One character can't speak English but his subtitles make him sound like a heroic knight. Most dialogue is campy in a late-80s anime sort of way, but nestled among all the cheese are some real gems. Though a few endings lack drama, Hatoful Boyfriend's humor never failed to elicit the kind of laughter that made me accidentally snort. At the same time, some storylines left me wanting in terms of my protagonist's character development, and some endings were plain uninteresting and flat. Given how busy I am on a daily basis, it's great to have a game I can play in short sessions. I was able to complete most romances in under an hour, although some storylines pushed more towards the 90-minute mark. I was a little bummed because these loving interludes are on the short side. I became invested in my romances because I was excited to see what nonsense came next. As I carefully nurtured each relationship I pursued, and as each new scene I unlocked became more off-the-wall kooky, I found myself yelling across the apartment to my boyfriend to come look at what was happening on screen. Not many games can provoke a verbal reaction from me, but Hatoful Boyfriend had me laughing and shouting out loud. Hatoful Boyfriend dragged me so deeply into its world that at one point the illogical stupidity of the idea of dating pigeons started to totally make sense and not be weird at all. The game introduces each new character with an anime portrait of what they would look like as a human male. Just a reminder that while all of the above is happening, my character was still the only human in the game. I got excited every time the game would reward me with a scenario I hadn't seen before. You have to want your birdie love.Īfter that first time, I made sure to aggressively pursue my bird of choice by making conversational and physical choices that reflected affection for him, thus allowing me to progress farther into the game without failing and open up new scenes. This is how Hatoful Boyfriend keeps its players engaged and ensures anyone who doesn't commit to romancing pigeons is locked out of progression. But I didn't make choices that pushed me actively into the wings of any one bird, and the game shut me down. Because Hatoful Boyfriend makes it so easy for you to fail, it prevents players from making random choices and passively participating in its avian romance.ĭuring my first playthrough I thought I would tackle the challenge benignly, choosing what I felt best represented my own feelings and hoping to watch love bloom organically. But my annoyance soon dwindled when I realized why the game worked this way. I didn't see this coming, and at first I was irritated that I had put what I thought was so much work in only to fail and have to restart. You get a game over because you have failed to smooch any pigeons.
Without spoiling specifics, if players fail to make significant headway with any bird by the game's halfway mark, it all ends. Hatoful Boyfriend's handling of its fail state is, from a design perspective, one of the best things about the game. This choice was always difficult to make, because some of the individual birds' endings were weird and wonderful, while others were more tame and boring as far as game content goes and felt less rewarding. But when the time came to commit to one bird or fail the game, I had to abandon one of my feathered friends. In this way, I was able to view a handful of new scenes focused on both birds. This can happen whether or not you focus on appealing only to one bird in several playthroughs I made it a point to pursue two birds at once. Another brought me into the path of the aforementioned eccentric - and rather unhinged - track star, who inspired me to join his quest to find the one true pudding.ĭifferent dialogue choices and scenes will become available as your relationship deepens with the birds. One of my favorite storylines involved courting a bird that lived as though he were a character in a role-playing game, complete with dragging me into a turn-based boss fight. The story unfolds in dramatically different ways depending on which bird you attempt to romance. Of the birds you encounter, there are a number of romance options, including your childhood best friend, an eccentric track star, your teacher and the school doctor.
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