (no spoilers please) I think maybe a danger of Kichikuou existing as it did pre-5D is the potential to almost "waste" key planned/desired plot events on a sort of rushed implementation of them as exists in this game. Now this isn't to rag on Kichikuou, I'm just speculating that if for example they did X with Nobunaga in Kichikuou and it played out really well, to an extent they’ve sort of spoiled the surprise when they "redo" that plotline in a future game and indeed the temptation may be there to go a different way in a future game, which could be a positive or negative, but to some extent the devs have shot their load already by putting so many of their ideas into this one game. Much like if you are writing a planned series of books, you *could* whack amazing plot development 1,2 & 3 all into book 1 and be done with it, but then you've kinda squandered the potential as I see it.

Kinda like the FF7 remake where you're expecting X to happen but the developers have thrown you a curveball in the "reimagined" version of events - maybe the new take is better, or maybe not. Remains to be seen but Kichikuou's existence as a sorta-maybe spoiler of future games makes it a weird title.

I can respect the original intent to sort of close-out the series and get all their remaining ideas into one final game just in case the worst happened (and when you think about how watered down, devoid of soul, and factory-esque modern AAA productions have become I place a lot of value in smaller developers getting to see their creative vision through to the finish line, rather than a B team taking over an IP years after the original developer gets swallowed up, as is often the case), there’s definitely value in the original developer closing out the series even if it was done in a premature manner, but it’s definitely a... unique situation, given the series carried on anyway.

[[CHARACTERS]]
Characters writeup will be short due to aforementioned reasons; the characters, in part due to Kichikuou’s strategy trappings and in part due to this game covering several games worth of story content, meant that the characters simply aren’t as fleshed out as those we’d come to love in the future canon entries.


[SHEILA HELMAN]

Spoiler

Fuck, this storyline got dark real fast. Rance is practically a saint compared to Stessel.
Seems Stessel gets to just run away and disappear though, I never caught up with him after the main events unfolded.
After Sheila tells you what happened to her, is there any more dialogue/events beyond that?

[PASTEL KALAR]
Pastel Kalar in Kichikuou looks and behaves like Pastel's mother did in Quest, lol. A bit unexpected but it mixed things up a bit when dealing with the Kalar village. The whole Kalar village incident from Quest is a highly slimmed down (optional, maybe?) little event of little consequence in Kichikuou, although we do see some stuff here that wasn't in Quest. While I see Reset on the Kichikuou wiki page, I didn’t encounter her in my playthrough so I can't comment on that.

[NIKKOU]
So Kentarou's sword is very talkative in Kichikuou yet I don't think I ever saw here talk once in the Rance canon timeline 1-8 at least. Does Nikkou talk at any point in the canon timeline?

[MAGIC]
Magic's like a different character in this game, definitely not as good as her canon timeline iteration,

[GANDHI, KAORU AND WICHITA]
So these three are in this game too, they all feel far more loosely defined than R6's rendition. Gandhi has no qualms with sending his women to fuck random dudes causing trouble on the street in this game for some reason. The basic idea of what they'd become in R6 is there though, Kaoru lacks any air of authority and Wichita feels a bit generic. They also have an easily overlooked recruitment event chain, which is bad given that you're missing out on one of the better mages and 2 ninjas if you miss em.

[SAIAS + UPSIRA]
Kichikuou Spoiler

Spoiler

So Saias blew himself up and took Upsira with him in my playthrough, a bit unexpected to say the least . Worked out well in gameplay terms as it meant the pair of them stopped attacking me every turn but I'd be interested to see if you can recruit them. And the rest of Zeth’s minor generals.

[SHIZUKA]
Major Kichikuou Spoiler

Spoiler

Shizuka narrowly escaped a nasty end in my playthrough. I hit her duel with Ragarl when Sill was still a cow and saw the “Flash” outcome. Yeah, shit way to go out getting turned into a bomb. Decided to reload and thanks to Hubert's noble sacrifice to Ho Raga, Sill was restored and all was well for Shizuka as a result. Except for Huberts chastity of course.

It's kinda funny given how especially harsh Shizuka is to Rance when he helps her avoid death numerous times.

But damn, they can be real brutal with some of their character outcomes in this game...

[CHIZUKO]
Kichikuou spoiler

Spoiler

Chizuko is basically a different character in this game, retaining her weird fashion sense but her main character trait is simpering over Gandhi and then later over Rance. Also a lot colder towards Anise, Magic and others in this game. Literally gave no fucks about using using Anise in the Flash.

[MILL/MILLI]
Milli spent most of my game in hospital, but just managed to cure her the turn before she croaked it, which was good as her harem scenes with Sill & the other girl are pretty funny.

I also wasn't able to get Mill to age up using the fountain in the Uncurse dungeon, even with Merim with her and I’d seemingly fulfilled the prerequisites. Consequently I had to pretty much abandon her for this playthrough.

[KAITO / CALORY MATE]
Basically the same story from Rance Quest albeit more condensed.

[SANAKIA]
She buggered off somewhere after Rance beat her, never saw her again. The crashed Toushin city she was guarding was a neat nod to R4.

[NAGI]
Nagi & her father's story is basically what was shown in Rance 6, albeit the outcome can be far more brutal. For me she died in a forest after Rance picked Shizuka over her. Nowhere near as fleshed out as R6, but you get the main highlights and feel a bit sorry for her I guess.

[REBECCA]
Ha, so Rebecca was in this game and Kisara isn't! Made me smile when she popped up with Pluepet early on in this game after finishing up Quest so recently too. She still has her little slave crown thingymajig on her head too; funny how they had so many little details down even at this stage. I liked seeing Rebecca's scenes in this game as she's not as far gone as when we see her in Quest, so it was a good opportunity to speak to and learn more about this sister in this game. Burning down Pluepet's house was a silver lining too.

[SATELLA]
Satella was quite well developed in this game and had a neat character design, she’s been a favourite of mine since R3, so hopefully she’ll have some more appearances in the canon timeline.

[SEL/CHAOS]
Nice event(s) after dealing with the AL Church. Rance finally got to do it, lol.

[SILL]

Spoiler

Kinda talked about Sill enough elsewhere, main thrust of it for concerns the endings, which as a return the status quo of a typical Rance outing, just didn't really feel like a definitive ending for her character. The Kichikuou endings I saw felt like they lacked closure for the main waifus and made me wonder if a potential follow up was ever on the cards. Or maybe they did just wanna leave it on that status quo note, seems pretty far off where the Magnum ending leaves things though, imo. Not canon though, so w/e.

[MELFEIS]
Yeah, I eventually had to fix her problem permanently as her warning event had a tendency to get eaten by other events and I eventually got tired of Maris telling me the sad news.

[[EVENTS]]
[RANCE'S WEDDING]
You know this game’s going places when it opens with Lia forcing Rance to marry her and he actually goes through with it. It’s a funny scene with repercussions echoing through the whole game. Good setup, Sill is pretty damn sad when she learns Rance married Lia and in typical Rance fashion he never actually tells her why he did it. Similarly to what I noted with Quest, Rance’s marriage prompts a lot of returning to characters to question him more seriously & tell him to stop dicking around/trying to fuck them (with varying degrees of success, lol). Lia was fun in this game too, we see a lot of both Lia and Maris in this game, especially Maris given she's your advisor. I think I prefer the path they’ve taken Lia on in the canon timeline compared with Kichikuou though.

It is cool and gratifying to see this almost alternate universe Leazas slowly spread out to encompass the whole world under this pair though!

[LITTLE PRINCESS CAPTURE SQUAD]

Spoiler

It's neat having these guys parked on your doorstep from early on in the game causing you increasing bouts of trouble. Good to see La Seizel again too. I liked what they did with Lei, with his coercion from Kayblis forcing him to fight, good backstory with Mary - this game did a pretty good job presenting fiends/demons who don't want to be at war with humans so the whole climax with Lei was pretty cool and a nice early game victory for the player.

Camilla was back as her usual self (now with blue hair), cool battle sprite. Felt good to finally take her and Reincock down later in the game

[PINK COW]

Spoiler

While I liked the content of the event, it took Sill out of play for a long time. Lia’s jealousy towards Sill definitely came to a head in this game, fun sequence of events overall and unexpected. Hell, when Sill disappeared I thought I’d hit a bug after a few turns as there was no follow up to the Lia event until I bumped into the cow at the merchant. Can easily overlap with the Shizuka event chain too for an undesirable outcome.

[ODA’S NINJAS]
So those ninja pair (Gekkou/Shinobu) can appear if you attack Osaka and fail to take out Nobunaga by the end of the turn. And they can assassinate any generals who acted that turn, including Rance. Nasty stuff! I ended up throwing every fiend-damaging unit I had at Nobunaga and just managed to take him out, nullifying the event.

[FREE CITIES]
*sigh* Coming off of Rance Quest, it sort of feels like something is missing when dealing with these guys and Copandon not being present just feels... wrong. Still, you have the Custom crew with Maria, Shizuka, Eleanor Ran, Mill & Milli. Rance's acquisition of Custom is very Rance-esque, heh. We got a little Athena 2.0 cameo too if you headed back to Rance's house but sadly she can't join the battle crew this time.

[HELMAN]
I think they did a pretty good job with the Helman campaign here, quite a few unexpected twists, lots of events, loads of enemy generals and we finally got some light shed on a nation that we haven't really seen/heard much of up to R8. I really liked this part of the game, but it really just made me more excited to play Rance IX.

[ZETH]
I left Zeth till last. (Those fucking magic wall enemies are back). Honestly though, most of their units are pretty wussy so I'm thinking I may hit them after the Free Cities next time through.

The whole Zeth cast is developed SO much more in Rance 6, it’s not even funny and I even started to feel a bit bad as you beat all their generals back considering Rance ends up on fairly good terms with most of them in R6. They took a bit of a different angle with meat shields protecting the glass cannon mages in the game, which I guess forms the barebones roots of Rance 6’s story.

[HORNET FACTION]

Spoiler

So I'm stuck fighting Zeth and all my potential Hornet faction waifus are getting their shit fucked up in the distant west with me unable to reach them, lol.

At least between R1-8, we haven't really had much info beyond the odd allusion to what’s going on between the opposing fiend/demon faction, while this game answers that question and seeing the war going on between the two factions was pretty interesting to watch develop as you get get drip fed information over the course of the game.

I mean, shit was getting pretty damn exciting when Kayblis led his army to take down Hornet. Having the two demon factions at odds definitely made it more interesting than when the big Monster Army shows up in Sengoku and they're all united under Xavier. Made me wish for a bit more dialogue with Miki/Satella as the situation worsened. It'll be interesting on future playthroughs if I can get over to that side of the map before they capture Hawzel, if that’s even possible.

But man, Hornet getting wrecked after her epic showdown with Kayblis's generals, man, made me wish I'd got my Rance over there faster to find out what the heck was going on.

Hornet herself doesn’t get anywhere near enough interaction with Rance/anyone outside Monster Realm. Same with Silky. Hopefully this is addressed in Rance X as the setup with two opposing factions was very intriguing.

[HAREM]
The Harem can quickly become more of an annoyance and obligation that anything else. Sometimes I just don't want to/cba to read through a h-scene, but there's at least two girls you have to H on the regular or you lose em plus some scenes are required to unlock events. Not enough comedy on the whole in these.

[THE FLASH]
Kichikuou spoiler

Spoiler

So is the human killing bomb from Rance 6 basically a nod to the Flash from Kichikuou then?

Pretty brutal device, and Chizuko is far colder toward Anise in this game, not even a second thought about chucking her into the bomb’s ingredients.

[LEILA/RICK]
So we finally see this happen in Kichikuou, nice enough sequence of events with Rance acting like a child but ultimately coming to mostly accept the situation. Makes you feel a bit bad for Maris too I guess.

[[OVERALL]]
Kichikuou is kind of shocking in a way compared to other Rance titles. Pretty much all characters up to this point (including on the canon path up to R8 at least) have had plot armour on them so they can't die and nothing TOO bad tends to happen to them. Not so in Kichikuou , old faces are practically lining up to meet their end in this game, and in that sense it's shocking and that courtesy is even extended to its gameplay through permadeath. It's Sengoku on steroids in that regard; the gloves are off - BUT- it's not this nice little self-contained game like Sengoku is, here all these characters you've grown to love over the past couple of games are just dying to nasty events left and right and it's all so... unexpected when compared to every other game I've played in the series.

Like with Rance Quest, you're gonna get more out of the game if you've played R1-4.2 first, and despite it being proto-Sengokue-esque, it's hard to recommend to people without knowledge of the prior games given it is a finale, of sorts.

I expect I will be playing the game again a few times, probably not immediately, I'll likely dip back into it like I did with Sengoku every few months.

[[ENDINGS]]

Spoiler

So the first proper ending I got (aside from premature "endings" like assassinations was the Unification ending (normal ending I think) where Patton & Gandhi are both planning to rise up and Arios comes to attack Rance in the throne room and Rance reminds you how cool the settings when he just scoffs at Arios and baits the "hero" to attack him. Not a bad ending and a cool final CG, but not really very conclusive for what could have been the end of the series I guess.

My next ending was Fortune - Rance goes on another adventure after defeating the whale thanks to Warg. This ending basically almost returns things to the status quo, I guess, Rance divorces Lia and skips town and it’s implied the world will eventually end up at war again, which I guess would make the whale happy when it eventually wakes up. Felt a bit sorry for Lia, lol, but I guess it's nice how that ending wrapped around to the start of the game. That being said, it didn't feel as "final" as I'd maybe expected either.

I believe this is the “true” ending to Kichikuou yet it almost comes off like they were leaving it open for a sequel, given the prior implications and Rance/Sill just walking off on another adventure. I can see the value in an ending like that to some degree, particularly if AliceSoft’s future was uncertain, the ending does get back to Sill’s internal monologues about how Rance is growing more distant. It works for the most part provided you’re into the Rance/Sill thing, I guess. It definitely feels like it lacks a hell of a lot of closure for the plethora of Rance waifus accumulated over the past games though. From Lia to Kanami, Maris, Maria & Sill -- nobody in the Rance collection gets any real resolution.
On this front, it didn’t really feel like a definitive ending to me, it felt like they really pushed to get every idea they had into the game in terms of events, etc, but they weren't as fussed in moving beyond the status quo when it came to the ending. But I guess it’s a moot point given the game isn’t canon.

[[FINAL THOUGHTS]]
So, is Kichikuou worth playing through? I'd say yes, particularly coming from more modern iterations, it's initially gonna feel clunky and the obvious comparisons to Sengoku are gonna find it coming up short in terms of UI, game mechanics and overall polish. BUT, if you can persevere through that initial breaking-in phase you'll quickly get used to it and find there is a pretty good game here with a lot of great payoff if you’ve played past entries and like the cast.

Is it the "be all and end all" of Rance games? I'd say no, personally, perhaps at the time of release, but now it's hard not to view each of the smaller stories in Kichikuou as condensed “first-pass” iterations of what would be further developed later. I think, the events of R6-R8 inclusive have already "grown" Rance as a character beyond the King Rance we see in this game, and not just him, but those characters around him too.

That said, there *is* definitely a certain appeal in having the stories of R6,7,8 (and presumably to some extent 9 & 10) all playing out in tandem in a grand strategy type setting. There is a LOT going on, perhaps too much for one game to do everything justice. Despite its RPG roots, there's something about Rance as a character & as a series that melds very well with the strategy/conquest gameplay and while Sengoku is probably the stronger game, Kichikuou is jam-packed with trimmed-down takes on what we revisit in later, canon games and as such the sense of scale in Kichikuou easily dwarfs Sengoku, easily meriting at least a single playthrough. Context is key, and I understand why Kichikuou is what it is, but context aside, it is a game that narrative-wise tries to do too much all at once and as such doesn’t deliver as much depth through its dialogue & story as newer entries do.

[CREATOR PHASE]
Kichikuou Spoiler

Spoiler

And so we come to the “AliceSoft endgame BS” section of this game. It's inescapable. Somebody thought it'd be a great idea to have a force of 2x 3500 Angel Knights attacking your cities (your capital city is a valid target) five times per turn for the final phase of the game. You haven't got a chance of fighting them all off (5x separate attacks + 2x earthquakes that knock out two cities) and if they take certain cities, it blocks you from getting to critical locations you need to access to finish the game. The solution - reload, even if you successfully defend 1x attack on Leazas Castle, they get 5 in total per turn, so you're fucked if it happens. And it gets better, seemingly the location the angel knights attack is decided after the game auto saves at the beginning of the turn, so you have to go back to your previous turn, REDO all that shit again then pray Leazas Castle doesn't get targeted when you get back to where you originally were.

I must have spent an hour redoing this fucking phase over and over just to get the last gold statue from Ho Raga without Leazas Castle getting blitzkrieged by an angelic choir.

I have no clue who at Alicesoft thought this was a good idea and it probably takes my top spot for sheer Alicesoft late game fuckery tbh.

It's a shame the endgame is handled in such a crappy way tbh, having the angels be a challenge is fine, but a 5x assault on your HQ you can't win with its chance of occurring governed by RNG is just fucking stupid. Not only that but I think in terms of game design it's one of the worst things you can do; let's piss off the player with some arbitrary RNG nonsense right before they finish the game so their final thoughts on the game will be tinged with annoyance.

[[QUESTIONS]]
Questions for those that know the game and series well.

Spoiler

- Routes - I'm interested in seeing other "routes" if indeed there are any; the Demon King Rance stuff is particularly of interest to me. So you have to let Sill die and then agree to Satella's proposal. Is this a genuine "route" with unique content, or is it just Sill dies, Satella asks you a question, you say yes and then bam, that's the end of the game? Sill “blocked” the event in my current playthrough when Satella asked. Are there even any significantly different routes through the game? Or is it just little variations to the ending?

- Is it possible/feasible to make it over to the Monster realm prior to Hawzel/Hornet getting captured. Can you interact with them/save them early and cause any plot divergence? Also I read that Silky can be captured, presumably this prevents her from gathering the blood souls and fighting/dying to Kayblis, so how do you capture her?

- Silky - Was a fiend/demon's body collapsing after eating another's blood soul always a thing? Didn’t Albert become a Fiend through eating an orb, can existing fiends not permanently increase their power in this way then?

- Stessel - Possible to catch up with him after Helman falls or does he just get away?

- How much do the events of Rance IX / X differ to what’s shown in Kichikuou? I don’t really want any specific spoilers here, just a general idea/short answer - is it more or less the same or are there significant differences/divergence?

And so, that’s probably me done with Rance for now, I've finished all the games currently available in English and I’ve really enjoyed my time with the series - it’s been quite a ride so far and it’s not over yet. It’s a little crazy to me how little acclaim the series gets given how successfully it develops its cast across all these games, but maybe it’s for the best. I’ll be back for Rance IX & X for sure.

Oh yeah, is there anything else in English from Alicesoft that’s worth a look, finished Evenicle a while back (it was very good) before I went full steam ahead with Rance.

 

[Jason Liang]

Spoiler

The Helman characters are more or less the same in IX as in Kichikou (moreso than Zeth to VI) although the entire plot is completely different since IX tells a linear war story while KR is basically sandbox, so IX adds an entirely new plot, more or less.

X is similar. Most of the Darklords are the same, but X has a different plot since X starts Kayblis has already captured Hornet and won the civil war. There's also no Creator phase, sadly, although the plot does resolve similar themes. Different plot, although X has a similar structure to KR in that you have to deal with each of the 4 nations in turn.

Definitely check out Daibanchou, which has an English translation. Its mechanics are not as polished as SR and some of the character recruitment/ clear requirements are complete bullshit, but it has its own sort of charm and is still a great example of a harem collecting game.

Slash! Thrust! Burn! is short and simple but it may be worth playing just for the Sengoku Rance sidestory.

Finally I haven't played them but supposedly Toushin Toshi 1 and 2 are very good.

Patton and Poron have their own games but they aren't translated into English afaik.

 

[Average Manatee]

I recall there being some "tricks" to farm up characters and/or armies to be much, much more powerful. I played kichikuou a long, long time ago so I don't really remember the specifics. I also don't remember about half the plot, and probably half of what I don't remember I never got in the first place since this was pre-translation and my japanese skills weren't that great

 

[thesecret1]

Does Nikkou talk at any point in the canon timeline?

Yeah. Actually, it talks pretty often. It talks even in Sengoku.

Kichikuou is kind of shocking in a way compared to other Rance titles. Pretty much all characters up to this point (including on the canon path up to R8 at least) have had plot armour on them so they can't die and nothing TOO bad tends to happen to them. Not so in Kichikuou , old faces are practically lining up to meet their end in this game, and in that sense it's shocking and that courtesy is even extended to its gameplay through permadeath. It's Sengoku on steroids in that regard; the gloves are off - BUT- it's not this nice little self-contained game like Sengoku is, here all these characters you've grown to love over the past couple of games are just dying to nasty events left and right and it's all so... unexpected when compared to every other game I've played in the series.

Yeah, Kichikuou has balls, keeping everyone alive is a challenge. It's very different tone-wise to everything later on, and packed to the brim with various story lines (it was meant to be Alicesoft's last hurrah, after all).

s it the "be all and end all" of Rance games? I'd say no, personally, perhaps at the time of release, but now it's hard not to view each of the smaller stories in Kichikuou as condensed “first-pass” iterations of what would be further developed later. I think, the events of R6-R8 inclusive have already "grown" Rance as a character beyond the King Rance we see in this game, and not just him, but those characters around him too.

That's why I recommended playing this right after Rance 4.2. It all feels a lot more natural coming straight from the old series than when you already have knowledge of new series mixed in. I wouldn't be so afraid of spoilers – sure, a lot of events get reused by later games, but those games handle them so differently that it's really just a passing resemblance.

I think that most interestingly, Kichikuou Rance is uncharacteristically dark. I don't think any of the other games are so dark in tone, with horrible, evil people all around and with death lurking behind every encounter.

 

[Terra]

Spoiler

The Helman characters are more or less the same in IX as in Kichikou (moreso than Zeth to VI) although the entire plot is completely different since IX tells a linear war story while KR is basically sandbox, so IX adds an entirely new plot, more or less.

X is similar. Most of the Darklords are the same, but X has a different plot since X starts Kayblis has already captured Hornet and won the civil war. There's also no Creator phase, sadly, although the plot does resolve similar themes. Different plot, although X has a similar structure to KR in that you have to deal with each of the 4 nations in turn.

Definitely check out Daibanchou, which has an English translation. Its mechanics are not as polished as SR and some of the character recruitment/ clear requirements are complete bullshit, but it has its own sort of charm and is still a great example of a harem collecting game.

Slash! Thrust! Burn! is short and simple but it may be worth playing just for the Sengoku Rance sidestory.

Finally I haven't played them but supposedly Toushin Toshi 1 and 2 are very good.

Patton and Poron have their own games but they aren't translated into English afaik.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed regards IX/X.

I'll give Daibanchou and the rest a shot in the future, for sure.

Does Nikkou talk at any point in the canon timeline?

Yeah. Actually, it talks pretty often. It talks even in Sengoku.

Now you mention it I do recall seeing Nikkou's sword portrait at some point during dialogue in Sengoku, but it's been a while since I did a playthrough where I actually read all the old dialogue. Must have slipped my mind., thanks.

That's why I recommended playing this right after Rance 4.2. It all feels a lot more natural coming straight from the old series than when you already have knowledge of new series mixed in. I wouldn't be so afraid of spoilers – sure, a lot of events get reused by later games, but those games handle them so differently that it's really just a passing resemblance.

I think that most interestingly, Kichikuou Rance is uncharacteristically dark. I don't think any of the other games are so dark in tone, with horrible, evil people all around and with death lurking behind every encounter.

It's a tricky one, I reckon most newcomers are gonna get into the series through Sengoku nowadays. And from there, the pull towards the next part of the story is very strong. I think Sengoku draws you in and probably sells most potential fans on the series gameplay (and somewhat, but not completely on story), while R6 is the game that definitely cemented my interest in Rance (as a series) through its story. At that point I was hooked, but I'd already garnered enough "post 4.2/new series" character knowledge from those two games, incomplete though it was, that Kich was always gonna feel like a weird entry in that regard.

Certainly, looking back, it would definitely have been optimal to play through from 01 onwards and go in release order (and normally, that's exactly what I'd do), BUT, despite the fact I really liked 01, neither it, nor 02 will sell anyone on the series as a whole and motivate em to keep going. Or put another way, I reckon a lot of potential Kich players come to game with at least some of the new series knowledge mixed in too, I wonder if many players will get to experience Kich by playing through the series in the more natural release order nowadays.

I agree in principle with what you're saying though

 

[thesecret1]

It's a tricky one, I reckon most newcomers are gonna get into the series through Sengoku nowadays. And from there, the pull towards the next part of the story is very strong. I think Sengoku draws you in and probably sells most potential fans on the series gameplay (and somewhat, but not completely on story), while R6 is the game that definitely cemented my interest in Rance (as a series) through its story. At that point I was hooked, but I'd already garnered enough "post 4.2/new series" character knowledge from those two games, incomplete though it was, that Kich was always gonna feel like a weird entry in that regard.

Certainly, looking back, it would definitely have been optimal to play through from 01 onwards and go in release order (and normally, that's exactly what I'd do), BUT, despite the fact I really liked 01, neither it, nor 02 will sell anyone on the series as a whole and motivate em to keep going. Or put another way, I reckon a lot of potential Kich players come to game with at least some of the new series knowledge mixed in too, I wonder if many players will get to experience Kich by playing through the series in the more natural release order nowadays.

I agree in principle with what you're saying though

I got into Rance through Sengoku and liked it enough to decide to give the rest of the series a go. Playing from 1 all the way to Kichikuou took so much time that I was fully in sync with old Rance (especially since I played it all in short succession). I didn't even know Rance 6 was going to be so good, it was a nice surprise :D I think you played Quest prior to going to Kichikuou? That could cause a big dissonance in Rance's character for you

 

[Jaedar]

It's a tricky one, I reckon most newcomers are gonna get into the series through Sengoku nowadays. And from there, the pull towards the next part of the story is very strong. I think Sengoku draws you in and probably sells most potential fans on the series gameplay (and somewhat, but not completely on story), while R6 is the game that definitely cemented my interest in Rance (as a series) through its story

Yeah, Sengoku was the hook, VI was what really sold it and showed me that rance games are pretty good even when the gameplay isn't strong. I'd play more of the old games, but the artstyle really puts me off.

I guess quest hasn't performed as well as MG hoped though, because it seems they stopped editing Rance IX again. I guess getting two big rance games in one year was too much to hope for.

 

[Nirvash]

well, magnum done

Grinded hard for items and gold.

i'm so gonna 100% this

 

[thesecret1]

i'm so gonna 100% this

Same. I'll take a break for a couple months before starting world 2, though. I feel that trying to basically play through all that stuff again would just burn me out and wouldn't be much fun; it's better to do it after I forget most of the scenes.

 

[Nirvash]

holy crap the poster boss obliterated my sorry ass

omg the RESET-dark rance quest is so cute... YES HANNY QUEST 4 YES YES YES YES

 

[Haba]

Kichikuou is kind of shocking in a way compared to other Rance titles. Pretty much all characters up to this point (including on the canon path up to R8 at least) have had plot armour on them so they can't die and nothing TOO bad tends to happen to them. Not so in Kichikuou , old faces are practically lining up to meet their end in this game, and in that sense it's shocking and that courtesy is even extended to its gameplay through permadeath. It's Sengoku on steroids in that regard; the gloves are off - BUT- it's not this nice little self-contained game like Sengoku is, here all these characters you've grown to love over the past couple of games are just dying to nasty events left and right and it's all so... unexpected when compared to every other game I've played in the series.

Yeah, Kichikuou has balls, keeping everyone alive is a challenge. It's very different tone-wise to everything later on, and packed to the brim with various story lines (it was meant to be Alicesoft's last hurrah, after all).

Kichikuou is what Rance was ultimately meant to be.

There has been a certain degree of tragedy built into many of earlier Rance storylines. Conflicting interests, tragic characters etc.

A lot of it has been retconned over the years and Rance as a character has been whitewashed to some degree (one could claim that he has "mellowed out").

After decades of investment into those characters, it simply becomes harder and harder to go through what they initially planned. So we end up in this weird situation where Rance gets to eat the cake and keep it.

To me, approach like Kichikuou's would've been preferable to what they did in X. You simply can't have satisfying conclusions to everything without cutting out conflicting parts (like Sill). So branching alternate routes it is.

But that would've led to a simply unmanageable size for the game. And the years leading up to X had already changed the direction to a degree where such tonal shift would've maybe felt out of place.

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Rance X is already a massive game as it is (apparently has the longest script in vidya history). The amount of branching content you are missing in an individual playtrough is ridiculous.

 

[thesecret1]

Kichikuou is what Rance was ultimately meant to be.

There has been a certain degree of tragedy built into many of earlier Rance storylines. Conflicting interests, tragic characters etc.

A lot of it has been retconned over the years and Rance as a character has been whitewashed to some degree (one could claim that he has "mellowed out").

After decades of investment into those characters, it simply becomes harder and harder to go through what they initially planned. So we end up in this weird situation where Rance gets to eat the cake and keep it.

To me, approach like Kichikuou's would've been preferable to what they did in X. You simply can't have satisfying conclusions to everything without cutting out conflicting parts (like Sill). So branching alternate routes it is.

But that would've led to a simply unmanageable size for the game. And the years leading up to X had already changed the direction to a degree where such tonal shift would've maybe felt out of place.

I'm a bit conflicted about saying that Rance had mellowed out, it's more that they try avoid placing him in situations where he'd look like an absolute villain. Rance in the old games has some genuinely evil moments, scenes that just make you go "holy shit that's wicked", and Alicesoft has clearly been trying to limit those from 5D onwards. Still, to their credit, they are managing this shift rather naturally, and you don't even notice unless you start comparing between new and old titles, it's not a jarring jump or anything.

I think Alicesoft is probably the only videogame company that managed to write an "anti-hero" character right. Everyone else just writes a hero and says "Oh yeah he is also mean to people sometimes" and call it a day. I find it a bit disappointing that they're trying to hide his bad side in the newer titles like that, but on the other hand, it is true that when they do let the hammer drop with, for example, tragedy and similar, I do end up wishing to have some way to turn it into a happy end, so I understand where the demand for a generally lighter tone is coming from.