... wayyyy too vanilla and boring. (the writing's just shit)
Exactly. Also the pubes. Holy shit. Those fucking pubes...
Can you roughly explain what's so good about Kichikuou Rance? And why it's worth it?
It's simply 100% undiluted peak rance, the ultimate Rance. Fun, full of love, rape and excellent writing (that knows it's telling its story within a game, and not as a linear novel). The easiest way to judge this is by looking at all the subplots that seem to be important, but don't go anywhere at all. Like Yamanaka Kojika trying to restore the Amago clan in Sengoku Rance, or the fucking Hanny march towards your capitol. Stupid shit like that. It's hilarious. Needless to say, Kichikuou Rance also got plenty of that kind of shit going on, the best example maybe being the relationship and correspondence (via cute demon apostles Kaybnyan and Kaybwan) between Kayblis and Camilla. There is just nothing dumb and funny like that in IX (lame!). At all. And I thought the "hanni subplot" was long since a staple of Rance games...
There are just 3 territories/cities that make up Japan. Sengoku (clearly) expanded and improved that part of the story by a lot, and so good. The alicist church got one territory/city, there is no Crook, instead Rance will do that part himself, which is great too. The original Sachiko Centers is already here, formerly known as Mokomoko. The Kalar forest just counts as "dungeon". Rance Quest expanded and improved these parts of the story by a lot. The three big territories (other than the monster realm) in Kichikuou are Leazas (plus Free Cities), Zeth, and then Helman, which is big. And you get a really fair chunk of the whole Helman rebellion. IX doesn't add or expand much, it just fucks around, and not even in a good way.
Where Sengoku and Rance Quest took a "chapter" of Kichikuou and made it bigger and better, that's simply not the case with IX. And for this alone, as a proper IX replacement, it's worth playing already.
Finally, let's quickly talk about the gameplay. The game just throws you into the bandit phase and you will probably still be slightly confused and/or irritated by the time you make it to Leazas (at least I was, playing this for the first time). I think it's a question of expectations/mindset. The game isn't really about grand strategy or (RPG) fights, it's about decision making and also bit of a puzzler. And as such, you totally shouldn't be afraid to "save scum", that's the wrong term and mindset to begin with. I believe the idea here is to explore every single turn as much until you're content with your move, and then you proceed. This may, or may not involve reloading a few times to see what happens if you do this, or that (for example there are always plenty of options/locations available that wont do anything at all/good for you at the time, but the game will not indicate this, and your actionpoint for the turn is gone anyways...). You're just not going to beat this by simply playing turn for turn without ever looking at the options you have (which involves a fair bit of replaying the same turn). It's just part of the experience and made very clear (that it is indeed a bit of a puzzle game in this sense) once you invade the monster realm, since all demons have alternative/special ways to kill them off.
I do suggest to first read a guide, but only the parts about the game mechanics, parameters and such (there's no tutorial or anything in the game, and it might really take a while figuring out how to do a rance attack on your own...). Don't follow a walkthrough (or at least not too closely), but play it as described a bit like a puzzle game, and it should be one hell of a ride.
Because let's be honest, the old stuff looks bad.
The really old pixel Rance games aren't that sexy, true, but Kichikuou Rance still looks splendid (and always will). The map is great. The sprites are great. The lewd images are also great (and much better, as in more competent, objectively speaking, than cheap IX pubes unless you just don't dig that older char style). Just the fights are a little bit clunky due to the lack of any animation, but they still look great, especially when Miki goes BOOOOOOOMMM, holy shit.
Though I'll give it to you that Magic looks pretty hot in Kichikuou, especially when compared to forehead Magic in canon Rance
It's just odd to me what they did to Magic. Absolutely ruined, and not just the looks.
Oh, oh, and the Lia (and Maris) shenanigans are the best (the whole situation with Rance being King/married to Lia is just golden).
Lia alone is plenty of reason to play Kichikuou. Make sure to build that S&M tower.
gahahahaha.
, those fucking pubes, aaahhhh... - rance game in a long time, but sure, I'm cutting the older games lots of slack here. At least they're all still very charming. IX will never be. It's trash.
