識を超えどんな不可能をも可能にする力男の識名はランス (My love letter to the Rance Series)
This is a translation of my original text published in portuguese and some changes, especially in the more in depth part, if you read my portuguese text maybe you can find other things here
Rance is a franchise which I’ve been playing for around 2 years. I start at the end of 2022 and now in the middle of 2024 I have finished the final title of the series, Rance X, which unfortunately until the publication date of this text don’t have a translation. I will make a resume for those who don’t know or start the series yet.
Start of resume
Before anything i have to warn you, this franchise have sensitive topics like rape, abuse and other things, so it will not be for everyone.
Rance is a eroge franchise, published and developed from the japanese company Alicesoft, with the first title of the series being launched in 07/15/1989, making Rance one of the oldest rpg franchises of the story. With 10 games, 3 remakes, one alternative final game, the series finish in 2018 with his last title, Rance X Showdown (ランス 10ー決戦).
Besides Rance I being the first, the truly first game of the series is Little Princess, being launched 2 years before. Presenting some major characters like Kentarou, Miki and the Archfiend Gai who in the game is disguised as Dracula, with Miki being a central character in the series after this game, tu into the Archfiend Little Princess (I will explain what is a Archfiend later).
We follow the adventures of Rance and Sill Plain for the continent, the first two games are a more closed adventure with the third and after starting work and develop more the worldbuilding of the game, this being an important aspect of the series.
Rance are very influential to the fantasy genre, in specific Isekai, you can notice this in Mushoku Tensei, Re:Zero and others, but his influence can be seen even in Touhou as you can see in this image.
End of the resume
Nomenclatures and terminology
Monsters and demons have different names in japanese which is 魔物 (evil being) for monsters and 悪魔 (this word is normally use to demon-like creatures) for demons, this is important because the monster realm and the demon realm are two completely different things.
Dark Lord/魔人 (majin) are servants of the Archfiend. They are immortals to time and practically invulnerable to anything with some exception are get hitted to the Dark Sword Chaos/Lightblade Nikkou, other Dark Lord or the hero sword Escudo.
The Archfiend/Demon King/魔王 (maou) are the leader of the Monster Realm, strongest being of the continent beside high class gods and his orders are literally absolute, none Dark Lord/魔人 nor any monster can negate.
Now I will start talking about things that make me like this franchise.
How this mixes gameplay elements, worldbuilding and ero is interesting, everything is connected and is essential to how things work. Like the Morurun system em Rance Quest, which every time you have sex with a character their level will go down to 1 but at same time they will absorb the property of an item, making sex an important aspect of the gameplay at same time it is interconnected with the plot. other good exemples are Kichikuou Rance and Sengoku Rance, I will explain the first later but for Sengoku making sex is important to get more events of a character and upgrade them.
How the story works is another thing I like, even in the older games like Rance III already have a certain level of complexity, nothing big but interesting, expanding more with the passage of time, bringing more character, concepts and conflicts to the table. Discussions about exploration of vulnerable people for profit (like the pedophile scheme in Rance VI), social inequality, class conflict and usage of religion to manipulate people. Exploring how destructive and cruel this world can be, Rance is a cruel person, but this world is such a mess that he is a chaotic but good presence for this world, because of how strong he is and having a (distorted) moral which makes him helping people (for self interest of course) and even changing the status quo of a nation.
Talking about Rance, he is an amazing character, he is a selfish, hedonist and brutal person, only caring about himself and his uncontrollable lust but as I say before, he really is at his own merit a hero. His strange morality gerates very funny moments and is one of charms of the character, like when he banned rape, cheating, incest and pedophilia in Kichikuou Rance, but he can rape and fuck a woman of another person. The series doesn’t justify or try to clean up his acts, he is a horrible person and they know. various characters don’t like or are worried about his behaviors even if they help or are helped by him, his actions are punished too like the motive of why he has a morurun curse in Rance Quest.
The relationship with Sill, his slave, is my favorite in the series. He has other relationships with other heroines that I can make entire texts about but I will talk only about them. Rance and her love eachother but Rance don’t admit this, he love all the womens in the world so it’s is impossible to him fell in love with his own slave, being a kind of a Tsundere and Sill have a Stockholm syndrome, she really see him as a good person and master besides all the abuse he make with her, their relationship is for me the most beautiful in the series.
The variety of gameplay style is kinda high, you can find SRPGS, tradicional rpgs, dungeon crawlers, a rng based, a skill based party member system, even a card game which is a strategy game and sometimes emulates a more traditional rpg, you can always be surprised playing this games, in good and in bad ways. About the bad ones, I can mention the orbs system of Rance VI and IX. God, this system is horrible, most of the time being a time eater or simply annoying, I have to finish Rance IX about 4 times to get all the endings because of this stupid system. Another one is the rng system of Rance 5d, oh my god this fucking sucks and makes this game very annoying because it’s all luck based, don’t depending the player’s ability but simple if the roulette or the dices will fuck you or not.
The difficulty curve of certain titles like Rance X, Kichikuou Rance and Rance VI can sometimes being hard or annoying, an example of this is the increasing difficult of the general/dark lord in Kichikuou Rance which most of the time is fair, but sometimes hard and the purple mist in Rance X increasing the difficult everytime you pass them, turning most of the time making the game more annoying them effectively difficult.
Now I will enter in the spoiler section, but I will warning you about which game is being covered and it will follow the order of the games, so i will start with rance I and end with Rance X
Rance I-4.2
This is the start of the series, presenting core parts of the story and worldbuilding like Leazas, Helman, Dark Lords, Archfiends, The Holy Magic Sect and more importantly, Rance and his slave Sill.
Certain events and characters will be important in the future like Patton Helman/Minarge, the fall of Ylapu, the seventh Leazas-Helman war, the witches of custom, especially Maria and Shizuka, etc.
The first game is more a adventure text based, the second a traditional rpg of his time and the third is a mix of dungeon crawler and strategy game. They three have been remade in Rance 01, 02 and 03, with 01, 03 expanding their original games story and add a new gameplay style, 02 is the safest and first remake of them, changing practically nothing besides a remade optional script know as Rance 02 kai, playing exactly like the original Rance II.
A certain major plot I like is how Lia turn obsessed with Rance after being violate by him in the end of Rance I, Lia as a character overall is very interesting but her obsession with him are very what catch me the most, she literally giving her entire realm to him in Kichikuou Rance is very romantic and stupid thing to do which resumes her very well.
Rance 03
I want to talk about him alone because he is a perfect example of how to make a remake, i already think rance 01 as a close perfect remake but this is another level, this not only a retell and expends the events of Rance 03, but add a whole new perspective of the events, with the change of POV of Rance to another characters, enriching the plot and helping to develop more character like the three 魔人. Talking about them, Aizel grows so much in this game, he is already a cool character in the original Rance 03 but here is another level, he turns into one of my favorites Dark Lords in the series, his apostles are cool too.
The new voice acting is a thing I like very much, helping to give more emotion to scenes (especially the h ones) and setting more of the vibe of a character like Noce.
Gele having a real fight and not a gimmick increases her as well, she is a more cool (and hot) character than in the original game, i really love her new design.
Kichikuou Rance
This game helps Alicesoft to get out of a bankruptcy, is not only an ending of the series but a final love letter to those who are following the series and Alicesoft (the series has already 7 years at this time).
This game expands the worldbuild of the series and events here are used in posterior games, like the Helman arc, Kalar Forest, The church of AL (ALICE) and the monster vs humanity war. All the other nations who haven’t been presented until now are, Zeth, Japan and the Monster Realm, all of them being very unique.
How fucked this world is are very well explored in this game, being even mixed with the gameplay, like when you see Kinkaid and his subordinates raping Helmanian womens and Rance confronts him, giving the choice of kill him or not, if you kill him he will not be able to be used as a general, the difficult in this choice is, he is a very useful general because of his large number of troopes, very useful in defending cities, in the true ending too. Other socio-political themes are explored here as you can see in the Helman and Zeth arcs, contributing to make you feel how bad this world is.
I have commented earlier in the text that I will talk later about the sex elements in this game, now is the time. Some events of characters, including achievement of the true ending needed to have knowledge of character events to achieve sex scenes, for example, to get the true ending is necessary to have sex with Kouhime at least 5 times, this with other requisites makes the true ending available to the player, it’s interesting seeing the events to know more about the character and how get their h-scenes too.
The true ending is very beautiful, really worth of the difficult, the other endings are awesome too, in special the demon king ending with Rance turning into a brutal demon king after Sill’s death, and with the real ending of the game, have one of the most interesting characters of the series and the true culprit of the world chaos, Creator God Rudraussun.
Rudraussun is a God who lives for countless amounts of time, being a very bored person because of his immortality. He wants the world to be in chaos for his own entertainment, making more gods to maintain the world in a constant state of misery, Peace is boring. In some stances he is just like the player, what Rudraussum and us want is to see the disgrace and other things because it is fun and sometimes even funny.
Rance 5d
I don’t like this game and I don’t want to talk about it, so I have already told my main problem with this game which is the RNG system, but it has more ransil (Rance + Sill, it’s the name of their ship) content and presents Rizna who is a character I love, so yeah it has its merits.
Rance VI
This is for me the first new canon Rance game (it’s Rance 5D but this is where things are really explored and receive more depth).
Setted in the Magical Realm of Zeth it are in parts a adaptation of the Zeth Arc in Kichikuou Rance, obviously very different, but various key points and plots are reintroduce in this game like Shizuka sister, Nagi, Magic the Gandhi, some of the political hierarchy and slavery. This game is about most of the time, class struggle, with Zeth being divided into A citizens and B citizens, A being the mage elite of the nation and B the rest, it’s sometimes so uneven that it is cartoonish, with the A citizen literally promoting mass massacres, slavery, etc. Just because they can.
One of the interesting things is the revolutionary group, Ice Flame, headed by Urza Pranaice, they save Rance after Rance gets slaved by some random rich Zethian thinking Sill are her master, because of how social relations are in Zeth, this early part is very funny, have Patton and cause one of the first main motives of Rance helping this revolutionary group, which is finding Sill. Their relationship is kind of a hope for this revolutionary, because they can see mages don’t are untouchable, being able to revert the status quo. His Relationship with Urza and Rizna are very good too, Urza is one of the most touchable representations of someone with depression and trauma, for most of the game she is unable to move, thinking she lose her mobility after the attack of Zeth soldiers against her family, killing them all in front of her. Rance slowly gain control of Ice Flame because he is one of the only persons who get close to her and are in his way supportive, her get really emotional dependent of him, accepting his unreasonable order like cutting most of the male soldiers, attacks that obviously will go wrong and even allying with Pendragon, the original revolutionary group and at same time the motive Ice Flame exist, they quit Pendragon because of how extremists they are, they want not equality but subjugation of the mages. Her regaining the ability of walking again is some of the most remarkable moments of this game, representing how she gets out of a trauma that literally doesn’t permit her to move, to help the people she likes and loves. Rizna as a friend of mine comment, represents very well how women’s bodies are perceived by society, she don’t like her body because she think it’s make some people see her like a object, being one of the Rance characters with least sexual design and more clothes of the series, she literally makes ritual to “cleanse” and “purify” her body because of the condition she have (she get aroused very easy), Rance sometimes tries to help her but he is so horny and stupid to understand her situation, making situations even worse.
Dark Rance, son of Rance and Feliss, raises some interesting themes, like how the social system of the Demon Realm works. Rance really makes Feliss’s life a mess, she progressively get more lower in the social status because of his action, culminating in her scene in Rance VI which until now i don’t know you can miss, this is such a sad thing because not only are a very impactful scene but is important to Feliss and Dark Rance development, this scene explaining why Dark Rance hates Rance so much (being a absent father are already a good motive to be honest).
I already talk about how stupid the orb system is so i will don’t extend here, but making this not be accumulative is one of the most boring things in this game because the max you can get at time is three, if you get more them this you will lost a orb, what makes this game sometimes a painful experience.
Sengoku Rance
This is the first entry of many people to the Rance series, being the first to be translated to the west. Set in JAPAN, this game besides being a sequel to Rance VI, can be played without playing the other six games. Most of his characters are unique to this game, only some character’s’ events and other minor things are cited in this game, obviously you will have a much more enjoying experience if you play the six games before but you can play this first if you want, because this game is so good, having for me one of the three better gameplay in the series (with Rance X and Kichikuou) so if a person i see that have a interest in the series but I know will not like Rance 01 or will play until this game, I’m have a inclination to recommend this game.
This game have very beautiful and impactful moments like when Sill get freeze by Little Princess, most of them are in the other routes which is the most cool part of the game too, the first route don’t are even the best part of the game. But, it’s not as good as some other stories to me and it’s ok because the gameplay is engaging, the character’s interactions, events and other things are awesome too, it’s cool to see more develop of Mike and Kentarou too.
Rance Quest
This is the game i get more surprised in the series, in first stance I wasn’t liking this so much but after getting months without playing and restart a run (i have lost my save and it’s why i postergate this to months) i really get fished by the game, even the grinding aspects are somehow getting more fun to me (i will not start this game to the zero again, at least in five years).
This is the most funny game of all in the Rance series. I really get very good moments in this game, especially because it is Rance traveling the world and getting requests. Add the morurun curse on this and you have some of the most fun stories in the series. I will never forgive them for killing Milli that way, it’s really something I get really pissed at this.
This are at same time a deepening of the Kalar Forest and The Church of ALICE, with the main game being focused in the Kalar forest and travels of Rance in the world and the expansion called “Magnum” is a story about the Church serving as a finale to the game too.
Talking about the final I prefer the original Rance Quest final, because of how sad he is. In the end they have the same result but the Magnum is more hopeful, Rance really get Sill out of the ice so he see it is possible, but in the original, he can’t, so he expend his days in a sex spree to forget about don’t get possible to melt the ice that Sill are stuck and forcing Crook to lie about a item in Helman that can melt the Ice (connecting this to the next game which is about the Helmanian Revolution).
This game has my favorite villain in the series, Am Isuel. Even though I think the Rance x final boss is the most awesome villain of this franchise, he is nearly as good as her. How she acts, literally as a Shin Megami Tensei protagonist trying to dethrone Rudraussum even if it takes a massive amount of time (and it’s possible, i will not explain how) and her ideals are very interesting, she has a free space in my mind. Her parallels with Crook is very good, both don’t like Rudraussum and are making their decisions purely for their own sake, with Crook obeying ALICE and Rudraussum for the sake of Rance’s life and Am are fighting because she don’t like how the world works, literally corrupting souls and causes disasters only to make Rudraussum weaker
This commentary will have spoilers of Rance X, i will warn when it end
The conversation of her and Ho Raga in Rance X make me think how both are in despair because of knowing too much, but Ho Raga accept this by living a life of boredom and conformism, because he know too much, knowing that is practically impossible to challenge Rudraussum, Am on the other hand embrace the despair, knowing she maybe not will achieve nothing by making what she make, but she will make this anyway, even greeting Ho Raga for confirming that her plan is right, even it will get a immeasurable amount of time she start this not knowing if this will really work, i really love this event.
Commentary end
And this has the most cute and adorable character of the franchise, Reset Kalar. I really, really love her, the concept of her slap making people literally change their behavior is very cool too.
Rance IX
Rance IX is a game that I’m very divisive about. I really love this game but at the same time this is the most annoying and boring experience I have in this franchise. The story is very good, giving the best male cast of all franchise and really makes the Helman Arc of Kichikuou Rance but much better, at the same time expanding the Holy Magic Sect, Freak, Hubert and Patton.
Minerva and Stessel have so much glow up in this game, not only in appearance but as a characters too, both are turn into one of my favorite villains in the franchise, how cruel minerva is and how megalomaniac Stessel is making them very charming, both characters having the desire to govern but for different purpose, the Minerva death scene is very beautiful.
Patton is already my third favorite male character of the franchise at this time(only down to Chaos and Rance) but after this I started to love him much more, he is basically the main character in this game. All his journey and development in the franchise culminates in this game, with him being an asshole prince in Rance III to a revolutionary and humble man in Rance IX, he is a very good character in Rance VI too, having very funny and good moments with Rance. I can talk for hours about how the story, characters, and music of this game is good, but I need to talk about what I don’t like in this game.
As i said before i have to finish this game 4 times, because the system orb is horrible, it makes the game so annoying after the first run because you need to count how much orbs you have and can get before the last chapter, i really wish this game don’t have route, i like them but it’s get them all is such a boring and time eater task that makes me don’t like this game very much, still one of my favorite Rance but i don’t know, as i say it makes me have mixed feelings about this game.
Especially because this is a certain homage to Mamatoto with some acts, characters and other things getted from there, like Hubert design, some osts like Justice and Running to the Straight, the last boss, etc. But, Mamatoto has a much better gameplay and is very much fun overall. I don’t know how they make Rance IX so much worse than this game (I like the Rance IX story more).
Rance X
This is my favorite game of the series and the finale of this saga
I cannot put all what i think of this game because i will need another 4k words of text (or more) to put all what i think (I’m not good with long texts).
This game is the result of all of Rance’s merits in the last nine games, which makes him unify all nations not by force as in Kichikuou Rance but by connections he get between those games, like being the secret ruler of JAPAN, the lover of almost every world leader and other things. Another difference is the Monster Realm vs Human Nations has already started because in the prologue, Rance get freeze for 6 month after exploring a alien spacecraft and the Monster Army are already invading all human reigns (beside JAPAN which is isolated), it’s interesting how this game is more defensive them Kichikuou, in the sense that you will win the war gaining territory after territory in the monster realm, and in this game you will win the war defending yourself against the Dark Lords and their leader Kayblis.
Kayblis is a character that i don’t expect to be so good as he is in this game, is Kichikuou counterpart is cool but nothing more then this, him in Rance on other hands are for me, the definitive Rance rival and antagonist for Rance, I love Am but Kayblis is so symbolic in this game, he and Rance are very equal in certain things, both are leader of their nation that conquest their way to the top, but Rance are always strong, Kayblist not, Kayblis is born as a small and fragile creature, living in the struggle for thousand of years until turning the strongest Dark Lord to exist, this make him have a personality complex, for living in fear for a vast amount of time he is a coward beast, having self esteem problems, masking them in his arrogant manner which is very similar to Rance, both reference themself with 俺様 (the most arrogant way of calling yourself) and the “strongest”.
Kayblis allies are much better too, most of them receiving backstories and more development like Lei, Kesselring and Galtia, others are just cool or serve their purpose, like Balbolat, he is the most whatever Dark Lord of this game but he serves his purpose. I can talk about them another time.
And now I will start to talk about the character that most have I get brainrot about, Arios Theoman, the Hero.
As i say before, the world of Rance is fucked on purpose, and it’s hero too, the hero system basically cause more tragedy them saving, because of how the hero’s sword Escudo works. To Escudo gets more power the humanity population need to get reduced to a certain amount of people, in 50% of the total population of humanity lost, Escudo gets the power to defeat even the Archfiend, and so is the main objective of Arios, wait until 50% of humanity has dead. This is what makes me think about him because he don’t like it but he lost everything after the Monster invasion, being hunted by guilty of not killing the Archiefind Little Princess when he have the chance, now the only thing to get him alive is his idealism of saving the world and fulfill his purpose. He remembers me Emiya Shirou from Fate Stay/Night and Ayane Ichijou from Soukou Akki Muramasa. Both Ayane and Emiya try to achieve their idealism of Justice, even if them is a farce, but for Arios it is a guilty for not being able to do what he is destined, not able to fulfill their duty and because of this is loved ones dies in front of him, as he say in the bad ending he will continue to fight against the Archfiend much times it is needed.
He makes a parallel with Rance, because Rance is the real hero of this world, a cruel, selfish and hedonistic man not the hero chosen by the world, this represents very well how this world works and I love this. Rance are helping and uniting nations, Arios is literally making nothing besides getting levels and trying to kill Rance, I feel sad for him.
The ending is the karmic retribution of all Rance actions towards certain people, represented by Bird, he who have his life destroyed as many other peoples who have contact with Rance steel the most precious thing to Rance, Sill his lover, the ending is very chaotic and i love this, getting a cliffhanger to the part 2 which I will start to talk now.
Rance X Part II
This is an extra scenario and the true ending of the franchise.
It follows the story of Rance and Crook Mofus’ son, El Mofus in his quest to find all the Rance childs and defeat their father. Even being a more short campaign it takes like, 20h+ to complete.
I love all Rance’s sons, they are such unique and interesting characters, I would play a 40h game with any of them as the protagonist.
I like how in some ways the second part feels more like a traditional rpg because the cards you can get are mostly other versions of characters in your party, so they work like the skills of this character, it’s pretty creative. Even the story is more like El getting new party members and traveling the world, it’s interesting especially because it gets 15 years after Rance X part I so much of the structure of the world and the effects of the Rance X ending can be seen hare, like Kalar capital being Shangri-la and not Kalar Forest because Kalar Forest have been burned in the start of Rance X by Red Eye. I wish part 2 would give more information about Arios after the ending but unfortunately, they don’t give. The new hero of the world is Geimark who is a cool character, like he is decaying and dying but can’t die because of the hero’s blessing. How he continue the discussion of the hero system is interesting, he literally cause a mass genocide because he want to get Escudo’s powers and get ironically stoped by Demon King Rance.
Talking about him, Rance doesn’t appear very much because of his condition as a Demon King, but all his appearances are very remarkable and good, I love his CG.
The battle against Rance is awesome, especially because of the revelation about Sill staying in the ice, and Rance CG liberating her, God this is so good and cute. And it is a starting point for Rance returning his humanity which are being repelled by the 魔王 Blood
Quelplain story about how her love for Rance makes her turning into a monster is very beautiful and sad, but because of she turning into a monster that the final antagonist of the franchise can be achieved, Blood Memoires/血の記憶.
Kayblis is the perfect antagonist for Rance, Blood Memories is the perfect antagonist for the franchise, representing the concept of the demonic blood who runs in the Archfiend and in minor level, in the Dark Lords he is the ancient evil of this world and the representation of destruction, his mere existence are abominable as it is demonstrated when he get out of Quelplain, turning the sky red and cause fear in anyone close to it, I just wish his fight be more difficult, it’s very easy, which makes me prefer Kayblis more as a boss fight.
The credit scenes are very beautiful, demonstrate the years after the end of the part two, if the character getting older and some adventures of them, finishing in 100 years with Sill and Rance very old and Rance dying in peace.
Thanks to everyone who read this text, I hope you liked it.
