Kichikuou Rance

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Kichikuō Rance (鬼畜王ランス Kichikuō Ransu, "Brute King Rance") - a "what-if" spin-off not part of the official Rance timeline. It was released in 1996 only on Japan.

This game is not part of the official Rance universe timeline, forking off after the events of Rance 4.2, as a "what-if" episode. Rance leads a band of bandits which is attacked by the Imperial Patrol, who captured Sill. Rance marries Lia, queen of Leazas, becoming king to take revenge and rescue Sill. It was fan-translated to English by anonymous 4chan user Arunaru on 2014. He was subsequently hired by MangaGamer to translate other games of the series.

Directed by TADA. Published by Alicesoft.

Tropes used in Kichikuou Rance include:

• 0% Approval Rating: If Kayblis wasn't the strongest monster around, he would be the loneliest one. All of his subordinates despite him and only obey him out of fear. The cherry on the cake is his crush Kamilla rejecting all of his advances.
• 100% Adoration Rating: Every Hanny loves King Hanny. Being the progenitor of the entire race helps on that.
• Adaptation Distillation: Sort of. The whole series had been planned out by this point, but AliceSoft didn't know if they'd be around long enough to finish it, so what they did instead was make a What If...? game that boils the entire latter half of the series down into one epic adventure.
• Author Avatar: King Hanny is one for TADA. He shares her fetish for Meganekko, and is universally loved by his creations, and a noble individual.
• Back from the Dead: Wenlina can resurrect a person, but only one time a year and only if the person died recently.
• The Bus Came Back: British, the adventurer imprisoned in the thieves' hideout in the first game, returns here on an expanded role.
• Darker and Edgier: Compared to the rest of the series, the art style here is grittier and more detailed, Rance's Nominal Hero status is taken much more seriously, and many of the game's antagonists make him look like a saint by comparison even then. It is telling that Kichikuou is the only installment in the original timeline to feature bad ends, both for individual character arcs and for the game as a whole.
• Driven to Suicide: People affected by the Greening Disease are often said to commit suicide out of despair, since the illness' cure was never found.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Rance is a Punch Clock Hero is put off by Aoi being a sex slave addicted to sex.
• Evil Versus Evil: Subverted. Though Rance and Kayblis are not much afar on morality, their alliances makes their conflict much more grey than it is, since Rance's allies are mostly good people and all of Kayblis' subordinates obey him out of fear.
• Final Death: If one of your commanders is defeated even once, they're not coming back. Enemy commanders, not so much.
• Grand Finale: It was supposed to be one for the series. The game's massive sales made AliceSoft's luck turn around, and they retconned the game into an alternate timeline to allow more Rance games to be made.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The encounter with Ruberan that caps off the prologue is not meant to be won, though it is possible with enough grinding and luck, and in fact leads to a unique ending.
• King Mook: The appropriately named King Hanny, which apparently fathered all of his race.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: Over one hundred between heroes and villains.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Enemy commanders will often survive if you defeat them without actually winning the battle. Sometimes even if you do win, they'll just flee and have to be fought again in a different city. What's more, the Monster Army can capture multiple cities per week, even though you are strictly on defense for the rest of your turn once you capture a single city.
• Nothing Is Scarier: Due to the limited soundtrack (1-3 themes for each army, two themes only heard in dungeons, Rudrathaum's theme, and the Kalar Forest theme), particularly ominous scenes will be dead silent. This also serves as your only real clue about Pi-R's trap.
• Token Evil Teammate: Rance lacks a lot of heroic qualities, a lot of his allies can have flaws, but it pales in comparison to Liz, which is outright an evil sadist that wanted to marry Rance because he raped her on revenge because she tortured random girls to the point of utter despair. Of she wasn't infatuated with Rance she would firmly be a villain.
• Unwinnable by Design: If you deploy Miki against Pi-R's army, she'll be captured and raped to death by Kayblis, who transforms into the Archfiend mid-coitus. Congratulations, you are now fighting a Nigh Invulnerable boss who can capture four cities per week and wipe out fully manned units by himself. What's more, it's possible to do this by accident due to Miki's usefulness as a meat shield, and a Wrong Genre Savvy player might assume this is how it's supposed to go down and save in their usual file before they realize it isn't.