Otome Game Review: Snow Bound Land

Based on the story of the  Snow Queen, our heroine Gerda lives in a small village with her childhood friend & neighbor Kai. She also has other childhood friends in the village like Craes who works at a bakery, and the sickly Orva who’s got some incurable disease where he’s bed ridden all the time. Then there’s also Aje who lives in another village but he’s been traveling and searching for someone so he’s stopped in Gerda’s village for a bit. One day Kai brings Gerda a mirror saying it can make any wish come true so everyone decides to get together and wish for it to cure Orva’s disease.  Unfortunately it’s a cursed mirror created by a demon using the powers of the Snow Queen and when they make the wish it breaks into pieces. The pieces all get thrown inside the bodies of Gerda and her friends placing a curse on all of them. Kai becomes bipolar, Aje gets foot in mouth disease, Craes is able to predict bad people, Gerda gets superman strength but Orva’s disease is cured despite him now basically rotting anything he touches. The demon who created the mirror shows up and tells them that if they want to break the curse they need to go see the Snow Queen in the White World, but the only way to do this is to go to the Red, Green and Yellow worlds to obtain special keys. With this, Gerda and her friends gather together to begin Snow Bound Land: The Incredible Journey.

Most of the game is basically the same outline so here’s the basic gist. They go to red world which has a witch named Liselotte in it and she lives alone in a mansion with a loli and shota named Will and Lydia. The granny acts all nice but she forces Lydia & Will to be her child slaves, like forcing Lydia to repaint all the white roses in the garden red. The kids’ entire family died from some disease and that’s why Liselotte took them in.  The white world key here is Liselotte’s ring and she doesn’t want to give it away. In fact she just wants to get the mirror pieces from Gerda & co. cause the old hag is angry that she doesn’t have as much powers as the snow queen. Gerda & co. have to then sneak around and steal the ring and with Lydia & Will’s help, everyone manages to escape Liselotte’s dungeon. I honestly feel sorry for the 2 kids because we never really find out what happened to them and I’m certain the hag would rage at them for letting her magic powers escape. Also the scenario of red world is like the longest scenario in the entire game compared to everything else which made it really really dull for the most part.

One thing they do get from Liselotte is a special magic bottle which basically acts like a magic dispel potion so if they get attack by any mages, it can be used to protect themselves.  Unfortunately, it’s not effective when someone goes and breaks the bottles and that’s why the cast ends up vanishing halfway through the route lol. Once everyone gets to yellow world, they run into the prince named Alfred and a queen named Natalia. Based on whose route you do the scenario slightly changes but basically Natalia’s pocket watch is the key to the white world. It was given to her by Alfred who she’s in love with, but he’s busy being a manwhore so most of the time you spend the routes being cupid for them :lol:. Once they obtain the key, they move on to green world where they meet Fine, a bandit gang leader and her sidekick Bayser. The key to the white world here is Fine’s necklace that was given to her by her father who was killed by the snow queen.  Unlike the other 2 worlds, Fine isn’t too sad to part with it and just asks that they return it once they’re done with their business. Once everyone reaches white world (and depending whose route you’re on, by this point most of the cast has dropped off the face of the earth) they go to see the Snow Queen who is a sad & lonely lady who they try to talk into helping them break the curse.

Craes – Craes works in a bakery where Gerda’s a frequent customer. He’s known Gerda since he was 5 when he first moved to the village. At first Craes was a tsundere shota who hated Gerda because she took away his playtime with his bff Kai. However as time went by, Craes eventually fell in love with Gerda and started getting jealous of Kai instead.  She’s the reason that he became a pastry chef in the first place because Gerda tried one of his scones and told him it was delicious. (๑￫ܫ￩๑)  Unfortunately one day when Craes was trying to get some flowers for Gerda, he fell off a cliff and died. Before his death, a demon appeared and offered to give him life saying he’ll “come back for the payment in 5 years”.  In yellow world Alfred asks Gerda to be a stuntwoman for Natalia because someone is after the queen. Gerda agrees since she got hulk smash but is scared. Fortunately Craes is with her and when some dude attacks her, he beats them up with his frying pan xD. So then that green world girl Fine (who’s the leader of a bandit gang) tells Gerda her necklace is the key to the white world. She agrees to give it if they defeat Bayser in an arm wrestling contest. Craes tries but loses of course cause he’s a little cooking shota. So then it’s Gerda’s turn to step up to the challenge and with her SUPER HERCULES POWERS she beats the dude in like 2 seconds lol. They get the key and say goodbye but soon as they leave green world, Gerda is wondering about the demon who told her that Craes is hiding something from her. Just then Craes says he has something important to tell her after the journeys over. When they get to white country they cuddle in a scarf while he says he’s loved her for 7 years and shes the reason he decided to become a pastry chef…cause she ate his scone and said he’s like a realchef so he wanted to put a smile on her face by cooking for her　(๑￫ܫ￩๑)

They end up smooching hehe. When they run into demon dude he tells them the only way to break the curse is to kill the snow queen. They run into Ivan, who brings them to the Snow Queen and Gerda demands that she return Kai to them. The Queen reveals that Craes is lying and in fact he doesn’t have a mirror piece inside of him and the only one who has the mirror piece inside of them is Gerda.  She says that the mirror pieces have now merged with everyone’s bodies and due to this she cannot extract them. She gives Gerda a choice to stay and live with her in the castle forever & ever like Ivan.She tells Gerda to forget about Craes cause he’s a liar and she hates liars but Gerda says that he must have had a reason.The Queen says that she’ll return Craes to the village on the agreement that Gerda stay behind. Not wanting Craes to be turned into a popsicle, Gerda agrees. When Gerda comes back to tell Craes, she lies to him and says “removing the mirror piece” will take too long and tells him to go back to the village without her. He wants to know the truth but Gerda gets into a fight with him so that it’s easier for them to part even though it feels like someone’s stabbing her heart. Craes catches on, grabs her hand and says no way I’m going home without you baby.  They run out of the castle and when they hide from Ivan, he says there’s no point of him returning to the village alone. The entire reason he travelled on this journey and made up that lie, is so that he could spend as much time with her as possible. Unfortunately Ivan knocks Gerda out and takes her away with Kai getting in the way telling Craes to return to the village alone. Craes ends up fighting Kai but he keeps yelling for him to return back to his old self and save Gerda. Fortunately just then Aje and Orva who dropped off the face of the earth, magically return for back up!

After Gerda wakes up at Snow Queen’s place queeny tells her to forget Craes the liar but Gerda tells her to STFU. Just then Craes shows up saying he punched Kai to his senses and that’s why he’s here. Craes tells Queeny to stop being such a STIFF and she says that without her powers everyone bullies her so she’d rather be powerful and threatening. Gerda’s like “umm well even if you don’t have power I wouldn’t really hate you???” Craes adds that if she promises not to hurt him or his friends, they can hang out and be bffs! The Queen gives up and gives in and is like sigh go on and get outta here you crazy kids!  They start to return home but there’s one thing that they’ve forgotten – the deal that Craes made with the demon. He tells Craes that he’s here to take his payment for saving his life 5 years ago. Craes asks to at least say his goodbyes to Gerda, so he asks Gerda if he’s become more manlier throughout this journey. Gerda says he’s changed a lot and as proof she grabs and kisses him xD. Unfortunately, in the middle of the kiss, he says sorry to Gerda as he passes out into the snow. (´；ω；｀)ﾌﾞﾜｯHappy End: Some time passes and Gerda is back in her village but she has dreams of Craes leaving her every night. Turns out that what the demon took away was Craes’ memories of Gerda. After he passed out  he woke up not knowing who she is.

At the village Gerda visits him often at his restaurant trying to rekindle his memory but he’s back like he was the first time he came to the village, aka he thinks Gerda is annoying. Of course just like in the past, Craes gets all jelly seeing Gerda and Kai and starts to misunderstand and think they are lovers. ( ఠ‿ఠ ) And so eventually Craes falls in love with Gerda once more and one day he brings a giant sunflower to her door. He tells her since she liked flowers he just picked the brightest one but Gerda tells him that he’s the one who reminds her of the sunflower…because he’s the light of her life! (*´ω｀*) And so Gerda tells herself that she’s confident that the two of them can fall in love once more. There was a short story that continued after this ending, 1 year later they have been dating and Craes surprises her by making a special cake for her. He then basically proposes for her to marry him once he’s become a well rounded chef. That day he promises to make their wedding cake. Bad End: The demon takes Craes’ soul and he dies.  Gerda tells the Snow Queen that she can’t live without Craes and asks to freeze the two of them so they can be together forever. (´；ω；｀)  I didn’t know if I’d like Craes or not but dayum son he was such a cutie pie and I lol’ede at all the times that he smacked people around with his frying pan ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ァﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼ . Also it was nice that the demon tied into his story because in other routes the demon just shows up, trolls and then leaves for no fuggin reason.

Orva – Orva’s sick and bedridden his whole life so of course when his curse cures him it’s like ﾜｰｲヽ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾒ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾒ(ﾟ∀ﾟ)ﾉﾜｰｲ. Needless to say when the journey to LIFT the curse begins, HE AIN’T PLEASED. And to be sincerely honest I can sympathize. Your disease that kept you bed ridden your whole life is cured, you can finally go outside and do things and now you’re being told to deal with it and get sick again. It would drive any person insane! So while I really don’t agree with some of Orva’s actions, I can truly sympathize with his rage and wangst cause I’d probably feel the same way. Yes it’s totally selfish but don’t underestimate a sick person’s feelings I guess is the moral of this story.  Since anything Orva touches rots & dies, he constantly wears gloves so he doesn’t touch anything directly or hurt Gerda.  In yellow country, this time the prince tells Orva & Gerda if they find the key in his room they can have it. The reason is apparently someone gave the prince the responsibility of holding the key and he wants to be freed of it…however he can’t just GIVE it away so if “someone else finds & takes it then it cannot be helped”!  They look for it but can’t seem to find it and so Alfred prince tells them to stay at the castle as long as they need. They end up sharing a room – and a bed (。≖ˇ∀ˇ≖。)  Gerda is invited to attend a royal ball but Orva is too sick to come along with her.  While Gerda’s away, the demon dude visits Orva and is like “are you ok with the curse lifting cause you gonna be sick again?” He then torments Orva so when Gerda returns she gotta deal with the extra wangst.

When she asks him what’s wrong he says he’s fine but, he grabs her and pushes her on the bed. Gerda’s like yo dude, shit ain’t right here but before she can get any answers out of him he kisses her and starts to cry.  After he lets go he’s like why aren’t you mad that I kissed you and she’s like its ok babe, if you sad I’m here for ya.  The next day Orva tells her he’s sorry for forcing a kiss on her, and says he didn’t do it to be an asshole. He then starts pushing Gerda away because now she’s got the key for yellow country and says that he’ll just hold her back oh noeess wanngstt. ヽ(。_゜)ノ Orva then admits to Gerda that he doesn’t actually want to clear his curse and he just wants to go back to the village being healthy.  He refuses to go back to being bedridden but Gerda says she’s going to continue her journey cause she feels Orva may regret his decision in the future. Orva is like “wtf dude are you saying I want to go back to being sick in bed the rest of my life??” 😆 Sadly I can’t sympathize with him putting her a knife point to threaten her to go back to the village with him. (　´_ゝ`) Gerda tries to get him to calm his tits and he throws a shitfit and stabs her by accident. Poor Gerda’s like “but its ok…this isn’t as bad as the paaain you’ve felt all your life ;_;.  Well I guess this uh changes his mind cause lol now we’re going to green world! And so in green world they run into a bandit gang run by a lady named Fine and her sidekicks Bayser. Gerda plays a game of poker against  Fine and kicks her ass over & over so Fine hands over the key to the White World. Meanwhile Orva is annoyed at all the drunk bandits and tries to keep to himself lol. He then feels bad when they get the key so he decides to join everyone for a drink. Since he seems sick Gerda tells him to get some fresh air, but instead he takes the necklace and is like fuck this shait I don’t wanna go back to being bedridden.

While everyone’s getting drunk, he takes the necklace and runs. When Gerda looks for him, not only can she not find him, but she also realizes the necklace is MIA. Fine’s parrot tells Gerda he saw Orva run into the woods so Gerda runs in after him. When she finds him he’s wangsting how he can’t hide his true self from her and it’s making him go insane. He takes off his gloves and tells her not to come  near him or she’ll rot like the tree he touched. Gerda sees him walking away so she’s like fuck dis shiat and grabs his ungloved hand.  Just then the 2 of them fall off a cliff and when Orva wakes up he finds an unconscious Gerda lying near him. He then starts crying and babbling that he hasn’t told her that he loves her. Meanwhile Gerda’s having a dream of when she first befriended Orva and he said he wants to buy the flowers Gerda will sell at her future floral shop. She then wakes up in horrid pain while Orva is crying and apologizing for everything.  Gerda hugs him back and says that she’s glad he’s back to his normal self and he tells her to never touch his bare hands again. Gerda’s like no dude, we gon’ clear yo’ curse and then I’ma grope you all over the place!! 😆 Just then demon dude shows up raging that his cockblocking didn’t work and they successfully obtained all 3 keys to the white world. He admits that he was the one who set a spell on Orva in yellow country which is what made him go all wacky tabacky back there. Orva gets his knife out and says he’s gonna stab the demon’s ass for ruining shit but demon dude flies away and just then Bayser finds them ichaichaing together xD.They return back to Fine’s house and Gerda tells her that she’s not mad at Orva cause she loves the dork. When they get to white country, Orva confesses his love to Gerda.  After they walk to the castle they run into an angry Kai again, and they want to save him but only way is to fight him.  Orva fights Kai and tells him to wake dafuq up and remember about Gerda who’s sittin there crying a river for him. Well this magically works and Kai returns to his self and apologizes for being an ass.

Just then Ivan shows up and Orva pulls out his knife part 3 and starts kicking asses. When they get to the queen she announces that the mirror pieces have merged with Gerda’s body and she says she’ll take the piece out and preserve Gerda’s body like her own “doll”.  They manage to convince the queen not to turn them into icepops but then demon dude who’s like extremely butthurt by now shows up. The only way to quell his massive butthurt is to just kill everyone. He then calls the snow queen a BBA and that’s when she gets really pissed.  She defeats the demon or something and in the meantime Kai, Orva and Gerda run for the hills. Happy End: Craes and Aje show up to say goodbye before dropping off the face of the earth again. Since uh they all merged with the mirror this somehow magically lifted the curse and made Orva bed ridden again. He’s okay though cause now he can just ichaicha with Gerda in his room all day.  He then touches her face with his un-gloved hand and kisses her. Bad End: Orva actually somehow kills the demon with his little Trex arms and knife lol. Or so he thought, but turns out the demon dude just trolls him. Not only that but he comes back and KO’s the queen lmao.  Orva manages to kill him part 2 and Demon dude tells Orva that he’s gonna be cursed for killing a demon. And well in fact, he does get cursed to the point that he TURNS INTO A DEMON HIMSELF! He pushes Gerda away from him and tells her to hurry and run away before he hurts her. In the short story omake Orva invites Gerda for a sleepover and she ends up wearing one of his shirts like a nightgown cause he’s like some erogge xDDD.  Man Orva acts all nice and innocent but inside he’s randy as fuck lol. I guess maybe that’s why I couldn’t fully hate him though he did have his really angsty moments but a lot of his route felt like “are you me?” 😆  Kinda sad that he got stuck being sick again though, with all the other ridiculous shit in this game you’d think they’d have some miracle that would cure his disease.

Aje – （*´▽｀*）萌えぇ！！ Aje is my cutie pie tsundere dork and he’s the most adorable thing in the whole game. He’s got the foot in mouth disease so he usually says the opposite of what he means. The thing is though, I often feel like what he says isn’t too far from the truth of what he really feels lol. He’s often found babbling his desire to bed Gerda but then starts raging at himself that it’s just a curse and he doesn’t really mean it xD. In yellow world, Aje suggests that Gerda return to the village but she says she wants to continue. He falls asleep and while Gerda pats his head he grabs her and hugs her like a dakimakura telling her not to treat him like a kid xDD |萌|･´∀`･)ﾊｧﾊｧ 萌えぇぇ↑  Gerda gets too embarrassed and pushes him away sending him flying off the bed xD. Craes and Orva get back to the inn room and are like wtf are u guys doing and they lie saying they were “training” until Aje’s “truth” comes out and says that he wanted to hump like rabbits hahaha ( ﾟ∀ﾟ)ｱﾊﾊ八八ﾉヽﾉヽﾉヽﾉ ＼ / ＼/ ＼ xDDD The other 2 get pissed and take Aje “outside” for a little “chat” LOL.  When they run into Alfred, they ask him what they can do to get the key he tells them he wants to take Gerda out on a date.  Gerda agrees and so she goes shopping for a dress with Aje.  When they return to the inn Gerda asks Aje about his family.  He says that his family is his parents and his older brother.  They start talking about having families in the future and somehow the topic switches to Gerda asking if Aje’s ever dated anyone. He says that he hasn’t but Gerda keeps thinking about how he said he had someone “important to him” and gets all jelly.  But then Aje gets all jelly of Kai and even though Gerda says Kai is like a brother to her Aje says she doesn’t understand Kai’s feelings for her. Sadly their time is interrupted when Cockblocker Demon shows up.  He then casts a curse that makes Aje and Gerda wrap their arms around each other lmaoo xDD

 Aje can’t hold himself back and tells the demon that instead of fighting, the 2 of them are gonna end up humping instead. Demon dude gets bored, releases the spell and then runs off. (◉◞౪◟◉｀)  After this Gerda starts to think that it might have been nice to kiss Aje….huehehe（*´▽｀*）. After this basically Aje and Gerda are used as triggers of jealousy by both Alfred and Natalia but instead it ends up triggering feelings for Aje and Gerda.  And its about this time when Craes and Orva go missing in action so Aje tells Gerda once more to go back to the village. Gerda gets upset and says she’s gonna go outside for some air but she plans to go to the snow queen alone. Just then she runs into Kai who’s acting all sweet and tells her to come to the white world with him. Once he breaks her bottle thing though he’s like lol I trolled you, lets go to the white world bitch! He then hugs Gerda and she realizes she don’t get that (*´ｪ｀*)ｷｭﾝ♡ feeling with Kai like she did with Aje. Just then Aje comes outside and sees Gerda getting NTRed so he gets pissed. He fights Kai and beats his ass down (with Gerda’s football tackle) and tells him that he’ll save everyone. Soon as they get to green world, Aje’s stupid foot in mouth disease gets him into a fight with Bayser.  Not to soon after Fine shows up and the fight ends. Instead she takes both Aje and Gerda to the bandit hideout as guests. She also then just hands over the necklace key to them and says it’s cause she hates the snow queen for killing her father. After this all the other bandit dudes start hittin on Gerda and pissing Aje off xD.  Just then Fine joins in and goes “How about you quit going to the White World and instead stay back here and marry one of my dudes so we can have a big happy family!”  Gerda says that the only person she’d ever want as a husband is Aje of course ;). Fine says that if Aje is with her because of obligation then he should give the role to someone who will be her lover.  She tells Gerda later that she said that intentionally because she could tell Gerda’s in love with Aje.

She tells Gerda to just go ahead and confess her feelings to Aje and if he rejects her she’ll beat him up :lol:.  And so that night Gerda goes out for a walk with Aje and confesses that she loves him.  Aje says how basically he pretty much loves her too but noo he can’t fully commit because it will be like a weakness for him!! ヽ(。_゜)ノ Just then cockblocker demon dude shows up and when they go back to the bandit hideout they find all of Gerda’s stuff missing, including the keys to White World.  Not only that but once everyone wakes up they keep fighting with Fine and saying they don’t want her as a boss anymore. 　And so Aje, Fine, Bayser and Gerda end up having to fight against Fine’s bandits who betrayed them. It’s all of course the dumb demon’s doing and Ivan shows up and tells him to stop cockblocking Gerda from coming to see the Snow Queen.  Ivan leaves but Aje feels like he’s met him somewhere before. The bandits then apologize to everyone and the following day, Aje and Gerda head off to the White Country. Before going they sit down and talk and Aje reveals that his “important person” is his brother who vanished 10 years ago during a blizzard. Welp I guess this pretty much confirms that Ivan is Aje’s brother lol. After Gerda tells him she loves him once more, he babbles that he doesn’t love her….cause of the stupid curse lmao. He then keeps his mouth shut with his hand to stop saying anymore awful things.  Just then Ivan shows up and Aje’s like “my brother’s name was Ivan too!” Ivan just says that he has no family, ouch! He denies that he’s Aje’s brother but Aje’s like ure fulla shit bro. Aje also admits to Gerda that because he was in love with her he was saying the opposite of what he feels cause of his curse. When he tries to confess to her “I hate you” comes out but Gerda’s like lol and he attempts to try and tell her he loves her and finally manages to babble it out. (Probably said “I hate you” instead hahah). He then grabs and kisses her ( ≖‿≖).

They decide to head to the snow queen’s castle to look for Ivan.  When they find him and tell him to leave this place with them, Ivan’s like grr I don’t have family GTFO and have to fight him again. After they battle for a bit Gerda runs in and tells them that they should stop fighting cause she knows Ivan is fulla shit and in fact has memories of Aje. Aje tells him that their dad’s been looking for Ivan all this time even now believing that he’s alive somewhere. After the queen shows up though, Ivan mellows out and tells Aje to run away with Gerda.  He admits that even after being taken by the snow queen, he’s never forgotten about his family or Aje.  He asks Gerda to take care of his brother as he betrays and fights the Snow Queen. The queen says she’ll kill him but Aje’s like fuck u ho, I’ma save my oniichan.  He then goes to stab the Queen but for WHATEVER REASON GERDA GETS IN THE WAY TO PROTECT HER AND TAKES THE STABBING INSTEAD ヽ(。_゜)ノ.  Ivan then uses his magic to heal Gerda but it’s not enough so the Queen offers for Ivan to take some of her magic powers to continue healing.  After Gerda wakes up she finds out that the mirrors have merged with the bodies and it magically dissolved all the curses. (Except Gerda’s lol)  Happy End: Aje returns to his family with Ivan but it’s been a month since Gerda’s had contact with him so she’s a sad panda.  One day though, Ivan & Aje come to Gerda’s town to visit as a surprise. The reason for the visit of course, is so that Aje could propose to her (*´ｪ｀*)ｷｭﾝ♡.  Gerda of course says yes and they hug each other and say how much they love each other (*´ω｀*). Bad End: Gerda dies after the stabbing. In the short story Gerda is upset that she ain’t gettin laid so Ivan trolls his bro to act like he’s NTRing her. This lights a fire under Aje’s ass and eventually he and Gerda end up in her room humping happily ever after 　ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ). Aje baby made this whole game worth it and being voiced by Ono Yuuki made it even better ＼( ‘ω’)／ウオオオアアアアアアアアアアアアアアアア

Kai – Sigh.. Kai what a waste of potential. Kai is a sweet guy, he’s the typical boy next door nice childhood friend. He and Gerda share a passion for flowers and that’s why Gerda’s room is filled with them. Unfortunately the curse turns him into an asshole and because he’s voiced by Kimura Ryohei I WAS HAVING MAJOR TRAUMATIC FLASHBACKS TO KOU IN DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE BLOOD. ｶﾞ━━(;ﾟДﾟ)━━ﾝ!! Seriously he was nearly IDENTICAL in both actions and tone (though not nearly as cruel I guess cause this game is Cero B.) Still, because of the way he acted in everyone else’s route, by the time I got to his route I just couldn’t trust him. Everything he did felt suspicious to me because I expected him to have an outburst at any moment. What makes no sense is in the original story Kai was a consistent jerk the whole time his heart was frozen, but in this game he constantly switches back & forth which just makes him weird & bipolar. I think that’s where I began to run into problems.  It’s weird too because in red world, Kai vanishes to go to the Snow Queen to sacrifice himself so he could get powers to protect Gerda. He didn’t think his cunning plan all the way through and when his heart is frozen, he hurts Gerda more than helping her. He then magically appears in Alfred’s castle in yellow world and from there on we just…go into his route with no rhyme or reason.  Castle guards think that Kai is Alfred’s doppleganger cause they look similar. After the guards leave Kai explains that he’s the childhood friend Gerda was looking for. And so basically Kai spends time with Gerda in the castle for like no reason lol. Natalia tells them to stay in the same room (and share a bed) together ( ≖‿≖).　Unfortunately his shitty side comes out again and he tells her to sleep on the couch and that if she comes into the bed with him he’ll punch her. When Kai wakes up the next day he realizes what he’s done and feels like an asshole. Natalia gives Gerda a dress to wear and Kai ends up dancing with her in the garden. He then confesses that he loves her more than just a friend or family.  Unfortunately their love moment is interrupted when Ivan shows up again to cockblock.

After he leaves, Kai tells Gerda he doesn’t need an answer from her but Gerda’s like nooo wait I need to confess mah love to u and tells him she loves him too.  He’s so happy that he immediately asks if he can kiss her but because he kisses her too long she grabs his arm and nearly crushes it HAHAHA. xD  And so after this they get all raburabu and shiat together and I’m all like damnit why did you have to ruin him in other routes Σ（ﾟдﾟlll）. Ivan then shows up annoyed at Kai for not “fully being loyal to the Snow Queen” basically and for taking too long to bring Gerda over there.  After he leaves Kai basically has to fight himself to stop from turning into an asshole again and when he starts to think about his feelings for Gerda he’s able to hold himself back. Unfortunately after Ivan’s doing, he can no longer hold himself back and goes back to being a d-bag.  He tells Gerda that he’s sworn loyalty to the Snow Queen and starts babbling between “go back to village” and “you must come with me to see the snow queen” 😆 He then tells Gerda to forget about the curse and that he’ll save Orva, Craes and Aje by himself (who have all apparently been kidnapped by Ivan lol). And so nice Kai finally vanishes, kicks Gerda to the curb but Gerda is determined to be the best heroine there ever was and tells Kai to take her to the Snow Queen directly. So now they head over to green world and even though he’s always angry, he still takes great interest in flowers rofl. Even though he’s being an impressive douchebag, maybe somewhere deep inside he still loves Gerda cause he kisses her. Gerda asks why he’s doing it and he just continues being douchey (´･ω･`；).  He then gets jealous of his nicer self that Gerda never smiles at him and is always upset. YEA NO SHIT DUDE STOP BEING A DOUCHE AND MAYBE SHE’LL GIVE U A SMILE.  Anyway they get captured by Fine’s bandit group but thanks to Kai’s magic spells they manage to defend themselves. After telling them the story about rescuing her friends, Fine gives Gerda her necklace to “borrow” and asks her to return it when they come back.  Kai doesn’t wanna wait 3 days to get the necklace so he just steals it from Fine and tells Gerda to stfu and just go to White World already.

Bayser finds them and he’s not the least bit pleased. Kai ends up apologizing for being a butthole and they return the necklace. He then goes MIA and in the meantime, all the bandits & Fine get some magical disease from that flower that Fine’s dad brought from the snow queen.  When Kai returns Gerda glomps him and begs him to save everyone, and amazingly he agrees! Despite having an icey heart, Gerda’s awesomeness eventually begins to thaw this personality and he starts showing signs of dere lol. When they get to white world, Ivan is there as the big bad antagonist babbling about how friendship and bonds are dumb etc. And to add to the annoying fact of Ivan being turned into the bad guy, Kai goes into dickshit mode and starts strangling Gerda saying how she pisses him off. (　´_ゝ`) Great, Dialovers More Blood flashbacks I didn’t need. Ivan then shows up and admits that it’s because of his magic he made Kai’s heart “freeze faster” so he’d lose his emotions and bring Gerda to the Snow Queen quicker. Well suddenly Mr. Hyde vanishes and Kai returns to his normal personality hur dur. Kai apologizes to Gerda for being a huge asshole. He says he just wanted to protect Gerda but she starts crying and saying that even if he protects her, a life without him is meaningless! So they finally see the queen and as usual she says that if they want the mirror pieces extracted, gotta become her icicle for all eternity. Kai agrees to stay with the ice queen forever if the queen lets Gerda and the others return safely to the village. The queen agrees but Gerda’s like nooo what’s the point if you can’t come with me! Just then the queen says that the mirror pieces have merged with Gerda in order to get her powers back she needs to die. Kai is like wtf that’s now what I agreed on and goes to fight Ivan.  And just as the Snow Queen story goes, Kai becomes cold and heartless (part 35235) but Gerda hugs him and starts crying begging him to return back to his old self.  Her WARM LOVE AND TEARS MELT AWAY HIS ICEY HEART! He acts like it didn’t work though and throws the Queen off guard by pretending to swear loyalty to her.  He then suggests that they freeze Gerda along with all their friends and then take all their mirror powers at once.  Before freezing her Gerda tells Kai that she loves him, even after she’s frozen…so Kai gets close to her and whispers in her ear that he loves her and he’s going to save everyone. (*´ω｀*) And so everyone battles against Ivan & the Queen along with Kai and they end up destroying her castle. She’s like why the hell were you able to melt my frozen magic, and Kai says HER LOVE MELTED MY HEART!  But sadly he says he pledged his loyalty to the queen and he agrees to stay back with her and lets Gerda and co. run away.

Gerda of course won’t stand by this and decides to return and save Kai.  The Queen gets pissed off that everyone’s gonna leave her and she’ll be foreveralone.jpg so she starts freezing everyone.  Gerda remembers her grandma’s words that the queen is just a sad and lonely woman and uses the power of the 3 keys from red, green and yellow worlds to stop her.  She then cries and admits that she used to be the head of the other 3 worlds, but she didn’t trust anyone afraid of them betraying her so she ended up in her own frozen kingdom.  Gerda tells her how she’ll gladly be her friend and that she isn’t scared of her. Gerda’s kindness melts the queen’s heart, and therefore her entire existence. As she vanishes, she apologizes for holding Ivan captive and thanks Gerda before saying goodbye. Her final wish is to be remembered, even if just a bit. After she’s gone, white world begins to melt.   Good End: Gerda, Kai and Ivan return to the other 3 worlds to give back the respective keys.  And so after their journey ends 3 years later, Kai and Gerda are raburabu back in their village (with Kai suffering through Gerda’s awful tea on a daily basis :lol:) Also Gerda’s curse isn’t broken so she’s still the incredible hulk woman xD.  They now sleep in the same bed together and ichaicha in the morning though Gerda apparently still can’t get used to this.  Also they still blush like idiots when giving each other good morning kisses. Bad End: The queen freezes Gerda forever and her magic powers return. She then freezes Kai along with Gerda as per his request. In the short story Kai comes home to Gerda to make her feel less scared due to some thunderstorm. They then start making out until Kai starts sneezing cause he’s all cold and soaked from the rain. What’s terrible about Kai is how he keeps  playing appear & disappear act in all the other routes. Like he’s literally just used as a plot device to be the “evil bad guy” to make Gerda get “closer” with the other guy whose route you are doing. So after all that, suddenly we have to pretend Kai is a nice guy who can HOLD BACK THE EVIL whenever it’s convenient for the plot ?! (・_・; )  Kai has such a sweet personality and it was honestly a disappointment. I know, in canon, he becomes a bad guy ….but I think it would have been better if he was “consistently” cold to Gerda rather than going into bipolar mode like Kou from DLMB (ugh).

Ivan – I feel sorry for Ivan because his entire route is just one giant shoehorned instance. It’s painfully obvious that he was just thrown in for the sake of being thrown in. For example in red world, during the lightning scene you have a choice of who to “kyaah” into the arms of. By not picking anyone and going “somebody save me!” magically Ivan shows up. It’s such a joke and this kind of thing basically happens the entire game. It makes it seems like Ivan’s basically stalking Gerda the whole time waiting to appear and save her (of all things lol). But I took my srs and threw it out the window the moment I realized Ivan is a キス魔 and all the times he used kissing to shut her up. (◉◞౪◟◉｀) In fact the more time he spends with Gerda, the more he starts to resemble his tsundere otouto-kun!!! （*´▽｀*）！！ So yea now I’m sittin here wishing for some 3P end with Aje and Ivan as I roll my eyes through the rest of the ridiculous route lol. In green world, Ivan gets into a spat with Fine’s bandits. Fine and co meanwhile invite Gerda to stay at their place but when they find out that Ivan is fighting their group, Gerda runs to stop him. He gets pissed off saying he’s gonna freeze them all but Gerda gets in the way to stop the fight and gets hurt. This pisses him off further and before he freezes all of them Gerda hugs him begging him to stop and the bottle in her pocket breaks his magic down.   Afterwards Fine, Bayser, Ivan and Gerda talk things out but Fine says she’ll only give the necklace if Gerda breaks up her ties with Ivan. Gerda refuses, so Fine changes her mind saying she’ll trust Ivan.

Ivan asks Gerda why she didn’t want to break ties with him,  but Gerda turns the tables and Ivan says he would have done the same thing.　Fine also says Gerda doesn’t have to give her anything in return because she knows that Gerda loves Ivan which is why she didn’t wanna part with him. Just then Gerda’s like ZOMG THAT’S RIGHT……..! I LOVE Ivan!!!1 She agrees to return the key to Fine as long as she comes back together with Ivan to do it.  Before heading out to White World, Ivan admits that he’s in love with Gerda and feels awful cause he’s promised loyalty to the queen. Gerda tells him that she loves him as well and they become a hilarious bakapple lol. ＼( ^ｑ^)／  They’re both so happy they start making out in a field of flowers www.  On their way to whit world Ivan mentions that there’s a high chance that his younger bro, Aje has a crush on Gerda but she’s like NAAH IMPOSSIBLE LOOOL oh Gerda you wouldn’t know the first of it ლ(́◉◞౪◟◉‵ლ). He tells her when he was kidnapped he waited for his family to save him but when nobody came he felt like all hope was lost. In order to forget his family he decided to become the queen’s loyal servant to freeze his heart…but somewhere deep inside he had hoped to someday see his family.  As Gerda falls asleep to rest, Ivan says he’s sad that he has to part with her and kisses her goodbye.  He then comes back to the queen and says that he didn’t bring Gerda because he’s in love with her and cannot hurt her.  He asks the queen to free Kai and co and to give up on taking the mirror piece out of Gerda.  Snow Queen’s like LOL NOPE and she takes all of Ivan’s powers and energy away.

Just then Gerda wakes up alone in the ice cave and runs to find Ivan. She finds him half dead at the Snow Queen’s castle, and agrees to sacrifice herself to save him and return the mirror piece. Ivan sees Gerda pass out and thinks she’s dead, but when she wakes up she’s all fine and dandy…except her heart is frozen over. She’s basically now cold and heartless towards Ivan like Kai was towards her. The queen now tells Gerda to kill Ivan for betrayal but Ivan’s heart is now melted so the tables are turned for him to thaw her instead :P. He tells her to STFU and kisses her like he did back in Alfred’s garden and suddenly this brings back her feelings for him.  When Gerda’s back to her normal self, she tells the queen that she wants to try and reason and understand her but the Queen just gets upset and throws a blizzard saying nobody understands her loneliness.  Gerda runs after her and tells her that she’s just sad and lonely and Ivan offers to sacrifice himself. Happy End:  The Snow Queen cuts off Ivan’s long hair saying that her “loyal servant Ivan has died here” and tells Gerda to take her friends and go home. (The hair cutting thing reminds me of something in some other otome game I’ve seen but I can’t pinpoint where.) Some time later, Gerda and Ivan are living happily ever after together and he tries to teach her how to cook. In the extra story Ivan and Gerda ichaicha in her room and he says he wanted her to learn how to cook in preparation for their future family ifuknowwhatImean ;). Anyway Ivan is cute, he’s cute but I shouldn’t have done him last. In fact I think he’s better to do immediately after Aje’s route. I’m kinda sad that his route got so shoe’d in and it was almost an insignificant contribution to the story. I almost feel like it might have been better to just branch off Aje’s route instead maybe.

Well it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great so overall meh I guess. I liked the characters themselves, the music was nice, setting was great and CGs were gorgeous. However as always, Otomate prioritizes their scenario last and it was painfully obvious when on my 2nd run I spent half the route skipping. The game also had way too many choices so the fact that you had to skip through like 25 choices at the beginning each time was very annoying. The story also kept changing in the end, with the Queen having different reasons for “letting everyone go” so there wasn’t really anything consistent. I guess you could say the only consistent ending was Kai as it actually stayed true to the ending of the original tale. As far as favorites for me it would be Aje > Craes > Ivan > Orva > Kai. I know Kai is supposed to be the main guy but his bipolarness just made him the most hateable character in the game :|. As a heroine, Gerda was pretty awesome and well those looking for a STRONG heroine, Gerda will beat a gachimuchi man in arm wrestling if that’s strong enough for you :lol:. For route order I’d recommend Craes → Orva → Aje → Ivan → Kai but if you don’t want to hate Kai’s guts and don’t mind story spoilers, it may be a better idea to just play Kai first and get him out of the way. Anyway not sure if I would go as far as recommending this game, but if you care more about art/characters than story, then this might be worth your time.