This game is crazy, a masterpiece, and one of the most ambitious and most passion-filled video games ever made. You can tell that in the 1990s, Alicesoft put a lot of its future plans for Rance at the time into this game, as they didn't know if the series would go on. Luckily, this is the game they truly blew up in popularity with, but this game is insane as-is.

The scale of this is huge. You take control of cities' and countries' economies and armies, as well as negotiate and battle with entire other cities and countries. Recurring and iconic Rance characters can perish forever in the blink of an eye due to the permadeath feature. There are so many moving parts and characters all across the map moving on a timescale across in-game months and years, with such a level of player agency that no playthrough and its plot is the same for two people. It is full of emotional moments and gut punches from the very beginning as the tone shifts to being more serious, with some seriously grim moments, too. I did not expect a game that's better in the series than 03 for a while, but I'm glad this was one. It's genuinely just impressive.

Oh, and the soundtrack is full of bangers.

https://files.catbox.moe/f7gjyp.mp4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4RQFHLkS4w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykInTylqBIo