H Scene Count-70+(probably more)

Created by Alicesoft, translated by Mangagamer

Length- 50+ hours Purchase

Rance Quest is game 8 in the series, and when it was released was panned by most people I saw talking about it. It was very grindy, had a bad ending that showed Rance at his worst, had a lot of dangling plot threads and just in general was not well designed.

Tada, the man in charge of the Rance series had a different job during Quest’s development, and so the product we got had none of the original Rance team work on it. After its bad reception, Tada stepped in and started fixing the game with updates and eventually Magnum, an expansion that added a lot of necessary plot, a better ending, and a lot of h scenes for characters who lacked them. We got basically the final version of the game, which includes a mode called TADA mode, which doubles xp and gold gain. I turned this on as soon as I could as I heard the pacing of the game was still bad, and yeah. It was. Definitely. Got better though.

Quest was supposedly a goodbye to some older Rance characters as a lot of faces in this were not suppose to show up again, which was why Quest had Rance travel basically everywhere he has ever been before. Considering Rance 10 is the biggest game in the series(and the longest VN by word in existence), I don’t think they needed to do that.

Story

Rance Quest picks off a few months after Sengoku. Rance has been kind of killing time, waiting for some info to come to deal with the Sill problem. In the meantime, he ignores the problem by going back to the worst he is in the series, making a lot of his longtime companions tired of his antics.

He basically kidnaps a girl, gives her a cursed shield, and guilt her into adventuring and doing what Sill would usually. Soon after the game starts, Rance comes across his first kalar, a race of elves. In this world, they are hunted for the stone on their foreheads give an amazing amount of magic to whoever has it. This magic is boosted by how much sex a kalar has before the stone is taken, which also kills them. It shouldn’t be that hard to understand what happens to most kalar in this setting.

Turns out the Queen of the Kalar is a curse master, which is exactly what Rance is looking for. After a few trips to meet her, he does so and then the real plot begins. After raping her and leaving, Rance is visited by the Queen in the middle of the night, where she curses him with the Mororun curse. This curse only lets you have sex with people over level 35. Of course this destroys Rance mentally and he almost offs himself.

He gets a second wind though, and sets off to get rid of the curse and find as many high level women he can to satisfy his urges. This makes up the majority of the original Rance Quests story, the Kalar and Rance wandering around looking for high level girls. There is a second arc that really is only fully explored in Magnum that justifies some of the other quests and content that the original game had.

The other plotline Rance Quest deals with is the religion of the world, Alicizism. You pretty early in the adventure meet Crook, one of four people competing to be the new pope. She kind of attaches herself to Rance’s team as a way to collect items that break the worlds balance. In the original Rance Quest, she gets like 3-5 quests that deal with this and that’s it. She causes a major event but is never taken to task by anyone and generally just kind of exists. In Magnum, her story is the entire purpose. I can kind of get why when Quest originally came out people didn’t like the original ending, not just for how it paints Rance but also how wasted Crook is as a character.

Gameplay

I intend to write most of this as a weird kind of promo/worship of my favorite character to make writing more fun. But since there’s a few gameplay mechanics she takes no part in, I kinda need to go over those before doing that as those mechanics are kinda vital to how the game is played. For those who want a short and easy what this game is, it’s Rance 6’s gameplay with more systems and 3D map movement instead of block by block dungeon stuff. Combat’s mostly the same with total attack counts and back and front row stuff, though with one less party member active.

Okay, the biggest new mechanic to Rance Quest from 6 is the mororun curse(I will spell this wrong a bunch) itself. It’s not just a story thing, its a big part of how you develop your army of units. At level 35, the first curse can trigger using quests or events from the hub menu, though a vast majority of your good recruits will already be cursed when they join you. After a curse session(aka h scene or being in the same room for a night for the guys/kids), a characters level is reduced to 1, though every curse after that is only 5 levels lost and then increases the level for the next curse based on a list of set levels. That sounds horrible right? In the beginning of the game it kind of is, and by the end it does effect who you will likely actually use as retraining new units is kind of a pain, but the xp needing to get back to where you were is lowered such that at end game it takes 3 fights to get those 5 levels back.

So why would you want to do the curse other then for story progress and h scenes? There are 4 benefits to the curse. First, the first ten triggers of it add 2% to that characters attack, defense, magic attack, and magic defense(I don’t think it adds to the stats, just when those stats are called you get the bonus). So that’s a 20% boost to your major damage and survivability stats. Next is you get 2 skill points for the first 5 curses, which is nice. Third is that if the character is at their level cap and you do the curse, their level cap will go up by how many levels the curse needs for it next trigger. So if you did the level 55 curse, the next goal is 65. If a character at 58 did the 65 curse and was at cap, their new cap is 68. The final bonus is that the special item a character has equipped(top slot) is absorbed and its stat bonuses kept. Up to 5 items can be absorbed, and new ones will kick out lower ranked old ones. This is good for stat raising, but really shines for raising stun, crit, resistance, and HP for units who need those stats though I will get into how important stun is and why this matters so much a bit later when talking about World 2-3 and NG+.

There is one other benefit, kinda. When you do the curse, a character’s skill set is reset to what they start with, which usually means their unique skills and a couple of random other ones that exist to make that character standout a bit more, which the game does a good job of actually. Almost every character has either a unique skill, unique gear, or some trait that makes them unique to a degree. This really doesn’t stop until the end of the game when new characters just start with a lot of free invested points into skills that anyone can get, they just don’t have to invest anything more into them.

The skill system itself does need a bit of explaining though, as the game doesn’t bother with it at all. Every level, curse, and slice of life scene at the castle gets characters skill points. In their stat menus is a skill screen where you purchase new skills or add uses/upgrade already learned skills. Most of this screens options are decided by which class a character is and some other skills unlock new ones. The easiest example of that is weapon skills, which after level 2 let a character learn abilities that require that weapon type. This is how you build characters.

My favorite doesn’t have skill pints though. She also doesn’t level up, so the curse is never part of her character growth. My favorite is a robot(humonculus?) by the name of Athena 2.0, and she ignores a lot of those above mechanics and is still the best single target damage dealer for dungeon crawling. Is that really overly specific? Yes, but considering the amount of units you get, it’s okay to have people be this specific.

So you might wonder, if she can’t level how does Athena get stronger? She grows based on five passives she can equip in her three slots to have skills equipped. She can grow her accuracy, crit, attack, HP, and speed. Accuracy and crit have a cap at 200 and 100 respectively so those eventually get ignored, but anyway. By placing Athena below and to the right in the W that is the party setup, she can grow her stats if the member in that place has higher stats then the one you are growing.

So if you place a faster ranger in front of Athena and equip the speed study passive, at the end of the next fight Athena’s speed will grow by a set amount. It will continue to grow per fight until it is equal or higher then the unit she is studying. This means Athena can have the speed of your fastest, attack of your strongest, HP of your best HP tank, max accuracy and guaranteed crit every attack. Based on pure stats she has some of the best potential.

The reason she is the best dungeon crawler though, is her other passive. Athena fully heals her HP, and gets all of her skill uses back after each fight unlike every other character. As long as Athena isn’t killed or hit by a trap, she stays usable in combat at her best for every fight. Her general setup is having one study passive and her attack 3 and attack 2 in each battle, killing the biggest threat long before it gets a turn.

Now there are some issues with Athena. For one, you basically want to have a dedicated attack, speed, and hp stat characters just to grow her, and those will always be in your party. Growing Athena is slow and requires constant usage, while most other character can be slotted in and grown to at least usable pretty quickly. Not to mention leaked xp keep the non used character strong enough to survive the few fights it takes to get them to usable. She is best for someone lazy like me who only wants to raise a small number of really strong units rather then get the whole group usable.

Athena’s equipment is also kind of in a bad spot. Her weapon doesn’t really matter as her attack growth is mostly based off her passives to grow that, but her armor slot is basically worthless. You see, equipment in this game requires certain levels to be used, except for some of the starting stuff. Athena can only equip 2 weapons, a gun(that drops her accuracy to 10, though it makes it easy to grow that stat) and a shortbow, which is what she’ll have on so that she can attack from where she needs to be for her passives to work. Her best possible weapon is a light elemental shortbow, so if you find that keep it for her as it lets her deal with the most enemies out of any element. Her armor situation is worse though. There’s a grand total of 3-4 armors she can wear and none of her defenses will be above 50 without some amazing gear rolls. You can buy the gear to make it better in an interesting system. Buying a weapon or armor attaches a number at the end of the name, and increases it’s stats by 5%. That number will grow per purchase up to nine, so about 45% increase to the damage or defense stats of that piece of equipment. That purchase bonus effects the shop and all future found versions of that piece of gear. If you also roll talent(as equipment has something a rogue random abilities and stats increasing mechanic), a special modifier on gear that has it’s stats increase based on how much xp is earned by the character wearing it up to a cap, you can get maybe 100 in Athena’s defense. Still terrible though, which is why its good she’s a back line unit. As for item and special item slots, Athena has junk locked in those slots so ignore them.

Another issue is how damage maximum’s work. A majority of attacks in Rance Quest will list a damage cap of some sort. <Named based on weapon type> Attack 1-3 are the most used things with caps, and those are 500, 1000, and 2000. Note that by cap, I don’t mean actual top limit but more like the math changes once you do more then that number. My Athena at end game could go 3200 damage per attack 3 at end game of world 1, or my first playthrough, while attack 2 was hitting 2000. Crits and hitting weaknesses seem to help a lot in going over the cap. There is a skill characters can learn and equip to raise the cap, and in the middle of the game it is very helpful as it keeps attack 1 useful, and every character gets charges of attack 1 when level reset. Once characters can learn attack 4 at around level 40 though, damage caps can be forgotten as attack 4 doesn’t have one. Athena doesn’t have that. My character with the highest attack did around 8000 damage on a crit with attack 4, Athena’s total damage caps around 6000. Now other then bosses you don’t need that much damage per attack very often, but it is very noticeable of a difference. Apparently world 2 changes the caps and world 3 throws them away entirely, though those modes have their own issues regarding Athena.

World 2 is a very dangerous increase in monster power, and stun becomes increasingly important for not letting enemies attack. Stun is only doable with melee attacks, and the more enemies that attack hits the better. Hammer users, archer’s volley, Milla, Lia, and Maria are all good units with a full party melee attack that can stun. For units like Lia getting a good stun rate is really hard. She has no passive that increases it like warriors do, and she can’t use her item slot to get something to increase it because that’s locked with a dragon equipped. She can gain around 50 stun from absorbing items and another 20-30 using the right weapon though, letting her do a decent job of it. Athena will basically never stun. You can roll a small bonus on her bow and that’s it. I didn’t get into World 2 to see if Athena could still one shot, but if she can’t then I don’t know if she’s worth continuing to raise over a ranger with assassinate or a hammer user. I’d still try though.

That’s about it. I think I covered almost all the main gameplay mechanics with the above, except for one more thing. Charisma/fame or whatever the English version actually called. You get it from completing quests, and they up a level. This level equals the number of party switches you can do in quests that allow them. It takes 1 point to switch any number of units out of combat with fresh units, in combat it’s one point per switch. Lia has a skill that doubles the point gain if she’s in the party when a quest completes, making her something of a swap in at the end of every quest. Otherwise the amount halves and eventually you lose out on points. For min maxing you can make a character with the same gimmick as Lia with better combat stats and is in the party earlier, for a lot of gold. I didn’t really do custom characters but apparently there’s a lot of options for them.

Oh and monster taming is useless. Only really weak characters can use them and they don’t do enough damage to justify the weak character being in the party.

H and Other stuff

I feel like just saying, “it’s what you would expect form a Rance title” would explain the h scenes just fine, but I’ll go a bit into depth here. Because of the curse, Rance can only shoot once per scene, and usually his partner is not willing. In fact, even among the girls who do like him few of them enjoy sex in this game.

There are only 2-3 scenes not featuring Rance as the guy, so I won’t bother getting into them. The scenes are definitely longer then Sengoku’s, not voiced as only Rance 03 is, and there are not as many as you would expect. Despite Rance’s main goal of sex, a lot of quests end with no partner for him or the girl he would sleep with not actually fitting his requirements. A lot of quests are actually just story advancing stuff, with a majority of the sex scenes being him in his castle with whatever girl just hit 35 in some situation before sex happens.

Not every girl gets a sex scene, and even though the curse is used via sex usually, there is a quick way to skip seeing the full scenes. The hub menu has an option where you get to see the castle and it shows characters you have recruited. Girls without h scenes and girls with them can de done here for the sake of getting the curse. Most girls you recruit get an h scenes, but there are like 10-15 that just don’t.

Unlike Sengoku’s English release, Quest didn’t really have any changes. This sadly means any scenes in the game that reuse cgs are not replayable in the gallery, as cg scenes only replay the unlock scene. The easiest example for this is Matilda, a girl you meet really early on. Her first cg is used 4 times, in four different h scenes. Only the first one is replayable at all. Her penetration scene is not in the gallery at all. except via cg. I did try to make a list of these, though I started really late so its more of a list of what I could remember. Most scenes like this can have their other variations scene via some method, Matilda’s are impossible since it’s triggered on map transition events which you cannot get to trigger a second time.

Verdict

It starts really slow. I’m guessing they purposely give you a lot of bad characters near the start so you feel like you are getting a stronger team as the good characters trickle in, but it makes the game start really slowly. Rance being at his worst at the start didn’t help.

Once I got near the end of the original game I realized I was finally enjoying the mess of a game that this is. I enjoyed parts of it before that, but that was around I realized I wanted to play it for actual decent amounts of time, something I struggled to do at the start. This is definitely a guide kind of game with its dungeons and raising characters as Rance himself is something you only get 1 shot at, though eventually he levels enough that a few wasted skill points aren’t a huge problem. Can be fun, though it starts slower then a lot of other RPG’s I’ve played. As a Rance title it’s middling. While 6 had its problems I think that one is more enjoyable throughout. Sengoku is a very solid game, and 01 and 5D aren’t really that great as games. Quest does have the longest post game of the series at least.

Save for Rance Quest Magnum

Contains-All cgs, a save at the end of all content for World 1, except the 999 floor dungeon. Should be good to go into World 2. I don’t care to do that myself right now, maybe some time in the future closer to 9 or 10’s release. the only reward in World 2 is a new boss fight, and World 3 has two new bosses and two new characters to grind with since there’s nothing else to do by the time you get them.