The last of Sengoku Rance IF route cleared! Now i see why of all Sengoku Rance routes, Nanjou Ran is easily the least popular one. Overall Ran's route is the weakest, mainly because it was given the least amount of effort but her story is just not compatible for a Rance game. I suppose at the time Alicesoft think that Sengoku Rance need a variety of Main heroines apart from Female Samurais and thus Nanjou Ran came into the equation as a Onmyoji providing a supporting role.
Being a heroine that already loved someone else makes Nanjou Ran's options rather limited in a Rance game especially when she is given the role of main heroine. So while most of time Ran ends up dying as a sacrificial unit to recruit Souun, players expect her character to have something more in store to deserve her own route. But in the end Nanjou Ran's story is not something you would want in a Rance game.
Nanjou Ran's character boils down as a totally devoted childhood lover who would go to extreme length in order to saved her beloved even if it means sleeping with a person she hates which happen to be Rance. Then in the end after all of the efforts spent to save Ran's which would have been otherwise forfeit and rescuing Souun, all Rance get is to be abandoned by Ran which just doesn't sit well for a character with caliber like Rance.
Considering you play as Rance, an accomplished Hero whose primary motivation revolves around sleeping with beautiful women as many as possible and winning their affections as well in the process. While Rance does not hesitate to resort NTR if it means to get the woman he desired, Nanjou Ran simply just simply doesn't worth his effort.
The main problem of Ran IF route is how the Romance of the main heroine being handled. So throughout the majority of the story you have the main heroine hating Rance without many opportunity for him to show his heroic quality to win the main heroine affection. Kenshin and Isoroku able to fall in love with Rance but for some reason Nanjou Ran decide to refuse so and certainly Ran can't match up with those two or other Rance's lovers. For the route ending you either have Ran returning to Souun or stay with Rance and both are equally bad for different reasons. The former makes all of the Rance's effort went to waste while the latter is just lackluster due to the writing which make Ran become a run-of the-mill Eroge Heroine.
Had the proper amount of time and effort given for this route, we could have seen Ran's love properly bloom for Rance which would have made her character sits well for the fans. But instead in Ran's route we only get to see lamer side of Rance with the guilt trips throughout the route. And in the Nanjou Ran ends up as the Japanese version of Masou Shizuka with some tweaks and an inferior one at that considering even the latter able to love Rance eventually.
In terms of gameplay, Ran's route is relatively easy as there are no any overwhelming pressure to rush compared to Isoroku or Kenshin. The main part lies in fighting the onis to seal the hellholes and it is quite a breeze compared to Demon Army as long as you control the eastern half of JAPAN. The other significant threat comes from Shimazu but still not as dangerous other than the chance for the Shimazu brothers to steal Rance girls.
In this playthrough i finally able to gather all of the Takeda's generals which is easily one of the hardest thing to accomplish in Sengoku Rance. First you need to fend off the Takeda Blitz of all four generals and only then you are able to recruit the other generals other than Tourin which you need to capture them first. In Normal difficulty after Takeda falls, the generals already come in the stack of 2000-3000 units which will easily crush your army without a dedicated units to hunt them. For all of these lengths of trouble, you will get to unlock the best starting bonus clan as the 4 commanders are some of the best generals in Sengoku Rance.
In this playthrough I also tried to unlock Date Clan bonus this time, but failed as the Omachi revival event does not appear for some reason but i will try again if i ever plan for another run. With Ran's route finished, i think i am pretty much done with the game saver for minor things. Nanjou Ran's route is not the best way to part away from Sengoku Rance and perhaps someday if Alicesoft ever decide to revisit this game, i think her route needs some priority fix.
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