Code: Realize: Wintertide Miracles - A (very long) Review

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?)

Code: Realize: Future Blessings: Final Thoughts/Finis Route Opinions

I had planned to finish this game yesterday, but I had to do real life stuff instead. It's not like I'm in a race or speed running it or anything. This morning I managed to complete it and get around eighty-six percent trophy completion for it. So, what are my final thoughts? What did I think of Finis' route? Read below to find out, but beware of spoilers!

Herlock's Route: A Very Long Summary/Review

Warning: This post contains massive spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings.

After sitting down on the sofa with my cat and my Vita for many hours, I have finally completed Sholmes' route, and it was a very dramatic roller-coaster ride that I enjoyed quite a bit! I suppose this post is going to be almost like a proper review of it.

"Lupin's Gang" - My Final Opinion

(Massive spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings down below!!)

I'VE FINALLY FIGURED OUT HOW TO USE "READ MORE" BUTTONS ON BLOGGER! Now nobody can be spoiled by accident scrolling down the homepage!! I've known how to do them on Wordpress for a long time but I never bothered to figure out how to do it on Blogger until today.

"Lupin's Gang" - Initial Opinions

(Spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings down below!!!!)








At this point I am somewhere about halfway through the "Lupin's Gang" short story. It's turning out to be a lot longer than I had expected. The plot is also very different to what I thought it would be, too. I thought that it was gonna be about some other gang that Lupin was part of, I didn't realise that Lupin's Gang actually refers to him and the rest of the main cast of the story.

:)

(Spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings down below!)






Saint-Germain's after story was mainly just plot, with a bit of fluff and some cute CGs scattered here and there. It was a good route, probably not my favourite of them all, but still great.

That Was Awesome!

(Major spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings down below!!!)







Wow, Impey's after story was simply amazing! It might even be my favourite so far! In the original game I didn't really care for Impey that much, but now I really really like him. His entire route was so happy and there wasn't really much conflict at all, it was just pure fluffiness.

...

(Spoilers for Code: Realize: Future Blessings down below!)



I just added a "read more" tag to this so you can't really see what's down below anymore. That means I need to think of more creative titles than just "...". This post contains my thoughts on Victor's after story, just in case you were wondering.

A Satisfying Conclusion

(Spoilers for C:R: Future Blessings down below!)















I literally just finished Lupin's after story. I had to log on to Blogger immediately, because if I don't write about it now, I'll forget all that I wanted to say.

The Prettiest CG Ever!

MASSIVE CG SPOILERS FOR CODE: REALIZE: FUTURE BLESSINGS DOWN BELOW!!)












I haven't finished Lupin's after story yet (I've been doing other stuff in real life) but I have found the one of the prettiest CGs I have ever seen!

....

(Spoilers down below for Code: Realize: Future Blessings!)

Code: Realize: Future Blessings

Guess what I finally got around to play? I suppose you would already know if you read the title. Yes, I finally played the Code: Realize fan-disc, and it was amazing. I played it until my Vita's battery was almost dead, which actually wasn't as long as you expected since the battery was at fifty percent, but I still played it for quite a while without stopping!

(Spoilers down below!)

I Finished It!

(Spoilers for Sweet Fuse down below!!!)

I finally finished Sweet Fuse. But I'm still missing loads of CGs for some reason... Let's just hope they're just depressing bad ending CGs only.

I Ordered A Lot of Otome Stuff!

Hello everybody! I haven't been playing my Vita at all this weekend, because I don't normally play it then, but I did get given a really big Amazon voucher. I haven't spent it all yet, but I've still bought four otome related items for pretty good prices.

I ordered Collar X Malice, DiaLovers Haunted Dark Bridal for PSP and two DiaLovers drama CDs. I know most of the stuff I got is in Japanese, but I'm going to be using my slowly improving language skills and online fan translations. It's going to be very exciting once I get them. I also got C:R, Future Blessings from my local gaming shop, so once I've finished Sweet Fuse I'll be playing it.

I'm very happy at what I've bought, it's certainly going to make for lots of blog posts. Once I've finished with the DiaLovers game I'm gonna make a guide on how other Japanese beginners like me can play it easily.

:)

...

The second Code: Realize fan-disc came out yesterday! I want it so badly, but I don't even have the first one yet! It looks so good, but I can't play it.......... There's even like a bit where you get to go on dates or something.

But it's Christmas/Winter themed, so I have no idea why they didn't decide to release it in December to capitalise on the holiday season. But releasing it on Valentine's Day is also a good idea, for lonely otome gamers to have something romantic to look forward to.

My local gaming shop still has that special edition copy of Future Blessings sitting on the shelf. I really hope nobody's bought it. I've seen it there since before I even wanted a Vita. It's been there since the game came out, I think. But a couple of the otome games for sale there, Norn9 and Period Cube, have been purchased, so somebody where I live must be into them. At first I thought that Future Blessings was the first game and I was gonna buy it first, but I'm glad I didn't because it would've been disastrous if that had happened. The shop also has a copy of Hakuoki: Kyoto Winds that I kind of want, but they don't have the second game, plus I only just played it on the PSP.

I saw some of the new CGs from this new fan-disc, and they are just so pretty! I'd probably end up screenshotting them and setting them as my Vita's wallpaper like I did with the other two games I have.

My memory card came in the post but I don't really have anything to put on it yet. I could take a billion pictures of my cat with the camera though, but I don't want to waste memory!

See you all later!

Now, On to the Next Game.

So, I finished Lupin's route but we kept dying at the end no matter how many different choices I made. Then I had to look up a walkthrough and it said that I have to reload it at chapter thirteen using the "Path of Genesis" or whatever it's called feature and set the affection to maximum, and that seemed to fix it. Then I got the after story and it was very cute. This was the only route where Cardia ended up marrying her love interest at the end, but I think everybody gets to have a go at wedding her in the next game.

My game keeps glitching out and making some of the CGs I've earned in the after stories not appear in the album, which means that I can't get a trophy for "collecting all of the skin photos", but oh well. I have no PSN friends so nobody's gonna see what achievements I've earned.

In a few days, after I've read this book I just got, I'll be starting Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly. I read online that no matter what you have to do the normal common route ending first, then start dating the boys afterwards. It sounds a lot more complicated than your average otome game and I'm scared that there's not gonna be much romance... But in those games like Hakuoki where it's mostly plot I've never gotten bored or disappointed, so this game should still be good like the rest of them.

But before I do anything, I have to read that book. The book in question is "My Mum Tracy Beaker". It's probably a bit too young for me but I loved the Tracy Beaker series as a child and I wanna read about her all grown up.

I'll be back once I've started the next game. Goodbye!

What An Interesting Game!

Spoilers down below!











Tomorrow I will have finished Lupin's route. I'm on the last chapter now. It's so full of interesting plot twists and stuff. I'm actually glad they force the player to leave this route until last, because it feels like a grand finale to a TV show where everything comes together and all of the plot points are solved. Many of the characters and personal problems that were in some of the other routes also appear here, except you, I mean Cardia, doesn't get to play a part in them because she's too busy being captured by Finis.

The other bachelors didn't really do much in this route until the end, except Impey, he doesn't really do anything. Van Helsing gets some screen time with Lupin and kind of acts like a friend towards him, and Saint-Germain gets to do some stuff with Idea.

I was starting to like Finis until Cardia decides to save him and instead of thanking her he's just like "I h8 u bitch go away" and just lets go of her hand. I thought he was going to be forgiven, but nope, he just dies.

The quite attractive side character who is only available to date in the fan-disc, Herlock Sholmes, is actually called Sherlock Holmes. He decided to change his identity by switching round a couple of letters in his name and called it a day. And then the guy who's the villain in Van Helsing's route, Aliester, is actually Moriarty. I did not expect that twist to appear. I only actually know who Moriarty is because I watched BBC's Sherlock adaptation. I don't really know yet what that had to do with the plot of Lupin's route, it probably could've been more useful in Van Helsing's, but I'm not an otome game writer so I can't really tell them where to put stuff.

And it turns out Cardia and Finis are actually copies of Isaac Beckford's dead children. As soon as Cardi (I'm just gonna call her that now for the rest of the post, sorry) had this weird memory of waking up and being with her family and having breakfast and all that, I immediately knew that she was gonna be a copy. I watched Into the Spider-Verse recently and the villain in that wants to (SPOILER ALERT IF YOU'VE NEVER SEEN IT!)                 bring back his dead family. That was still fresh in my mind so it's probably why I could smell it coming.

In the fan-disk, I think Finis has a route. Hopefully it's not romantic. It better not be an incest route. I think Otomate are better than that though. It might just be a "What If?" situation where Cardi decides to join her brother to initiate Code: Realize, or maybe instead the terrorist plot doesn't happen and she just gives him the power of sisterly love and he stops being evil and gets welcomed into Sainty-G's mansion like Delly was.

It's gonna be so sad to leave this game! I hope Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly is good. Online it said that the game has a massive plot flowchart so I really don't want it to be really complex with fifty-billion different endings. It also has a mini game too. Please don't affect the plot, mini game! Please, because I'm really bad at those and I'm only really used to reading visual novels on my Vita because I don't have anything else.

There are Code: Realize character albums which I kind of want because they come with free charms and I'd like to hang one on my Vita. On the CD is also one of those audio drama tracks but they're probably all speaking Japanese really fast so I will never be able to understand it. They're most likely really expensive so I'll never end up buying one. I'm sure someone has uploaded them to YouTube somewhere.

Even though I haven't finished Code: Realize yet, I'm gonna rate it about a nine out of then. It's an excellent game, and I would recommend it to anyone who likes the genre. It was worth getting my Vita to play it.


Before I leave, I just wanna mention something that I find strange. I know I don't play Ikemen Sengoku anymore, but I still kind of look at the artwork and stuff because it's pretty. There are a ton of fans for it, and they all seem to like that Mitsuhide guy, who hasn't got a route yet. I really do not understand why he has so many fans! Maybe it's because I only played one and a bit of a route from that game, but he just seemed like a creep to me! I probably just have different taste, that's all. It just surprises me how many fans he has. But people always like the weird ones, it's like that with every piece of media. I've had some awful crushes in my time, so I'm not really one to talk.

Anyway, that's all I have to say for today. Goodbye!

:)

 SPOILERS DOWN BELOW! :)














So, I literally just reached Lupin's dramatic love confession scene, and it was soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo romantic. This might actually be one of my favourite routes, to be honest. It was so cute because Lupin started talking about the one he loved, and Cardia was so oblivious, she thought he was in love with someone else when he actually loved her. :)

If you read my post about Sainty-G's route, then you would've seen that I was wondering whether Idea were after Cardia in every single route or if it was only a thing in Saint-Germain's alternate timeline/route. But the stuff with Idea is also happening in this route, so that's pretty cool. And Saint-Germain, even though he isn't romantically involved with Cardia here, he still protected her from them instead of trying to kill her like he did in his own route. Like, why didn't he try to kill her this time? Well, I think that maybe he just wasn't tasked to kill her in this timeline. I'm going to call each route a "timeline", because I kind of think of them as all parallel dimensions where in each one Cardia ends up with someone else.

Even though in Victor's route Queen Victoria was a villain, this time she's meant to be a good guy, and I don't think she's in charge of plotting any terrorist plots this time.

We also got the obligatory game title drop in this route. I don't think I could've predicted when I went into this game that Code: Realize was the name of a terrorist plot. I thought it was just some gibberish that didn't make sense.

I think I've already talked about this, but this game actually reminds me a lot of Hakuoki, but that's probably because I saw somebody mention it online. In both games, the title drop is in the main guy's route, the MC is some kind of monster/demon thing looking for her father who ends up running into a bunch of handsome men, and there's an evil twin brother. It's not really surprising that they're kind of the same, because they were both developed and localised by the same companies. But the games are still different though, I'm not trying to say that Code: Realize is a knock off or anything.

I don't think I could pick a favourite out of the two games though. They're both very different. It's harder to choose a favourite love interest from Hakuoki because they're all so awesome, but even though I like everybody from Code: Realize, Van Helsing will probably always be the best one in my opinion.

After I've done Psychedelica of the Black Butterfly and the C:R fan-discs, I might purchase a few Japanese otome games. I've been browsing Amazon.co.jp to see what's out there for the Vita, and there are so many choices!

Apparently games like PsychicEmotion6 and Hakuoki SSL are some of the easiest to start off with, so I might buy those. There's also those Uta no Prince-Sama games that I've heard great things about. I will definitely be playing Hakuoki SSL before I die though, and Diabolik Lovers. Those have been on my list for a long time, and are my main motivations to study Japanese.

Even though people say that Diabolik Lovers is really weird, I really like the art and I like most yandere characters so I should enjoy it. If I play it in public, at least nobody can look over my shoulder and see the weird shit that goes on in those games, because it'll all be in Japanese so they can't read it! Hopefully I'll be able to understand it if I get it. I'm on Lesson 4 on the first Genki book so my Japanese is very basic.

Hakuoki SSL just sounds cute, and nobody dies, so that's great! Plus, Kazama has an actual route here instead of just a single ending where he kisses you and that's it. I could always just buy the PS Vita two part Hakuoki re-make in English as well, because Kazama has extra scenes there too. But I don't wanna play the same game again, and I don't know if there is enough extra content to justify getting it. There are new routes though, so maybe I should get it after I've gone through the rest of the English Vita otome library.

No matter what I play, I'll be sure to write it down here. If I play a Japanese one I'll try to recap the plots more for those people who can't play it because of language barriers. I also should get around to playing V's route and Ray's good ending, but I really need a break from Mystic Messenger. Having to take time out of the middle of your day to get a certain chat room gets tiring eventually.

I certainly am excited for the future of my otome gaming career!







:)

Lupin's Route

(There's going to be spoilers down below, like normal.)







My third post today!!!!!




So, Victor's after story was hilarious. It takes a lot sometimes to make me laugh out loud, even if something is meant to be funny, but this story managed to do it fine. Cardia's just trying to pull poor Victor's clothes off to get a bug, not knowing that what she's doing isn't really appropriate... It was very cute. It isn't really an "after story" though, because it's set during the common route. Saint-Germain's is too.

I'm excited to collect Lupin's extra story, but I've gotta complete his route first. I have a feeling it's going to be longer and more dramatic than the others. Today I started it, and I just got to the bit where Cardia went back to her mansion and then the nasty villagers tried to chase her. This is the only route where her escape from Sainty-G's mansion has actually been successful! Every other time, one of the boys ends up stopping her.

Just a quick little side note: When I talk about the MC in a game to myself, I usually just refer to her as myself, because I am a huge self-inserter. But when I'm on this blog I just use her regular name so I don't look like a weirdo.

Anyway, I'm excited for this route. Lupin isn't my favourite guy, but I did really enjoy him in Saint-Germains route. I think I already mentioned this, but he was really nice to Cardia there. He is supposed to be the main man of the story, so he has to be a pretty great character. Cardia's poison might be cured for real here, because I think that's what I found somewhere online. (I tried to avoid spoilers, but that just came up whilst I was browsing one day!)

From the start of the game, I think Van Helsing's been my favourite out of them all.. Normally I don't like the men with glasses that much, but I find him really hot for some reason.  His route was probably my favourite too, but that might just be because it was my first route. I don't think I'd be able to rank the routes though, because they're all still quite good. Speaking of rankings, I've just had an idea! One day I should make a post ranking all of my favourite otome love interests! It'd look weird for somebody clicking onto this site for the first time, but who cares!

So, all I have left before the end of the game is Lupin. I should be finishing it maybe on Monday or Tuesday, because I don't expect I'll be playing my Vita much over the weekend.

I've been looking at non-visual novel games for my Vita, but I'm not sure which ones look interesting. Persona 4 looks cool but I dunno if I'd find a JRPG with lots of combat any fun, no matter how much people praise this game. There's also a Nintendogs knock-off that I kind of want, because it looks cute and I really loved Nintendogs as a child, even though I always reset the game when I forgot to feed the puppies. It would be cool to have Stardew Valley on the Vita (I forget to play it on the Xbox a lot), but it's digital only! I wanted Persona 3 Portable because you could play as a girl, but I'm only going to get that cheap digitally too. I'll see about these other games, but for now my main focus is just otome, but I want to eventually take advantage of the Vita's rear touchpad and analogue sticks.



Wow, this was a very long post! I'm writing this really late at night, but I don't really feel tired because I drunk a can of Pepsi. (This isn't product placement, don't worry!)



See you all later!!


(I dunno why I put the tag "Stardew Valley" on this post, because I only mention it once...)

I've Almost Finished!

 (More spoilers for Code: Realize down below)


I literally just completed Victor's route and it was great, as expected. It was strange though that Cardia was slowing falling in love with this bloke who she suspected to be her father for some of the game...

This route probably had the most romance in it compared to all of the others. Now I've just got to play the after story (Which will probably have another fan service CG in it!) then I'm onto Lupin's route!

It'll be sad when I finally finish it all. At least I have the two fan-discs waiting for me, although I don't think the second disc is out in English yet. Really they should be called "fan-cartridges", because the PS Vita doesn't use UMDs, it uses those tiny little cartridges, like my old DSi XL does.

I'll see you all later once I've finished the after story!