Rance Series

[Jaedar]

You need to figure out the minimum defenses and healing to be able to survive at least 4 fog/ 3 mist rotations, I think. Also, you have to optimize your burst damage output to the utmost. If you got her down to 1 million, it sounds like she's beatable.

That was on 2 fog 1 darkness rotation. The problem with defenses is that they all feel so damn costly in terms of ap. I totally believe I could kill him before 2nd darkness if I had had the best healer up, and not wasted some actions trying to use miki for a hail mary (I should have swapped in Hunty and miss 6-orb instead for a massive hit).

If it makes you feel any better, it's really, really tough to get the card from Leazas 2 that the wiki suggested (Apostle Atlanta). I would confidently wager that more players have beaten Kesselring (Night mode) without getting Atlanta than players who have ever gotten Atlanta.

I mean a little bit, but as you say, if I get him down to 10%, I can probably do 0%. And if I had done Leazas2, I wouldn't need to survive with more than a sliver of hp, and Free cities2 would mean coming into the fight at 100%, which would be much more comfortable. But there's no way I beat kesselring and have enough power to get through one more meatgrinder of a fight. But like so many other challenges in RanceX, I will be back for revenge...

 

[Jaedar]

If it makes you feel any better, it's really, really tough to get the card from Leazas 2 that the wiki suggested (Apostle Atlanta). I would confidently wager that more players have beaten Kesselring (Night mode) without getting Atlanta than players who have ever gotten Atlanta.

Why you lie?

Spoiler

That was first try. I didn't get a screenshot of second try because the boss ambushed me by dying too quickly.

Aside from Galtia, this is the first "early clear" I managed, and this was much easier than fe saving hornet, or Galtia. Or maybe my deck just finally reached maximum op status? She has no status resist, a measly 3 million hp, and her only notable offensive action is casting dispel. Easy win.

Hunty+Athena is kind of disgusting, 18x damage for 6 ap is absurdly efficient.

Also there's nothing on Atlanta that describes how she makes Kesselring easy? Is it deep lore?

Also, what does it mean when you get a card with gold shiny and the game even plays an animation with an R as it is revealed? Is it legendary rarity?

 

[Jason Liang]

If it makes you feel any better, it's really, really tough to get the card from Leazas 2 that the wiki suggested (Apostle Atlanta). I would confidently wager that more players have beaten Kesselring (Night mode) without getting Atlanta than players who have ever gotten Atlanta.

Why you lie?

Spoiler

That was first try. I didn't get a screenshot of second try because the boss ambushed me by dying too quickly.

Aside from Galtia, this is the first "early clear" I managed, and this was much easier than fe saving hornet, or Galtia. Or maybe my deck just finally reached maximum op status? She has no status resist, a measly 3 million hp, and her only notable offensive action is casting dispel. Easy win.

Hunty+Athena is kind of disgusting, 18x damage for 6 ap is absurdly efficient.

Also there's nothing on Atlanta that describes how she makes Kesselring easy? Is it deep lore?

Also, what does it mean when you get a card with gold shiny and the game even plays an animation with an R as it is revealed? Is it legendary rarity?

I'm not sure why Lexington only had 3 million hp. I've always thought that her hp scaled just like every other dark lord (other than Silky). It could be that you missed a difficulty up by doing the Toushin side quest? In my first playthrough Lexington had 6 million hp on turn 9 (although I had an extra difficulty up from Medusa).

On youtube found turn 9 difficulty 16 Lexington with 17.5 million hp:


Turn 10 difficulty 13 Lexington with 11 million hp (0 cp run):


Atlanta vs Kessselring isn't a lore thing. Atlanta defends against physical attacks and Juno defends against spells.
Yeah, there is a 3rd rarity level (SR secret rare).

 

[Jaedar]

I'm not sure why Lexington only had 3 million hp. I've always thought that her hp scaled just like every other dark lord (other than Silky). It could be that you missed a difficulty up by doing the Toushin side quest? In my first playthrough Lexington had 6 million hp on turn 9 (although I had an extra difficulty up from Medusa).

I am at difficulty 9, turn 11 (reduced it once with ranjer quest).

Sadly it seems I messed something up with "from the sea ending" (I looked up the conditions but I guess I still made a wrong choice somewhere, probably the choice with copandon). So I guess this train is only headed for bad endings at this point. Choo Choo (Helman is now dead).

 

[Jason Liang]

Well, if you remember which turn you picked the Copadon choice, after you get a bad ending you can go back and replay from that choice to get From the Sea done. Even with some 2nd game bonus points, it's difficult to get the other "A" endings without getting From the Sea first.

 

[Jaedar]

Well, if you remember which turn you picked the Copadon choice, after you get a bad ending you can go back and replay from that choice to get From the Sea done. Even with some 2nd game bonus points, it's difficult to get the other "A" endings without getting From the Sea first.

Why is that?

But yeah, once I get my first ending I'll probably do a bunch of reloading to get various bad ends. As I understand it this game just gives points for each ending you get, and there is no score like in sengoku, so I don't feel the urge to replay the entire game just to get one new ending.

 

[Jason Liang]

Well, if you remember which turn you picked the Copadon choice, after you get a bad ending you can go back and replay from that choice to get From the Sea done. Even with some 2nd game bonus points, it's difficult to get the other "A" endings without getting From the Sea first.

Why is that?

But yeah, once I get my first ending I'll probably do a bunch of reloading to get various bad ends. As I understand it this game just gives points for each ending you get, and there is no score like in sengoku, so I don't feel the urge to replay the entire game just to get one new ending.

There are 4 "A" endings, and the two easiest are From the Sea and the other is locked until you've gotten an other "A" ending (so to unlock it you have to get either From the Sea or the two harder "A" endings, both pretty tough with < 5 CP).

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Happens more often than you think.

 

[Jaedar]

First Rance X ending get. Probably the worst ending too, so I guess that's "nice" (can only go up from here).

I guess I should post some kind of impressions. Overall, I liked the game.

I was a bit worried by the whole card aspect, because card based games are supersaturated and usually not very clever. But the cards turned out to basically just be aesthetic. I still don't think it was a great choice (as evidenced by the fact that the cards needed to have 4 sides to fit all the information) and the cards are a bit drab as there are no backgrounds and the characters are mostly just standing idle. The enemy sprites/backgrounds are typically great but the attack animations are all super dull. The interface is really modern (in a good way), and it feels a bit weird (in a good way) to play a rance game with an interface that doesn't remind me of x-com.

On the gameplay side I feel the game has been vastly overhyped. This is not the second coming of sengoku. It's basically held up entirely by the quality of the boss fights, as the nuts & bolts of the gameplay doesn't really measure up. It's a great shame, but the normal fights tend to be very formulaic due to the low difficulty, and all you really need to care about is getting a good overkill on turn 3, which you'll quickly figure out the best way to do, and then repeat 10 times per mission, with a few different party setups. In a way, it feels a bit like rance quest, except if you removed the limited uses of skills, thus making most of the roster instantly obsolete. You may have 40 cards of a faction, but odds are 3 of them will be "toolbox cards" (fe a card that dispels poison, which is useful maybe twice in the entire game), another few will be worthwhile combatants and the remaining 30+ are just blobs of hp and damage.

When the game wants to throw a good challenge at you, it can. I really am itching to try and figure out how to beat some of these double suppressions and extra challenge routes that completely wiped the floor with me this time around, but it's also kinda shitty because I skipped every optional rest node and took every optional fight, and I rarely ever felt challenged by the normal gameplay. But then there'd be an optional route and suddenly the difficulty peaked so much it was basically impossible, forcing me to pick the normal route. I wish there was more of a middle ground between autopilot fights and maximum challenge. And I expect this problem to only get worse in NG+.

It's pretty much guaranteed I'll come back to it, but not really to see the alternate routes, mostly just to extract revenge on the hard parts I failed to beat first time around. But first I'll need to savescum around to pick up more endings (and ending bonuses), because there's no way I'm playing through the whole game that many times.

I was really hoping rance 9 would be out by now though...

What is the difference between hard mode and regular?

 

[Jason Liang]

What is the difference between hard mode and regular?

Hard mode starts the game at +3 difficulty up but you get to pick 2 cards per chest instead of 1. So it's more difficult at first but somewhat easier by the end (although about the same at 0 cp - the extra card makes the most difference with the two +5 free levels bonuses).

Also, not sure if you know, but you've only played 2/3 of the main game content... ... and not even that since afaik you only did half of the national campaign part 2s (Zeth and Leazas), when the national campaigns have 3 parts each.

As for challenge, the game scales itself to how well you're doing, since the better you are doing, the more difficulty ups you get (for example if you had double suppressed Zeth, you would have played the rest of the game with an additional difficulty up). Every boss in the game can be beaten on 0 cp (including every double suppression) but doing all of them in one playthrough at 0 cp is a real challenge. The game can be challenging even with just +1 difficulty up from beating Anise-Redeye in Kalar Forest. By the end of the game you were playing at -2 difficulty (from average) so it seemed easier than it should.

 

[Jaedar]

Also, not sure if you know, but you've only played 2/3 of the main game content... ... and not even that since afaik you only did half of the national campaign part 2 (Zeth and Leazas), when the national campaigns have 3 parts each.

I've done full clears of Zeth, Leazas and Free cities, and no main missions in helman.

The game can be challenging even with just +1 difficulty up from beating Anise-Redeye in Kalar Forest

Is.... this optional? I lost the first fight and then won with Rizna, thought this was a mandatory win. Do you get double difficulity up if you win it immediately?

Hard mode starts the game at +3 difficulty up but you get to pick 2 cards per chest instead of 1. So it's more difficult at first but somewhat easier by the end (although about the same at 0 cp).

I started hard mode with 1 CP, died to the first fight

As for challenge, the game scales itself to how well you're doing, since the better you are doing, the more difficulty ups you get (for example if you had double suppressed Zeth, you would have played the rest of the game with an additional difficulty up).

For sure this is true, especially since double suppression means a lot less regular fights, and therefore a lot less loot. But I didn't feel like I had the dps for most of the double suppressions, and yet most of the game was trivial. So either I'm a savant at easy fights or the difficulty is a bit whack.

Also it seems the one time I was not meticulous with my saves is the one time I needed it (steel horror ending - for sure I saw it in the mission list at some point, but apparently I gave a meal ticket to miki on exactly the last turn it was available, and didn't save).

 

[Jason Liang]

Is.... this optional? I lost the first fight and then won with Rizna, thought this was a mandatory win. Do you get double difficulity up if you win it immediately?

Yes, you get the extra difficulty up for beating Redeye immediately without Rizna.

For sure this is true, especially since double suppression means a lot less regular fights, and therefore a lot less loot. But I didn't feel like I had the dps for most of the double suppressions, and yet most of the game was trivial. So either I'm a savant at easy fights or the difficulty is a bit whack.

The game probably assumes that if you lost to Redeye, its your first time playing the game, and if you beat Redeye, you know what you're doing (and want the extra challenge).

My first time experience I had the extra difficulty up from double suppressing Medusa, and I found many parts of Free Cities 2 quite challenging (not Pi-R himself ofc).

In addition to double suppression, there are some other optional side challenges that give an extra difficulty up. For example, there is a difficulty up if you climbed Dragon Mountain in Free Cities 2.

Also it seems the one time I was not meticulous with my saves is the one time I needed it (steel horror ending - for sure I saw it in the mission list at some point, but apparently I gave a meal ticket to miki on exactly the last turn it was available, and didn't save).

That was what I was alluding to in an earlier post:D

You're right that normal mobs in the game don't offer any challenge, but the game does have a lot of bosses, mini-bosses and side quest bosses to make up for it, and they do require strategizing and experimenting from a large pool of characters to beat. To beat certain bosses at higher difficult levels you will have to raise exp on specific characters, nations, etc...

 

[Jaedar]

In addition to double suppression, there are some other optional side challenges that give an extra difficulty up. For example, there is a difficulty up if you climbed Dragon Mountain in Free Cities 2.

I did do that one, but it was like turn 13. I did like that optional challenge, but even that I beat mostly without thinking with half a health bar to spare (but I did have to use the holy heal from monster girl, so it wasn't trivial).

You're right that normal mobs in the game don't offer any challenge, but the game does have a lot of bosses, mini-bosses and side quest bosses to make up for it, and they do require strategizing and experimenting from a large pool of characters to beat. To beat certain bosses at higher difficult levels you will have to raise exp on specific characters, nations, etc...

Maybe, I am bad, but in my experience some bosses do require special tactics (like medusa), but I never felt like I needed to raise xp on a certain character aside from just generic "this guy is good at deeps, let's level him!".

But for sure the minibosses and the like are the highlight of the game. I think my absolute highlight was the "win these 4 fights in 7 turns or less" challenge. I wish the game had more "endurance" challenges of that sort and the mountain top, and relied less on "kill this one encounter in 5 turns or less".

Yes, you get the extra difficulty up for beating Redeye immediately without Rizna.

Damn, I remembered that path as not joining back up with the regular path. Seems like shooting yourself in the foot then, unless that chest is reaaaaallllyyy good.

 

[Jason Liang]

Afaik you also didn't get to do "By the Sea" which is a pretty good challenge for most players' first time through, and more of an "endurance" challenge as you have in mind.

What I really like about Rance X (besides the boss fights and the story) is the design choice to have auto-scaling difficulty (and also having "easy" versions of each boss). It let AliceSoft publish a game that was both easy enough for more casual players that just want to see the story to the finish (which you haven't done yet!), while also be challenging and replayable for autists (and a lot of jrpg players are definitely autistic). It's the ultimate fan-service - everyone goes home a winner. I've seen many Kayblis fights on youtube, and they tend to come down to a final "do or die" turn - the holy grail of a finely-tuned rpg fight. Its an admirable and elegant achievement, and its only possible because the game fine-tunes itself across 10-13 turns to match your specific ability+roster strength sweetspot.

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rance-series.76507/page-68#post-6000908

https://twitter.com/hanny_king/status/1090358229312229377

TADA likes three types of games:
-The 'Being able to find the optimal solution while under restriction' type
-The 'Enjoy yourself by entrusting everything to the RNG' type
-The 'Will definitely advance if you spend time working on it' type
That's how he mostly makes his games and wonders how many or which to make into his game.

Rance X's design in a nutshell

 

[Jaedar]

Afaik you also didn't get to do "By the Sea" which is a pretty good challenge for most players' first time through, and more of an "endurance" challenge as you have in mind.

Ayup. Current plan is to get

Spoiler

- Steel horror (have a save now where I am on the first square in the mission, hopefully there are no further requirements)
- All countries dead (should be pretty easy to fast forward a few turns, might skip the reading if it gets depressing)
- From the sea. I'll probably have to properly replay at least one full turn for this, which will take a while, but I doubt I want to face it with the power deficit of having skipped a turn.
Probably in that order, then start thinking about NG+. I also did 5 of the after quests (but the remaining two I can choose from now are difficulty level 20, and a bit too hard)

As I was reloading and replaying though, I noticed just how awful my party was back on turn 8 (or maybe my standards for what is good have shifted).

story to the finish (which you haven't done yet!)

Is this referring to the ever mysterious part 2, or something else?

Its an admirable and elegant achievement, and its only possible because the game fine-tunes itself across 10-13 turns to match your specific ability+roster strength.

It's not bad.

 

[Jason Liang]

You probably need to start a save from turn 2 to get "All countries dead."

 

[Jaedar]

You probably need to start a save from turn 2 to get "All countries dead."

Nah, was able to easily do it from a turn 10 save. Just needed to fast forward 3 turns.

Japanese swat teams are really strong though. Very patriotic. 2 stronk for me, at least if I just skip forward after turn 8 split, but probably doable if I engage in some shenanigans with difficulty manipulation, but that will require replaying a few turns.

 

[Jaedar]

You probably need to start a save from turn 2 to get "All countries dead."

Nah, was able to easily do it from a turn 10 save. Just needed to fast forward 3 turns.

Japanese swat teams are really strong though. Very patriotic. 2 stronk for me, at least if I just skip forward after turn 8 split, but probably doable if I engage in some shenanigans with difficulty manipulation, but that will require replaying a few turns.

^-- this fellow is a fool who forgot that the sleep spell existed. Easy win. Now for from the sea...

Also just realized today I was running the game at version 1.00, and patched to 1.04. It seems I accidentally reset my after mode progress, and somehow some lines I hadn't seen in steel horror got marked as seen anyway? But it doesn't seem to have impacted from the sea... Something weird is going on.

 

[TigerKnee]

Installing a patch does completely fuck up your "seen text", which was annoying back in the day and you definitely should have avoided it in 2022.

 

[Jaedar]

Installing a patch does completely fuck up your "seen text", which was annoying back in the day and you definitely should have avoided it in 2022.

Is there a way to reset it? I don't read moonrunes that well.

Edit: You can delete the "MsgSkip.msk" file in your save directory to reset it.

 

[Nostaljaded]

Reposting from tieba
twitter @Tragicrhyme based in Hokkaido, a lot more drawings over there

 

[Jaedar]

This from the sea mission is pretty serious.

Spoiler

Delete more than half my team(permanently?!), AND two difficulty ups in a single quest?
The raidboss fight was pretty nice, but a bit tedious. Dealing 95% of it's hp in basically only poison and curse damage took a while.

 

[Jaedar]

And that's A ending get.

Spoiler

I'm sure Kayblis would have been hard if I didn't have 8 ap generation per turn. Basically just did super poison opening, and then slammed him with 12 combo hornet every other turn. Rance didn't even get to participate, because his brutal attack just isn't up to snuff. I think this makes Rance X the first game where I don't use Rance for the final boss battle.

Also lol at this epilogue "unified humanity without the use of violence" :D

From the sea was pretty great in general though. It already felt like it went to 11 when it permanently removed half my squad in the first part(especially as I previously complained about characters being available when plotwise, they shouldn't be), and then started chipping away at my meagre remaining forces in the second part. It was perhaps too severe, as there was no way I believed the game expected me to beat the final boss with the mere dozen characters I had remaining at the first encounter with big K. Still, it was a really good ride.

That epilogue cliffhanger though. This isn't cool at all. But I need a break from this game.

 

[Jason Liang]

And that's A ending get.

Spoiler

I'm sure Kayblis would have been hard if I didn't have 8 ap generation per turn. Basically just did super poison opening, and then slammed him with 12 combo hornet every other turn. Rance didn't even get to participate, because his brutal attack just isn't up to snuff. I think this makes Rance X the first game where I don't use Rance for the final boss battle.

Also lol at this epilogue "unified humanity without the use of violence" :D

From the sea was pretty great in general though. It already felt like it went to 11 when it permanently removed half my squad in the first part(especially as I previously complained about characters being available when plotwise, they shouldn't be), and then started chipping away at my meagre remaining forces in the second part. It was perhaps too severe, as there was no way I believed the game expected me to beat the final boss with the mere dozen characters I had remaining at the first encounter with big K. Still, it was a really good ride.

That epilogue cliffhanger though. This isn't cool at all. But I need a break from this game.

There is a reward for beating Kayblis without Shariela (if you chose to bully Kaybnyan in Shangri-la - and you also need Merim Tser). You certainly don't need Shariela to beat Kayblis if you want the challenge :D

 

[Jaedar]

And that's A ending get.

Spoiler

I'm sure Kayblis would have been hard if I didn't have 8 ap generation per turn. Basically just did super poison opening, and then slammed him with 12 combo hornet every other turn. Rance didn't even get to participate, because his brutal attack just isn't up to snuff. I think this makes Rance X the first game where I don't use Rance for the final boss battle.

Also lol at this epilogue "unified humanity without the use of violence" :D

From the sea was pretty great in general though. It already felt like it went to 11 when it permanently removed half my squad in the first part(especially as I previously complained about characters being available when plotwise, they shouldn't be), and then started chipping away at my meagre remaining forces in the second part. It was perhaps too severe, as there was no way I believed the game expected me to beat the final boss with the mere dozen characters I had remaining at the first encounter with big K. Still, it was a really good ride.

That epilogue cliffhanger though. This isn't cool at all. But I need a break from this game.

There is a reward for beating Kayblis without Shariela (if you chose to bully Kaybnyan in Shangri-la - and you also need Merim Tser). You certainly don't need Shariela to beat Kayblis if you want the challenge :D

After the slog that was the rest of the mission, I really don't mind
And I loathe kaymeow and kaywoof.