Rance Series

[Endemic]

Wait, what's wrong with Kou? She has PTSD but also her act of self-fridging motivates her to fight against Xavier for real. If anything, Kouhime is by far the most normal one.

Not enough time in between that and joining you as a combat unit. I don't think she should have been playable at all, but YMMV.

 

[Jason Liang]

When I was 9, I (accidentally) pushed a girl down two flight of stairs once. She got up, nothing broken. Kids are elastic like that.

 

[Haba]

When I was 9, I (accidentally) pushed a girl down two flight of stairs once. She got up, nothing broken.

Not even the hymen?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

So finally got around to beating Manga Rance. I wouldn't call it a difficult game, though there was some small strategy involved with party compositions and character skill sets pitched against enemy capabilities and vulnerabilities. It's the kind of casual game that you can leave for awhile and then come back to and not worry too much over trying to figure out where you left off. Also, you can tell where the original team developed the storyline for Rance 8 and where TADA came in and made improvements to Magnum Rance. Rance himself is not as likeable in the base game as he is in Magnum Rance, and the art in the extended game is a lot better. Some quick thoughts:

+ Although I do like Sengoku Rance waaaay more, this is an entirely different game and one that's easy to play for 10-15 minutes and then leave and not have to come back to for awhile. It still has enough team customization to not be boring.
+ I was so glad to see some of the Sengoku Rance characters return and mentioned. And they brought back Kenshin... best gal.
+ Interesting plot points with Rance's children are developed here, which of course will lead to important developments in the final game.
+ I really did like many of the new characters. I thought they were different and varied enough in personality, or if dull they at least had pretty awesome abilities. For instance, Alkanese was just an ok character, but give her a hammer and the right skills and she was a brutal force in the field. Crook was ok in combat, but I liked her character and storyline. Something here for combat lovers and story lovers.
+ Some of the game was really funny. The part with Maria going on a date and the Meg character were good for a chuckle. Although the gameplay is a downgrade from Sengoku Rance, the humor is up there.
+/- Sill !!!!
- This game requires a lot of grinding... it gets repetitious and dull at times, which is why it took me so long to beat. The decent party customizations and development really help to offset that negative.
- There were some parts of the game where I felt there wasn't a very good bridge to to higher level challenges, making the requirement to grind worse. There are a ton of dungeons for levels 30-40 and then a decent number from 40-50, but the numbers of available dungeons to explore really drop off after level 50. This wouldn't be a problem if the end game and bonus dungeons didn't require you to have several characters at the upper level 50s and above. Eventually I was able to beat the final boss with a level 57 Rance, a level 55 Kenshin, two healers and Arlcoate (for her attack and defense boosts). It took a lot of grinding in the same dungeon to get there. My characters are too underpowered for the post-game dungeons, which are registered as Level 60+ encounters. There are no interesting dungeons that I can grind over and over again to meet those challenges, so I think I'm done playing.

Anyway, yes I recommend the game. Not the best Rance game, but fun enough. Just don't expect to play this over a short time unless you have some podcasts to listen to while you play, otherwise you may get bored. It's fine to play in short sessions over a long period. Ultimately I didn't get CGs 153, 196, 197, and 218. I also didn't complete the Hanny Quests after the first one, or quest 115, 147, 195, or 199. I did get to see both the original Rance 8 and the Magnum Rance endings, and of course prefer the Magnum Rance ending.

 

[Longes]

and of course prefer the Magnum Rance ending

I'll hard disagree on this one and say that the original is much better. It's dark, it's sad, it ends on a false hope. While Magnum is just a gag.

 

[Jason Liang]

Well, original ending is the Liafag ending

(I'm a Liafag)

And I've said before, one of my favorite parts of RQM, as a Liafag, is the game giving Lia the chance to travel and adventure by Rance's side. While Lia can be used in Rance X as well, it doesn't feel the same in that game.

 

[Maxie]

frankly I'm hard-pressed to name a dungeon in Quest that I've found genuinely likeable, maybe the mountain thing

 

[Jaedar]

And I've said before, one of my favorite parts of RQM, as a Liafag, is the game giving Lia the chance to travel and adventure by Rance's side. While Lia can be used in Rance X as well, it doesn't feel the same in that game.

To be fair, Lia does kinda deserve it after putting up with Rance ditching her for 6 games.

frankly I'm hard-pressed to name a dungeon in Quest that I've found genuinely likeable, maybe the mountain thing

Imo none of the dungeons really feel that different from the rest, unless there's a gimmick reason.

 

[Jason Liang]

frankly I'm hard-pressed to name a dungeon in Quest that I've found genuinely likeable, maybe the mountain thing

My favorite adventure was the Mula Test, felt very climatic, and also fantastic.

There were a couple of memorable quests overall. I liked the maps where you travel on the boat, etc... #214 Letter from Nippon was also... memorable.

 

[Jaedar]

Rance IX – The Helmanian Revolution
Translation: 100%
Edit: 100%
Script insertion in progress

 

[Maxie]

QC + distribution = spring release, like with Evenicle

 

[Deuce Traveler]

One thing I noticed in Magnum Rance was how Bill Gates (Gates 95) and Jeff Bezos (Amazusa) were portrayed as sex abusers and general creeps. And the game was published in 2011. The Japanese knew and tried to warn us. Can't wait to find out what secrets will be revealed in Rance 9.

 

[Endemic]

One thing I noticed in Magnum Rance was how Bill Gates (Gates 95) and Jeff Bezos (Amazusa) were portrayed as sex abusers and general creeps. And the game was published in 2011. The Japanese knew and tried to warn us. Can't wait to find out what secrets will be revealed in Rance 9.

To be fair, they (especially Gates) were disliked long before that. The antitrust lawsuits date back to the 1990s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.

I'm sure Alicesoft also did research into Amazon's history as well (Guardian article, but it's a decent summary of events: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/04/amazon-jeff-bezos-monopoly-power-antitrust)

 

[Nostaljaded]

Showcasing Chinese modding scene for Rance X Chinese version.

Rance Series Character Append cum Difficulty mod

New cards sample

CP increased to max 16 with 20 modded choices, up from 14 with 17 choices.
Modded vs Original

Demon King set for CP +1

Spoiler

Highlighting 1 of the difficulty adjustments:
Boss Kayblis - Down 2 Attack > Down All Attack


Hats off to the Chinese modder at tieba in 战国兰斯吧 forum.

 

[Jason Liang]

That's exciting... an Ascension-like mod or Swordcoast Stratagems for Rance X would be sweet.

Although there's no sign of a map editor/ creator yet, no?

 

[Deuce Traveler]

Showcasing Chinese modding scene for Rance X Chinese version.

Rance Series Character Append cum Difficulty mod

Yes! Sign me up for the bring back Milli Yorks campaign. Out of all the characters to kill off early... and instead we got her lesser sister repeatedly pushed on us.

 

[Jaedar]

Showcasing Chinese modding scene for Rance X Chinese version.

Rance Series Character Append cum Difficulty mod

Yes! Sign me up for the bring back Milli Yorks campaign. Out of all the characters to kill off early... and instead we got her lesser sister repeatedly pushed on us.

Yeah, after playing Rance02 I was upset to learn Milli dies.

Does anyone have any english translations/texts of the various interface screens? I started going through Rance X with my (admittedly pretty basic) japanese skills and deepl. For the regular dialogue I feel it's fine (I can get the gist of it after capturing the text and looking up the words I don't know, and deepl is a really good second opinion for complex sentences with a low kanji count, even if it frequently drops nuance and context, and occasionally derps out entirely), but some of the interface fonts are tiny and I can't even tell what kanji they're supposed to be well enough to look them up visually. Not looking for a 10 page document describing everything about the gameplay (I want to try to figure that stuff out on my own), just a basic rundown of interface stuff. Thankfully the combat interface seems mostly self explanatory due to the icons for every skill.

 

[Nostaljaded]

Although there's no sign of a map editor/ creator yet, no?

Not that I'm aware of.
If there's new routes, it's more likely to end up in 'After' (difficulty will be down the drain though), rather than messing with the difficulty pacing/add in non-canon story writing... unless it's those kind of IF routes but with no new CGs.

...with my (admittedly pretty basic) japanese skills and deepl...

Once familiar with causative and passive verbs (e.g. to steal/to be stolen), the can of worms untranslated jap games (coupled with text capture/extraction tool for assistance/learning-on-the-go) are your oysters.

 

[Jaedar]

Once familiar with causative and passive verbs (e.g. to steal/to be stolen), the can of worms untranslated jap games (coupled with text capture/extraction tool for assistance/learning-on-the-go) are your oysters.

I'm not entirely unfamiliar with those, but I can't say they feel natural. The stuff I have the most issue with currently is these kinds of things:
「ちっ、やるしかなさそうだな」
ここまでだな、ジャハなんとか
I have a hard time distinguishing what is just emphasis, what is speech impediments (don't think there's any in this example in particular, but it's not uncommon for characters in Rance, although it is mostly confined to sentence ends) and what are load bearing parts.

I'm making progress through the game though, and I feel I understand what is going on, but it is pretty slow going and I'm rarely confident enough in my understanding to not look at what deepl is saying.

Edit: Beat the tutorial dungeon. Shit ain't looking too good, especially with casualties being counted in whole digit percentages of total human population.

 

[Nostaljaded]

...I feel I understand what is going on, but it is pretty slow going and I'm rarely confident enough in my understanding to not look at what deepl is saying...

That's mightily fine as it is. Going forward make a point to rely less and less on machine translations, just read original text with helper tools like a text parser (e.g. MeCab).
Parsing the above 2 quoted examples may fail quite miserably though.

If really serious in learning jap to play jap games, this might be helpful.
http://www.guidetojapanese.org/grammar_guide.pdf

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Jaedar]

Am I an idiot/does it bode ill that I couldn't understand the text/explanation of stone guardian and had to do some trial and error save/loading to figure it out?

Spoiler

Seems the stone guardian ignores all damage that's less than 5k, but also caps max damage taken to 100 per attack? Pretty trivial to configure your party to beat once you know what's up, but it took me one load to even know it was stone guardian, one to realize there was a 100 damage cap, and then third try easy peazy.

Feels kinda unfair that the devs spring that much of a puzzle fight on you with no warning and no chance to change party after the fight starts.

Normally I'd feel a bit bad about "save scumming" such an early fight, but when it takes me this long to read the dialogue I'll accept any excuse to have more gameplay

 

[Jason Liang]

Am I an idiot/does it bode ill that I couldn't understand the text/explanation of stone guardian and had to do some trial and error save/loading to figure it out?

Spoiler

Seems the stone guardian ignores all damage that's less than 5k, but also caps max damage taken to 100 per attack? Pretty trivial to configure your party to beat once you know what's up, but it took me one load to even know it was stone guardian, one to realize there was a 100 damage cap, and then third try easy peazy.

Feels kinda unfair that the devs spring that much of a puzzle fight on you with no warning and no chance to change party after the fight starts.

There is a party switch button on the left side, although it's in cooldown for a random number of turns (until you unlock the tactics that lets you switch party members every turn), so it wouldn't help for the Stone Guardian fight. At this point you should have Rance in the party though (and a general tip is you should almost always have Rance in the party since he needs the exp) and he's all you need for this.

If you notice that you are dealing 0 damage, you need to check the enemy's defensive buffs (icons on the left side of the battle screen). If you aren't using an UI patch (I think an English UI patch exists?) then you need to learn to decipher the basic abilities at some proficiency. You can also hover over the enemy attack icons to decipher the battle effects of each attack. Nearly all the boss fights have some trickiness to them.

Don't forget to save before boss battles!

Kalar Village is still a tutorial chapter too!

There is a Rance X thread with some basic information to help players get started (although some of the information I now know to be wrong and needs to be updated), if you prefer to avoid the Alicesoft wiki for help. Although I think it's great that you want the completely blind experience (including discovering the game mechanics yourself), since that can only happen once~
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/gameplay-guide-rance-x-decisive-battle.120599/
https://alicesoft.fandom.com/wiki/Rance_X:Game_mechanics

Normally I'd feel a bit bad about "save scumming" such an early fight, but when it takes me this long to read the dialogue I'll accept any excuse to have more gameplay

Rance X is not the type of game that you should feel bad about save-scumming.

 

[Jaedar]

If you aren't using an UI patch (I think an English UI patch exists?)

I tried googling for it, but the only thing I found were SPOILERS and gameplay guides like the one you wrote. It's entirely possible it exists, but that google is hiding it from me.

It would be lovely though, so far I'm relying on intution for most gameplay stuff, and the alicesoft wiki for the card's skills.

Kalar Village is still a tutorial chapter too!

More than a dozen hours in and I'm still in phase 2 of turn 1... It's definately going to be a long game.

 

[Jaedar]

I think RanceX might be too dense for me right now. There's just way too much dialogue per gameplay, and unlike other games in the series it shows no sign of decreasing as the game goes on (admittedly I am still pretty early in, doing the first dark lord hunt). Can someone who has played it confirm/deny how the ratio of dialogue/gameplay changes? I also foolishly decided to go to the free cities, which I thought would be fine but has turned out to be a whole lot of rance03 characters reintroducing themselves making me feel entirely lost.

I'm considering trying rance03 instead, as it apparently has spoken dialogue which is prob good for learnings. Has anyone played it? Where could it be acquired? (the origins of my copy of rance X are lost to time).