Don't Sleep On Rance VI: The Collapse of Zeth

[@__m.r.]

Amazing video! Well worth the wait - Adze delivers 👍Gotta admit, Alfra segment brings back memories back from when I've read it. Some stories just stay with you for a long time

[@Adze]

The fact that Alfra never shows up again in the series is unforgivable

[@mysticthunder5838]

Hey, I'm glad you enjoyed Rance 6! It was my second game in this series (after 01) and really sold me on continuing through the other titles.

[@cesarmarante680]

My most wanted video of the year 🥲

[@StarryKnightPinkle]

21:08 I can’t believe there is a Saw reference in this game. Vinny vinesauce will approve. Gas, gas, everywhere! 😂

[@ethanmijares55]

Recently just found out this retrospective of the Rance Games existed and I'm looking forward to seeing you cover more of the modern games! Super amazing channel man, love the content!

[@vaynep]

this video belongs in a museum sometimes rather than replaying a rance game I'd watch an adze video about it instead, good job

[@BornToLove305]

Just found your channel, and wow! You weren't lying about "in depth" absolutely wonderful job subscribed.

[@relaetsecyr]

Rocky is GOATED

[@presidentirinavladimirovna7054]

Another excellent video, Adze! Still not done with Kichikou Rance yet, but I went ahead and got Rance VI. Looking forward to the Sengoku Rance video!

[@Senraikai]

Nice. Definitely one of the best Rance games and a great video. (I will always hate Majin being translated as Fiend, though) I played Sengoku Rance as my first Rance game, so when I played this game it was super weird seeing Urza weak and lacking confidence. I really liked getting all the Shizuka stuff which of course gets continued in future games and goes in some...interesting directions lets say. There's still plenty of great characters and character development left for you to meet and experience in the series. Looking forward to future Rance videos (and non Rance videos, I guess)

[@dardanuyp]

your reviews never disappoint regarding alfra, I didn't really appreciate her arc that much with all the crazy things that happen during the story, but hearing you narrate it again made me appreciate it a lot more and tbh that's something that happened a lot, since I binge played all the games during covid, so I never even stopped to appreciate the small things, I just wanted to finish the whole series shizuka best girl, I think she has one of the best stories in the entire series and I just love how she's one of the few characters that actually seems to have common sense and stands up to rance also, the humor in this entry was one of my favourites, my favourite moment in this entire game is probably either what happened with sieg or *SPOILERS* ... when rance has his dick frozen, is completely desperate to unfreeze it, gets mad and throws chaos at saizel screaming "IF YOU WANT IT SO MUCH THEN TAKE IT", and actually somehow stabbing her with that throw

[@Adze]

The dick freezing CG is one of the best in the game.

[@Lolroflpie]

@@Adze A lot of the decensors in the english releases make Rance's hyper weapon way darker than the rest of his skin so me and my friend always joked that he got really bad frostbite here that he never recovered from.

[@toastyww1751]

Personally i think Rance VI has the best writting of all of the translated Rance games so far and one of my favorite moments in this game was when Lia showed up, that was so hype and funny. Great video but i expected comments about the ost...

[@Paul-bz8ps]

The next entry, the one that introduce this glorious series to the western audience, i'm really looking forward to the next video.

[@relaetsecyr]

The shizuka nagi plot also had the: I'm your sister thing that was super funny

[@lol0999]

Rance 6 is my 3rd favourite of the series, played through it twice without the TADA patch. Sengoku Rance is the game that introduced me to the series and definitely is my favourite overall, hope you enjoy it.

[@zomt420]

Yeeeeaahhh new rance video

[@TriXC0re]

Funnily enough I've just finished my Rance VI replay today. Yeah the TADA patch is GOATED. But truth be told the game is going to be very easy until the very end. End-game and post game is still challenging tho. But when the challange actually arrived I was completely burned out. And when I started that "defeat 20 squads" mission in the post game I've turned on the cheat engine. When I played it for the first time I've also cheated my way through the end and post game :P

[@lemonov3031]

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one to beat the damn game without cheating. It's not *that* hard.

[@TriXC0re]

@@lemonov3031 yeah it's definitely not hard. just tedious and the whole gameplay loop got kinda boring after 30h. I love the gameplay but it may actually be a bit too simple (and easy with the tada patch) for such a long game.

[@relaetsecyr]

Even without TADA patch the game isn't bad until the really end imo. It just takes longer to get there

[@canibalsuicune]

I'm not gonna lie, while I'm glad that you appreciated Rance VI and claims it to be your favorite, I sensed that your heart wasn't fully in it during the plot analysis section so suffice to say I was a bit underwhelmed. You brush off the plot of the game as "a lot of filler with not much meaningful things happening or anything much said" but I disagree wholeheartedly with that statement because on the contrary there is a lot to say about Rance VI's story and its place within the series continuity. On a surface level, Rance VI is a classic revolution story. You get a tyrannical and corrupt gouvernement, an oppressed minority having to live as second class citizen and a rebel group trying to change stuff about the whole place. Typically, it's a very tried and true formula with not much room for improvement or variations and which has been used to various degree of effectiveness. But I think that adding the Rance variable made this story shot up to interesting new height that I rarely see from other story of this type. See, the thing with Zeth is that its society is just too damn rotten to the core and if not for Rance showing up it wouldn't have changed significantly. See the game is overall a critique of "passive activism" which is the act of resisting by not actually being too radical and believing that you can change society by small increments and by focusing on seemingly trivial but existing problem. Ice Flame does a lot of good deeds for the lower class citizen of Zeth, there's no denying it but on their own they're not really changing society all too deeply because they lack that itch to just do bigger things, actually attacking the establishment and hurting the system in a meaningful way, Urza is a coward and too traumatized by her past to be a good leader and enacting these more radical actions... until Rance's shows up. And that's the thing, all of these moments you declare to be "fillers" is a clear representation of that, Rance & Co does a lot of things which helps people on a micro-level but doesn't change anything on a macro-level and that's not the Rance style. The first thing Rance does upon arriving at Ice Flame is killing a bunch of useless goons and getting his own squad, then through his charisma alone, he manages to become the shadow leader of Ice Flame and progressively gain more and more control over it changing the direction their taking overtime. And that leads him eventually to follow his own hubris and team-up with Pentagon which yes, he does it for his own gain but also because as awful and extreme Pentagon is, they get shit done, ofc Pentagon are a bunch of fucking lunatics but don't worry because Rance thinks he has everything under control... (He hasn't). And this leads to one of the biggest catastrophe in the recent continent history but that set of events was just the right push to lead people to unite and work together and in the end change society as a whole. Rance VI is the first Rance game to put Rance in front of a situation that is way more complex than what he usually resolved in previous games. Rance himself doesn't particularly care about the political situation in Zeth and has no real opinion on anything going on here but like always, if he can boost his own ego by just fucking a few women and slaying a few monsters that's a win-win situation for him. But the situation in Zeth is just too damn big for himself, he can't just solve the situation by doing his regular Rance shenanigans and Rance VI shows us a situation where Rance showing up makes the situation worse because he alone cannot solve the literal centuries of systemic oppression and societal issue that were going on in Zeth One of my favorite piece of storytelling in Rance VI is once the shit hit the fan and people are now working together to solve the mess Rance indirectly caused by his recklessness and since he can't be the main figure of the operation, people just don't take him seriously anymore and that hurts his ego badly and he just fucking leaves Because the world doesn't turn around Rance and Rance is not a great person and if nobody need Rance then Rance is useless and being useless and not the center of the universe pisses off Rance deeply and he acts exactly like he's supposed to : like a complete man-child Rance acts perfectly in character once he can't get anything out of the situation, the guy just leaves but then while he doesn't seem to accept the idea of doing something for others instead of himself for once, he gets complicated feelings as the harem and relationships he had built until this time crumble in front of him so he has to resign and come back. And he isn't welcomed with open-arm either, the guy hardly fits in the resistance against Camilla's army because everyone is busting their asses of to make the situation better while he just laze around waiting for the moment he'll be useful again. Also Rance VI is where the cumulative consequentialist storytelling of the story goes full circle, where actions Rance took in previous games either turn the situation to his advantages (like stopping Leazas from annexing Zeth because Lia has the hots for Rance's) or adding new problems (everything relating to Feliss which is way the fuck worse than simply "getting a child", if you missed out on her scene in the disposal dungeon, you'll realize that she's in a much more dire situation than previously and it's going to be the first time that Rance shows a bit of regret for one of his victims). The game establishes Rance as this ultimate force for change, not good, not bad, but changes nonetheless, he is a man which charisma and chaotic nature can both break eggs and make omelettes at the same time and that's why Gandhi is tricked into thinking he's some sort of messiah because Gandhi is about as incompetent if not more so at dealing the problem in his own country since he blindly believes that eliminating a few bad apples will change society as a whole. It's a much more ambitious take on a Rance story, it's actually Rance III with LAYERS and it does all of this while still keeping the silly and goofy nature of the story with small sprinkles of darkness here and there like only Tori can achieve to do.

[@TheGlamourNazi]

Yeah I thought it was wild he mentioned dark Rance but didn’t mention the Feliss section of the game.

[@Adze]

With the sociopolitical stuff, I actually noticed a couple of different possible interpretations, but I wasn't sure which ones I thought were more correct. Plus, there's always the chance that my own political beliefs could bias me (and I really do not want my personal politics to be a part of my videos). For example, I actually read a large portion of the story as a fairly harsh critique of excessive radicalism. Pentagon routinely hurts the very people they claim to care for, actively push away those who would otherwise be sympathetic to their cause (including some who are in a position to potentially influence things for the better), fail to impart their ideas to the masses that they look down on, fight against the new reformist government that's actually imparting meaningful change, and ultimately end up being easily manipulated into being the tool of an even greater evil. I also have some unfinished thoughts on what I think the series as a whole is doing (didn't fully realize it until after the video was already 90% done. Blame Mushoku Tensei for that) and if I'm right, it'll actually radically change the way I look at Rance overall. I just need to think about it more and see if future games reinforce it. I also think that even if I'm right, it wasn't part of the plan from the very beginning which complicates things even further. This thought does *somewhat* conflict with your interpretation of Rance while also kind of paralleling it. Again, gotta think about it more. I also maintain that many of the individual plot points don't do much on an individual level. It's more that they're each one singular piece of the puzzle and talking about the individual pieces would feel (to me) like I was padding the video without adding all that much of value since realistically you could eliminate any one of them without significantly impacting the overall story. I genuinely believe that many of the story beats do more in service of the pacing than of the plot. And one more thing, I didn't record my entire playthrough of the game in the interest of disk space. And conveniently, the wiki is absolutely horrendous when it comes to the Rance VI story, much worse than any of the previous games. So I actually forgot a bunch of the small details amd I really wouldn't be comfortable going in-depth about an individual moment that I half remember, but have no reference material for. I did actually find a tool that let's me more easily reference stuff in my recordings, so this shouldn't be an issue moving forward (and I can just delete my footage when I'm done and pray I don't need to re-edit anything). Realistically, I trusted the wiki to be as useful as it was for my previous videos when it just wasn't. And it even slapped me with a Rance IX spoiler on top of that lmao.

[@sadscientisthououinkyouma1867]

While your analysis is interesting I disagree, Rance 6 portrays revolutions in an historically accurate way with Rance ironically enough saving far more lives than anyone else involved in the entire story. It portrays revolutions as an entirely top-down event not as a rising of some oppressed class, which is literally what all of history tells us. The French Revolutionaries for instance were mainly those in the upper classes who utilized those in lower classes for the revolution. This is why BOTH Ice Flame AND the Pentagon were spearheaded by some of the most prominent members of Zeth's first class. Ghandi himself the king of Zeth supported Ice Flame, while Pentagon was radicalized by its leader Nelson Sever the father of one of the four lords. Then when you look at both groups neither are actually effective, Ice Flame essentially does nothing while Pentagon serves as the prime example that non-mages are dangerous which gives free propaganda to those against non-mages. Rance 6 has multiple segments where it is discussed that the second class is so uneducated they don't even understand they are oppressed and don't understand the value of real freedom. It makes it by far one of the least generic revolution stories of all time, when Rance finally comes in and by virtue of fucking things up, fucks things up so terribly that the system didn't fall to any revolution or reform, but under its own weight.

[@pasta8026]

Video about Rance? I gotta to check this out! GAHAHA😁

[@ivolodar18]

Dude, are you the same legendary user from nhentai?

[@pasta8026]

@@ivolodar18 let us keep this to ourselves 🙃

[@smashingpao5632]

Ah Rance 6 the most grindiest and probably started the mobile stamina systems that are oh so common.

[@pompom8315]

I haven't yet finished the game but for now Pentagon seems to me so ridiculously evil it's funny

[@oof5992]

Yooooo New rance video! Based

[@lordewok666]

Great video! I really liked VI back in the day. To be honest i never felt the need of a patch back then (we didnt have it).. except for that last boss level. That i agree it sucked. Also i dont really remember requiring all that stuff for the true end? I remember completing all the quests, maxxing bonds and the weapons, thats it.

[@Adze]

Tamanegi's character clear requires all galmons and the other characters require their optional events to get their character clear.

[@revivalfromruins]

I won't sleep on it. I'll sleep with it instead. Wait

[@tppcrpg6311]

Wished you got more into nitty gritty of the plot and characters, Patton got some cool scenes and Lia barely being stopped from murdering the refugees and invading the country was interesting too. Rare to see such an unashamed ambitious character siding with a protagonist. Copa too... yeah the characters really are the strongest point of Rance series. Also how could you not mention the frozen dick scene?

[@drawin_junk7137]

soits basicly what if og manga lupin 3 was a rpg prtag

[@relaetsecyr]

This game and Rance Quest made me laugh so much. I think that the 'filler' is honestly what makes the game so enjoyable and break up the tedium of the worst of dungeon crawling and it makes you really fall in love with so many characters. I think that the orb system is definitely poorly balanced as some dungeons don't give you a ton and the FR abilities range from powerful to sorts junk. I really do like the stamina system of this game as well since it makes a lot of the weaker party members much more viable throughout the game and though you have to sack some characters, especially as you get into later content, I think being able to use characters at their full potential for the duration of a battle is nice when compared to Quest and Sengoku. I think this game is probably my favorite in terms of story and characters after Quest. 9 retells a lot of the same story beats and ultimately is too story focused for my taste. I have definitely enjoyed your review since there isn't a lot of overall discussion of the games on the web and reflecting on all the great times I had in these games in the past.

[@Adze]

Filler definitely does not mean bad. I think it did an excellent job of maintaining the pacing while being consistently entertaining at the same time. The Alfra plotline is arguably filler, but it was probably my favorite bit of story in the game. I also definitely loved how all party members gained XP and how you were forced to switch things up due to the SP system. In JRPGs, I tend to neglect party members which just ends with a vicious cycle of "don't like them, don't train them, they're underleveled, continue not to use them." Wasn't an issue here

[@brutalnobody5240]

the dark rance sub-plot ain't really important till 8 and 10 I believe

[@lemonov3031]

Talking about gameplay in a non-spoiler section, proceeds to show multiple spoiler CGs

[@RZero490]

Holy❤

[@TheGlamourNazi]

Rance is my transphobic king