Kichikuou Rance

19.12.1996

Users 81/100

Genre: Role-playing (RPG) Strategy Adventure Visual Novel

Kichikuou Rance (literally translating to "Brutal King Rance") is the seventh game in Alicesoft's flagship Rance Series. It was released in Japan on December 19, 1996. It was the first Alicesoft game to be produced for Windows 95 operating systems, as well as the first game to use the company's SYSTEM 35 engine and the territory conquest strategy gameplay used in several of its future releases.

The game begins at the start of LP0003 some time after the events of Rance 4.2. The warrior Rance, accompanied as always by his faithful slave Sill Plain, has been living as the leader of a group of bandits in northern Helman after killing their previous leader as part of a job given to him by the Keith Guild. While Rance greatly enjoys the raping and pillaging that comes with being a bandit leader, the guilt-ridden Sill believes that he is in danger of losing what remains of his conscience and genuinely becoming a villain. After attacking the city of Golak, Rance's group alerts the attention of Ruberan Tser, commander of the Helman volunteer army, who launches a counterstrike on them during their second attempt at pillaging the city. Unable to fight against a genuine army, the bandits are quickly destroyed, Sill is captured by the Helman Army and Rance is forced to flee for his life. Rance evades the Helman army for several days, with both his equipment and health steadily declining all the while, before he finally passes out from fatigue along the Leazas/Helman border. He is found on the verge of death by Kentou Kanami, the personal ninja of Leazas' queen and Rance's longtime admirer Lia Parapara Leazas, who brings him to Leazas castle. After three days of recovery, Rance finally regains consciousness and, completely humiliated by his defeat at Helman's hands and desperate to rescue Sill, demands that Lia give him the Leazas Army to destroy the enemy nation. Finally seeing an opportunity to have Rance to herself, Lia agrees on the condition that he first marry her, which Rance reluctantly accepts. Rance, his mind already corrupted by his time as a bandit leader and his morals even more flexible in Sill's absence, becomes drunk on power almost immediately after becoming king of Leazas, causing him to expand his goal from simply destroying Helman and rescuing Sill to conquering the entire world for himself. On the day of his coronation, rather than read the pre-written speech given to him by Lia's advisor Maris Amaryllis, Rance makes the bold declaration that all of the country's people are required to throw their lives away for the sake of his ambitions, causing him to be instantly deemed a tyrant. The very next day, Ex Banquet, general of the Leazas White Corps, forms a rebel army composed of nearly half of the nation's forces, with the explicit goal of removing Rance from power. His dreams of world conquest momentarily halted by the sudden rebel uprising, Rance vows to destroy the opposing army without hesitation. So begins the era of the man who would go down in history as the brutal king...