I am finally on the second Code: Realize fan-disc, Wintertide Miracles. As of the time of writing this, the game came out in English exactly a year and a day ago, and was the last Otomate game to be localised on the Vita.
Of course, like usual, I absolutely had to write a big rambling review of it. Like always, it'll contain plenty of spoilers, so be warned.
(This cover art is super pretty, isn't it?)
I'm so happy that I managed to snag a limited edition copy of this game. It now sits alongside my limited edition box of Future Blessings. Using the both of them, I managed to set up a mini Code: Realize shrine in my bedroom, which looks quite decent. It's probably going to attract a lot of dust, however...
Inside the limited edition, you get some collectible character cards and some acrylic figures that are really nicely made. The box is shiny and a lot less flimsy than the one that came with my copy of Future Blessings. There's less stuff inside this one, however, but maybe they couldn't afford to put as much in because they spent more money making the box nicer...
The game works like literally any other Otomate game, of course. Wintertide Miracles was also released for the PS4, and it shares the same trophy list as the Vita version. I'm just wondering, if you buy it digitally, does it mean you get to play it on both consoles?
Wintertide Miracles has one opening theme song, and about three, yes, you read that correctly, THREE different ending songs! It must've been a lot more expensive to produce all of them. I found out that you can actually buy them on iTunes, well, you can on the UK version at least. You can also buy the character songs too, and they only cost 79p each, not 99p like most songs do! I can't really remember how any of this game's songs go, but I do recall that one song was sung entirely in English. They weren't really that special sounding, in my opinion.
The BGM used the same tracks from the other two games, but I think a couple of new, slightly wintery-sounding songs were added too. I really like the Code: Realize soundtrack, actually. I've probably mentioned before, but my favourite track is the one that plays whenever Lupin does something cool, I think it's supposed to be his theme. I can't remember what it's called, but it's the really jazzy song with the brass instruments and all that. I always turn up the volume when it comes on, because it's really an excellent piece. Just writing about it is getting it stuck in my head!!
Let's move onto the plot now, shall we?
The first things that I decided to read were the Triangle Dates. They are a really cool idea, and I hope that there are more games out there with a feature like this. Basically, you get to choose two love interests, and read a short story involving them doing something romantic with Cardia. There are quite a few combinations, I don't actually know how many there are. Each story comes with a CG, and they are all so beautiful!
It was great seeing the different characters hanging out together, and not just because they were all fawning over Cardia. I just like the friendship between the main love interests and their banter. But yeah, the romance was also good. One of the things I've always loved about Code: Realize is how nice Lupin and the gang are to Cardia, they treat her like a princess and not in a weird way, they just genuinely care about her. None of them insult her or harass her, like in a lot of other otoge. They just all love her in a wholesome way.
I'm not really sure when these Triangle Dates are supposed to be set. I originally thought it was the common route, but then they referenced stuff that happened in some of the character routes. I'm guessing that it's set in some alternate universe where all of the main plot stuff happens, but Cardia ends up with nobody, instead everybody is vying for her heart. It's like in an otome anime adaptation where the heroine just has her own man harem instead of ending up with anyone.
Some of the stories (mainly Saint-Germain and Lupin's stories) involved the two boys competing for Cardia's love, but others involved both of them working together. I pretty much liked every single one of them, but I did have favourites. The one where Van Helsing and Impey took care of Cardia when she was ill was really cute, especially with the CG. I also loved the one where Impey and Lupin took Cardia back to her old mansion and made her a special meal and made the house look all pretty for her. There was also a really funny one where Victor took this truth serum in order to confess his true feelings for Cardia.
There were also date scenarios for some of the side characters, too! Delly (or Dora-chan, it depends on what language you read it in) had his own story, and while it wasn't a date because he's way too young, it was an incredibly cute scenario about him and Sisi. The CG at the end was adorable. As you can probably tell, I am a very big fan of Delly. I'm very glad that he gets some screentime in the fandiscs.
One side character "date" scenario I did not expect to be in the game. It was with Alistair and Nemo, of all characters! It was quite entertaining, however.
Alistair asks Cardia on a date, for some reason. She only goes because he let her take a flare gun with her, just in case he does something. It later turns out that he only asked her to come because he didn't want to have to deal with Nemo alone. They're building some kind of Ornithopter knock-off, and the three of them take it out for a spin. It ends very terribly, with them crashing into the river.
Nemo gets out of the water, but he's not wearing his funny goggles. Seeing his eyes for the first time, Cardia and Alistair realise that he's actually... hot. Looking at the CG, I agree with them. He's actually attractive, for some reason... Nemo route when?
I think if Nemo did actually get a route though, I wouldn't be able to take it seriously because I can't listen to his voice without bursting into laughter.
This "date" scenario was entertaining. I was sort of expecting an Alistair CG to come up, but I'm not really that bothered because I don't like him that much.
The third side character Triangle Date story was another very interesting pairing: Watson, and one of my absolute favourite side characters/this blog's current header character: Hansel. Let me tell you, this one was absolutely wonderful and probably the best thing that I could ask for. It's the closest thing you can get to romancing Hansel, and I don't think any fans of his will be disappointed by it.
Cardia wanders into Hansel in the street, and they just so happen to be heading to the same sweet shop. They decide to go together, until they run into Watson. In order to prevent Hansel from making our heroine pay the bill, Watson tags along, and comedy ensues. Their clashing personalities create some very entertaining moments.
Since Watson's married, he doesn't get any romance. He likes Cardia in a fatherly/brotherly way, I suppose. But Hansel is definitely attracted to her. The CG of this story is of him licking cake off of her chin as Watson spits out his coffee, making the most hilarious sound.
So, yes, the Triangle Dates were a great addition to the game. The character interactions often had me laughing out loud. I'll definitely be coming back to these in the future, since they're short, cute, and good at cheering me up after a bad day.
Next, I read through the Christmas stories. These are basically cute little mini-routes starring each love interest. The only issue I had with them was that they weren't actually after-stories for the main routes, they were all set after Finis' Future Blessings route instead. So that meant that all of the development from those routes was gone, and the romance had to start all over again. They really could've just made them set after those original routes, but I suppose they wanted Cardia to still be able to romance someone, even if she did go off to Wales with her brother.
You can also make choices in them, not just for Cardia, but for the love interests too. I'm still not sure if they have any impact on the ending, however. Hopefully they don't, because it's highly likely that I didn't pick the right ones!
The first route I started with was Lupin's.
After Cardia leaves Saint-Germain's mansion to live with Finis, Lupin realises that he should never have let her go, because he loves her. He tries sending letters to Cardia, but they never reach her. That's because of Impey, he sent her too many and eventually her post became one big pile that Finis couldn't be bothered to give to her.
Meanwhile, Cardia also tries to send Lupin letters, but Saint-Germain and Victor confiscate them before they can reach him. Why? Apparently if they do that then he'll act on his feelings for her or something. It doesn't really make sense, because wouldn't he just think Cardia's not interested in her and give up?
In the end, Lupin goes crazy and on Christmas Eve he just nicks the Ornithopter and dashes off to Wales with Sisi. He knocks on Cardia's window dressed as Santa, which was very romantic. I expected him to make a big romantic confession here, but nope, he doesn't.
Finis hears a big commotion going on in his sister's room, and enters to find her chatting to Lupin. In the end, all three of them decide to go to London together. I thought they were just going to leave Finis behind at first, but luckily Cardia's too nice for that.
In London, Lupin constantly tries to confess his love for Cardia, but keeps getting interrupted. Eventually, he steals her away in the middle of Saint-Germain's Christmas party, and they run off to see the city in the snow. On the roof of some building, they both admit their love for each other, and kiss.
Then the credits rolled. They got a chuckle out of me because one of the lines said "Engrish Localisation". That pretty much sums up the quality of parts of this game's translation. Sometimes there were random grammatical errors, twice it said Cardia instead of my name, and one line even said "Cardia and <insert my real name here>" instead of "Lupin and <insert my real name here>". Aksys really need to hire some proofreaders.
I thought there was going to be an after credits scene like there usually is, but there wasn't. Oh well. It doesn't matter because I really liked this story. The Christmassy backgrounds, music and sprites (which I witnessed for the first time here) were absolutely gorgeous to look at. Everything was super romantic too. I can't really remember how the romance went in Lupin's route in the first game, so I can't really compare the two. He was never my favourite character, but I certainly like him a lot more after this story.
Van Helsing's after story was also great. I'm probably a bit biased because he's my favourite character though. This one has the same sort of plot as Lupin's, with Cardia living in her mansion with Finis while Van Helsing travels around the country with Delly doing vampire business.
One day, Van and Delly turn up on Cardia's doorstep, waiting out in the cold until she returns. Despite Finis' protests, she lets them stay in her house for a few days before they all travel to London to meet up with the others.
Finis and Delly have some very cute interactions with each other. For some reason they refer to both of them as "children", even though I am very sure that Finis was at least made to look at least like a teenager. He's supposed to be Cardia's younger brother, but I'm sure that once the game said that they were twins.
One line of dialogue also states that Cardia and Finis sleep in the same bed. That's not normal for siblings, is it?? Maybe it was just a translation error. Here's proof if you don't believe me:
Anyways, one night Van walks in on Cardia knitting Christmas presents for everybody. He insists on helping her, so there's this cute little scene and CG of them knitting. Van is so sweet, which is so different to how he was in the first game. He certainly has changed quite a bit.
There's also some stuff in this story about Van and his plans to get revenge on his family's deaths. It's a bit awkward for him because he originally wanted to kill Finis, who he now knows probably didn't actually order his relatives to be murdered. They both have a little confrontation which ends with Finis being allowed to survive.
One evening, Van finds Cardia sleeping in bed after knitting all night. This scene was really immersive for me, because the CG is from the heroine's point of view and it looks like Van is looking at you while you're asleep in bed, and I just happened to be in mine whilst reading this. The lighting conditions in my room also matched those in the CG, further immersing myself in the game.
Eventually, everybody travels to London to meet up with the others. Van and Cardia also have a little stroll around the city, like how they did in Lupin's story. They also run into Alistair, who hasn't been revealed to be evil unlike in Van's actual route, so he just acts really weird towards the couple and nobody knows why.
In the end, Saint-Germain's Christmas party starts. Like Lupin's story before, Van and Cardia love each other but don't know how to confess their feelings. At the end of the night they find each other in the garden. Cardia confesses her love and gives Van a handmade leather jacket, while he gives her a pair of earrings. They both hug and there's a CG, but then when they kiss the screen just goes white. Looks like Van doesn't get a kiss CG again!
I feel like this story was shorter than Lupin's. It probably wasn't, it may have just been that I read through this one quicker.
Victor's route was slightly different to the other two, because it didn't involve the Christmas party at the mansion at all. I'm glad that they don't all follow the same formula, because that would be boring!
Victor's parents send him a letter from Switzerland, asking him if he's planning on settling down with a woman yet. He replies by telling them all about Cardia, which makes them think that he's dating her. They then plan to visit him in London to see his new girlfriend.
So Victor goes all the way to Wales to visit Cardia. He tells her to "be his significant other" and I was like "Wow, the romance started a lot earlier in this route!", but then he ruins it by saying afterwards "You only have to pretend!" I'm sure I've seen this plot in a romantic comedy film before, and it always ends with the fake "couple" falling in love.
Like me, Cardia was very annoyed, so she offers to help him under one condition: they spend time together acting as real lovers. So they go to London together, and Finis conveniently disappears by being taken away somewhere warm by Hansel, who is apparently their friend now.
Victor and Cardia then spend some time acting like a real couple, doing coupley things like eating in cafes, skating, and holding hands. They get a bit embarrassed when people mistake them for married partners, but both of them still secretly enjoy all of it.
In the end, at the very last minute before Victor's parents arrive, he confesses to Cardia that he had so much fun pretending to be her boyfriend, that he wants it to never end. He admits that he loves her, so they kiss. His parents arrive and meet Cardia, but then the credits roll.
Victor's route was overall really great. They used Cardia's sprite a lot during this one, which whether or not it's a good idea depends on if you're a self-inserter or not. At least they treat her like an actual character. I know Cardia's sprite usually resides in the bottom left of the screen, but I turn that off so I usually forget that this game has that feature.
Next up, we have Impey's Christmas story.
One day, Cardia and Finis are hanging out in Wales when they get something in the post. It's a doll of Impey, one that has a voice box in it. The doll contains a recording that invites them to go to London for Saint-Germain's Christmas party.
Impey quite clearly is in love with Cardia (I think he's one of those characters that loves her no matter what route you're in), but Saint-Germain asks him why he fell for her. Unfortunately, Impey cannot find the answer to that question, and he still doesn't have one by the end of this story.
Cardia is also busy thinking about love. She notices that her love for Impey is different than what she feels for her friends and her brother. There's a cute little scene where she tries to get Finis to say "I love you" to her and he says it so awkwardly and I'm pretty sure his sprite starts blushing.
A few days later, Cardia and Finis go on the train to London, but due to a massive snowstorm, the rail network goes to a standstill and they are stuck. It probably wasn't even that bad of a snowstorm, because in England we stop everything even if there's only a small centimetre of snow, whereas in other countries I've been to they get way more than us but still manage to function fine.
Impey hears that his "princess" is stuck and takes the Ornithopter out to find her. He later knocks on the window of the train and tells Cardia that he's going to save her and Finis. I feel bad for the other people on the train, because they don't have anyone to save them, they just have to stay there on the train.
In the end, everybody makes it to London and the day is saved. Cardia tells Impey that she loves him, but for some reason he panics and runs away. He runs off to ask Nemo, of all people, for help. Surprisingly, Nemo actually gives him some decent advice, as well as this mysterious red button.
Then Impey runs back to the mansion and takes Cardia out on the town. He later confesses his love for her, and they decide to press Nemo's button to see what it does. They hear an explosion and panic, until they realise that the button only launched a few harmless fireworks. Then the credits roll.
The final Christmas story, Saint-Germain's, felt a bit more depressing than the others, but then again, this is Saint-Germain we're talking about. His routes have always seemed a bit more angsty than the others.
Omnibus gives Saint-Germain some time off from his Idea duties. The game gave you a choice on what he should do on his holiday, so I chose for him to go on holiday and see the world. But no, even though I decided on that, he still decided to stay at home, and... clean.
The beginning of the route just follows him cleaning the mansion and having flashbacks of when his house wasn't so lonely. Nobody is staying in the mansion here, unlike in the other Christmas stories where usually Impey and Lupin are at least there.
He walks into Cardia's old room and gets some weird hallucination where he thinks she's there. The CG of this is a parallel to the one from the first game where we meet Saint-Germain for the first time. It's basically the same thing, but with the roles reversed. Cardia looks so pretty in this one, but my screenshot of it sort of sucks. The trophy notification popped up as soon as I took it and I never realised...
In order to fight away his feelings on loneliness, Saint-Germain invites everybody to a Christmas party. He even makes Guinevere and Hansel help him prepare it, and we get a CG of them!
Any CG with Hansel in is a good one in my book.
The day of the Christmas party eventually arrives, and... nobody shows up. I honestly felt sorry for Saint-Germain here, because he'd set up all these decorations and made all this food, and the only one he had to share it with was Sisi. Well, I did think that, until the most unexpected thing happened. Suddenly, the Ornithopter crashes through the window, along with Impey, Lupin, Finis and Cardia.
I laughed out loud at this part, not just because of how absurd everything became, but because of this hilarious translation error with one of Finis' lines.
I am speaking about this one:
I have no idea how the translators messed this final line up, but at least it's funny. OK, maybe it's not that hilarious now that I think about it, but it was in the moment.
At the same time as the crash, Van Helsing, Delly and Victor also arrive. They are obviously very confused about all of the commotion. All of it just causes Saint-Germain to laugh out loud.
Later on, Saint-Germain and Cardia go outside for a bit of fresh air, when Idea show up. I was like "Oh no, not this nonsense again," but luckily they just came to join the party. I'm glad because I didn't want to hear Omnibus explain all of Idea's inner workings to Cardia again.
The party ends without a kiss scene. There's a timeskip to Saint-Germain seeing Cardia and Finis off on the train. They propose to live together, but they do this right as Cardia's about to leave. I thought she was going to just decide to stay in London, but nope, she just goes on the train anyway. Perhaps those tickets were too expensive to waste. So Saint-Germain kisses her goodbye, and they promise to meet again. The end.
This route was going down a path of sadness until the Ornithopter crashed into the window. That whole scene was honestly quite hilarious. Code: Realize has a habit of making me laugh with its character interactions.
The Christmas stories were all really good, but the real question is, are these alternate universe romances better than the routes from the original game? No, I don't think so. They may be fluffier, and they may be set in a timeline where Finis gets saved from doom, but the original routes will always be better for me. They dragged out and developed the romances and had their own plots, while these are just extra stories in a fandisc. I wouldn't replace the routes in the first game at all, but it is nice to know that Cardia has a possibility of romance after Finis' route. If another fan-disc were to exist, they could write more romances set after this route, possibly starring new characters, or just old ones like Hansel or Nemo. I really just want a Hansel route. Why do I keep falling for unromancable side characters when there are plenty of perfectly serviceable love interests who already have routes???
Like Future Blessings before it, Wintertide Miracles has another non-romantic side story starring new characters. This one is sort of similar to the previous one with Shirley and the Mafia and all that nonsense, but I personally think that it's way better. Actually, I didn't expect to get invested in this one as much as I did. I was originally thinking, "I'll just read through this quickly so I can get to the other after stories and back to the romance," not really expecting much to really care about this one much in the end, but this one was actually a decent story.
It feels a bit like an anime episode. If they ever expanded on the Code: Realize anime (which I have never watched), this would be a really cool idea for a story arc. I don't really feel like going into too much detail with the plot, but basically, it follows the relationship between this girl called Cantarella and her father. Cardia and the others are there too, but the story isn't really about them, which is fine.
Cantarella was one of Isaac's failed attempts at creating Cardia. This means that she's technically the sister to our heroine, but nobody ever tells them that. In fact, I don't think Cardia even learns about this at all, only the reader does. Cantarella was almost disposed of, because I think she had a deformed eye and a completely different hair colour to the original Cardia. Very early on in the story, I had predicted that this was going to be her backstory, and I am not surprised that I turned out to be correct.
From this CG, these two look quite similar, don't they? If you just dyed Cantarella's hair brown, then she'd look just like Cardia.
Cantarella was almost disposed of, but she was rescued by this bloke called Miles and then adopted by him. Miles seems like a poor excuse of a father, but he has quite a close relationship with his daughter. Still, it doesn't excuse the fact that he was secretly giving all of her earnings away to Twilight. I honestly thought that they were going to kill him off at the end right after making him seem redeemable, but he still lives.
The main story was about this "villain" called Auguille (I do hope I spelt that right), who wanted to capture Cantarella and use her singing voice. He has this magic castle (that was actually created by Cardia's father) which has the power to walk, but only if someone with the right voice sings in it. It all ties into some fairy tale that I'm not sure is just created for the game or not. They never explain why Canterella's voice is the only one that can power it.
Eventually, Auguille captures Canterella, with Cardia stowing along for the ride. They learn that he only wants the castle to move so that he can use it to travel the world. (His legs have no power, so he's unable to walk anywhere.) After learning that, Cantarella offers to sing, but then the castle makes her go all weird, and it almost starts walking into London before Lupin and the gang stop it.
(Sorry, I'm writing this late at night so I sort of glossed over the story a bit...)
This is Auguille's sprite. He's quite cute, but that's expected for an otome game. Of course the artist is going to make all of the boys look attractive. Usually, I would be writing "OMG HE'S SO HANDSOME, I WISH HE COULD HAVE A ROUTE IN THE NEXT GAME!!", but I sort of think that he's supposed to date Cantarella, instead of Cardia/our self insert Mary Sues. The game implied that, at least. There wasn't really any romance between the two, in fact Cantarella mainly just gave him sarcastic comments, but the game still implied that they were sort of destined to be together. You know that fairy tale I mentioned earlier? It was about this prince and this princess who were in love, and the game used little chibi-like CGs to illustrate this. They made the couple look like Auguille and Cantarella, so that's why I think that they're supposed to be together. It's quite rare for me to see an otome that ships a male off with someone other than the MC, so good for Code: Realize. Cardia has enough men after her anyways, and I think Cantarella deserves some romance in her life.
So, yes, the story with Cantarella was interesting. I read it over a period of four days (I didn't have much time to play it), so a lot of it I've probably forgotten to write down here, but it was good. Normally, I don't enjoy stuff about parent-child relationships, but this had some great moments and was just generally a nice story.
After Canterella's side-story, we have epilogues for the two new routes that were included in Future Blessings.
I started off with Sholmes' after story. Even though I wrote a super detailed blog post on his route last year, I couldn't remember much of the plot at all. Luckily, there was a recap that got me up to speed with everything.
If you thought that this epilogue was just going to be full of fluffy romance, think again. At the end of Sholmes' route, Cardia's poison was never fixed. This means that we have to read through them trying to figure out a cure for what seems like the billionth time. I'm not saying that there wasn't any romance at all, but it felt like the plot stuff was more prominent here.
I know they have to cure Cardia's poison somehow, but since we've had to read about this multiple times before, couldn't they just have glossed over it in some recap and got to the real stuff? This happened with the other characters too, they still had to figure out how to remove the poison in their after-stories, while characters like Lupin had it fixed right off the bat at the end of their routes. It sucks because it meant that Sholmes and Van Helsing didn't even get to kiss Cardia until the next game. I feel like they should have just made it so that the poison is removed at the end of each route in the same way, so that nobody gets shafted for a kiss CG or they have to waste their after-stories trying to cure Cardia.
The plot did involve Cardia and Sholmes doing normal couple stuff for a bit, until the Horologium started acting up. They realised that they only had a couple of days to cure it before it unleashes its poison and destroys London. Victor and Watson are able to produce a medicine to stop it, but for some reason it'll take them a year to work on it.
They find Nemo living in a sewer and recruit him, as well as Impey, to help remove Cardia's poison. In the end, the only way to stop the Horologium is to use this elixir to shut her body down, essentially killing her. This somehow stops everything from working and the poison from killing everybody. So they do that, and Cardia sleeps for a year while everybody works on her medicine. The final scene is where she wakes up, and Sholmes finally gets to kiss her.
I enjoyed this epilogue, but it was annoying having to read about them struggling to cure the poison when I know that in the other routes they did it so easily. Sholmes actually seemed like a decent boyfriend to Cardia. He seems a lot nicer than other interpretations of Sherlock that I've seen. It's a shame that I often forget that he and his route even exist, because he's a decent love interest. Watson's also an entertaining side character, it's a shame that he doesn't appear that often in the other routes.
This story felt a bit sad at times, what with Cardia not being able to properly touch Sholmes, and then having to sleep for a whole year. I did get a few chuckles, mainly because of Nemo. He certainly made some very weird noises a few times. Honestly, I don't know how his voice actor does it. I bet he has a sore throat after every recording session.
Personally, I think that Finis' epilogue was much better. It also has a plot as well as fan-service, but I actually got quite invested in it. The character interactions in it were also great.
Finis and Cardia are living in Wales, going about their daily lives, when they find out that something strange is happening over in London. Buildings are randomly being destroyed, and a national emergency has been declared. Since this problem was caused by something Isaac Beckford created, Cardia insists on going to try and stop it.
So Cardia and Finis try to leave their house, but they are stopped by Hansel. I can't remember exactly what he told them, but he said something about how they've already found their happily ever after and that they have no need to try and go to London and meddle with things. I think they convince him to leave them alone by saying that they are responsible for cleaning up Isaac's mess or something like that. This scene was really good, probably one of the best ones in the entire epilogue.
So they go to London, and see these weird mechanical spider things called Knockers (the name makes me laugh!) that are destroying buildings. Cardia steals the Ornithopter, and uses it to get Finis on top of the main Knocker to turn it off. Up there, he almost gets defeated by a massive gang of smaller Knockers, but Hansel comes and fights them for him. I really like the relationship between Hansel and Finis. I'm glad that they developed it a bit more in this story, because I enjoy seeing them together.
In the end, the day is saved. Finis then gets a new job with the government, where he mainly focuses on controlling the stuff that Isaac had left behind. He has to commute everyday from Wales to London, so Hansel allows him to use that magic transporting forest thing that Idea has.
This was an excellent epilogue. It had fan-service (like a CG of Finis in a maid outfit), great character interactions, an exciting plot (one that I didn't expect from an after-story) and more Hansel. I just generally enjoy Finis anyway, he's one of my favourite characters in this series.
I had actually expected this epilogue to be Christmas themed, because in the opening movie they showed a CG of Cardia and Finis in their winter outfits. I don't remember seeing it in any of the other routes, and it certainly wasn't this one. It was probably just artwork created for the sake of the opening.
After completing all of these stories, this picture came up on the screen. It was of a photo board containing CGs from the last game. Then, some text popped up on the screen. It was in Japanese, meaning that Aksys had forgotten to translate it. Luckily, the text wasn't anything important. It disappeared before I could read it all, but from what I saw, it said something along the lines of "this is a story about a girl" and then something about a story of the future. I think the game was trying to tell me that I had finally unlocked the epilogues for the after stories in Future Blessings.
The epilogues were quite short, but each one was super romantic and enjoyable. Most of them were just wedding scenarios, whereas Lupin and Impey (who already had gotten to marry Cardia in previous games) got short romantic stories. There's not really much to say about the plots of each one, to be honest. My personal favourite story was Lupin's, even though it didn't involve a wedding, I still enjoyed it the most. Each story got about two CGs, I believe. Impey's one had an image that you could only get if you made a certain choice, which meant I had to skip through the story again to get it. For some reason I have one CG missing, but I am 99% sure that it's just one of them is a bonus image of everybody in their swimming costumes.
In my opinion, I think that the Christmas stories should've been tied in with the epilogues, or at least set in the same universe. I have no idea why they made them set after Finis' route, when they could've been just as good had they made them canon with the other routes. They probably would've been more romantic that way, instead of seeing Cardia and her man pine for each other when we've already seen that happen in the first game!
That really wraps up the content of the game. It took me about two weeks to clear it, and if I had finished it a day earlier, I would've completed it exactly a year after the game released! This fan-disc you could probably finish in about a week if you really wanted, but I can never go beyond a few hours a day without getting burnt out or tired.
I think I may like Wintertide Miracles better than Future Blessings, although both are almost as good as each other. Originally, I thought I was going to feel weird playing this one in February when it's a Christmas game, but I didn't really mind in the end. Not very much of it actually occurs at Christmas anyway!
I love Code: Realize so much that I wouldn't mind if there was another fandisc, but still, three is a bit too much. There's only so much after-story content and new side characters you can make before it just gets old. I wouldn't mind a Hansel route though, and maybe some more fleshing out of the vampire stuff. I don't really understand vampires in this game, they don't suck blood (or at least they never mention them doing this), and they don't burn in sunlight. All they seem to have that separates them from humans is improved strength.
If this is the last game in the series though, at least it ended on a high note. I've had so much fun with this franchise and there aren't really many problems I have with it. I'm glad that it's on the Switch now, because hopefully more people will get to experience it. It's probably really great playing it on the big screen, the CGs would look beautiful in HD or 4K or whatever resolution it's in.
I don't really know what else to say, so I'm going to end this post off with this. Goodbye.
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