Rance 5D and Rance VI

[Martic]

Really surprised no one is talking about this yet. It was one of my most anticipated releases of the year as a fan of gameplay visual novels. Hopefully that's not indicative of the sales, as MangaGamer said in an interview that they want to release each game in the series in some form or another. They mentioned the remakes for the first 4 games specifically, but did say they wanted to release the whole series if possible. 

As far as the games themselves go, 5D seems a little below average to me, perhaps because it is such a weird system that takes some getting used to.

VI is great though. I'm really enjoying my time with it and the dungeons are extremely well done in my opinion. At some point I'll start compiling a guide, working on a character evaluation for it as of right now. Anyone else buy this?

[littleshogun]

Well, not yet. To be honest I kind of want to make the thread for this, but kind of forget it. Thanks though, and good luck to your guide. Hopefully I could give my opinion in regard of VI soon or later here.

[Mugi]

Didn't even know they were out yet, guess this is going to be one white Christmas  

[Papa Sheep]

I personally skipped over 5D for the time being because I was more interested in playing VI.  Enjoying it quite a bit so far.  Enjoying the story, the dungeon crawling is fun, and the character interactions with Rance and the others are great.  The interactions with Rance and Daniel have to be my favorite so far since Daniel is so blunt and rude towards him regardless of what Rance does.

On side note during the scene when Rance and Urza are looking into the magazines of the top 8 Zeth idols I noticed that a few of them had their ages blacked out.  I'm curious if that was there because of the 18+ caption at the title screen or was always a thing.  It didn't really bother me, in fact I thought it was pretty amusing.

[Martic]

Glad someone else is enjoying the game. 6 is definitely Superior in my opinion, though 5D isn't bad by any means. Feels more like a side game than a main entry. As far as the ages, I think you're probably right. Why they didn't just change the real age to say 18 or whatever is beyond me, as with it crossed out it makes it seem like they wanted us to think the girls were under 18 lol good catch, i hadn't really noticed that.

[littleshogun]

Played 5D a little bit, and let's just said that it was mostly gamble just as a blogpost at Mangagamer said. It's quite easy though, although then again I'm still at the beginning and it'll be gonna harder later especially the event number will be increasing (Maybe).

[Martic]

I think I read that the event number stays at 5. It is really easy, especially if you use the 3 or 5 spin. I decided to leave it to the rng and only do normal spins no matter what, and when I get a game over I restart. It's more entertaining for me that way haha.

 

On 12/25/2016 at 3:56 AM, Papa Sheep said:

I personally skipped over 5D for the time being because I was more interested in playing VI.  Enjoying it quite a bit so far.  Enjoying the story, the dungeon crawling is fun, and the character interactions with Rance and the others are great.  The interactions with Rance and Daniel have to be my favorite so far since Daniel is so blunt and rude towards him regardless of what Rance does.

On side note during the scene when Rance and Urza are looking into the magazines of the top 8 Zeth idols I noticed that a few of them had their ages blacked out.  I'm curious if that was there because of the 18+ caption at the title screen or was always a thing.  It didn't really bother me, in fact I thought it was pretty amusing.

Actually I was wrong. I looked up an original CG set because I was curious, and the ages are blacked out in the Japanese release as well. I guess Alicesoft thought it would be a funny gag to make it blatantly obvious they were underage lol

[littleshogun]

I agree that for 5D it's quite entertaining if you get game over there (The post at Mangagamer Staff Blog even said that). Although it's getting hard to me though, if only you need to spend some time at town before going to the dungeon later (Town and dungeon share the same time bar). Whilr at first I didn't interested in this I admit, now I could said that it's quite nice experience with 5D there. Oh, for more history lesson I'd like to think that there's two Rance 5, this one and Kichikuou. That's all that I could tell for now.

Edited December 28, 2016 by littleshogun

[Papa Sheep]

As far as Kichikuou goes it was just a spinoff series that wasn't supposed to be part of the main story.  It still contains a vast amount of characters from the series and is a pretty good game in it's own right.  It is pretty comparable game to Sengoku Rance.

For Rance VI I think I'm around halfway through at this point if the progress bar is a fair means of measurement and I like where it is going.  The game is showcasing it's theme quite well, while also developing some of the side characters a bit as well.  It also feels like your raising your own brigade of troops rather then just a single set party with the way the stamina system works and your growing roster of characters.  One minor annoyance I'm having with it though is the orb system in some degree.  While I'm fine with some events being locked under them I always have the need to grind an old map just to get them for the next mission.

I do plan on giving 5D a shot when I finish this up though.  Seems like an entertaining game in it's own right.

[Martic]

15 hours ago, Papa Sheep said:

One minor annoyance I'm having with it though is the orb system in some degree.  While I'm fine with some events being locked under them I always have the need to grind an old map just to get them for the next mission.

 

Yes, I agree with that. I stopped doing long play sessions of it now and only play 1-2 hours a day because of the orb grinding tedium. On a side note, if you happen to save up three yellow orbs you can permanently increase Rance's SP by one. As far as I know you can only do it once, but still. 

[Decay]

Are there any "fuck you" moments in VI players should be aware of? I realize that the designer wanted to make it a "friendly" dungeon crawler that was pleasant to play, but well, this is Rance so I'm still not convinced. Any hidden time limits, annoying forced game overs, required skills/equipment, etc?

[Papa Sheep]

As far as I'm aware there hasn't been anything too ridiculous so far.  Quite a few of the harder battles so far have either timed out for me or you were supposed to lose to them in the first place.  I did run into one fight against two bosses you fight at once and got a game over there.  Their AoE skills demolished my party so I'm not sure if I wasn't supposed to fight them or if I did something else wrong.

As for other battles you can run from almost all of them using the tactical retreat option.  It's 100% guaranteed to work as well, the downside is only a few characters have or can learn the skill itself.  You can also escape from dungeons at any point in time using the return bonsai, which is free and also never runs out.  I think the game is fairly lenient for the most part.

[Mr Poltroon]

4 hours ago, Decay said:

Are there any "fuck you" moments in VI players should be aware of? I realize that the designer wanted to make it a "friendly" dungeon crawler that was pleasant to play, but well, this is Rance so I'm still not convinced. Any hidden time limits, annoying forced game overs, required skills/equipment, etc?

There is one bloody instance where I was running around like a headless chicken not knowing what to do.

You're supposed to activate the battle, see that it's impossible to win and retreat.
All other instances thus far simply give me time-outs or permit my loss.

Basically, if you're seriously losing, and you can retreat, do so. Always. Sometimes you can't and when you can't that usually means it's forced (which doesn't mean you can't put up a fight).

[Martic]

19 hours ago, Decay said:

Are there any "fuck you" moments in VI players should be aware of? I realize that the designer wanted to make it a "friendly" dungeon crawler that was pleasant to play, but well, this is Rance so I'm still not convinced. Any hidden time limits, annoying forced game overs, required skills/equipment, etc?

There are enemies you can encounter that appear as a dark mass on the screen, indicating that they are difficult enemies to fight. The only "fuck you" thing about these is that they might be ridiculously easy, or they might end with you dying before you have a chance to retreat. Best way to handle those is when you find one use your bonsai tree to leave the dungeon, save, and then return to the dungeon and head directly to it. If it's some stupidly strong encounter then you'll die without losing progress. I do this occasionally, but usually you can just risk it.

[Darklord Rooke]

I don't enter those clouds in the middle of a run because it can stuff up your orb process, and exiting the dungeon to save will definitely stuff up orb progress  

Rance 6 is incredibly grindy. I'm not nearly as impressed with it as I was with Sengoku.

[VLOCKUP]

6 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Rance 6 is incredibly grindy. I'm not nearly as impressed with it as I was with Sengoku.

I think the fact that the game is a dungeon crawler should readily tell you that.

[Darklord Rooke]

There are ways to lessen the grind. Interesting environs, tactical combat etc. Rance 6 is often just … repetitive. And the orb system, which means you have to exit the dungeon and retrek over old ground complete with (often boring) random encounters, doesn’t help matters.

[Mr Poltroon]

All that orb hunting requires is visiting old maps and getting the Adventure Achievement icons.
When available, Italia allows you to get 40 (eagle orb) per run and doesn't take much in the way of time nor are its encounters challenging towards the mid game.

My main issue with the game really is random encounters. I just don't like the mechanic as a whole, and there has never been a game in which I enjoyed them. I like fighting when I know I'm fighting. I can avoid the red clouds all I want, if all of a sudden a random encounter pops up with a super hanny and as RNG would have it neutralises my best fighter on the first turn I need to restart the whole thing. Now that's irritating.

[Darklord Rooke]

3 minutes ago, Mr Poltroon said:

My main issue with the game really is random encounters. I just don't like the mechanic as a whole, and there has never been a game in which I enjoyed them. I like fighting when I know I'm fighting. 

Agree with you here. I like enemies on the map, like Dragon Age Origins or XCOM. Having battles on the same map and not in a separate turn-based battlefield allows for tactical set up of your group before engaging. 

Just my preference, though  

[Tyr]

Please don't criticize a dungeon crawler for being a dungeon crawler. Rance 6 is as casual as a homage to late 80s / early 90s Japanese ero dungeon crawler can be.
For someone like me, who likes this genre (and I don't mean Western dungeon crawler, I specifically mean Japanese ero dungeon crawler like Raidy or Dragon Knight), there isn't even enough mindless grinding in Rance 6.

[Mr Poltroon]

7 minutes ago, Tyrosyn said:

Please don't criticize a dungeon crawler for being a dungeon crawler. Rance 6 is as casual as a homage to late 80s / early 90s Japanese ero dungeon crawler can be.
For someone like me, who likes this genre (and I don't mean Western dungeon crawler, I specifically mean Japanese ero dungeon crawler like Raidy or Dragon Knight), there isn't even enough mindless grinding in Rance 6.

I don't believe the game is grindy at all. If I take it as a a VN game (whatever that means) there's comparatively hardly any grinding in this one.
So I'm not so much criticising it for being what it is, as I'm expressing that I don't generally like this type of game. From that perspective, it's actually great that I'm playing it.

 

The RNG is such that I can just keep doing the same bossfight using the same strategy over and over and I'm bound to win eventually. #lolstrategy

[Papa Sheep]

So as for the orb grinding there is an easy way to get past that.  I didn't realize the coupon store sells those orbs, and they are really cheap as well with crab/monkey costing 1 and eagle at 2.  I was sitting on like 50 of them when I realized this, so getting those events done is much easier then I thought.

The random encounters don't bother me too much, though I do wish there was an item or trait you could equip or use to lower the encounter rate.

Edited December 30, 2016 by Papa Sheep

[littleshogun]

Okay, I played VI a bit and it's quite nice if you managed to understand the system. At least the orb was easily obtained there albeit tedious if you're not in the mood for grinding or entering the dungeon there (The coupon could lessen the boredom though). Not much I could said here for now in regard of gameplay (Or rather, so much that I don't know where I should start). That's all I could said for now (In regard of VI), and just use guide for Rance 5D if some user want to save time as much as possible.

[Tyr]

10 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

Okay, I played VI a bit and it's quite nice if you managed to understand the system. At least the orb was easily obtained there albeit tedious if you're not in the mood for grinding or entering the dungeon there (The coupon could lessen the boredom though). Not much I could said here for now in regard of gameplay (Or rather, so much that I don't know where I should start). That's all I could said for now (In regard of VI), and just use guide for Rance 5D if some user want to save time as much as possible.

You pretty much only summarized the comments in this thread. Do you have any original thoughts of your own?

 

5 hours ago, Papa Sheep said:

So as for the orb grinding there is an easy way to get past that.  I didn't realize the coupon store sells those orbs, and they are really cheap as well with crab/monkey costing 1 and eagle at 2.  I was sitting on like 50 of them when I realized this, so getting those events done is much easier then I thought.

Why do you waste the most important resource on orbs? You are supposed to buy presents with it, lol.

[Mr Poltroon]

1 minute ago, Tyrosyn said:

Why do you waste the most important resource on orbs? You are supposed to buy presents with it, lol.

Because the mechanics aren't duly explained and each player has different priorities. I know I was hoarding around 17 presents before I realised what to use them for, and I gave my first one to Rance.