Rance Series

[Jaedar]

Rance games are rpgs produced by a team of hardcore rpg fans, so they wanted to try their hand at every genre within the genre even if some of them don't quite succeed (like RQ and Rance IX).

Rance 8 and 9 are considered bad ?

 

[TheEntitledOne]

Gameplay of 8 is a massive grindfest, and before the expansion it was even worse and didn't even have a plot.
Gameplay of 9 is just too simplistic, they could have done a proper TRPG.

 

[lightbane]

Another thing that's curious about Rance is that I don't think there's another series that just switches genres like nobody's bussiness. First two games resembled a text adventure more than an RPG, then there were some regular JRPG entries, then suddenly grand strategy with Kichikuou, then RNG cancer with 5D (seriously, what the hell was that), then a blobber... A pretty unique approach to an IP, I think.

Rance is so cultured he can work in any genre. Or the devs wanted to try new things.

. Some might argue that the lack of character creation disqualifies it, but, see, this is not actually true – character creation system would be purely redundant in this game, as every (sane) person would just create Rance every single time anyway.

Funnily enough Rance does grow and change between games to a degree, becoming somewhat nicer compared to his older self as time passes.

 

[thesecret1]

Funnily enough Rance does grow and change between games to a degree, becoming somewhat nicer compared to his older self as time passes.

Dunno, if you compare Rance 1 and Rance 5D, Rance just became a bigger asshole as the time went

 

[Jacob]

I think Rance reached peak douchebaggery in VI and got soft in Sengoku Rance.

 

[thesecret1]

I think Rance reached peak douchebaggery in VI and got soft in Sengoku Rance.

Nah, he was softer in VI. Aside from being the shittiest in the series, I also remember 5D having the douchiest Rance (although 4.1 with Operation Pervert Bird is a close contender). Just remember what he did to Feliss, for example. In Rance 6, it was the setting that got a lot darker, but Rance himself was nicer.

 

[Average Manatee]

Rance from 1->5 is just getting more competent at being an asshole.

 

[Bohrain]

Destroying the pedophile orphanage is the point where Rance starts softening up.

 

[lightbane]

He also gets softer once he meets his daughter Reset in Rance 8/Rance Quest according to the wiki, culminating with a pretty much self-less act in Rance X against all odds. He also would literally take over the world to save Sill if she was in danger.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Rance going soft is a dark thing indeed, my friends.

 

[Nostaljaded]

Gameplay of 8 is a massive grindfest, and before the expansion it was even worse and didn't even have a plot.
Gameplay of 9 is just too simplistic, they could have done a proper TRPG.

Expanding on TheEntitledOne's comment,

Rance VIII is a clickfest; strongly recommend to spread out playtime with other non-mouse games to prevent mouse-related RSI (Repetitive Stress Injury).
- Point-and-click skill activation in combat by adopting Rance VI gameplay with a larger mouse click area
- Drag-and-drop for active skill switching due to limited skills usage & party member switches upon skills depletion


Rance IX is short enough to push through to the 1st ending with its below-average tactical combat but likely to become unbearable before reaching the True Ending.
- Minor enhanced version of Mamatoto, with Speed stat used for turn order within a single turn
- Battle maps are non-scrollable, aka small and cramped

 

[Damned Registrations]

I remember being interested in Rance X when it came out, I'm a sucker for card game/deck builders. What's the status on that translation wise? Everyone was playing a machine translation or something? Is that still all there is, how soon is a proper translation coming out, how do you do the machine translation thing?

 

[Nostaljaded]

Machine translators are mainly used as a weak-form dialog translation, frequently producing nonsensical translations.
Hence it's meant for those having zero knowledge to play that particular language eroge VNs.

As for games with combat (which will unlikely have machine translations during combat screen), one will need their language level to be at least 2nd/3rd grader to understand and then able to deal with each challenge.

I play Rance series for his exploits adventures and the large cast's side stories, aka Rance storyfag.
If you can't do the following in the screenshots below, best to wait for (a few more years on) the official translation.

Screenshots

Decipher Rance X characters' skill descriptions
ENG translators have to be really creative to squeeze all the necessary info in such a small area.

Decide the best current action due to multiple choices within limited turns
And use previous playthroughs' meta-knowledge for opening up yet-to-experienced branching routes

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Damn the writing in Sengoku Rance is pretty sweet, very to the point and funny, having a blast ( ) with the game. Thanks top 101 list

 

[TigerKnee]

https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/projectbook/190801a

Interview with TADA. Quite long and detailed. Hopefully someone will translate it

 

[TigerKnee]

https://hannylaboratory.blogspot.com/2019/07/18.html

Another bonaza for Japanese readers - TADA has released the original draft notes for Sengoku Rance, annotated with his comments. For those unaware, Sengoku Rance was originally intended to be a "regular" linear RPG like R6 rather than the Grand Scale Strategy game that it was eventually developed into and the original scenario was quite different. Instead of joining the Oda house, Rance instead joins Takeda as a Kagemusha (Body double) for Shingen as the original was killed.

 

[KingDoofus]

I remember being interested in Rance X when it came out, I'm a sucker for card game/deck builders. What's the status on that translation wise? Everyone was playing a machine translation or something? Is that still all there is, how soon is a proper translation coming out, how do you do the machine translation thing?

I had a lot of fun with the deck building gameplay in Rance X, especially when you have to deal with decks having certain factions and having to choose within them. You can only have one active card from the Leazas faction in use (unless you take a turn to switch them), but each card you get for Leazas strengthens the active card and different cards from different factions can synergize with each other well. Then decisions you make during the war phase basically dictate which of your factions is going to get strengthened. Gameplay wise, it's probably the Rance game I enjoy the most (story's kinda great too).

Now for the bad news: machine translation is all we've got for awhile. Arunaru is working on the translation now although as I understand it, it literally has more text than any other Japanese game ever released and it's not really close (here's a link, https://gamia-archive.gamepedia.com/List_of_longest_video_game_scripts). Even when he does finish translating it - probably a year away at best - then it has to be edited and the game itself has to have its graphics edited. And then Mangagamer has to find the right time to release it. Since this game basically closes the series, they'll want to release every other Rance game first and that's about a half dozen games. So optimistically, I'd say the game is 2-4 years away from an official release. If Sengoku is a money making monster in sales, maybe closer to 2.

The good news is that the game is playable if you want to fuck around with translation tools, though it's far from ideal. Visual Nover Reader (VNR) can give a serviceable translation of the game - I speak no Japanese and understood the game fine with it (though I was often re-translating things in my head and familiarity with the series helps). Some text won't be translated by it, but if you use an OCR program (Optical Character Recogition) with it that'll usually cover the rest. I used Capture2Text and had few problems.

(That probably sounds daunting, but you'll be comfortable using Capture2Text in 5 minutes and VNR in 10 or less)

There's also the Rance X forum on the Codex which talks a lot about gameflow and gives informal translations to things that would trip you up. It's work. But I think it's worth it.

(But the more sensible option is probably to wait).

 

[thesecret1]

MangaGamer is supposedly about quarter done with Rance X. Then again, they've been "100% done" with Sengoku like a year ago, and it's still not out, so I'd take their estimate with a heavy dosage of salt.

 

[Jason Liang]

I remember being interested in Rance X when it came out, I'm a sucker for card game/deck builders. What's the status on that translation wise? Everyone was playing a machine translation or something? Is that still all there is, how soon is a proper translation coming out, how do you do the machine translation thing?

Since I've discovered how to do text-to-voice Japanese to Chinese machine translation, it's not hard for me to actually translate Japanese -> Chinese -> English. I completed a full translation of all the non-H scenes in the first three chapters of Rance IX in about 2 days for instance.

If there's demand and I have time, I could try to do an English playthrough for Rance X and people could just follow that as they're playing. Otherwise, there's enough resources here and on the alicesoft wiki to figure out how to play, how to read the cards, without much problem. With machine Japanese -> English translation you'll get a rough sense of the story (it's pretty straightforward) but you'll be confused a lot of the time as well. You also need some familiarity with the characters and places so that you can recognize names from the garbled machine translation (Rear--> Lia ---- very confusing! especially i think there are jokes about Lia's ass).

The biggest thing you'll be missing are the meal ticket events. But unfortunately that's also a huge chunk of the enjoyment of the story, is learning the fate of each character from these.

Anyway we have guides to how to set-up VN Reader, if you want to give it a go on your own, I'd recommend playing around with the setup yourself first and then asking more specific questions here. There's also a text-hook code for Rance X now.

If you partially know Chinese or Korean, it's probably better to download the Chinese or Korean translations and go with that. The Chinese is complete afaik except perhaps for H-Scenes and Meal Tickets. No clue about Korean but I assume there are Korean autists as well. TigerKnee

 

[KingDoofus]

Here's a link from 4chan's Haniho thread that gives further links to helpful information on how to play the game - Gameplay Explanation, VNR Guide, Cards Lists, and Portraits:

https://pastebin.com/Np8rfwTg

 

[Bohrain]

I used google and atlas simultaneously for X so I got the gist of what was going on. But capture2text didn't work so well for the tiny font on some of the skill descriptions and some speech patterns like Miracle's chuuni lingo comes out as pure gibberish. I'll definitely play it again once a proper translation is out.

MangaGamer is supposedly about quarter done with Rance X. Then again, they've been "100% done" with Sengoku like a year ago, and it's still not out, so I'd take their estimate with a heavy dosage of salt.

They can do the raw translation pretty fast, but the problem is that MangaGamer has next to no staff who can hack the game together so that it still works with latin characters. Alicesoft's games are not very translation friendly from a technical viewpoint.

 

[Jason Liang]

I used google and atlas simultaneously for X so I got the gist of what was going on. But capture2text didn't work so well for the tiny font on some of the skill descriptions and some speech patterns like Miracle's chuuni lingo comes out as pure gibberish. I'll definitely play it again once a proper translation is out.

MangaGamer is supposedly about quarter done with Rance X. Then again, they've been "100% done" with Sengoku like a year ago, and it's still not out, so I'd take their estimate with a heavy dosage of salt.

They can do the raw translation pretty fast, but the problem is that MangaGamer has next to no staff who can hack the game together so that it still works with latin characters. Alicesoft's games are not very translation friendly from a technical viewpoint.

Yes. Something that kept throwing me off when using VNR until I figured it out is that all the Chinese translations still use Japanese unicode, not Chinese or English unicode. It's just that the Chinese characters are available in Japanese unicode. So keep that in mind if you use a Chinese translation.

Also imo Chinese --> English machine transltion is more legible than Japanese --> English by a bit.

 

[KingDoofus]

I used google and atlas simultaneously for X so I got the gist of what was going on. But capture2text didn't work so well for the tiny font on some of the skill descriptions and some speech patterns like Miracle's chuuni lingo comes out as pure gibberish. I'll definitely play it again once a proper translation is out.

MangaGamer is supposedly about quarter done with Rance X. Then again, they've been "100% done" with Sengoku like a year ago, and it's still not out, so I'd take their estimate with a heavy dosage of salt.

They can do the raw translation pretty fast, but the problem is that MangaGamer has next to no staff who can hack the game together so that it still works with latin characters. Alicesoft's games are not very translation friendly from a technical viewpoint.

That's strange, I had almost no problems with Capture2Text on the small card text when the game came out. It has gone through several updates since the release of X, maybe there was a period it wasn't working well. Hopefully it works better now.

You're right about the translation only being a small part of the release process. Then they have to edit it. Then program it into the game. Then redo pictures that feature Japanese. Then test it. Then figure out how a release works into their sales schedule. The half a dozen other things I can't think of. It's a long way away.

Mangagamer has Doddler working on game hacking stuff and he's pretty good at it (he even redrew the penises in Evenicle after everyone noticed how fucking weird they looked after being de-censored). But I have no idea who else is working for them who does that stuff (if anyone at all).

 

[thesecret1]

Then program it into the game.

Isn't that usually just replacing japanese text with english in the game files? It worked that way when I tried translating games from english to my language, or modded games. Text was usually separate from source code, in assets, and changing it was as simple as just deleting the original line and writing the translation there.

 

[Jaedar]

MangaGamer is supposedly about quarter done with Rance X. Then again, they've been "100% done" with Sengoku like a year ago, and it's still not out, so I'd take their estimate with a heavy dosage of salt.

I think they have previously said they intentionally delay and stagger releases, because they think the market is small and they don't want to risk flooding it. Not sure how likely that is, but they might have seen some flooding tendency in their sales.

They can do the raw translation pretty fast, but the problem is that MangaGamer has next to no staff who can hack the game together so that it still works with latin characters. Alicesoft's games are not very translation friendly from a technical viewpoint.

Do they still do their stuff in non-unicode formats? That seemed dumb to me even in sengoku, do be doing it still seems really strange.