Today on the blog, we have a Rance Quest Magnum tester’s corner from threepwood007!
WARNING: This post contains spoilers for Rance 5D, VI, and Sengoku Rance.
Rance is, if nothing else, a pretty story in the visual novel medium. From a company that just about burned itself out to the point of not wanting to go on, the Rance story burst forth from those ashes to continue to be one of the most unique franchises out there. Whether you can stomach the tastes of Alicesoft or not, the green anti-hero of the Continent has definitely Gahahaha~’d his way into the hearts of enough to make the series one of the most desired localizations here at MangaGamer for ages.
Which is appropriate, because in the grim darkness of the far future, as it turns out there is only Rance. And quests. And levels. And item upgrades. And quests. And Malgrid.
Rance Quest Magnum marks the 8th entry into the franchise, continuing the new canon timeline from 5D as Rance settles down in the Continent to continue his all-important life directive of banging every beautiful woman in the world. There’s a side bit about his longtime companion and slave, Sill Plain, being stuck in ice from the curse of an Archfiend, but the hole you have access to trumps the hole you don’t, apparently.
Rance Quest is well-known for having a major plot device being a curse placed upon Rance such that he cannot, however, penetrate a hole belonging to a woman under level 35. This sends Rance on a campaign of fuckin’ and fightin’ as he searches for powerful ladies as well as the means to break the curse. A Rance game with the core of Rance as the driving gameplay mechanic: level up, fuck it up, and then do it all over again.
Working on the game actually proved to be even more of a challenge than Sengoku Rance, and that’s mostly because it’s a great deal longer (more than twice as long, as the numbers suggest).
It’s helped by TADA, bless them, adding a nice little 2x XP mode to boost the grind along should a player choose, but the sheer enormity of Rance Quest Magnum is intimidating. There are dozens upon dozens of recruitable characters, over 200 quests, and loads of plots and subplots to keep track of. There are also, of course, tons of features in the game that need to be examined lest they prove a headache for you, dear player.
Tooltips, quest descriptions, quest triggers, multiple endings, end credits flags, etc. etc. etc. Rance Quest Magnum has it all, and the big takeaway here is that this game is absolutely worth the time that you’ll put into it as the payoff is enormous.
Protip: Don’t bang the queen the first time you get the actual choice, and you’ll see one of the more brutally emotional endings Rance has to offer. Oof.
As a wrap-up, the QA process been coming up on “the Internet” more and more recently. If we could, we’d test until every bug was squished and our eyeballs could only see XP gained and Gold drops.
Sadly, our time is limited and so the production team does their best with what we have. This human on the other end of the ethernet cable simply hopes that you enjoy your time with the official localization of Rance Quest Magnum as much as he enjoyed getting it ready for you.
See you in Helman~!
Rance Quest Magnum is now available for purchase on MangaGamer.com!
