History YMMV / AliceSoft

* [[MexicansLoveSpeedyGonzales Americans Love Eagle Dougla]]: [[EagleLander Eagle Douglas]] from ''Daiteikoku'' is incredibly popular in the US, to the point of overshadowing the less popular Sarah Britten and Katherine.

* AcceptableTargets: Gays and Foreigners come under a lot of fire in pretty much every game, though ''Daiakuji's'' Karasuba Kagou is presented as a heroic [[BadassGay Badass]] StraightGay and, amidst all the negative stereotypes they're surrounded by, the national leaders of ''Daiteikoku'' are presented as pretty goodhearted and admirable people.

** For a more standard example, [[EagleLander Eagle Douglas]] from ''Daiteikoku'' is incredibly popular in the US, to the point of overshadowing the less popular Sarah Britten and Katherine.

** In ''Sengoku Rance'', trying to recruit the youkai Nogiku involves recruiting Kazemaru and going through a whole series of events to get Hibachi. The fact that Kazemaru has no relevance to Nogiku at all means this sidequest is also one BigLippedAlligatorMoment.
** In the same game, trying to recruit Hojou Sooun. It involves recruiting Nanjou Ran and a very long series of sidequests. The problem with recruiting Ran is that you cannot recruit both Sooun AND Ran. If you fulfill certain conditions [[spoiler:before the 5th gourd has been broken]], you get the Ran IF route. If you fill the conditions [[spoiler:after the 5th gourd has been broken, Ran dies, but]] you get Sooun on the next turn. The reason you can't have both is [[spoiler:that Ran's body holds one of Demon Xavier's apostles. Once Xavier takes control of Oda Nobunaga, Gigai/Suzaku will come out of her, killing her.]]
** Recruiting Seigan. You either have to either be fighting the Tenshi sect when the Honnouji event becomes available, or he joins you when the Demon Army appears. The former means you have to deal with uprisings WHILE fighting the Tenshi sect, while the latter is not a guaranteed means of recruitment.
** Recruiting [[AntiVillain Aristoles]] [[TragicHero Calm]] in ''Kichikuou Rance'' involves ignoring any and all combat with his unit while invading Helman, turning down the alliance with the Patton Faction (which is not only ridiculous because it gives you four very strong units, but also because Patton is one of the main characters of the entire series) and then ''agreeing'' to accept the aid of Convert Tax, Aristoles' self-admittedly shifty scumbag of a second in command who is no longer working with Aristoles at the time.
** Recruiting [[PunchClockVillain Galtia]] in the same game requires doing the seemingly innocuous and time-consuming Martina Curry cook-off sidequest, then ''allowing Galtia to take four of your own territories from you''.
** Recruiting the Seizel sisters is also quite hard, though only because the dungeon you need to complete to find one of them is ''really'' hard to find.
** Recruiting Cafe Artful in ''Kichikuou Rance''. Chances are, you won't get her unless you use a guide, and even then it's incredibly infuriating. You first need to find the Lady Caravan in one of your conquered territories, while this doesn't seem so bad initially, the caravan will randomly appear in ''any'' of your territories, meaning you'll have to go through the tedious task of checking all of them until finally finding it. Then you need to do that ''two more times'', while also having the item given to you by British (whose location on the map is a tiny pixel) and information from Ho Raga (Which costs a search point and requires you to sacrifice ''all'' of the soldiers from one of a set of {{Bishonen}} commanders, all of whom are very good units). Even the ''walkthrough'' complains about how random and tedious the entire ordeal is.

* ThatOneBoss: Oda Nobunaga in ''Kichikuou Rance''. As he is a demon in this game, he can only be damaged by Rance, Kentarou or one of the recruitable demons. While this isn't that bad, the arena size of 400 means that the unit attacking him needs to have 400 troops or less in order to damage him while Nobunaga himself has over 2000 troops and is incredibly damaging. At the same time, Nobunaga sends out his two ninja assassins Gekkou and Shinobu to attack Leazas, causing them to occasionally permanently kill of one of your units between turns. One of these units can be Rance, which results in an automatic game over, making it an indirect TimedMission.

** Recruiting Cafe Artful in ''Kichikuou Rance''. Chances are, you won't get her unless you use a guide, and even then it's incredibly infuriating. You first need to find the Lady Caravan in one of your conquered territories, while this doesn't seem so bad initially, the caravan will randomly appear in ''any'' of your territories, meaning you'll have to go through the tedious task of checking all of them until finally finding it. Then you need to do that ''two more rimes'', while also having the item given to you by British (whose location on the map is a tiny pixel) and information from Ho Raga (Which costs a search point and requires you to sacrifice ''all'' of the soldiers from one of a set of {{Bishonen}} commanders, all of whom are very good units). Even the ''walkthrough'' complains about how random and tedious the entire ordeal is.

** Recruiting [[AntiVillain Aristoles]] [[TragicHero Calm]] in ''Kichikuou Rance'' involves ignoring any and all combat with his unit while invading Helman, turning down the alliance with the Patton Faction (which is not only ridiculous because it gives you four very strong units, especially [[SmurfettePrinciple Hunty]] because she has the highest magic in all of your party member(13, while strong mage like Shizuka only had 8 to compare) but also because Patton is one of the main characters in the entire series) and then ''agreeing'' to accept the aid of Convert Tax, Aristoles' self-admittedly shifty scumbag of a second in command who is no longer working with Aristoles at the time.

** Recruiting one of Eternal Hero in Kichikuou Rance, Cafe Artful. Unless you look at the guide, chance are you will miss good ending since she is actually mandatory(okay, actually the item she carried, but still) to get that ending. To get her first you need to seek EVERY CITY until in one city you got option Lady Caravan. Then you need to do that TWO TIMES MORE, while you also need to get the item from Thief Dungeon and information from Ho Raga(You may forgot to do that process though). The problem is Lady Caravan location is very random. Sometimes you lucky and sometimes your not so lucky to find it easily. Oh and even in walkthrough at wiki express their frustration at getting her. And since she is quite a bitch in the beginning, you may tempt to rape her, therefore sealing your chance to get good ending forever [[spoiler:the one which Ludo is put to sleep for around a century]].
* ThatOneBoss: Oda Nobunaga or better called Xavier even though he is only stated as Nobunaga in Kichikuou Rance. The reason he's hard because he is demon and almost always you will fight him mid game. The problem is you need to reduce your army size to 400 or using special attack(which is need at least 2 turns) to have chance to damage Xavier, because while in Sengoku Rance if Rance present all your party member can damage Xavier, not so much here because unless Rance or Kentarou is present, or attacking party member is demon, no one can damage the demon at all, and to get the commander attacking Xavier (Rance or Kentarou), army must less than the city size battle, which is 400. Most attack will give damage to him 1 or 2. The problem is by the time you fight him you will also need to defend from demon attacking your territory and you need to kill him in one turn, because if you don't do that he will send the assasains to either kill one of your random commander(the one that you use) or give Rance DeathBySex at random chance. To top the pain he has 16 HP, the battle is on time limit, and unlike late game you only had 2 demons , one of them is weak (most of the attack to Xavier only result 0 damage), and before that you need to wear his force to have the chance to kill him with minimal pain (Fortunately his army doesn't respawn though). Oh and the situation above is when you had Kentarou, which maybe not in your party and even if you have him he may still not learning his special attack yet. Otherwise you will only have Rance as your main attacker, leading to mentioned event above.
* TheWoobie: Plenty, the writers at Alicesoft seem to be particularly good at writing them.

** Recruiting [[AntiVillain Aristoles]] [[TragicHero Calm]] in ''Kichikuou Rance'' involves ignoring any and all combat with his unit while invading Helman, turning down the alliance with the Patton Faction (which is not only ridiculous because it gives you four very strong units but also because Patton is one of the main characters in the entire series) and then ''agreeing'' to accept the aid of Convert Tax, Aristoles' self-admittedly shifty scumbag of a second in command who is no longer working with Aristoles at the time.

** Recruiting one of Eternal Hero in Kichikuou Rance, Cafe Artful. Unless you look at the guide, chance are you will miss good ending since she is actually mandatory(okay, actually the item she carried, but still) to get that ending. To get her first you need to seek EVERY CITY until in one city you got option Lady Caravan. Then you need to do that TWO TIMES MORE, while you also need to get the item from Thief Dungeon and information from Ho Raga(You may forgot to do that process though). The problem is Lady Caravan location is very random. Sometimes you lucky and sometimes your not so lucky to find it easily. Oh and even in walkthrough at wiki express their frustration at getting her. And since she is quite a bitch in the beginning, you may tempt to rape her, therefore sealing your chance to get good ending forever [[spoiler:the one which Ludo is putting to sleep for around a century]].
* ThatOneBoss: Oda Nobunaga or better called Xavier even though he is only stated as Nobunaga in Kichikuou Rance. The reason he's hard because he is demon and almost always you will fight him mid game. The problem is you need to reduce your army size to 400 or using special attack(which is need at least 2 turns) to have chance to damage Xavier, because unlike Sengoku Rance if Rance present all your party can damage Xavier, not so much here because unless Rance has either Nikkou or Chaos, or attacking party is demon, no one can damage the demon at all, and to get the commander attacking Xavier(Rance or Kentarou), army must less than the city size battle, which is 400. Most attack will give damage to him 1 or 2. The problem is by the time you fight him you will also need to defend from demon attacking your territory and you need to kill him in one turn, because if you don't do that he will send the assasains to either kill one of your random commander(the one that you use) or give Rance DeathBySex at random chance. To top the pain he has 16 HP, the battle is on time limit, and unlike late game you only had 2 demons , one of them is weak, and before that you need to wear his force to have the chance to kill him with minimal pain(Fortunately his army doesn't respawn though). Oh and to even do that you also need Kentarou, which maybe not in your party and even if you have him he may still not learning his special attack yet. Otherwise you will only have Rance as your main attacker, leading to mentioned event above.

** Recruiting one of Eternal Hero in Kichikuou Rance, Cafe Artful. Unless you look at the guide, chance are you will miss good ending since she is actually mandatory(okay, actually the item she carried, but still) to get that ending. To get her first you need to seek EVERY CITY until in one city you got option Lady Caravan. Then you need to do that TWO TIMES MORE, while you also need to get the item from Thief Dungeon and information from Ho Raga(You may forgot to do that process though). The problem is Lady Caravan location is very random. Sometimes you lucky and sometimes your not so lucky to find it easily. Oh and even in walkthrough at wiki express their frustration at getting her. And since she is quite a bitch in the beginning, you may tempt to rape her, therefore sealing your chance to get good ending forever.
* ThatOneBoss: Oda Nobunaga or better called Xavier eventhough he is only stated as Nobunaga in Kichikuou Rance. The reason he's hard because he is demon and almost always you will fight him mid game. The problem is you need to reduce your army size to 400 or using special attack to have chance to damage Xavier. Most attack will give damage to him 1 or 2(Sometimes 0). The problem is by the time you fight him you will also need to defend from demon attacking your territory and you need to kill him in one turn, because if you don't do that he will send the assasains to either kill one of your random commander(the one that you use) or give Rance DeathBySex. To top the pain he has 16 HP, the battle is on time limit, and unlike late game you only had 2 demons at most, one of them is weak, and before that you need to wear his force to have the chance to kill him with minimal pain(Fortunately his army doesn't respawn though).

* ComeForTheXStayForTheY: Come for the porn, stay for the rich storytelling and complex gameplay.
* CrowningMomentOfHearwarming: Plenty, surprisingly enough, though one of the most iconic is Rance tenderly embracing Sill at the end of ''Kichikuou Rance''.

* {{Squick}}: Demon Nobunaga/Xavier raping Kurohime. There's ParentalIncest and there's VillainousIncest, and then there's ''this''.

** Recruiting [[PunchClockVillain Galtia]] in the same game requires doing the seemingly innocuous and time-consuming Martina Curry cook-off sidequest, then ''allow Galtia to take four of your own territories from you''.

* AcceptableTargets: Gays and Foreigners come under a lot of fire in pretty much every game, though ''Daiakuji's'' Karasuba Kagou is presented as a heroic [[BadassGay Badass]] StraightGay and, amidst all the negative stereotypes they're surrounded by, the national leaders of ''daiteikoku'' are presented as pretty goodhearted and admirable people.

* {{Squick}}: Demon Nobunaga/Xavier raping Kurohime. There's ParentalIncest and there's VillanousIncest, and then there's ''this''.

** Outside of the Rance series, both Rouga and Tougou suffer from this. Plenty are happy to play as a hero who can actually be sympathized with and admired on a regular basis while others are annoyed by their apparent {{Bishonen}} designs and bland "hero-type" personalities and generally find their antics boring in comparison to Rance.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: Kenshin actually beat out [[FateStayNight Saber]] on the first Visual Novel Character Poll she appeared on.

* HoYay: Done intentionally and parodied. Rance hates {{Bishonen}} due to their tendency to create this, and while he does a good job of avoiding it for the most part he still suffers from it with characters like Rick. In general the protagonist shares a surprisingly close bond with their best friend in nearly every game.

* MagnumOpus: Kichikuou Rance singlehandedly saved the company from bankruptcy and is one of the best selling eroges of all time. It helps that it condenses over a decade's worth of content into a single, epic game.
* MemeticSexGod: The main characters of each game slowly become this as time goes on. By the latest Rance game, he has every important female political figure madly in love with him, and most of their subordinates along with them.
* MoralEventHorizon:

* NarmCharm: Sex scenes are always set to outrageously over the top rock music and tend to have hilarious dialogue that makes them hard to take seriously. Usually.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The original Rance games were considered amazing at the time for being H-games that featured actually sophisticated gameplay rather than just sex scenes. By today's standards, not only are the graphics dated, but the gameplay is hugely underwhelming and boring, to the point of making the first three game nearly unplayable by modern gamers. This is being fixed by remaking the first three games, and completely overhauling the first game's gameplay.

** In the same game, trying to recruit Hojou Sooun. It involves recruiting Ran and a very long series of sidequests. The problem with recruiting Ran is that you cannot recruit both Sooun AND Ran. If you fulfill certain conditions [[spoiler:before the 5th gourd has been broken]], you get the Ran IF route. If you fill the conditions [[spoiler:after the 5th gourd has been broken, Ran dies, but]] you get Sooun on the next turn. The reason you can't have both is [[spoiler:that Ran's body holds one of Demon Xavier's apostles. Once Xavier takes control of Oda Nobunaga, Gigai/Suzaku will come out of her, killing her.]]

* TheScrappy: Nonstisch Himmler from ''Daiteikoku'' is likely an intentional example. He only does anything of particular note in one route of the game, but it happens to be the route where he snaps and becomes a total asshole.

** Recruiting [[PunchClockVillain Galtia]] in the same game requires Doing the seemingly innocuous and time-consuming Martina Curry cook-off sidequest, then ''allow Galtia to take four of your own territories from you''.

** Recruiting Seigan. You either have to either be fighting the Tenshi sect when the Honnouji event becomes available, or he joins you when the Demon Army appears. The former means you have to deal with uprisings WHILE fighting the Tenshi sect, while the latter is not a guaranteed means of recruitment.

* JustHereForGodzilla: Plenty play the games for the gameplay alone.

** Shizuka is probably the earliest example, to the point where she was put into a patch for Sengoku Rance due to the uproar caused by her absence from the game, despite most of the regular cast being sidelined apart from a few cameo characters.

* GameBreaker: Rick in Rance 4 and Kichikuou Rance, due to being level 50 with a fantastic special attack from the moment you get him and being available pretty much immediately. While these helped lead him to his EnsembleDarkhorse status, it also led to complaints about him making the games too easy, causing his following playable appearances in Rance VI and Rance Quest to make him a late game EleventhHourSuperPower.
** He's back to being one in IX where he's once again available from early on and is now a LightningBruiser with a fantastic critical hit rate.
** Ferris whenever she's playable by virtue of being ''completely immune to all enemy attacks''. This reached a point where, after Rance 5, she stopped being playable to avoid easy and boring victories.
* MagnumOpus: Kichikuou Rance singlehandidly saved the company from bankruptcy and is one of the best selling eroges of all time. It helps that it condenses over a decade's worth of content into a single, epic game.

* NarmCharm: Sex scenes are always set to outrageously over the top rock music and tend to have hilarious dialogue that makes them hard to take seriously.

* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: The original Rance games were considered amazing at the time for being H-games that featured actually sophisticated gameplay rather than just sex scenes. By today's standards, not only are the graphics dated, but the gameplay is hugely underwhelming and boring, to the point of making the first three game nearly unplayable by modern gamers.

** In the same game, trying to recruit Hojou Sooun. It involves recruiting Ran and a very long series of sidequests.
** Recruiting Seigan. You either have to either be fighting the Tenshi sect when the Honnouji event becomes available or he joins you when the Demon Army appears. The former means you have to deal with uprisings WHILE fighting the Tenshi sect while the latter is not a guaranteed means of recruitment.

** On the male side of things, Rick went from a character who was simply meant to serve as the CrutchCharacter and AlwaysSomeoneBetter to Rance to one of the most iconic characters in the series and Rance's best male friend by the later games.

* PeripheryDemographic: They're tendency to have incredibly rich and well-developed back stories attracts a lot of people from outside the {{Eroge}} community.

* MorePopularSpinoff: Two major examples. The ''Rance'' series is technically a spinoff of ''VideoGame/LittlePrincess'', but became Alicesoft's most popular series. Alicesoft itself is technically a branch company of Champion Soft, an old InteractiveFiction developer that was going defunct.

* CrowningMusicOfAwesome: ''Tons''.