Rance: Quest for Hikari

Rance: Quest for Hikari is the first game in the long-running Rance series made by AliceSoft in 1989. It is an Adventure Game with RPG Elements.

The story follows Rance, a mercenary working for the Keith Guild. His current job is to find out what happened to Hikari Bran, a young student kidnapped by ninjas. With his faithful slave Sill, Rance has to rescue the missing girl before it's too late.

The game can be found with a Fan Translation here.

Tropes used in Rance: Quest for Hikari include:

Affectionate Parody: This game lampoons pretty much every ancient RPG trope it can get its hands on.
Anti-Hero: Rance outrights rapes random women.
Anticlimax Boss: Reichardt has low accuracy and his attacks who do land make hilariously low damage. A random monster which will you find in the dungeon can be harder than him. His only advantage is that he is quick and therefore he dodges a lot of attacks, but you can make much more damage on him.
Ascended Extra: A literal case with the nameless girl who runs the level shop. After this game, she becomes a series regular as Level Goddess Willis.
Bait and Switch: Rance seems like he is going to try to comfort a man imprisoned in cement in the Thieves' Lair. But his comfort is to say which he only rescues' girls, what only drives the man further in despair.
Big Bad: Princess Lia Leazas, which was responsible not only for Hikari's kidnapping but for what it seems for dozens of kidnappings, followed by torture of those kidnapped females for her own sadistic amusement.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Princess Lia.
The Cameo: Miki appears from AliceSoft's earlier Little Princess series.
Chainmail Bikini: Lampshaded. Rance mentions it can't offer much protection, making him impressed Yulang is the best gladiator around despite wearing it.
Chain of Deals: You need to trade a straw for a mandarin, which gets you a key. Rance lampshades the oddness of it.
Degraded Boss: Type A. A thief who you defeat to access the stairs in the Thieves' Lair becomes a recurring enemy in the exact same dungeon.
Disproportionate Retribution: Dialogue at the end of the game with Sill reveals Lia got her Start of Darkness by torturing a maid for accidentally killing a pet lizard of hers..
Driven to Suicide: What happened with Lavender after being brutally tortured for the amusement of the princess.
Early Installment Weirdness: In this game, Rance could both learn magic (from having sex with Sill) and equip shields. He also lacks his Rance Attack among other unique features.
Everything's Better with Princesses: Princess Lia is far more efficient at running the country than her parents. Oh, and she's also the Big Bad.
Evil Feels Good: Lia kept torturing girls for a sick thrill. Whether she is genuinely a sexual sadist or derived some different kind of pleasure from torture is left unclear.
Face Heel Turn: Raping a hostage in the thieves' lair makes Rance decide to become a full-time criminal. That generates an early bad ending.
Fate Worse Than Death: The Concrete Man is, as his moniker implies, trapped in unbreakable concrete and unable to die.
- He is actually British, an important character in the backstory of the Rance world. He has been stuck there for more than a thousand years and was the leader of the Legendary Five.
God Save Us From the Queen: Lia is the villain. While she is only a princess in this game, she holds the real power in the Leazas Kingdom, so she qualifies for this trope.
Gladiator Subquest: Rance decides to fight in Leazas Castle's coliseum in order to gain an audience with its princess.
Guide Dang It: Knowing what spells to get from Sill. Also, much of the game itself, considering how it's an old Adventure Game.
Hero with an F In Good: Not only does Rance rape girls, but his idea of kindness when he finds a man he can't help is Cruel To Be Kind, driving the subject further in despair.
Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: Hikari was kidnapped by female ninjas.
Kick the Son of a Bitch: By the time you learn what Princess Lia was doing in that mansion (kidnapping and torturing girls brutally for years), Rance raping her looks more or less like him giving her a dose of her own medicine.
Lady Not-Appearing-In-This-Game: No, the girl on the box isn't Hikari. Nor is she any other character you see in the game. She is actually Tomato Puree, who first appears in the sequel.
Law of Conservation of Detail: This is Princess Lia. These are Lia's parents. No guesses for who's more plot-important.
Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Missing student --> The princess has been kidnapping and torturing honor students at that school for years.
Morality Pet: Sill is the one of the few things standing between Rance and a complete loss of any morals.
No Fourth Wall: Rance actually addresses the player during an H-scene, along with the below example.
No Name Given:
- The girl in the level shop, who says it's because the authors got lazy. She is given a name later in the series, however.
- Several other unimportant NPCs outright break the fourth wall or lean on it by saying their names don't matter.
Nonstandard Game Over: If you decide to assault the girl in the Thieves' Cave, Rance will decide that Being Good Sucks and join the thieves.
Out with a Bang: Maris attempts to do this to Rance, but fails.
Point and Click Game: Easily the most puzzle-oriented game in the series, with the combat being more or less an afterthought. The remake downplays this however, not only by placing more emphasis on the combat, but also by having exploration take place through a card game rather than a traditional map.
Pooled Funds: In the ending, Rance takes a bath in his 20,000 gold reward, while lampshading how painful it is.
Put on a Bus: Yulang Mirage, who never made any future appearances until Rance Quest, over 20 years later.
- Hikari herself makes her first reappearance in the expansion pack, with some... interesting revelations.
Refuge in Audacity: It rarely works without fulfilling various conditions (though you do get some amusing flavor text out of it, at least), but the fact that the game has a rape button tells you everything you need to know about it.
Signature Move: Yulang's Phantasm Sword, which creates an illusion of herself to distract her opponent.
Standard Hero Reward: Played with. After raping the princess, Rance is later informed that the person who takes the princess's virginity has to marry her. Of course, he and Sill make a quick escape before that happens.
Town with a Dark Secret: The school's honor students are kidnapped as personal playthings for the princess.
Wham! Episode: In the mansion, it is revealed that the princess is behind not only Hikari's kidnapping, but dozens of prior kidnappings over the past several years, with most of her victims being Driven to Suicide.