Tag Archives: The Lonely Girl

Waifu Wednesday: Athena 2.0

A real highlight of Rance 5D is the amount of time you get to spend with Athena 2.0.

Utterly devoted to her master, but in a completely different way to the genuine feelings Sill holds for Rance, this rather peculiar artificial lifeform is a reliable source of comedy, cuteness and, more often than not, erotic scenes.

She’s definitely a memorable character for sure, and her interactions with Rance, Sill and the rest of the cast form an important part of Rance 5D as a whole.

(There’s a disappointing lack of Athena fanart around the Internet, so there’s a couple of mildly NSFW images from the games after the jump; consider yourself warned!)

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Rance 5D: Roulette, Role-Playing and RNG

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2002’s Rance 5D (finally localised into English in 2017) is probably one of the most unusual RPGs you will ever play.

At least part of its rather distinctive nature is due to the fact that it is actually developer Alicesoft’s fourth attempt at a fifth Rance game, hence the “D” on the end of the title — A, B and C were all failed attempts that never saw the light of day.

Thankfully, Rance 5D did, however, and it’s nothing if not a memorable experience, both from a narrative and mechanical perspective — and from the perspective of its rather troubled development history, too.

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Waifu Wednesday: Sill Plain

Now our exploration of the Rance series is well underway, it’s only fitting we celebrate some of its excellent female characters.

And where better to start than the protagonist’s perpetual companion (and slave) Sill Plain?

Sill has been a fixture in the series from its inception through to its current status, acting as Rance’s long-suffering sidekick and primary romantic interest despite her status as a slave. She’s one of the series’ most beloved characters, and the perfect counter to Rance’s shameless, brutish nature.

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Rance: The “Discworld” of Eroge

cropped-rance-header-1-6620974This article is one chapter of a multi-part Cover Game feature!
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One of the most remarkable things about Alicesoft’s Rance series is quite how detailed its lore is.

This might not be something you expect to hear about a series of 18+ games with rather a lot of sexually explicit content, but just a few minutes with a Rance title will make it abundantly clear Alicesoft takes this franchise very seriously indeed. At least, so far as ensuring its lore is internally consistent; as a series with absurdist (and often black) humour at its heart, Rance is anything but “serious”.

This combination of a significant humorous component with deep, well-crafted lore established over a long cycle of individual works particularly brings to mind Terry Pratchett’s influential Discworld series. And if we look a little more deeply into that lore we can see a number of similarities along the way, particularly in terms of how things the audience will recognise from modern life are blended with the conventions of fantastic fiction.

NOTE: A hanny from /vg/ helpfully pointed out that the original version of this article used terminology from the original Japanese versions and fan translations. It’s now been updated with terminology from MangaGamer’s “official” translation to prevent confusion for series newcomers!

Continue reading Rance: The “Discworld” of Eroge