H-Scene Count- 78, with 23 non h scenes/opening+ending replayable

Created by Alice-Soft, translated by Mangagamer

Length- 25-30 hours~

Purchase

What is possibly my favorite hgame, and easily in my list of top 5 favorite games is this, Sengoku Rance. The 7th game in its series and the 1st translated, its translation eventually spawned a group of people devoted to bringing over Alice-Soft titles and the rest of the Rance series.

Rance is a rapist, he will do whatever it takes to sleep with women, whether coercion, blackmail, force, or slaying a dragon. If the girl gives him a quest, he will do it to do her. He is a narcissist that believes all the cute/sexy women in the world belong to him.

Story

After the vents of the sixth game, Rance and his slave Sill go to JAPAN, similar to the one we have but with magic and such. There he aspires to have sex with the beautiful Kouhime, who turns out to be to young for Rance. Instead, Kouhime’s brother takes a liking to Rance and has him take control of their armies to protect there state. Rance goes along with this so he can have sex with beautiful women, and eventually he leads that state to taking over Japan. But there is a dark power that enters the stage that threatens all of JAPAN and only Rance can truly stop it.

Gameplay

It’s a war game of sorts with turn based combat. You have commanders(up yo 30) who have a class type and an army size and stats, and you send out up to six to do battle. Using the different skills of the classes and unique commanders your goal is to take over any and all countries for Rance to rape their women.

Okay, so slight disclaimer. While I frequently call Rance a rapist, and he is, he does prefer consensual sex. So when he can get a girl to agree, he will. Also, this games scenes have sometimes been called comedic rape, because it rarely reads horrific or bad, and the music playing sounds laughable. This is generally not a hardcore rape game, though it does contain a few scenes of that Rance is rarely involved in the worst stuff.

Anyway, gameplay. By taking over other territories you gain national power which is a score that limits your army and determines your pay. Gold is used to heal troops and recruit new ones. The other benefit of taking places is the sex scene, which gives Rance satisfaction. Using satisfaction allows you to gain a special benefit like getting a very strong commander or a special item, or even more actions per turn, which gives the player a reason to reget h scenes since their is an actual in game benefit to them.

The goal of every fight is not to kill all the enemies, but have enough control(represented by a bar at the top of the screen) at the end of a fight to claim that area. The easiest way to do this is to kill all your enemies, but sometimes that is not possible. So instead you use other methods of getting their, which adds depth to fights. Not all of them are just kill everything, but hitting the right targets and blocking the right attacks.

The game does not take very long to learn, but a while to get good at. The general advice in never vassal, conquer. And if you can’t win against the final enemy, just turtle until the game hands you a win. After you beat the game the first time you unlock a lot more of it. The first run railroads you a lot, but the second and onwards gives you other difficulties, another play mode, 3 new routes, and some inconvenient events just don’t happen. Really, the first playthrough is the hardest and the most boring in a sense.

One reason I like the game so much is how it leads you to replay it. Other then the unlocks after beating it once, you also gain some score points. Using these you can buy some NG+ bonuses for your next run, making it easier or just different. Higher difficulties give you more points to start with and you lose one a turn, and gain them through completing a few special requirements and clearing characters. It feels great to end a run with a lot of points so you can go to a higher difficulty to try for more.

Not only do you get the score, the game also has a list of what you have done. After you beat the game and start a new one you can do an action called Game Report, which shows all the unique characters you can/have cleared and a bunch of events you can try to do. While most these are pointless some do lead the player to finding some new cgs or events/bonuses. I feel its a nice touch, until you start trying to finish them all, then it becomes a bit to much, but that’s just me.

One other thing on the gameplay is the dungeon battles. Unlike normal fights where you have an army and are fighting for control, not victory dungeons are all about beating everything in as few actions as possible. All your commanders are units in dungeons, and have a stamina score. In army battles the stamina stat won’t matter for most, bit in dungeon it is the most important except level. Level is a dungeon only stat that affects HP and power. Your army stats, except maybe speed, have no effect in a dungeon so you may have a few characters that are just for dungeoning. Dungeons play out like a linear tournament of sorts, you fight one group, beat a floor, and can continue or not. Choosing no gets you a few rewards and you will start a bit lower, choosing to continue gets you deeper. Once you beat a dungeon all your characters level up and most of the time you will get a bonus, like an item or some extra levels.

The reason the last paragraph is so long is that dungeon battles are important. The biggest story fights, and the final boss, are dungeon battles against hard enemies. You need to level or risk getting gameover. Luckily if it is the final boss, you can sacrifice some score to make it easier, which is fine on your first run, but eventually you will want to beat him without  the handicap.

H scenes and other things

H is strangely good in my opinion. I don’t care much for rape or the 3rd person writing view, yet I like the scenes quite a bit. There is a lot of variety, from hardcore rape, to sex toy abuse, to more consensual and normal things. None of it is voiced yet I enjoyed most of the scenes, and the music brings a smile to my face. And since I mentioned voices, no one in Rance is voiced. Alice-Soft has stated that since he didn’t start with a voice they will will not give him or any of the girls a voice to avoid fan outrage, similar to why Nintendo doesn’t give Link a true voice.

This is a game anyone who can think should play. Sure their are people who would be sickened by rape or Rance, but their is much worse out there. This game is a blast to play. It is also a decent starting point in the series, since unlike the other games very few older characters appear, so you won’t miss much. You should play this, at the very least give it a try. There is some likable characters, the game has some variety in gameplay, and a lot of content to see and experiment with.

Save contains all scenes/cgs, NG+ bonuses unlocked, a completed clear game report, and a 315 score which is the max and lets you buy  all the bonuses for the start of a game. Plus two saves, one to see an ending that is not in the gallery and the other to prove I didn’t just cheat to get the score. It is my save after all my prep for the 315 run before I started cleaning up.

Note- the Mangagamer release added the ability to see other versions of scenes that reuse cgs, such as the first cg actually has four different scenes for it. The original release only let you see the first one, Mangagamer lets you see all four. The below save is not yet updated for this, so there are locked variations(mostly short repeat scenes in the waste turns option). This is mostly because I didn’t know about this until months after the release. Will work on this at some point.

Sengoku Rance

Has both original save and the Mangagamer version saves

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