Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ is a pure visual novel targeted for the female audience. This is gleamed from the fact that you play the role of a heroine who interact with five other males, and depending on your choices, will dictate who you'll be with during the ending. For anyone who is expecting something more interactive, you'll be disappointed as Code Realize is a visual novel in the most literal sense, you will be reading the story from start to finish with no other gameplay whatsoever. The only thing that keeps you going in this game is the story itself, so you would hope the story would stack up.
The story is set in an alternate London and starts off in 1853. It's the same as the real London during that time period but with heavy fantasy elements such as vampires, supernatural powers and unusual steam technology. It creates a sort of olden cyberpunk setting if that makes any sense at all. Through its narrative, the game wraps in some real life elements such as Jack the Ripper, airships, automobiles and Sherlock Holmes. These references actually touch your curiosity and make it seem as if the story can actually have taken place in the past. You play as Cardia (or whatever name you change it to) who wakes up with no memory and has a special power.
Anything that Cardia touches will melt as she seems to exude a type of poison, of course, the only exceptions are her clothing. She soon joins up with a group of talented guys who all have the potential to be her love interest. The main plot element revolves around trying to find more abut Cardia's father as she only remembers some snippets of what he has said to her in the past but there many other subplots too. The story is mainly told via dialogue with character portraits, there will occasionally be some high quality artwork. Since it is all text with static portraits, some slight animations to the frames and the music plays big roles in the tone of each scene. There are some great music tracks that elevate the emotions and atmosphere of the scene it was played in.
There are thirteen chapters to the story but there are also multiple endings and paths that you can go. No matter what path you choose, the first eight chapters are the same and the last five chapters are unique to each ending, introducing further story elements and character backstories. With five protagonists there are five main stories and if you play it in the order the Trophies are listed in, then you don't get big spoilers right out of the game. Playing in that order means the game will slowly reveal each set piece one by one and the mystery clears in a slow but satisfying way.
The final true ending was nice but it didn't have the big impact as you have already played through similar stories various times. Sure, having multiple endings means you get to know each character in much more detail but int he end, the story's structure was too predictable. The best thing though was how the true ending tied together and made references to each character's past, even if it ended up bloating the game. It might sound great in writing with how your choices dictate which ending path you go towards but the game doesn't actually present many choices. The limited times in the story where it branches doesn't feel like you are really picking the character you want to be with, since the choices are too obvious at times and the story quickly converges back into the same sequence of events.
Thankfully, for the speedy readers out there, the text speed can be set to fast which is effectively instantaneously. Furthermore, since you're expected to replay the story multiple times, you can skip text that you have already read, or if you really wanted to, skip text you haven't seen before. Unfortunately, you cannot select chapters which is somewhat annoying as it takes up to 2 hours to fast forward the first eight chapters to get to those specific character ending chapters. Code Realize only has Japanese voice acting and it's pretty good. Since you're reading most of the time, it doesn't really matter that the voices aren't in English.
There is a noticeable lack of extras because once you finish the story in around 10 to 15 hours, there is nothing much left to do. You have five extra short scenes to read through, a music player and that's basically it. There's not much replay value unless you really loved the story enough to play it again. Overall, Code: Realize ~Guardian of Rebirth~ is a visual novel in the strictest sense since you're effectively reading a book. This requires a great story to keep your interest and while the story wasn't bad, it wasn't the best plot ever. There were some scenes where you just didn't care what was happening but overall, the clever animation of scenes, solid voice acting and unique story elements make Code Realize a worthwhile visual novel to read.
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