Code: Realize - Guardian of Rebirth Review

Code: Realize - Guardian of Rebirth Switch Cover

Warning: major spoilers for Code: Realize and trigger warnings for difficult themes such as terrorism, massacres, and other related concepts.

 This is a fantastic otome. My interest in Steampunk increased over the pandemic and it was a great escape as I managed lockdown. I’m sure that’s something everyone can relate to. This article will review the game in-depth, meaning that there will be heavy spoilers. I used Otomedreamworld’s walkthrough.

This review became longer than expected, so please use Ctrl + F to look for specific routes.

The plot: Our protagonist, Cardia, lives in isolation in a mansion because she's a "monster". Anything her skin touches will melt. She’s mistaken as an object, being sought by Queen Victoria’s Royal Army and simultaneously, Arsène Lupin and Impey Barbicane are looking for this high value "object". All are shocked she’s a young, beautiful woman and Lupin offers her freedom, as he is the notorious Gentleman Thief. She learns her father, Issac Beckford, created her to contain poison in her body.

Cardia comes to live with them, in Count Saint-Germain’s manor. This manor becomes home to all available bachelors and headquarters for the characters to navigate an overarching terrorism plot, including their respective history of being monsters in human history. They come across Twilight, the British Government’s specialized and covert operations agency led by Finis, someone who claims close ties with her. As everyone tries to find out the truth of what’s happening around them, Cardia learns about the thing that keeps her alive, her Horologium, her family, and the true meaning of acceptance.

Now, the artwork is gorgeous, voice acting superb and plot, while mixed in the beginning, was wholesome and intriguing. The world building follows the typical structure – Lupin’s route is locked because it’s cannon, therefore other routes must be played. Each features in-depth interactions with respective villains and adds to the overarching story.  

I disliked the cannon route because I don’t like Lupin and Cardia’s relationship, nor their interactions. It’s the damsel in distress and saviour archetype that’s heavily used in comparison to the other routes. However, everything else in that route was amazing, especially the interactions among the characters and exploration of the main villains, Finis and Issac.  

There are 13 chapters altogether, with Cardia’s story being 1 – 8. The story differs from 9-13 since these are focused on one of the guys, based on the choices that have been picked by that point. The available routes are:
 
Arsène Lupin
Impey Barbican
Victor Frankenstein
Abraham Van Helsing
Count Saint-Germain.
 
Let’s start with the cannon route, despite being the last playable one.

Arsène Lupin

 

Lupin catching Cardia

Lupin is a happy-go-lucky guy and his backstory, though with tragedy, is more heroic than the others. He’s the team lead and steals from the corrupt, ensuring the team has funds and the means to carry out the plans.
 
His route held the main plot. As mentioned before, though I disliked their relationship, I enjoyed the interactions and plot. It was great to see anything tied together. All the men had a final showdown with their respective villains, except Victor, who joined Impey because his nemesis is Queen Victoria. In this route, she plays a large support role.
 
We learn about Issac and Fini's background and motives as primary focuses rather than secondary in other routes. The dialogue between the guys are the best part. It’s somewhat established that Van is considered a love rival, and they will support Lupin to retrieve Cardia, who had been kidnapped by Finis at this point. The only other time we see something similar is during Victor’s route. It was cute how they essentially became Victor and Cardia’s bodyguards during the final fight, but more on that later. 

The funniest interactions was with Hemlock Sholmes (yes...the spelling is intentional) because he consistently outsmarts Lupin, who doesn't deal well. All of this was enough to overcome the damsel in distress and saviour archetypes.
 
Onward to the other four – starting with Victor.

 

Victor Frankenstein

Victor x Cardia Sweetness

Impey was my first choice but for the sake of the review’s compare and contrast, I’ll pick the character who contrasts the previous. Alongside with Lupin’s route, Victor’s is the only other one where Cardia is cured of her poison.

 
Aside from the poison, this route is unique because Carda is dominant and I love it. Victor’s always blushing, and Cardia is direct, often dense. The best part to this is that the calm and cool Saint-Germain is their biggest supporter.
 
Cardia meets Victor when she’s separated from Lupin and Impey. She knows him as a terrorist because of the wanted posters and he saves her from human traffickers. After some events, especially seeing Carida’s Horologium, he comes to live in the manor with everyone else. Bottomline is he’s being framed and cannot share certain things because it’s confidential. Which makes sense because he was part of the Royal Society and its genius.
 
Because of his skills, he becomes her doctor and creates clothing that isn’t melted by her poison. Part of the heroine’s story is him negotiating with Queen Victoria in regards to the freedom of Lupin’s Gang, as well as ensuring all knew he wasn’t a terrorist. This took a lot of guts.

As the plot goes on, normally where Cardia would leave the manor because she feels she’ll endanger others, Victor disappears. The plot twist is he created the means of the Horologium, therefore her, and holds significant guilt for what his creation meant for the Vampire War two years ago – he was indirectly involved with massacre.

Cardia’s forgiveness is what he needed to hear, including her thanks that because of him, she was able to live. Her character grew from thinking herself as a monster, to someone who appreciated everyone around her, including Victor as he was.

Again, I absolutely love how direct she is and how often he blushed. a reverse gender role of sorts. His extra scene was hilarious too, where Cardia attempted to remove his clothes to find bugs. He screamed, face fully red, and it was glorious as the camera panned out. Kakihara Tetsuya understood the assignment, playing soft voiced when necessary and deep screaming and hesitation.

Victor's Extra Story

 

This route hit differently when we learn Victor and Cardia's romance is a parallel of Issac and Cardia's mother, with Victor being much more ethical. This is learned in Lupin’s route. It does leave the question of whether he would lose it and succumb to unethical behavior if Cardia died.
 
As it is, he is intent on holding Queen Victoria's regime accountable, because she was the villain and wanted to initiate a war with Europe. This was done by defaming Vampires as evil and engaging in home terrorism to blame other nations. This was her strategy to maintain supremacy.
 
I appreciated Leonhardt’s dedication to her, while demonstrating he despised what she was doing within the relationship as a Royal Guard. It was semi-shocking that even after she stabbed him, he carried her to safety, claiming that he would always be there for her, whereas she wanted to die to atone for everything she did. That was the dedication he had to someone who saved him.
 
In Victor’s normal ending, Cardia sacrificed herself because Queen Victoria’s plan to use her as an explosion device worked, and she wanted to save Victor. She stabbed herself so he could live, as could others. In the true ending, they live together in the manor because Saint-Germain gave them the title to the property. Because her poison is cured, Victor wants to continue spending his nights with her.
 
Overall, it wasn’t what I was expecting, as Victor and Cardia are truly a pure love couple. It was fascinating to see the difference in the intensity of guilt depending on character, because playing Van Helsing’s was completely different.
 

Abraham Van Helsing

Van saving Cardia

 

This was a gritty and intense route because Van was consumed by vengeance. Cardia’s stubborn nature was a necessity to break through the extremities and toxic masculinity, as his shining light of a dark night. Van is a direct, no-nonsense character, border-line stoic and keeps to himself. He can’t cook and is sarcastic. Impey is his direct foil and a cute part of his character was his snark towards Impey.

 

A big thing about Van was that he enjoyed a good reputation due to his role in eradicating vampires during the Vampire War, and he has a ridiculous amount of endurance and strength. It was humorous to see this in action during the heroine’s story, where they entered an airship race, and he was the secret weapon. Impey decided Van would be shot through a cannon into the ship causing the most damage. Hilarity ensued and he got the job done.

 

Following chapter 8, we see Cardia leaving the others, only to be kidnapped by Jack the Ripper and held hostage in the sewers. Honestly, the scene that introduced him gave me the creeps, and the only time that happened in the game. We learned about the drug, ‘Human Strength’, as Van found her and protected her from him. The elevation is when it was learned there was someone who orchestrated the Ripper’s murders: Azoth.

 

As we learn in Lupin's route, Moriarty disguised himself as Twilight’s second-in-command, Aleister. He wanted Van to become his successor and created an elaborate development path for Van, filled with tragedy. For most of the route, Van saw him as a mentor, until betrayed later.

 

He learned Aleister killed his mother and sibling, not Finis.

 

The second focal point is the Vampire Wars and Van's involvement. We saw he was undercover as a lost traveller and the hoard took him in. He befriended the Royal family, especially Delacroix II, known as Delly, and he learned they weren’t as framed to be. During the heroine’s story, she wants Delly to live in the manor as he was one of few vampires alive, and that he could overcome hatred if not in isolation.

 

He left the hoard and refused to harm them but informed his family was taken hostage by Finis, until he did as instructed. Sadly, he killed the vampires and when he learned Delly was alive, he cared for him from afar. His guilt, shame and grief manifested in toxicity and lone-wolf mentality.

 

This was where Cardia's love, initially insistent to be his friend, saved him from becoming Aleister’s puppet. Sadly, he used human strength on vampires, including Delly, and on Van without his knowledge. It took significant endurance of his strengths, which speaks a lot to bedroom shenanigans. Also, I found their romance to be more physical than others.

 

Van Helsing pushing Cardia away

I love Cardia’s guts because she needed them to deal with both Aleister, revealed to be Azoth, and Van, who have unparalleled strength. Her relationship with Delly also came through, as the kid couldn’t hate Van for what he did, and instead wanted Van to spend his life making up for what happened. They both guys forged a mutual caring relationship.

 

In the normal end, Van sacrificed himself for her and this took her sometime to move on, with Delly to manage her. The first time she wanted to leave the house was to put flowers on his family’s graves.

 

In the true ending, Van became security for diplomats and anyone who negotiated Vampire rights with Delly. They danced at London Bridge, as they wait for a cure to Cardia’s poison.

 

I really liked Van – he teased Cardia once they’re in a relationship and Cardia is adorably lonely without him in the house. Even though he couldn’t bring her to his events, he found alternatives. I’m looking forward to the fan disk of when they get married, especially when the majority of this route was Van pushing Cardia away. 

Impey Barbicane

Impey's happy ending

Impey’s optimistic story was a foil to Van Helsing’s gritty tale. He was Cardia's light and granted, this route had savourism in it, but not as much as Lupin's. He was my first choice, and it was surprisingly light in comparison to other routes. 

Impey gets knocked around often, especially since he hits on Cardia consistently. He definitely had a high self-esteem because he maintained his cheerful personality. She calmly rejected him at every opportunity and his expressions gave him the title of comedy relief. 

He's the resident engineer and has a dream to go to the moon. Naturally, there's always depth to the womanizer type and Impey's story is rooted in abandonment. 

It was revealed he was part vampire and after losing his parents to the Vampire War, he wasn't wanted so he lived in a shack outside the village. This would explain his instant gravitation to Cardia, especially when he doesn’t flirt with anyone else. A monster-monster relationship, rather than metaphorical ones like some others. 
As a child, Impey met a scientist when he was a child and they formed a club around science. They’d come together often to build a rocket to the moon. Sadly, his village, including his friend, was wiped out by the government because they dropped a bomb. 

Cardia supported him and eventually became his companion and she slowly came to love him, even if he constantly pushed it. I loved the dynamics between them during conflict as he was extremely strong, and she would use other tactics learned during the heroine’s story to contribute. 

Impey breaking into an airship

Overall, he had the lightest backstong and the most passion among the guys. I found it cute that his inventions didn’t always work, but had Lupin's absolute trust. He had a soft spot for abandoned animals. Sisi, the resident dog and Cardia's companion, initially had three legs then Impey gave him an artificial leg. But.... they don't always like him.

His route featured Nemo as a nemesis, an eccentric scientist who self-proclaimed Impey as his rival. Funny to watch Impey's discomfort. 

When Cardia attempted to leave the manor, Impey went with her, and both were kidnapped by Nemo after helping him retrieve his stolen items. He worked for Twilight. This scenario reinforced Impey’s kind heart, because he wouldn’t leave anyone behind. When the choices called for a kind approach or diabolical, his right choice was always kind. 

In a normal ending, Impey sacrificed himself as the airnship they infiltrated was about to crash. He saved Cardia in the process and she spent her life in America to fulfill Impey's dream of getting to the moon. The true ending was living together at the manor and Impey asking her to marry him. 

This route contributed the least in cas to the overall plot but was incredibly enjoyable. In retrospect, it was a breath of fresh air in comparison to the other routes.

Saint-Germain

Saint-Germain near death

Last but certainly not least, Saint-Germain's route was shocking. The stereotype of an ever smiling man is duality, like Fuji Syusuke from Prince of Tennis. Instantly, from the juxtaposition of the first image of their meeting, it was obvious there would be a deep story.

Deep indeed.

During the heroine's story, he killed Finis and that was when we first saw the killer. I won’t say true nature because his calmness was not a facade. There was a hint of something more when he was first to know about Cardia's tragic past, when her poison killed her friend. This happened because they were forced into a cave and trapped by villagers.

When we started Saint-Germain's route, he caught Cardia leaving and took her to another manor. Then he tried to kill her. This instantly pissed me off because I thought it was a route of extreme sadism an innocent woman is gaslit into staying in an abusive relationship. 

So glad I continued, otherwise I would’ve missed an epic.

Idea is an organization that exists outside of the human realm, led by omnibus. She's implied
to be Eve, and has an Apostle, an armored Guinevere followed Saint-Germain to ensure he fulfilled the mission - kill Cardia because she was a calamity.

Cardia picked up on his hesitation before I did. Eventually she escaped from him and Guinevere attempted to kill her instead. We learned Saint Germain failed his mission to destroy a village to stop the spread of the Bubonic Plague. He saved a child, who was a carrier. This spread throughout Europe. 

Yes, he's centuries old.

By the time his route started, he killed Issac and Finis secretly, and fell in love with her. This was why he hesitated. These two then go on a journey, mostly apart, to stop Idea from killing her, therefore being able to be together. 

He was constantly fighting Guinevere and eventually weakened. Cardia was finding a way to overcome Omnibus’ orders to be with him. It was a very melancholy journey and I loved the music throughout.

Cardia's determination never faltered and we didn’t see much of the guys. Because of Lupin's reactions, I think Saint-Germain was the true rival. It would be difficult not to, since this route was elevated to an ethereal reality. 

Saint-Germain asking for a final decision

This route really saw the duality of voice acting as eventually, Saint-Germain lost composure and begged Omnibus to save Cardia. She finally agreed to give them an opportunity. 

In the normal ending, Saint Germain passed away and Cardia joined Idea. She met Guinevere to complete an assassination, with Cardia hoping to be with Saint-Germain again. The true ending had Cardia and Saint Germain traveling the world, searching for a cure for Cardia's poison. It was the only ending we saw outside of London, which was great.

This was among the best route because as a character, Saint-Germain teased, scolded, nurtured, played and overall, loved in a really beautiful way - choosing her over the world.

Winning the Airship race

This was a struggle to write, because there's so much I wanted to include. I highly recommend this game to anyone because with the plot being phenomenal, the interface was just as great. A memory trunk held all collected items, giving an idea of how far along the player is.

I might write more in-depth analysis because there was a lot of material, and overall, Cardia's story was detailed and gave her great development. I'm playing Future Blessings now and in the near future, will write about that.

Thanks for dropping by!