Rance 03 – The Fall of Leazas (Rance 03 – Leazas Kanraku) is a 2015 visual novel by AliceSoft, an eroge developer historically known for releasing visual novels that feature different kinds of gameplay with scenarios that cover a wide range of genres while usually sharing common elements of comedy and cruelty. The game is a remake of the third installment of the Rance series released in 1991, Rance III, that features updated graphics, a different gameplay system, and a scenario that better fits the current lore of the latter games. Just like its predecessors, the story follows the brutal adventurer Rance and his devoted slave Sill as they are thrust into the middle of a conflict between two of the biggest nations in the Continent. The game was released in English by MangaGamer March 2025 and serves as a direct sequel to Rance 02 -The Rebellious Maidens-.
As of the time of writing this, Rance 03 is the second newest release in the series, only three years older than the last game, Rance X – Showdown. With its release in English as well, readers can now enjoy most of the series’ story without having to learn Japanese themselves. I’m quite excited to see these games released in English after all this time. Now everyone can see Rance make others’ lives horrible for (mostly) his own benefit.
All things considered, however, even this remake of the game is still almost 10 years old at this point. Was it worth bringing over an aging title like Rance 03 just for the satisfaction of the series’ fans? Or does it have something to offer to newcomers as well? Let’s take a peek at what this visual novel has to offer by diving into it with a review!
Note: Rance 03 – The Fall of Leazas directly references events from the previous games in the series, which is why this review might spoil parts of the story up until this point. The review, and by extension the game as well, is better enjoyed after clearing the preceding titles.
Old Fairytales and Green-clad Hopes
After receiving the hefty sum of 50,000 GOLD for saving the town of Custom from the oppression of its Four Witches (see Rance 02 -The Four Rebellious Maidens-), Rance has been lazing away for the last six months in his house in the Free City of Ice. Sill has been able to satisfy most of his cravings, both in his stomach and in his nether regions, and has been supporting their idle life by taking on various odd jobs and selling off random items in the household. One fateful day however, as Rance fools around with Sill while the problem of money looms over their heads, an unexpected visitor appears at their doorstep holding a gaudy object—a regal, blindingly white shield. She introduces herself as Kanami Kentou, the ninja that serves the princess of Leazas.
Kanami explains to the duo that the night before, forces from the nation of Helman suddenly appeared within the walls of Leazas castle, capturing Princess Lia and occupying the country. They were employing the help of Fiends, incredibly powerful entities that possess impenetrable defenses. Before Helman troops reached her quarters, Lia sent Kanami to ask for Rance’s help to liberate Leazas by using the three Holy Arms to gain access to the sealed weapon Chaos, a well-guarded secret in Leazas’ Royal Family that is said to give its user the power to defeat Fiends. With the Holy Shield in tow, she flees the castle with their hopes of liberation.
Saving the World Costs Money!
Listening to Kanami’s account of the events, Rance finds himself uninspired to help out. While the ordeal does concern one of “his women”, he dislikes the thought of working for free. Kanami offers him the coffers of the Leazas Royal Family, but the idea doesn’t move him. Instead, he asks Kanami what she’s willing to offer for his help. Kanami assures him that during their journey, she will be supporting them by following his orders. Upon hearing that, Rance agrees to assist Kanami in the liberation of Leazas. There’s just one tiny technical problem—the support he wants her to do is related to whatever’s in his pants.
With his desires momentarily satisfied, Rance departs with Sill and his brand-new slave. Kanami, however, notices something unusual about the situation. She asks Rance where the Holy Sword and Holy Armor that they lent him back in Custom are. Sill tells them that they unfortunately sold it to the local weapons dealer for a few thousand GOLD because they were running out of money. To add insult to injury, the guy hates Rance, so he refuses to give it back without them buying it for higher. Begrudgingly, the trio enters the familiar Keith’s Guild to ask for work.
This is the start of Rance’s journey to liberate the nation of Leazas and the Free Cities from the invading Helmanian forces.
A Bigger View of the Series World
Rance 03, much like its predecessors, retains a lot of the humor and tone that the series is known for. Rance is brutally honest to his desires and crude in his ways, but does great work when necessary and is weirdly charismatic even with his (many) flaws. There’s a lot of sexual assault and violence that leave female characters either traumatized or taken advantage of primarily due to the actions of our horny protagonist. To add this all up, these are all told from the point of view of a narrator who clearly sees these events as nothing more than irrelevant consequences necessary for his own happiness and satisfaction. It’s a cruel setting filled to the brim with comedic tones that make the events feel a lot more lighthearted than they should be.
What separates this installment of the game, however, is the expansion of its scope. Previously, Rance’s adventures were primarily concentrated in one area: Leazas in Rance 01, and Custom in Rance 02. But with the addition of Rance 03 to the series lineup, the world is greatly expanded upon, introducing foreign nations, an overarching antagonistic race, a plethora of cities, and a larger cast of characters. Shifts in point of views are more frequent in this title, giving important context to various characters’ motivations that power key events in the story. Suddenly, it’s not just Rance and Sill’s antics that concern the readers. A whole world is out there waiting to be discovered as the party travels to the Leazas capital.
This expansion of the scope is crucial; while the narrative is still created in a way reminiscent of Rance’s usual antics, the tone of the adventure greatly shifts towards a more serious, high-stakes conflict. It stops treating the Rance games as a silly way to just collect CGs of attractive heroines. With both new and recurring characters now in the mix, the story starts to feel weighty with the potential to create something epic. There’s suddenly a point to paying attention to the series’ plotline.
Spotlights Come in Many Colors and He’ll Take It All
With the expansion of both the scope of the adventure and the size of the cast, Rance 03’s text now features larger portions dedicated to describing the state of battles and the skills that members of the cast have. Previously, most of these felt relegated to the gameplay portions of the game as measures of how strong the enemy unit is but with movements now involving whole battalions instead of just one party, they’ve made the good decision to provide more details to avoid cheapening the conflict. It gives that much-needed impact to their skirmishes that war stories usually have.
Ironically, this falls a bit short when it comes to the generals of the opposing army. While I understand that the story is poised to eventually lead to the protagonists’ victory, some of the enemies were described as having presences that could greatly determine the outcome of a battle by themselves, but they didn’t live up to it. One factor might be because of how the enemy is just usually treated as a large number of punching bags, but perhaps due to the way Rance treats most of the story lightly from his perspective, his battles against enemy generals also end up being pretty silly, undermining their impact as opponents. What they do well, however, is introduce the urgency of action during war. Although it’s talked about in a silly manner, a number of characters talk about the horrific consequences of war as it is portrayed in-game, bringing with it a sense of gravity to the situation despite how commonplace violence is in their world.
Overall, it creates a pretty unique flavor to Rance 03 in that it’s an adventure-slash-war story with large amounts of silliness that makes it hard to take seriously, but along the way, it creates the foundation of a series lore that’s entertaining whilst being epic because of how self-absorbed its protagonist is despite its large scope. While this uniqueness is not necessarily a flaw, I believe that the story could have been much better had the text taken a bit more time to establish how ferocious the enemies were and how difficult it would be for the party to overturn the situation. The individual confrontations, however, were really well-done. I loved the pressure the enemies had in direct fights with them; the way they described it through deliberations among members of the party, their preparations, and the tactics they employed represented the difficulty of the endeavor very nicely.
To add to that, let’s continue to the gameplay portion of the review.
A Brutal Adventurer’s Way Up to an International Hero
Instead of featuring only locations within a city, Rance 03 goes full throttle and introduces a bunch of locations that the player can enter to achieve various goals. While initially having only three options, more of them are unlocked as the story progresses with Rance’s party getting closer to the capital of Leazas. There are two types of locations in the game: cities and dungeons. Cities have your usual utility establishments such as inns and weapon shops, while dungeons are where most of the combat and grinding in-game take place. When traveling to these locations, the game emulates the passing of time by including a walking animation and the possibility of encountering enemies during the journey. This makes transit to locations not necessarily always a safe bet, demanding appropriate awareness from players to avoid an accidental game over.
Within cities, players are usually presented with a few options depending on their progress in the main story and in some side quests as well. A standard lineup of options includes an inn for healing, a weapon shop for buying items and upgrades, and a save/load monument. While the game does have an autosave function, this only gets triggered when the player enters the world map. Therefore, if you do a lot of stuff within a city and accidentally close the game without saving, you’ll have to redo all the dialogue and activities once again. It’s honestly pretty hard to screw yourself over with that however because there’s no downside to spamming save when you’re within a location, so click that button as much as you want to be sure.
Conversing With a Woman Has Never Been This Easy
As a reminder that it’s a remake of an old eroge, Rance 03 employs your classic set of options for dialogue present in many point-and-click adventure games. Compared to Rance 01’s system, however, it’s a lot simpler this time around. For one, the options do not expand into multiple choices for dialogue; instead, it retains the incentive of repeatedly clicking choices to progress in the story and discover things about the state of the war, the stakes each character has in it, and other details that might be important for solving the cast’s current problems. Oh, and you can still, of course, attempt to assault anyone.
Honestly, I don’t hate the idea because it eliminates the annoying aspect of adventure/ADV games where you have to sometimes guess the random order of dialogue options that will eventually land you new lines from the character of interest. It instead reduces the possible options to three or four, and if there’s something new you discover, it instantly pops up in the initial list of choices, reducing the amount of time you spend just wildly guessing where to go. It’s a good balance between retaining that classic feel while avoiding the introduction of mechanics that artificially lengthen playtime just because they’re being annoyingly vague about how to progress.
Is It Wrong to Assault Girls in a Dungeon?
Rance 03 introduces a battle and exploration system that’s largely similar to Rance 01’s gameplay mechanics: it’s a dungeon crawler-esque section where you choose cards directly in front of the party to interact with what can be a number of things. They can be monster battles, events, traps, loot, or cards that are randomly made secret. Similarly to Rance 01, the dungeons do have a specific pattern to them as well that you can track to better navigate their depths. Some additions to the dungeon crawler mechanic are the introduction of new traps, a map loot card that lets you see the overall shape of the dungeon, and a loot card that lets characters gain passives for clearing specific solo trials.
An important change they made for Rance 03’s system is the removal of the day mechanic; this reduces the difficulty of grinding in dungeons as players are not required to hurry back to a city anymore. Players’ progress now only depends on their own resources and ability to sustain their characters, as you can technically explore these locations as much as you want now as long as members of your party are alive.
When Turn Based Battles Become Common H
Rance 03’s battle system, on the other hand, has been overhauled quite a bit. In Rance 01, the system made use of an inventory system that involved one character making use of multiple pieces of equipment with varying cooldown lengths. This incentivized bursty gameplay, rewarding the use of equipment with short cooldowns that sported high attack multipliers to kill the enemy as fast as possible to avoid accidentally dying to them. Rance 03 incorporates this system into a party setting by forgoing the use of equipment entirely. Instead of specific tools, each character now has four skills that feature different multipliers, cooldowns, attributes, and ranges. Each skill takes up one slot in the battle inventory of what is up to a maximum of five at the start of the game and is expandable with special items obtained as players progress through the story. If a character currently has a skill in the battle inventory, they will show up as a party member in battle with their own HP bar, adding a target to hopefully tank enemy attacks.
Speaking of enemies, instead of only fighting 1v1s, multiple enemies can now appear in a fight, with a maximum of three being able to participate at any given point during a battle. What determines what enemy will get hit by an attack is their indicated range: Near hits the front enemy, Far hits the back, and All will hit all of them currently on the screen. Buffs and Heals also fall under this system, with descriptions such as One, Self, and All to describe their coverage. With inventory space being as limited as it is, players are now incentivized to think about what action loop they want to enforce to quickly clear the enemies while minimizing the damage that they take.
A crucial change they made in 03’s battle system is the removal of the retreat option in battle—this makes each encounter a do-or-die situation, making dungeon exploration a lot riskier than it was in previous installments. Depending on the current state of the party, players might want to think about retreating first before retrying the dungeon, as with how limited the options are to save within a dungeon, there’s a high chance of losing significant progress in especially long sequences (I’m looking at you, Hyper Building). Additionally, defense options are now a lot more limited. Instead of lasting the entire turn, defensive buffs now only guard the first hit. Considering this, proper sequencing of actions to whittle down enemy defenses or defend against strong attacks becomes even more important.
Oh, and for those who are completionists (like me), they made it easier to H gal monsters by introducing an Assault attribute attack. No need to overkill them massively anymore—just last hit them with Assault! Enemies now also display the loot they drop and the chance of it dropping, making farming items a lot easier than before. These revamps make the battle system a lot more rewarding to invest in and pretty fun to play, which is very important for a game that wants you to grind for various goals by engaging its gameplay loop repeatedly.
Set Up Camp△
The last bit to discuss is the Set Up Camp which serves as the status screen for the game. Here, you can examine characters’ current skills and stats, level up through Willis the Level Goddess, view your inventory, and return to the world map. If you have Save Lions, you can consume them to save within a dungeon as well, making it a pretty important consideration if you’re not sure about the likelihood of surviving an encounter. Similar to Rance 01, you can also see a short description of the current task at hand in case you get lost on what to do while exploring various options within the game.
Overall, the changes in the system for Rance 03 are very much welcome ones. While its previous iteration was pretty fun in and of itself, the abundance of safety nets and the large inventory made a lot of fights a walk in the park by just spamming your strongest attacks on turn one. Limiting options and linking slotted skills to your present party members introduces a pretty fun consideration into the mix: do you go for multiple skills from one character in exchange for another body in the team or do you maximize your HP pool by diversifying your skill options as much as possible? Finding that balance is the fun part of the game, and with how long this installment is, it’s a change much needed to make engaging the gameplay loop a lot more sustainable in terms of being a good experience.
Would You Prefer the Top or Bottom as Cute?
Rance 03, as expected, features a ton of adult content that is unlockable by either clearing side quests, exploring dialogue options, assaulting gal monsters, or simply progressing the main story. For this installment in particular, repeatable H-scenes are plenty, with a bunch of them having variations in lines and length depending on how many times you’ve Assaulted a specific character. Because of the nature of Rance as a character who follows his libido, most of these scenes are gratuitous with regard to how they are technically rewards for clearing certain tasks. The more things you do, the more sex you’ll get.
In terms of quality, Rance 03 raises the standard compared to a lot for the series. As the only Rance installment with voices, the game naturally comes with the added experience of sensuality due to the great work of the voice actors. The average length of each scene is nice as well, being long enough to not feel like a slideshow while being short enough to not overstay its welcome. In addition, they include pretty prominent sound effects to simulate how, well, sticky the situation is. There’s a lot of variation in the CG’s facial expressions too; these depicted the escalation of the act pretty well with the changes they employed within the scene. Overall, it’s a great experience for fans of the plethora of adult content the series offers.
Eroge at the Start of the Public World Wide Web
As a remake, Rance 03 is an incredible upgrade to the original. Even without considering the updated graphics, the in-game text is a lot bigger in size, with various events expanded upon and different characters being given more spotlight than they previously had. In fact, some side characters that were originally only in one scene were promoted to becoming playable, perhaps as a nod to their role in the later entries of the series. Related to that, a lot of foreshadowing, as well as lore details, were introduced in the remake to better frame the events that would happen further down the series. These were achieved while staying true to the general direction of the original game’s plot, making it feel like a beefed-up better version of its previous iteration.
In terms of gameplay, the remake completely overhauled the original’s turn-based strategy system. Rance III had a dungeon exploration mechanic where you had to move spaces to advance with the possibility of encountering enemies along the way. It’s not too hard given that you can escape at any time, but because the space was pretty big while being empty, it made the gameplay loop a bit tedious to do with how long exploration took. There’s also a completely overpowered party member in that version of the game that trivializes all combat besides the last two battles, which thankfully they balanced in the remake. All the changes the remake adapted make the gameplay experience a lot more pleasant compared to the older version, while making it challenging without compromising the player’s enjoyment.
Overall, there’s not much of a reason to pick up the 1991 game now besides its history. The de facto best version is definitely the 2015 release, and while we did lose some characters and scenes along the way, the additions of the remake are incomparably better in terms of story consistency and experience.
Art and Music
Rance 03 features a total of 96 unique CGs in the gallery, not including variations. Among these, 68 are HCGs spread across a total of 62 adult scenes featuring sexual content. Most of the CGs have a sizable number of variations, with one having as many as 29 by itself. Some of these variations are so different from the base CG that they can honestly be considered unique CGs by themselves. The incredible amount of art in the game was done by AliceSoft’s team of artists led by Gyokai, the main artist for their other games such as Rance 01, Toushin Toushi III, and Dohna Dohna. His art, which employs a cute style with detailed eye expressions for their vibrantly colored heroines, remains very detailed for this game as well. The details in the shadowing make it seem as if their skin glows as well, making it feel like the characters have a texture that you can perceive through your eyes. Additionally, the Rance series makes use of a smaller number of sprite variations per character as well because of the size of the cast, so the way they vary poses between heroines gives each one a unique feel to them that surprisingly fits their personalities.
With Rance 03’s shift to a larger setting, there was a lot of opportunity for Gyokai and his team to feature their ability to draw other assets as well, such as male characters both lean and muscular, machines, and fight CGs. Although few in number, the angles they chose for these action scenes made them feel dynamic; they feel like they’re currently in motion and create an impact well-deserved for the scenes they’re in. Add that to the stylish UI the staff employed which uses a red motif to invoke feelings of violence and the game ends up being a well-packaged product with incredible artistic direction. I just wish there were more CGs to show significant fights between notable figures in each army, but I suppose with the number that’s already within the game, it would have been a pretty difficult endeavor to add more.
Rance 03 also has a pretty large BGM list, boasting 50 tracks in total. The composer for the game is still Sakuranosaki Mie, but for this installment, they made tracks that felt less retro but instead reflected the spread of sounds that would be present in a larger, grand adventure. R!R!R!, despite being without lyrics, is a pretty hype track, befitting for the game’s opening. With so many dungeons and lots of fights, there are a lot more tracks that represent conflict, sporting fast-paced, hype guitar riffs with intense progressions. One of my favorite tracks has a silly title, Next Bathroom Break is in an Hour, and it makes you feel like you need to rush precisely because the title is accurate. Helman Before the Storm is really good too, feeling like the impending fight that you can sense from the march of a large army. Besides those, there are a lot of tracks that Rance 01’s readers will definitely recognize as remixes of previous ones.
Unique to Rance 03 is the addition of a Scene Editor; this option allows you to create a visual novel-esque picture with custom text, a sprite of your choosing, a POV stand-in, a speaker title, and a Background asset to create weird, possibly meme-y situations. Hell, if you wanted to create a whole fan segment using characters from the game, you probably could! They’re also rendered pretty well once you click “Display Message”. It’s basically indistinguishable from a screenshot of actual dialogue in the game.
Alice’s Mansion
Alice’s Mansion makes a grand comeback for Rance 03, featuring your new friend Dark Alice as Alice is busy being somewhere else. This portion of the game is only accessible once you’ve finished the game once and features messages from the staff. They’re pretty lengthy and describe their experiences being part of the development of the game, so if you’re interested in reading all of that, you’ll enjoy this part. I especially like the pictures of drafts that they share which eventually get transformed into the game’s CGs; it’s pretty amazing what you can turn a random stickman in black and white into.
Besides that, they also have cute messages about the game’s characters which you may or may not agree with. They give insights about how they wanted to make the game different from the original without necessarily sacrificing its original vision, which for someone delving into creatives, is a pretty interesting read. Most of the content here serves as a space for readers to cool down after finishing the game, however, so I’ll refrain from sharing more. Whenever they do include content like this though, I really like it. It feels like a shared experience that a friend would talk to you about.
Verdict
Rance 03 – The Fall of Leazas is a visual novel RPG hybrid that features characters from the Rance series, both new and old, thrust into an epic war setting full of action and cruelty. While it retains its signature Rance style of humor, it explores a larger dynamic between characters and groups as it expands the scope of the game to an international conflict. It brings a fresh breath of air to the brutal Rance’s adventures and serves as a great starting point for a possible shift in tone for the overall series plot going forward.
By using multiple character perspectives, Rance 03 is able to introduce a number of character motivations that feed into the overall world setting, giving incentive for readers to become invested in the series’ lore. Additionally, the gameplay loop is rewarding to engage with, providing a sense of success through either adult-oriented rewards or overcoming difficult situations due to limitations introduced in the current battle system’s iteration. In simple terms, it’s a lot of fun to play. The catch, however, is that you need to play the previous two games in the series to fully appreciate what the game has to offer.
If you’re a fan of visual novels with gameplay and you don’t have any issues with the more dubious aspects of the main character, definitely try out Rance 03 – The Fall of Leazas. With an impressive cast of characters, an expanded setting, and fun gameplay, you’ll be burning away your free time without even noticing it. Moreover, even with the added focus on other characters, they still largely retain the unique combination of charisma and cruelty that Rance has, which fans of the series will definitely appreciate. It’s an installment that both lighthearted readers and those who like reading deep into the text can enjoy themselves in. Just keep in mind that you’ll be seeing a lot of cute girls cry; that’s Rance’s style.
RANCE 03 -THE FALL OF LEAZAS- IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Purchase Link: MangaGamer
If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy Love, Elections, and Chocolate. We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Many thanks go to MangaGamer for a PC review code for Rance 03 – The Fall of Leazas.
Visual novel reader that wishes there were more than 24 hours in a day. Gacha victim, TCG enjoyer, and VTuber simp. Still trying to live happily.
