Rance!
Story
This game is a remake of a 25 year old game (at the time), and serves as a great introduction to the legendarily notorious rapist scumbag adventurer: the Great Rance. The story follows Rance, an adventurer who goes on a quest to find the missing noble Hikari Mi Blanc. With his slave, Sill, by his side, he goes to the Kingdom Leazas in a Quest for Hikari
The mystery and overall story is quite simple, it's more so a backdrop for Rance to get up to raunchy antics as he hits on and and proceeds to assault every woman in town. The game does contain dark themes and Rance is one hell of a scumbag (hell, there's a literal assault button and there's like not a single consensual scene in this game) but they're mostly played off comedically. The game never takes itself too seriously and it's a game where you just have fun with it, with no real sense of urgency in mind.
Gameplay
You go around Leazas, exploring many different locations like shops, casinos, colosseums, bars, and other places talking to a variety of NPCs while trying to pick up leads on where the missing Hikari might be all the while enjoying nice Rance-y and humorous dialogue.
There's a lot of variation in the characters and they're all quite fun and colorful to talk to. Rance especially steals the show with how abrasive and self centered he is in all his interactions, only caring about himself or hitting on women in various uncouth manners. It's incredibly amusing to watch his antics play out, and a breath of fresh air to follow someone so scummy instead of a usual fantasy hero.
Besides exploring, you also enter and explore various dungeons laid out like poker cards. Each weapon is a poker chip that you "bet" in order to use in battle. Some chips have cooldowns while others are single use. There's also chips that change the type of your attack (i.e magic or purify), with certain enemies being weak to some types, and resistant to others. Additionally, there's shields you can use to defend against the enemy's attack.
The combat is quite simple, most of the time you'll just be throwing all of your chips in to try and overwhelm the enemy. You die a lot in this game and the devs even acknowledge that. However the game does at least auto save whenever you enter a dungeon, so if you die you don't lose too much progress. You can also choose to run away from most battles or even just get out of the dungeon at any point by choosing to hurry back to town.
The H-Scenes
This game kind of suffers from the same feeling I had from Dohna Dohna where the actual gameplay itself is more of the focus than the h-scenes. At least in Dohna Dohna it was easy to get the scenes though, in this game you'll often have to try and figure out little puzzles of what to do in order to "claim your prize".
If you try to assault a woman, it'll fail and there'll sometimes be a hint on what the player has to do in order to get the girl's h-scene. Some of them are quite straightforward like beating the girl in a fight or getting an item for a girl, but others are really obscure like gambling with a girl 8 times over in order to progress or trying to get an item by searching the same place 3 times. Some of them are time sensitive too, and can be really easy to miss forever.
In my opinion it's not worth such hassle to try and figure most of these out, and I would instead recommend to use a guide (god bless the very comprehensive walkthrough on Miraheze).
The scenes themselves are kind of hit or miss though. The art is nice and there's quite a few variations in each scene (I think the facial expressions are definitely the best parts), but it's just nothing too arousing most of the time. Some of them are also just more funny than erotic. I was really disappointed by the scenes of my favorite character, Patty, in particular, they were a lot more funny than anything.
The girls themselves are quite cute though and they really hit a wide range of tropes and types, from maids to ninjas to plain girls to tomboy soldiers (and lots lots more). It always feels like you're meeting someone new who might just be right up your alley.
Music
As a side note the music in this game is really really good. I loved all the songs in Dohna Dohna and I love all the songs in this game too, maybe Alicesoft is just really good at making bangers for their games. A few standouts are the night and day themes, the level up shop theme, and the weapons shop theme. Definitely worth a listen!
Conclusion
Rance 01 is incredibly polished, and as someone who's a newcomer to the Rance series, I found this game incredibly fun and humorous most of the time. It's a simple experience and the game is on the shorter side. It's not anything I'll remember for years to come, but it is very enjoyable for the time I spent, and it got me interested in trying out the other Rance games too.
For a hentai game, this game's hentai department is quite lacking however, which is why I'd say it's a 4/5. I do really enjoy the art though, Gyokai's art in this gives off a sort of retro feel that tries to pay homage to the original from so long ago.
If you go in with the lens of a hentai game, you'll be disappointed. If you go in with the lens of a regular game with some hentai scenes, you'll have a pretty good time though.
Story
This game is a remake of a 25 year old game (at the time), and serves as a great introduction to the legendarily notorious rapist scumbag adventurer: the Great Rance. The story follows Rance, an adventurer who goes on a quest to find the missing noble Hikari Mi Blanc. With his slave, Sill, by his side, he goes to the Kingdom Leazas in a Quest for Hikari
The mystery and overall story is quite simple, it's more so a backdrop for Rance to get up to raunchy antics as he hits on and and proceeds to assault every woman in town. The game does contain dark themes and Rance is one hell of a scumbag (hell, there's a literal assault button and there's like not a single consensual scene in this game) but they're mostly played off comedically. The game never takes itself too seriously and it's a game where you just have fun with it, with no real sense of urgency in mind.
Gameplay
You go around Leazas, exploring many different locations like shops, casinos, colosseums, bars, and other places talking to a variety of NPCs while trying to pick up leads on where the missing Hikari might be all the while enjoying nice Rance-y and humorous dialogue.
There's a lot of variation in the characters and they're all quite fun and colorful to talk to. Rance especially steals the show with how abrasive and self centered he is in all his interactions, only caring about himself or hitting on women in various uncouth manners. It's incredibly amusing to watch his antics play out, and a breath of fresh air to follow someone so scummy instead of a usual fantasy hero.
Besides exploring, you also enter and explore various dungeons laid out like poker cards. Each weapon is a poker chip that you "bet" in order to use in battle. Some chips have cooldowns while others are single use. There's also chips that change the type of your attack (i.e magic or purify), with certain enemies being weak to some types, and resistant to others. Additionally, there's shields you can use to defend against the enemy's attack.
The combat is quite simple, most of the time you'll just be throwing all of your chips in to try and overwhelm the enemy. You die a lot in this game and the devs even acknowledge that. However the game does at least auto save whenever you enter a dungeon, so if you die you don't lose too much progress. You can also choose to run away from most battles or even just get out of the dungeon at any point by choosing to hurry back to town.
The H-Scenes
This game kind of suffers from the same feeling I had from Dohna Dohna where the actual gameplay itself is more of the focus than the h-scenes. At least in Dohna Dohna it was easy to get the scenes though, in this game you'll often have to try and figure out little puzzles of what to do in order to "claim your prize".
If you try to assault a woman, it'll fail and there'll sometimes be a hint on what the player has to do in order to get the girl's h-scene. Some of them are quite straightforward like beating the girl in a fight or getting an item for a girl, but others are really obscure like gambling with a girl 8 times over in order to progress or trying to get an item by searching the same place 3 times. Some of them are time sensitive too, and can be really easy to miss forever.
In my opinion it's not worth such hassle to try and figure most of these out, and I would instead recommend to use a guide (god bless the very comprehensive walkthrough on Miraheze).
The scenes themselves are kind of hit or miss though. The art is nice and there's quite a few variations in each scene (I think the facial expressions are definitely the best parts), but it's just nothing too arousing most of the time. Some of them are also just more funny than erotic. I was really disappointed by the scenes of my favorite character, Patty, in particular, they were a lot more funny than anything.
The girls themselves are quite cute though and they really hit a wide range of tropes and types, from maids to ninjas to plain girls to tomboy soldiers (and lots lots more). It always feels like you're meeting someone new who might just be right up your alley.
Music
As a side note the music in this game is really really good. I loved all the songs in Dohna Dohna and I love all the songs in this game too, maybe Alicesoft is just really good at making bangers for their games. A few standouts are the night and day themes, the level up shop theme, and the weapons shop theme. Definitely worth a listen!
Conclusion
Rance 01 is incredibly polished, and as someone who's a newcomer to the Rance series, I found this game incredibly fun and humorous most of the time. It's a simple experience and the game is on the shorter side. It's not anything I'll remember for years to come, but it is very enjoyable for the time I spent, and it got me interested in trying out the other Rance games too.
For a hentai game, this game's hentai department is quite lacking however, which is why I'd say it's a 4/5. I do really enjoy the art though, Gyokai's art in this gives off a sort of retro feel that tries to pay homage to the original from so long ago.
If you go in with the lens of a hentai game, you'll be disappointed. If you go in with the lens of a regular game with some hentai scenes, you'll have a pretty good time though.