Hatoful Boyfriend

Do you ever dream about a love story with a dove? Do you ever feel that your life will be better with a bird on your side? If the answers are 'yes', try Hatoful Boyfriend.

Yes, Hatoful Boyfriend is a dating game with a bird gimmick, and that alone will be enough to keep many players at arm's length. But to pigeonhole your time at the St. Pigeonation's Institute as a mere gimmick would be a grave misjudgment of a game that is far more delightful and unexpected than even its bizarre premise would suggest.

For a product that started out as a joke, Hatoful Boyfriend is a surprisingly nice game. It will not take too much time, but it is fun to play with because of the absurdity and jokes.

If you prefer plots that are weird to begin with and just get weirder, you will be extremely happy with Hatoful Boyfriend; if you don’t feel excited by every single Japanese pop culture trope re-enacted by pigeons, Hatoful Boyfriend might not be for you.

A one-of-a-kind glimpse into the world of anthropomorphic-animal Japanese otome, Hatoful Boyfriend is surprisingly entertaining.

Hatoful Boyfriend is not as bold and eccentric as it seemed. It's a typical visual novel, nothing else, nothing more.

Hatoful Boyfriend is not a genuine comedic venture, it’s just a ridiculous idea turned purposely bad game. Charging money for it is just wrong, even if it is the best pigeon dating simulator on the planet.

Simply the greatest visual novel on pigeon dating ever made. Don't confuse this is for a one-trick laugh pony however. This animal goes a lot further than simple **** and giggles. Expect to be surprised if you ever reach the final ending.

This game is wild. It’s funny for real, but I’m straight up confused. I don't know if I liked it or if it just annoyed me by the end. If you want to date some birds and lose your mind a little bit, this is the one, but don't expect it to make any sense. Real talk.

Since this is on a game site, I am rating this as a game. The first playthrough...actually the first few playthrus I could not even get through this. The main reason I bought this was how much fun I had with the similar looking "Long Live The Queen". But this isn't much like that at all. There just is barely any game here. I see this touted as a visual novel....well there really isn't much story either. Dialogue is so generic. It's mostly a lot of awkward pauses and people being rude to your character. Reminds me of your most people play tabletop roleplaying games and what they say to NPCs when they do. The stats you have and build ****'t seem to do anything. You get to select what class you are taking as an elective a lot and each time that choice determines which of 3 stats go up (unlike the 18 that LLTQ has), But your stats really don't do anything. They need to DO something. THe elective choice really determines who you spend more time with. As each of the other characters in this seem to ONLY spend time in one place the entire game....thus making the world seem unrealistic. I like that you CAN steer yourself toward relationships with certain people and that is easy enough to do. After one playthrough I got the hang of the goal...."end up with someone". But a lot of time that goal isn't actually finished. BUt at least they wrote an ending for each person and that is satisfying. And your choices DO have effects on other characters. That too is rewarding. But there really needs to be much more of a story. More weaving and intertwining of characters. Since there really is no gameplay there needs to be more goals. Other games add collection type of goals...like Batman even amidst the fighting, has riddles to solve and question marks to collect and plenty of achievements to do. This game needed more achievements and other little things to accomplish on a meta level to go along with the story and that would have easily produced more ideas for sidecontent. But as is almost all of the achievements are which endings you **** who you end up with at the end. The bizarre idea of being at an all-bird school as a human is just so weird but cool and makes wyou want to just start dating birds. But that part of it is really underwhelming. The biggest problem is that almost all of the birds are white. So it's **** who's that bird? isn't that the other one? Haven't I met him before? Oh wait this is someone else. Is this a woman or a man? I have no idea. I thought my roommate was a girl. YOU CAN'T TELL! IT'S A BIRD. Making things more complicated is that it uses all Japanese names. Why? It had no reason to. Maybe if the whole bird idea was dropped and it was just a human dating sim story, but there really is no reason for that. Because having Japanese names mames it harder to distinguish if it is a boy or a girl (I almost typed bird or a girl). I guess that's just picky since it is FOR anime fans so I could let that slide but it does complicate matters. The other thing that completely subverts the whooole bird idea is that it provides the option of giving you a portrait of each bird AS A HUMAN. It does this when you meet each one. WHY DOES IT DO THIS? This completely ruins the immersion of being in an allbird school. Why bother with birds then? The thing **** dating birds thing is the ONLY hook this game has and then it ruins it with that idea. And even while it is breaking the bird immersion it does it poorly because not only do most of the birds appear white but their human potraits look mostly the same too. Thin anime characters with different colored hair. I only used that feature once and never again because it was so wrong for the story and the game. I did like the characters and their simple stories. I wanted more from ALL of them. If you are going to make a dating **** not allow you to go on MORE THAN ONE DATE. Why not let you date multiple people. It's like once you go on one date, then you find out a brooding secret about each person and then that's the end. And therein lies the only actual satisfaction. Trying to get each ending. And it is fast enough to play through the entire game very quickly until you get to a part you haven't seen before. And this is the best gameplay feature. With the simple click of the mouse button (or keyboard type), you can skip through the current bit of dialogue that's scrolling on the screen. That is SO IMPORTANT. Great. So just multiple click through the parts you've seen before! Hold on! there's an even BETTER button. They have a fast forward button! Click it and it zooms through whole sections until you have to make a choice or until it reaches a new chapter. That is so WONDERFUL. They need to use this format to make another much longer and more intricate story because that gameplay suits this kind of game perfectly. However, the amount that is skipped thru just to make your FIRST choice is very telling in how few choices you actually make.

It's very difficult to put a rating on this as this game is for a very niche crowd. The thing is, apparently it's supposed to be funny. After I finished the whole game I saw videos of people playing through it and apparently everyone finds it hilarious. I expected to find it funny as well but the humor of it just goes above my head I think. I didn't laugh a single time. The good news is that the story does get interesting.... but you'll have to finish the game (and repeat a LOT) 14 times to get there. That's about 7-8 hours of repeating something that's not very interesting in the first place. I endured and yes it does become good after that. But not THAT good. It still drags on far too long, the plot overreaches and without spoiling anything: the most important plotline does not get explained. Other plotlines often get ridiculous explanations. Again, this is probably meant to be funny again. In other words I could not tell you if this game/visual novel is good for you or not. Chances are you will either love it or hate it, and I expect most people to hate it. Oh one last thing, this game is a visual novel of the purest kind (no puzzles or anything involved). It is now a dating sim however. It's being advertised as a pigeon dating sim but that's just not what it is. You want be doing much dating I can assure you.

Really: what the heck is this? A girl going to a school for birds and trying to seduce one of them. The thing is pretty hilarious, and somehow funny. It is good at making the game initially interesting. I have made a single playtrough, completed the "game" with one possible ending, and that was pretty much enough for me. The reason is that the game is simply boring. Maybe is funny to some very small audience, to me is not.