The third week of Rance Month.  Why did I pigeonhole myself into this?

We’re back to the classic Rance games with 1991’s Rance III: The Fall of Leazas.

In the game’s prologue, we learn that the country of Leazas has been invaded by the Helman army, which seems to have formed a pact with demons and Dark Lords.  Princess Lia sends her ninja Kanami to bring the Holy Shield to Rance.

Meanwhile, we see Rance and Sill have used the money they earned from the previous game to buy a new house, new clothes, a bunch of expensive crap, and a whole lot of porn.

Kanami arrives and tells Rance that the Helman army is likely searching for Chaos, the bearer of an unknown destructive power.  The only way to remove the seal to Chaos is by using the Holy Shield, the Holy Sword, and the Holy Armor as a set, and Lia gave Rance the Holy Sword and Holy Armor in the previous game.  He proceeded to sell the equipment for 2000 gold each.  Oh, and months of slacking off has lowered Rance’s level from 40ish down to 10.

The party goes to the weapon shop to buy the equipment back.  Haggling doesn’t work, so Rance goes to the guild and takes on a mission to retrieve a girl named Rola who was kidnapped and taken to a nearby cave.  Technically, this mission was already accepted by another adventurer pair, but Rance figures he can take the reward if he completes it first.

Now, let’s cover battling.  It’s completely different from the first two games.  Rance is still the only character you can directly control, but he can now give orders to tell them to focus on attack, support, or defense.  This time, Rance and his party take positions on a grid, and you have to move Rance into position before he can attack.  Every character has their own range of movement and attack ranges.  Rance has average movement and can only attack one space away.  Sill almost never moves, but her magic can reach roughly halfway across the entire battlefield.  Rance can have a total of six party members (well, five plus one… more on that later), and it’s entirely possible to body block enemies, which is a great tactic in boss fights.

Rance now has three attacks: Attack, Rance Attack (higher damage, higher stamina consumption), and Light Attack (always does 1 HP damage).  You might ask, why would you EVER use Light Attack?  Well, remember the Badmouth option from Rance02?  We no longer have that, but Rance now has the “Assault” option.  If Rance uses Assault on a female enemy that’s low on HP, he’ll rape her.  Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass to order everyone to stand down while Rance whittles away 1 HP at a time from a target until he can rape it.  But sometimes it’s worth it.

During the excursion, the party meets the adventurers, Lark and Nor.  Or rather, Lark gets killed by a villain by the name of Satella, and Nor gets raped by a summoned creature.  Rance makes sure to take his sweet time before rescuing Nor (hoping she would be so grateful to him that she would turn over the quest to Rance, and maybe have sex with him later).

Satella escapes after deeming Rance not worth her time, and Nor gets saved.  Rance is now officially the only adventurer on the mission, so he completes it.  Turns out, the kidnapper, a monster named Lis, and Rola are in love.  Rance easily beats Lis, shames him into giving up on Rola until he can turn himself into a human, then proceeds to rape Rola before rescuing and returning her.

Rance gets his reward and goes to the weapon shop to buy the equipment back.  But a pissed-off Rola stole the equipment and ran away to the east.  Angered at the shopkeeper’s incompetence, Rance kills him, then runs after Rola.

No, seriously, he fucking KILLS the guy, and no one can buy weapons from the shop anymore.  Later in the game, you meet his grief-stricken daughter.

I honestly don’t want to spend too much time recapping everything, because this is actually a pretty long game.  The short story is, Rance meets Rola and chases her, but the Helman army gets in his way.  So he liberates cities on his way, and has to find ways past the army when it’s too big for him to take on by himself.  This involves entering a demon-controlled tunnel guarded by a familiar face.

Rance finds out Ferris’ real name and uses it to forever bind her to him as his eternal servant.  Not only does this mean she has to allow his party to enter the demon tunnel, but Rance can now summon her as an ally in every single battle.  Under ordinary circumstances, this is utterly broken: Ferris has the highest attack in the game, able to kill most enemies in one stroke, and she doesn’t drain any EXP.  Basically, the only drawback to summoning her is wasting a turn at the beginning of each fight.  Here’s where it gets stupid: there’s a glitch in the game that causes all sprites on the map to disappear if she’s summoned.  This is literally game-breaking, as many obstacles are sprites.  However, many things you need to interact with to move forward are also sprites.  I once was forced to restart the entire game because Ferris made the boss I was supposed to fight disappear; I entered another area, came back to find him respawned, and was unable to trigger the fight because I was on the wrong side.  Fuck this glitch.  It gets even worse if you pick up the item that automatically summons Ferris.  If you plan on using Ferris , make sure you save only right after entering a new map (including changing floors), lest you accidentally save where a sprite is supposed to be and get yourself stuck.

After the tunnel, Rance finds himself in New Kathtom and meets more familiar faces.

The Helman army was held off at New Kathtom by Maria and her army, but she’s woefully outnumbered, and it’s only a matter of time before the Helman army receives reinforcements.  Rance agrees to help as long as he gets to have sex with Shizuka.  This matches my interests, so I have no complaints.

Skipping forward, Rance takes over Maria’s army and continues liberating cities from the Helman army.  Along the way, he adds a new ally to his party: Sel, the nun.

Sel proves to be important later on when the party needs to encounter a unicorn, and Sel is the only person in the party who hasn’t had her virginity taken by Rance.

Skipping a whole lot again, Rance eventually corners Rola, Lis shows up and seems to have found a way to become a human, the two get back together, and Rola gives up the Holy Sword and Holy Armor.  Fully equipped, Rance pushes toward Leazas, where he is joined by Princess Lia and her servant, Maris.  They remove the seal on Chaos, which turns out to be a powerful sentient sword.  And a pervert.

It turns out that Chaos was itself a seal, keeping the Demon King Gele at bay.  After fighting through floors of enemies and an annoying-ass boss, the party encounters Gele, who defeats everyone except Rance.  The two fight in a non-standard battle that involves chasing Gele down and attacking her.  She teleports around the room and you can’t heal, and she attacks every few steps you take, so it’s literally completely random whether or not you can beat her here.

Once Rance is successful, she’s ready to be sealed.  But she goes and preys on Rance’s one weakness.

After plunging his hyperweapon into Gele, she proclaims she would rather die than be sealed away by Chaos again, so she summons a space-time rift and pulls Rance inside.  Sill barges in and tries to save him, but she gets pulled in as well.  And so, Rance and Sill find themselves in an unfamiliar place and time.  Now that’s a sequel hook if there ever was one.

Rance III is pretty much a perfect sequel, drawing elements from the first two games and retaining the same heart that makes the Rance games what they are.  It’s slightly disappointing that it didn’t introduce quite as many new main girls as the second one did (out of all the new girls in this game, the only one I’d be interested in seeing again is Sel), but it did flesh out characters from the first game a bit more, and the introduction of the world map makes the locations of the Rance world feel more connected.  Also, it’s been a bit downplayed in the other games, but the fact that Rance is actually a powerful and skilled fighter is on full display in this game.  There’s something really satisfying about seeing someone as perverted and irresponsible as Rance leading armies and beating the Helman army.  He’s almost heroic at times.

Huh.  That should probably be the slogan of the Rance series.  “He’s almost heroic!”