Hentai JRPG Review: Rance VI
Written by Flamecaster, edited by Otaku Apologist
“Rance VI”, developed by Alice Soft. A turn-based hentai RPG with 3D dungeon crawling, available on MangaGamer for $34,95 bundled with “Rance 5D”. Released on December 23rd, 2016. Genitals uncensored. almost 50 hours of gameplay. The second official English entry to the Rance franchise spanning decades.
The game features forceful, unapologetic intercourse and hardcore rape memes. Alice Soft has always been making toxic masculine games their penises want to play.
STORY
After Rance’s last adventure in another dimension, he saved Rizna from eternal imprisonment. This time Rance goes to the Kingdom of Zeth to once again replenish his empty money bags. After offending a high-ranking minister of Zeth with his hot-headed tendencies, the green warrior gets thrown into a slave arena, from which he is busted out by an anti-government organization known as Ice Flame. From that point, Rance finds out about the internal problems plaguing the prosperous Magic Kingdom of Zeth.
The society of Zeth is heavily divided and unequal between people that can use magic and those who can’t. The non-magic users are treated as second-class citizens devoid of virtually all rights, treated like animals. There are several factions within Zeth that want to seize the country and model it to their liking.
The themes of prejudice, and classicism are explored in a believable and realistic fashion. As you progress through the story, you witness many choices and actions by the characters leading to the eventual collapse of the kingdom. Alice Soft did not hold back in showing the darkest depths humans can go to in an environment that fosters discrimination. All this in a game about a guy that calls his penis “Hyper Weapon” and his sperm “Imperial Juice”.
How does Rance play into all of this intrigue? Even as a force to be reckoned with, Rance does whatever the hell he pleases. He contributes to changing Zeth by following his own sense of entitlement, lust for revenge, and lust for hot women. Funnily enough, his desires just happen to align with the forces wanting to change the unequal Kingdom of Zeth from within. I don’t want to spoil the story too much, but you can be sure that some of the forces manipulating Rance’s antihero desires don’t necessarily have the good of the people in mind.
“Rance VI’s” narrative isn’t just about the downfall of Zeth. Even if you don’t particularly like Rance and his vile ways, there are still other means of enjoying the story. The crippled and traumatized Urza, the female leader of the Ice Flame resistance, goes through a very compelling process of recovering her will to live and reigniting her desire to create a new and better Zeth bringing equality and justice to everyone.
Plenty of characters, both new and old, have their own arcs they go through together with Rance, adding more variety to the overall story. Shizuka’s quest for revenge, Rizna’s desire to change her oversensitive body back to normal, Maria’s uncertain feelings towards Rance and many, many more side story events ultimately bring you closer to the characters, making you appreciate them all the more.
The staple of every Rance game is the completely unapologetic crude humor loaded with pop-culture references and other elements diehard nerds giggle at under their breaths. “Rance VI” is no exception. The game has tons of humor, Rance’s behavior towards anyone is pure comedy, there’s amazingly silly out-of-place technology on top of a slew of inside-jokes by the developers. Rance VI can be equally goofy and serious with its themes. Those sensitive to quick tonal changes can be put off by how quickly the game can jump from genocide to wisecracking jokes.
GAMEPLAY
Apart from your standard visual novel segments, “Rance VI” is an old-school dungeon crawler RPG. Traverse dungeons, defeat enemies in turn-based combat with your party of six characters, gain experience and level up, collect loot. What makes the game stand out a bit are Adventure Achievements or battle points, which award you progressively better loot in the form of special orbs (to be later used at the camp), gold pieces and armor and weapon buns to make your shop-bought equipment more powerful. If you have a keen eye and explore the map enough, you may even encounter special heart-shaped events that increase your Friendship level with your companions. After a certain point, you will also be able to catch monster girls with the aid of Tamanegi, but that’s a story for another paragraph.
The most important screen is the camp screen, as this is where you will be progressing the story and accessing events. In this screen, you will be spending your hard-earned orbs to view events that progress the story, give your characters news abilities at specific FR thresholds and sex up your female companions. When combined with the fact that he doesn’t have a level cap, Rance’s sexual prowess lets him power up and further increase (up to a certain limit) the level cap and the stats of all the women he sleeps with, as well as his own through masturbation. Yes, given enough time and by jacking off alone, Rance could potentially become the most powerful being in the world.
If you skip the occasional grinding, you can find yourself challenged by some of the monsters later on. If you play like me, and want to kick the game’s ass, just level up Rance and it’s a cakewalk. Unless you want to breeze through all the encounters, be careful how much you level your party up. While it’s rare for most other eroge to feature, “Rance VI” actually contains a good amount of post-game content, with bonus dungeons and even additional story events that wrap up all the major unresolved plot points from the main storyline. They extend the game a good few hours.
GRAPHICS
The artist Orion is back in “Rance VI“. His distinct, cute style is present in the main story event CGs, and the sex scenes. His art style is polished like always, with good linework and usage of colors. There’s tons of art in this sixth major installment to the series, including some great POV (point-of-view) shots that showcase the intensity of the action-packed scenes, and Rance’s roughness during sex scenes.
Orion is not the only artist that loaned his talents to “Rance VI”. Chomoyama and MIN-NARAKEN, both with explicitly different styles, participated in the project. If you ever had the pleasure of playing eroge titles from the 90s, you will feel at home. The women have smooth, plump curves, and innocent-looking facial expressions, corrupted by a longing for sexual release during their sex slave training.
MUSIC
I’m of the opinion that all good games should have memorable soundtracks. “Rance VI”, with its rocking melodies and mood-setting beats, does. The music is intense during combat with regular enemies and bosses, and fittingly upbeat and silly during humorous scenes. The music slows down considerably when something serious happens. For longtime fans of the series, “Rance VI” also features a few character theme renditions from past titles. Sill’s and Shizuka’s themes are always a pleasure to listen to. While this may seem like a nitpick, I feel that some tracks the game provides get overused. The soundtrack is fairly big, so there’s no reason the developers didn’t give more thought to variety.
SOUND EFFECTS AND VOICE-ACTING (SFX)
While sound effects aren’t “Rance VI’s” strongest suit, they compliment the game. You won’t get anything mind-blowing here, but everything from the sounds of battle to silly comedy effects work incredibly well with the rest of the package.
HENTAI
As expected, sex in “Rance VI” is abundant and comes in fun packages. Sex even adds to the gameplay mechanics occasionally. Rance’s libido is his main driving force throughout his games. He obsessively chases the cuties encountered on Zeth. Rance will get into these women’s panties by any means necessary. Lying, manipulation, and force are his tools, and that’s how he usually gets his way.
The shark-toothed Rance does not experiment often, and usually just sticks his Hyper Weapon in, shakes his hips around and fires off a few shots of Imperial Juice in the pussy. Done and done. It’s thanks to encounters with the likes of Tamanegi the Trainer that Rance at least considers trying something new this time around. Speaking of the delightful Tamanegi, he deserves a special mention in this review.
If you’re tired of the often brief sex scenes with Rance, you will enjoy the novel assortment Tamanegi brings to the game. Tamanegi is an accomplished archeologist by trade, and has a very peculiar research hobby: he wants to create the ultimate female sex slave, using all kinds of techniques that even government interrogation specialists would be jealous of. Rance meets Tamanegi when the latter has exhausted all research possibilities on human females and to further his ventures he decides to study monster girls, to see how they will respond to his methods.
Rance and Tamanegi have the ability to capture over 40 unique monster girls encountered in combat. After that’s done, each girl goes through a unique sex slave training. This is where Alice Soft had a lot of fun in inventing sexual scenarios. Each of the monsters is broken down in a multitude of ways until they become an obedient sex slave responding to a unique handpicked stimulus. You will get events where one girl is taught to get off on the feeling of abandonment, another will get aroused by the vibration of her own weapon firing. Some will even feel sexual release by masturbating with her own severed limb. The way Tamanegi breaks down his subjects to the most basic of sexual instincts is described in tremendous detail. Not only are those scenes a fascinating look into the psyche and triggers of our own sexual urges, they also provide a much-needed diversity to the game’s sexual content. I highly recommend going through the effort of seeking out all of “Rance VI’s” monster girls to experience those scenes on your own.
CONCLUDING WORDS
“Rance VI” is a rough diamond. It’s somewhat unpolished, but still feels rich in every facade. I love the art direction, the sound design, the engaging story, the fun and simple gameplay, and the hentai. It’s an exemplary eroge, an experience I would expect from industry veterans of almost thirty years. For the amount of content bundled together with “Rance 5D”, the sixth Rance installment is more than worth your money and time. Even for a title released over fourteen years ago, it’s still one of the best examples of a game that combines sex into enjoyable gameplay.
Punch the pussy, or this link to download Rance VI now>
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