Celebrating All Things Romantic: Code Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~

After discussing the otome visual novel Code: Realize two years ago and its fandisc Future Blessings last year, now we’ll be talking about the second fandisc, Wintertide Miracles.

(As a reminder, a fandisc can be seen as an extended epilogue game, or a sequel that builds on your happy ending.)

Like its predecessor, Wintertide Miracles contains several different types of stories.

One entertaining inclusion are the “triangle dates,” scenes that feature the main protagonist Cardia with two of the other characters. While not explicitly dates like the name would suggest, most of them feature the love interests vying for her interest with some comedic antics along the way.

The triangle dates aren’t just restricted to love interests, though, and those additional scenarios might be the funniest of all.

(Nemo is a treasure, and he’s at his best in Wintertide Miracles.)

Now let’s talk about the character routes, the game’s core content. These are set at Christmas, making this otome a great choice to read around the holidays. Instead of following each character’s ending from the original game, however, all the Christmas stories follow the ending of Finis’s route from Future Blessings. Essentially, it treats that as an extended common route so that the romances can develop from there.

They’re quite cute and sweet, with an emphasis on romance and holiday cheer instead of high stakes, a lovely way to revisit these characters.

But if you need a break from the winter setting, each character also has a bonus short story set at the beach that unlocks when you complete that character’s route.

Since Future Blessings included a new route for Herlock Sholmes, as well as the platonic Finis route, both of those characters get their own follow-up stories as well, with higher stakes and more dramatic plotlines than those found in the Christmas stories. There is also another side story set during the original game’s common route, in which Cardia befriends a songstress named Cantarella and becomes entangled in a new plot. Despite its slow start, I ended up enjoying this story quite a bit.

Finally, once you finish playing everything else (except the beach stories, which are optional), you unlock special epilogues for each of the main love interests. These do follow their individual Future Blessings routes and are fairly low-stakes stories showing the characters happy and in love.

I greatly enjoyed Code: Realize ~Wintertide Miracles~. Going into it, I worried it might feel stretched for content, being the second fandisc. However, I enjoyed it just as much as Future Blessings. Maybe it’s heavier on the fluff than on serious conflict, but there’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re a Code: Realize fan, you definitely should check out Wintertide Miracles – especially around the holidays.

(Personally, I wouldn’t mind a third Code: Realize fandisc. Maybe with Nemo and Hansel routes? I can dream.)

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