Introduction (Spoilers)
What is there to say about Hatoful Boyfriend that hasn’t already been said? Well apparently there’s enough for me to delegate this as the first game to play in Otome Madness. Hatoful Boyfriend is probably one of my favorite games in the otome genre, it’s just so bizarre but has one of the most intriguing worlds out there. If you want a full review, I actually did one when Hatoful Boyfriend was re-released in HD back in 2014, you can find it here.
Just as a warning, this piece will have spoilers, all Otome Madness articles will. With this game in particular, it’s really impossible to talk about its depth without bringing in spoilers of one sort or another. Each route is pretty short to play, however, so I’d suggest if you haven’t played it you should pick it up and play it.
The story
Almost everything in Hatoful Boyfriend is strange unexpected. By that I mean not only are you dating birds which is pretty unexpected and strange. The truly strange unexpected comes in with how you can end up as a head in a jar, run away in search of Lord Pudi, find out that your boyfriend is Lord Pudi, get murdered, accidentally help the school’s doctor in removing a body, get assassinated for not romancing a bird, smooch a ghost, the list goes on and on.
Photo Credit: The Insatiable Gamer
Wow okay, there’s a lot of death in there. This game is just plain intense, you walk in thinking that you’ll smooch a few birds and get a few laughs out of it, you walk out wondering what on Earth just went on and your room turned into an ocean because you’ve cried so many tears.
The basis of the story is you’re a girl named Hiyoko Tosaka who’s the only only human to go to a school entirely filled with birds. In there you meet some… interesting… characters. From a ghost trapped into the library, the school’s flirt being a secret agent, the pigeon who only speaks in coo’s being a god of pudding, and the school doctor who wants to murder you and keep your head in a jar, there are some strange birdies in this game.
Photo Credit: Puellaex Machina
If you don’t end up dating a bird you get murdered by the Hawk party, heck in some routes even if you do end up romancing those cute birds you get murdered, namely by Shuu. Shuu also murders Yuuya and gives his roasted body to you as a Christmas roast as a way to get rid of evidence, you eat him unknowingly. Did I mention this game can be messed up?
Bad Boy’s Love
In the beginning, Hatoful Boyfriend appears to be about as deep as a kiddy pool. With a premise that’s weird enough to make you pick up the game and humor to keep you playing and hints of a deeper story to entrance you in this strange, bird filled world. Once you complete a certain set of routes, Sakuya, Yuuya, Nageki, Kazuaki, and Ryouta’s routes to be exact, you unlock a special route. The Bad Boy’s Love or Hurtful Boyfriend route. It’s at this point that Hatoful Boyfriend takes a truly deadly turn.
The game starts out at normal, though asking if you want to honor a promise from long ago. But after a few days of playing the game changes. Suddenly you’re no longer playing as Hiyoko but instead as Ryouta as you shortly find out that Hiyoko was murdered and it’s up to you and Sakuya to figure out the mystery.
BBL is the highlight of Hatoful Boyfriend. Getting to it is frustrating though, having to play all of the routes can quickly become boring, because as funny and interesting as they are there is a lot of sameness in the common parts of the routes. BBL is worth every repetitive second of it.
Holiday Star
Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star is a sequel of sorts to Hatoful Boyfriend, it takes place during the common route of Hatoful Boyfriend in the winter season. In Holiday Star there are several chapters you go through, from trying to solve the mystery of the Christmas thieves, to finding out why Anghel is so lethargic after going to meetings with a magazine editor in chief, to meeting The King. There are also some general wintery otome routes, you can pick a bird to go on a date with, either in bird form or human form, and have a short readthrough of meeting them at a shrine on New Years.
Holiday Star is a nice continuation of Hatoful Boyfriend, there’s not as many choice elements in the game, it’s a really standard visual novel, but it works really well. It’s not for people who hate reading, none of these games are to be honest. Despite lacking the choice elements and being locked onto a single route in each chapter, the story’s just as good as the first game, Hato Moa knows how to tell a good story.
Who I chose
In the end, I had to date a large number of the cast (what a travesty) in order to reach the BBL route, but for the purpose of this series I’ll go with the character I chose first. That character is -drumrolls- Yuuya. Of course I couldn’t pick him first as I needed to get a boyfriend in another route first and then play the game again to be able to do his and Shuu’s routes. I could lie and say that it was because he was such an interesting and complex character that I was immediately interested in his story, but that’d be a lie. In the end, I’m extremely shallow and his human portrait is hot. So chalk one down for the womanizer, so far that type’s one-for-one on the “What type of guy is Meghan going to date” scale, we’ll see how that changes in the future.
Game progress
Every week I’ll be updating you all on my progresses on the otome game I’m making! So far I’ve been working on some character sketches, getting a talksprite style, and planning out what my world is going to be. As of right now, I’m planning four routes of dateable boys.
Next game
Next week in Otome Madness I’ll be talking about playing Re:Alistair. If you want to play along with me you can download it for free here.
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