[REVIEW] Second Reproduction

Synopsis: Christina is the youngest of the three princesses of Almenan ,born in the era of war against the evil Demons. Having the status of a “True Champion”, Christina has countless battle victories upon her shoulders and is feared by the Demon race, therefore her mother, Queen Helaris, sends her on a secret mission to assassinate the Demon Lord Gardis in return for his ruthless annihilation of the Kingdom of Crofts.
Obeying her mother’s orders for the sake of humanity, Christina sets out alongside with her most loyal knight, Lezette, towards Deathryde, but what happens when they discover the Demon Lord and his people are not as ruthless as they thought…?

Developer: Heterodoxy/Operetta/Operetta
System: PC ((Windows XP/7/Vista)
Language: Japanese/English (patch by Ate the Moon Translations)
Rating: Teen 15+
Opening:

ENGLISH PATCH:

MY REVIEWS ARE MOSTLY SPOILER FREE UNLESS I WRITE SPOILER THIS WAY

REVIEW:

I must say I wasn’t expecting much from this game, mostly because I didn’t even read the summary when I first got it so I took it as another way to pass the time between school, exams, stress and tiredness, but opposite to what I thought, Second Reproduction turned out to be a nice distraction from it all. The game is not especially long but I really liked the way the story was portrayed mostly because it shares my philosophical believes on how somebody is supposed to view a nation despite their different religion or politics you can’t agree with. Christina is the typical oblivious tsundere that tends to not see things that are beyond her nose which makes her quite closed-minded, but as the game explains, that is based on the mentality she was grown with. Anyway, she’s the main girl which doesn’t lack “balls” if I can make myself clear. xD This makes her quite enjoyable to follow, while a blushy, shy, weak damsel in distress would have been a pain otherwise. If there was something I didn’t like about her, that would be her obliviousness but I’ll get there right away and explain exactly why that bothered me.
The art is really pretty,really pretty! so no complaints. The music was a bit monotone though. Another thing I must add before passing to individual routes review is that, unfortunately, once you play the game once, the story won’t have as much of an impact on you as it did at first, but I personally didn’t mind it that much after all. All bad endings are destined to at least let you teary eyed so yeah… Also, the game is partially voiced. At first I thought there was a problem with my version of the game but then I read some comments around and found out that only the important parts of the game were voiced. xD

Individual routes reviews

I usually start with the one I liked the most but I’ll do an exception this time because there are things I can explain only gradually if I start with the one I liked least. So this is why I start with…

Lezette

This is completely unrelated, but doesn’t Lezette kind of remind you of Shaoran in that pic above? You know…Famous first image of the Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles manga where Shaoran and Sakura were divided by glass…O well..It’s completely unrelated!

Some of you might complain and judge Neko for being blind or insensitive for liking this route the least (and I truly thought so too at one point), but as much as I tried I kept wanting to hit both Lezette and Christina in the second half of the game till the end.
At the beginning I was completely all over Lezette, his cuteness should have been illegal and I couldn’t help but “daww” everytime he’d make a sad face because Christina was too oblivious to understand just how much this guy obsesses over her, but really. What’s enough is enough. Just how could Christina be sensitive to other stuff and completely oblivious to Lezette’s feelings which were more than obvious and everybody, even the maids and retainers, would notice them?! She must be a complete idiot! XD At one point of the game he will also confess his feelings himself, but then our protagonist still doesn’t seem like wanting to believe and keeps going on her path of obliviousness. And Lezette! I understand everything about his position of Knight, but he was close so many times to tell her he loves her that it shouldn’t have mattered anymore. He’d always just chicken out. xD Even though one side of this is really funny, (she too oblivious to notice, him in conflict with Lezette as a man and Lezette as the knight), in Lezette’s route this concept/gag just tends to get overused to the point it’s just dragging the story longer than it was supposed to be, which I think was the whole point to begin with. And this seemed like going on till their Good End, which also felt quite incomplete if nobody would bother to read the notes at the end.

Now, the Bad End…I consider it being better than the Good End overall xD Gardis’ tragedy and Christina and Lezette’s final outcome was a nice touch to it. And I was glad the authors didn’t invoke the death cliche, what they did was enough. I’m not quite sure what was of their love at the end,though, but oh well.

In Christina and Lezette’s Valentine Plans special you can finally have a proper conclusion to their good end with a bit (a lot!) of help coming from Gardis. Our ol’, kind and lonely Gardis xD And we can also have more of Lezette’s jealousy which kind of felt forced in my opinion, but enjoyable to witness. xD

Jin

I’ve put up quite a happy-go-lucky picture but Jin’s route is anything but happy-go-lucky…xD While playing it there was a certain song playing in my head: Always by Saliva. So yeah, while playing I kept humming and singing “I love you, I hate you, I can’t get around you. I breathe you, I taste you, I can’t live without you…”. The song on its own is a good description of the feelings going on in this route. xD
Anyway, this is shorter than the other two routes and you don’t really have to do anything special to get Jin’s Good End, besides buying a rope which I don’t exactly understand how it helped, besides relating to Jin’s sadistic sexual pleasures…*coughs*
Now, you might wonder why I liked Jin more than Lezette…now don’t take me wrong. I don’t exactly know who I like better between them, but Jin’s route didn’t annoy or made me roll my eyes at all, this is why he’s second on my list of liking.
Some would be really surprised about Gardis’ Prime Minister real self, believe me, I was, but somehow he’s not hateable even though he knows how to be mean till the very end, so you can have a nice time dealing with a hopeless pervert. xD Also…while I could foresee Lezette’s route, I can’t foresee Jin. At all. Which is both a good point overall. He’s just purely spontaneous, just when I think I understand him he just does something I don’t expect him to do or say, which was quite fun.

Jin’s Valetine Plans special was…a bit disturbing on one side and cute on the other. I’ll stop there xD
SPOILER: Damn you, Lezette! You weren’t able to confess your feelings when Chris was single and now that she’s married with a psycho demon that’d be able to murder half male population of the kingdom out of jealousy, you finally get the courage?! *deep sigh* I don’t understand Lezette’s logic… END SPOILER RANTENDED

Gardis

Finally! We reached my favourite Demon Lord, which I find even hard to name a demon, but that’s what Second Reproduction is about to begin with. xD
Yes, he’s my favourite from all points of view, Good End, Bad End and Valentines Plans included, which I find quite surprising since I rarely like the main male character the game tends to push the protagonist to. At the beginning, Gardis plays the part of the bad guy, almost like in a Beauty and the Beast setting. Gardis is pervert, a womanizer, a sadist, a teaser, a slacker and really childish, but still very kind. He’s the only person Christina will go to when she has a problem with somebody else (in this case Lezette or Jin), and despite the fact he always falls in love with Christina he’ll never ask her to accept him when she starts loving somebody else, on the contrary, he’d be the first pushing her to that man’s arms…certainly till you choose Christina to fall for him. xD If you do then prepare to have him go childishly jealous over every man and sexually tease Christina till she falls flat on the bed exhausted. xD Gardis is not the forcing type either, he’d never make Christina do something she doesn’t want to and even if he tried it rarely works on her since she’s more stubborn than he is. He also tends to make himself the bad guy in order to save other people or in a desperate attempt to get his end the way he wants it to.

In other words, Gardis is like a combination of Lezette and Jin personality wise which makes him quite comical at times, but that’s what also makes him special.
The love Christina will learn to have for Gardis is also especially well executed. We know why she loves him. It was a gradual development, it wasn’t left ambiguous on why exactly she fell for the guy like in Jin’s route or a sudden realization brought by loneliness like in Lezette’s route. Gardis’ kindness made it impossible for her to even fight back, it was like a natural turn of events.
Another thing worth mentioning that I paid special attention to would be the LezettexChristinaxGardis and JinxChristinaxGardis exchanges. They made me laugh so hard at 1 in the morning that I almost made my mom wake up and yell at me, when next day I was supposed to wake up early and go to freakin’ school. xD They are just priceless.

This said, the game is a joy to play and very friendly towards new and old otome game fans.Certainly, I’m open to any of your comments and opinions. Have a nice time playing!