This review contains spoilers
I played this game on release after greatly anticipating it and following the series for years at that point. Of all the things that could be said about it, what's really most remarkable I guess is that it exists and it doesn't suck. The only similar long-running RPG series with a continuous story I can think of is Trails, and my interest in that precipitously declined when they got to Cold Steel, so Rance running for thirty years and ending relatively well was unprecedented and I don't know if it'll ever happen again.
I was very positive on it at the time, probably amplified by the high that comes from reaching the end of something so long. Rance X itself is a ludicrously long game, to say nothing of the series itself. But there are problems here, and by now I don't really think this outdoes Kichikuou.
Part II in concept is a great twist and I was floored when I first reached it (thankfully unspoiled), but honestly, I barely remember what happens in most of it and it ends with literal deus ex machina. It's cute playing as Rance's kids and I like the Toushin Toshi quest for the nostalgia, but little of consequence happens until you finish collecting the Dragon Quest orbs and go to fight Rance.
I understand of course that by this point the game has mostly stopped concerning itself with the events of this world and a lot of this is metatextual. I love that the game completely stops being a porn game now that Rance isn't present and only starts being one again in a couple of instances when he is, that's pretty clever and I kind of can't believe they did it. And at the very end they just spell out that the intention of all of Part II is to show "God" (the player) that perpetuating the suffering of this world (continuing to draw out the series) is not the greatest joy that can be experienced, and instead you can Collect Orbs and Fight the Demon Lord (play Dragon Quest? But who knows how much longer that's going either with Toriyama dead.)
Nice idea, but you kind of fucked it up because Part II is not nearly as fun as Part I or most of the rest of the series when taken by itself. It's Part I but far more linear and limited, and the lack of dramatic conflict amongst the characters outside their immediate goal of fighting Rance doesn't give them much depth. Maybe this is me being a huge masochist as I certainly am, but I do enjoy a little suffering, and I can't say this story convinced me to not enjoy it. And the depiction of suffering had already been greatly reduced by this point in the series anyway outside of scenes like designated Bad Ending gratuitous rape scenes and such you go out of your way for, which makes it feel especially fetishistic and not very real.
In Kichikuou the perpetuation of suffering was an inevitability and the greatest possible ending was to delay further conflict until after Rance would likely be dead. This is a much more realistic outlook, but I understand wanting to do something different and I'm glad they didn't just go with a Kill God ending given how impossible that's been established to be and how little it would mean narratively as anything but a power fantasy. But while I respect the attempt I don't think it actually lands.
I haven't even talked about Part I, but the problem with Part I narratively is that it's all what you would expect from the buildup across the previous games. This is The War with Kayblis, Kichikuou already did this but far more succinctly. In some ways this is better and in some ways that was better, but it has been done and reaches the same conclusion, so only what happens afterward can be that novel. Mechanically it's more open-ended than Part II, but not nearly as open as Kichikuou could be, and the character events have again been greatly watered down from what they were in that.
Anyway it is good and in some ways remarkable, I won't deny that. But I don't know if this is really the ideal ending that it could have been. I don't know if that ever could've happened after the main writer changed after Sengoku Rance either; the games from Rance Quest on don't quite feel right.
I was very positive on it at the time, probably amplified by the high that comes from reaching the end of something so long. Rance X itself is a ludicrously long game, to say nothing of the series itself. But there are problems here, and by now I don't really think this outdoes Kichikuou.
Part II in concept is a great twist and I was floored when I first reached it (thankfully unspoiled), but honestly, I barely remember what happens in most of it and it ends with literal deus ex machina. It's cute playing as Rance's kids and I like the Toushin Toshi quest for the nostalgia, but little of consequence happens until you finish collecting the Dragon Quest orbs and go to fight Rance.
I understand of course that by this point the game has mostly stopped concerning itself with the events of this world and a lot of this is metatextual. I love that the game completely stops being a porn game now that Rance isn't present and only starts being one again in a couple of instances when he is, that's pretty clever and I kind of can't believe they did it. And at the very end they just spell out that the intention of all of Part II is to show "God" (the player) that perpetuating the suffering of this world (continuing to draw out the series) is not the greatest joy that can be experienced, and instead you can Collect Orbs and Fight the Demon Lord (play Dragon Quest? But who knows how much longer that's going either with Toriyama dead.)
Nice idea, but you kind of fucked it up because Part II is not nearly as fun as Part I or most of the rest of the series when taken by itself. It's Part I but far more linear and limited, and the lack of dramatic conflict amongst the characters outside their immediate goal of fighting Rance doesn't give them much depth. Maybe this is me being a huge masochist as I certainly am, but I do enjoy a little suffering, and I can't say this story convinced me to not enjoy it. And the depiction of suffering had already been greatly reduced by this point in the series anyway outside of scenes like designated Bad Ending gratuitous rape scenes and such you go out of your way for, which makes it feel especially fetishistic and not very real.
In Kichikuou the perpetuation of suffering was an inevitability and the greatest possible ending was to delay further conflict until after Rance would likely be dead. This is a much more realistic outlook, but I understand wanting to do something different and I'm glad they didn't just go with a Kill God ending given how impossible that's been established to be and how little it would mean narratively as anything but a power fantasy. But while I respect the attempt I don't think it actually lands.
I haven't even talked about Part I, but the problem with Part I narratively is that it's all what you would expect from the buildup across the previous games. This is The War with Kayblis, Kichikuou already did this but far more succinctly. In some ways this is better and in some ways that was better, but it has been done and reaches the same conclusion, so only what happens afterward can be that novel. Mechanically it's more open-ended than Part II, but not nearly as open as Kichikuou could be, and the character events have again been greatly watered down from what they were in that.
Anyway it is good and in some ways remarkable, I won't deny that. But I don't know if this is really the ideal ending that it could have been. I don't know if that ever could've happened after the main writer changed after Sengoku Rance either; the games from Rance Quest on don't quite feel right.