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Rance Series

Sunri

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Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Hell, it's about time.

:d1p:

The worst part about playing the japanese games is that the names in english start bother you. Russian Galette? Miracle Tor?
What's wrong with Miracle sounds cool :?
ミラクル・トー
The miracle part is fine, I just don't know where they found the r in her last name. If you follow the schema of just translating the phonetics it should be Miracle Toe.

I'll probably try and finish IV before this releases, there are a bunch of helmans in that game after all...
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Patch to a game from 1993 they doubled xp and reduced monster encounters damm i played on the hardest difficulty :smug:
https://hannylaboratory.blogspot.com/2023/01/blog-post_26.html
Wonder how long it will take for someone to port the english translation to this.

The post also confirms there are no plans for 04 at this time. Which was fairly obvious from the fact that it hasn't happened already, but nice to see it officially I guess.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Imagine a man looping through menus to buy 50 Seirogan 2's. You may not like it, but that is what peak ranceIV performance looks like.
 
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Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
So for a RanceIV "review".

I know the game is old ('93 is venerable), but that can only excuse so much.

TADA says it well himself:
Weapons and Armor
Except for Rance, you don't need to pay much attention.
The items sold in the stores are all half-baked, so there is no need to force yourself to buy them.
 My recommendation is to set only Rance or Sill to manual control [and let everyone else be on autopilot]
The game is very old and the progression of the game is not very easy to understand.
Even for the final fight, I had all characters except Rance on auto, and I only needed to keep him on manual so I could stuff his face with seirogans (item use being a free action means there is 0 challenge). The game is really painful to control with dropdowns that move around as you click them, having to go up and down 20 different submenus to compare stats of different weapons is just baffling. And it has that really old school design with lots of identical graphical elements that are repeated 50 times, but one of them is quest important.

The soundtrack is pretty cool though, lots of catchy tunes. For the artstyle I really didn't like it at first, but it kinda grew on me, although some CG's just look awful. I prefer this version of Merim over the later ones, she actually looks like an adult and not a midget.

I think I will be happy for having played this come rance9, already there was some "ohoho, so this is the first time [] was introduced". Although I am also retroactively disappointed by how mediocre toushin are in X. I hope Paraffin has a large role in 9, I feel the whole "sect goes insane and declares war on humanity" could be really interesting to flesh out.

I was surprised at how quickly Athenas creation happened, considering how the later games treat how unique she is. But I guess this is just how the older games went, they were a lot briefer than the more modern titles. Also surprising to me was how little Rance has changed, I was always told he was way more evil in the old games, but I really didn't get that feeling here. He shows concern for cute women, considers men to be at best beneath his contempt and secretly wuvs Sill.

Now to detox from Rance until 9 comes out.
 

Sunri

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I wish they would make new game with tactical combat similar to IV just balance it out but looking at Helman revolution i don't think they are capable of it lol
 

Jaedar

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I wish they would make new game with tactical combat similar to IV just balance it out but looking at Helman revolution i don't think they are capable of it lol
Have you tried fire emblem? I think some of them have fairly elaborate stories. No H though, if you think that is required.
In my opinion "free movement actions on a square grid with no zone of control" is a fundamentally bad way of handling tactics, it makes positioning almost meaningless.
 

Sunri

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I wish they would make new game with tactical combat similar to IV just balance it out but looking at Helman revolution i don't think they are capable of it lol
Have you tried fire emblem? I think some of them have fairly elaborate stories. No H though, if you think that is required.
In my opinion "free movement actions on a square grid with no zone of control" is a fundamentally bad way of handling tactics, it makes positioning almost meaningless.
Yea i played them and i think similar approach would work in the rance series with relationship mechanics and tactical combat they would they to replace triangle system with something else tho
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
怠惰な白人...

At this rate, the world will end before they get Rance X out.
I blame people who pirate.

(Not entirely in jest either, the average mangagamer release apparantly sells like 5-10k copies, so each lost sale probably has a pretty big impact on the bottom line).

Also I can't believe we have such a celebrity on this site!
 

Terra

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Can't believe I nearly missed the release of IX, been waiting for what seems like ages and I must have missed an alert for this thread. Just preordered, can't wait.
 

Sunri

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Unfortunately, translation won't change the fact that this game is shit second-worst title in the series.
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Those wankers need to invest on some better swervers, I am only getting ~500 kb/s ffffssssahghgh!
Yeah, I'm getting 668 kb/s. 2 hours to download 3 GB, is this '99 or what?
Unfortunately, translation won't change the fact that this game is shit second-worst title in the series.
Which is the worst in your opinion?

I'm still excite. This is the last canonical rance game for me, and I'm sure there will be lots of good story events.


I bet this is why they delayed the release for 6 months.
 

Maxie

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does anyone have a readme with keyboard bindings or something
I'd like to map them for the controller
 

Jaedar

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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
does anyone have a readme with keyboard bindings or something
I'd like to map them for the controller
There doesn't seem to be great keybinds in general and the game is 100% mouse based, not sure how you'd map it to a controller.

I played Rance9 enough now to unlock the hoverfort, so I guess some initial impressions:

It's not as bad as Sunri makes it out to be. But it certainly feels like it's in the worse half of rance games. Combat is a square grid, free movement with one attack per turn, no zone of control (a cardinal sin for this type of combat in my opinion), and a shared 'special attack' resource. Most maps will deploy a lot of enemies, and you'll have a pretty large squad yourself, but there's really not much strategy or tactics to it so far. You gain more HMP if you deploy fewer/worse troops, but it seems HMP is 100% bottlenecked by HM stones, so there's no reason to try and max it (nvm, im dumb, the structures are consumables).

The game is also 100% linear with no exploration to speak of, and I doubt this will change. Story seems to be laser focused on helman military+ruling caste, hopefully there will be some fleshing out of helman culture and non-military institutions, but it doesn't look like it.
 
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