Rance 01

baseline good game, great mechanics and gameplay. Bit grindy at times and hard to unlock more than 50% without a walkthrough, but very enjoyable. Had to play it twice (2nd time with walkthrough) to get all Scenes. Great start of a series... about to play the 2nd one...

Rance! Story This game is a remake of a 25 year old game (at the time), and serves as a great introduction to the legendarily notorious rapist scumbag adventurer: the Great Rance. The story follows Rance, an adventurer who goes on a quest to find the missing noble Hikari Mi Blanc. With his slave, Sill, by his side, he goes to the Kingdom Leazas in a Quest for Hikari The mystery and overall story is quite simple, it's more so a backdrop for Rance to get up to raunchy antics as he hits on and and proceeds to assault every woman in town. The game does contain dark themes and Rance is one hell of a scumbag (hell, there's a literal assault button and there's like not a single consensual scene in this game) but they're mostly played off comedically. The game never takes itself too seriously and it's a game where you just have fun with it, with no real sense of urgency in mind. Gameplay You go around Leazas, exploring many different locations like shops, casinos, colosseums, bars, and other places talking to a variety of NPCs while trying to pick up leads on where the missing Hikari might be all the while enjoying nice Rance-y and humorous dialogue. There's a lot of variation in the characters and they're all quite fun and colorful to talk to. Rance especially steals the show with how abrasive and self centered he is in all his interactions, only caring about himself or hitting on women in various uncouth manners. It's incredibly amusing to watch his antics play out, and a breath of fresh air to follow someone so scummy instead of a usual fantasy hero. Besides exploring, you also enter and explore various dungeons laid out like poker cards. Each weapon is a poker chip that you "bet" in order to use in battle. Some chips have cooldowns while others are single use. There's also chips that change the type of your attack (i.e magic or purify), with certain enemies being weak to some types, and resistant to others. Additionally, there's shields you can use to defend against the enemy's attack. The combat is quite simple, most of the time you'll just be throwing all of your chips in to try and overwhelm the enemy. You die a lot in this game and the devs even acknowledge that. However the game does at least auto save whenever you enter a dungeon, so if you die you don't lose too much progress. You can also choose to run away from most battles or even just get out of the dungeon at any point by choosing to hurry back to town. The H-Scenes This game kind of suffers from the same feeling I had from Dohna Dohna where the actual gameplay itself is more of the focus than the h-scenes. At least in Dohna Dohna it was easy to get the scenes though, in this game you'll often have to try and figure out little puzzles of what to do in order to "claim your prize". If you try to assault a woman, it'll fail and there'll sometimes be a hint on what the player has to do in order to get the girl's h-scene. Some of them are quite straightforward like beating the girl in a fight or getting an item for a girl, but others are really obscure like gambling with a girl 8 times over in order to progress or trying to get an item by searching the same place 3 times. Some of them are time sensitive too, and can be really easy to miss forever. In my opinion it's not worth such hassle to try and figure most of these out, and I would instead recommend to use a guide (god bless the very comprehensive walkthrough on Miraheze). The scenes themselves are kind of hit or miss though. The art is nice and there's quite a few variations in each scene (I think the facial expressions are definitely the best parts), but it's just nothing too arousing most of the time. Some of them are also just more funny than erotic. I was really disappointed by the scenes of my favorite character, Patty, in particular, they were a lot more funny than anything. The girls themselves are quite cute though and they really hit a wide range of tropes and types, from maids to ninjas to plain girls to tomboy soldiers (and lots lots more). It always feels like you're meeting someone new who might just be right up your alley. Music As a side note the music in this game is really really good. I loved all the songs in Dohna Dohna and I love all the songs in this game too, maybe Alicesoft is just really good at making bangers for their games. A few standouts are the night and day themes, the level up shop theme, and the weapons shop theme. Definitely worth a listen! Conclusion Rance 01 is incredibly polished, and as someone who's a newcomer to the Rance series, I found this game incredibly fun and humorous most of the time. It's a simple experience and the game is on the shorter side. It's not anything I'll remember for years to come, but it is very enjoyable for the time I spent, and it got me interested in trying out the other Rance games too. For a hentai game, this game's hentai department is quite lacking however, which is why I'd say it's a 4/5. I do really enjoy the art though, Gyokai's art in this gives off a sort of retro feel that tries to pay homage to the original from so long ago. If you go in with the lens of a hentai game, you'll be disappointed. If you go in with the lens of a regular game with some hentai scenes, you'll have a pretty good time though.

Short Review An adventure RPG kicking off the famed Rance series. It's fairly short for this dev with great music, memorable characters and setting and a big dose of humour. It does have some usual Alicesoft downsides-overly long sex scenes and a need for wiki consultation. It also has unique negatives, the combat system isn't as great as later games and Rance is at the beginning of his journey so he doesn't have the wide array of allies to use and he comes across as just an arrogant bully who barks way more than he bites. Five stars as it's in the top 2% of games here AND sets off a great series. Be aware of the tags, if they're not your thing then the Rance series is probably not your thing. Also Rance kicks a puppy due to jealousy, so know what you're getting into. Spoiler: Full Review Rance 01 is a 2013 remake of 1989's Rance I with better graphics, QOL improvements and some reworked story/character elements to better fit where the series ended up going. It focuses on an adventure undertaken by the titular Rance, a lecherous, arrogant swordsman who would be the antagonist in some other games. Although at this stage he is famous only in his own head, he has some things going for him: a cunning mind, luck, good allies and unlimited potential, which, in this setting, makes him entirely unique. In this debut game he is investigating the disappearance of a young woman which leads him to explore and battle through various locales and to meet (and probably bed) numerous pretty females. The gameplay consists of two parts. First is the VNish adventure part where you go to various locations (shops, inns, castles) and interact with the people and environments there. All interactions have some kind of response, most of a humorous nature. For instance, you can "assault" anyone and in most cases will just get a funny line though that should give you the hint that there is a lot of non-consensual sex here, and not just from Rance. For being based on a 90s game, it's fairly lenient, I can think of only one place where you get insta-killed and the women are very forgiving of your antics. I'd rate the story as B+: you'll see the "twist" coming but the writing is enjoyable and the general arc isn't just generic. The second part is "dungeon" exploration. Unlike other Rance games, you're only managing Rance himself here, though occasionally allies will be usable as items. You have a number of inventory slots which you can fill with weapons/shields/other items which you can then use against enemies as needed. The stronger the item, generally the longer the cooldown, so you might end up traipsing around with 6 swords. Between fights, you'll be moving around on a map where you choose one of at most three directions (veer left or right or straight ahead) to go. This can lead to some planning being required if you need to get to a certain square, but is mostly pretty easy. I will say this is the only part I was using the wiki a lot, since after running a map blind, it feels silly to run into a trap on your 3rd pass. I wish the traps were permanently marked once you encountered them once, though I get why they're not. I'll also note that I was not so invested in this part of the game that I felt a need to push on after the story to take on the challenge boss (I believe this just gives some dialogue). Since this is an Alicesoft game, there are sex scenes. These are well illustrated, but generally use variations of one still CG. Some of these involve rape or coercion, involve males other than the MC (I remember two instances of this and one is unmissable) and have defloration. They go on a bit too long for my liking, I'd halve their length, but that's standard Alicesoft for you. Also par for the Alicesoft course: great music. As with all Rance games, consultation of the wiki is likely required to ensure you get 100%- there are missable CGs, items in dungeons and "collectable" monster girls. This is done in such a way that you can blindly do a dungeon, then see if you've missed anything. Just have a look at the ending for the gladiator girl, I think that's the only story-related CG that's missable due to path-splitting. TLDR Q+A I want to get into the Rance series, should I start here? Yes. Unless you hate adventure games and love strategy, in which case jump straight to Sengoku. This one introduces Rance and sets in motion his arc obviously, but also introduces Sil (S tier in terms of continuing prominence), Kanami+Leia (A tier) and a couple of B and C tiers. It also sets the stage for other in-universe ideas such as level caps/level gods. Spoiler: Counterargument A non-genre reason not to start here is if you don't think you'll manage with subsequent games. 03 is not yet translated (EDIT: now translated), IV is still old-school and 5D is... well read my review there. I think all those games are fun, but maybe do a little scouting ahead to see if you'll feel the same. Should I play this or the original (Rance I)? Play this, unless you prefer 90s adventure games with very dated graphics and clunky UI (I'm sure some people do). While not everyone loves the changes made to the characters+story (I'm personally not bothered) the QOL upgrades make it worthwhile and you can always read the wiki to see what changed.