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Hatoful Boyfriend coming to the PS4 and Vita on July 21st with new content

Illucio

Banned
Yeah I can see this as an anime. I bought this thinking it would be a fun dating sim game with some good bird puns. I had no idea that it was a visual novel with a bunch of plot twists and some actually good writing. As a fan of Danganronpa and Zero Escape, I'm quite pleased.

My idea is that each episode will be the entire school year with Hyoko dating each person getting their full ending each episode will be the final chapter or the full true ending of each characters story/relationship arc, everything seems like it's setting up to another generic love interest story until the last episode or two when the Bad Boy Love comes up and blows everyone away with it's story.

The birds will mostly be appeared as humans because of the "powerful visualization module." So most scenes will be them viewed as humanoids (to help with animation, and logic purposes), but will be switched on and off to birds for a more realistic world effect, fan service, and plot purposes.

I can easily see this becoming a show that lasts a good 12 episodes.

I don't understand the appeal of the game, I bought on PC as a novelty. I guess I was expecting it to be more of a parody of the dating sim genre, but it seemed to play it straight, just with the boys as birds. Even then, the game felt very simplistic in its interface/gameplay and story. I've heard that there is a more interesting story the deeper you go, but the first two more straightforward romances I did bored me.

Sadly you have to play through each story and complete each ending to unlock Bad Boy Love, which is the deep story of the game. It plays more like a visual novel, and you need the exploration of playing through all the stories to understand the background of all the characters to understand most of the deep story of Bad Boy Love. But I assure you the ending is worth it, and playing the game as it's entirety would make the experience even more amazing. But if you're looking for amazing game-play you bought the wrong game.
 

jrcbandit

Member
Sadly you have to play through each story to unlock Bad Boy Love, which is the deep story of the game. It plays more like a visual novel, and you need to exploration of playing through all the stories to understand the background of all the characters to get Bad Boy Love. But I assure you the ending is worth it, and playing the game as it's entirety would make the experience even more amazing. But if you're looking for amazing game-play you bought the wrong game.


I might give it another try, but it will be a struggle to unlock Bad Boy Love (at least they aren't that long...). I really enjoy the Danganronpa/Zero escape type of stories.
 

FDC1

Member
Just started the game,I was pleasantly surprised to see the game was translated in french (and other languages). The writing seems quite poor, I just did Steins;gate before, pretty clear it's not the same league lol
 

Droplet

Member
I might give it another try, but it will be a struggle to unlock Bad Boy Love (at least they aren't that long...). I really enjoy the Danganronpa/Zero escape type of stories.

Some of the romances aren't very interesting, but you can at least skip through the repeat text, and there are smarter ways you can go about the stories to go through different endings to take less time. I took around 4 hours without doing any sort of smart saving, but I imagine I could have cut it down to 3 if I had.

I think it's a fun game for what it's worth, and it's about the kind of writing I've come to expect from a VN. Also, I imagine you went down some of the more...vanilla routes. Have you perhaps tried to romance a doctor or maybe even a fallen angel?

A couple things (no real spoilers):
-the cafe and Azumi (?) routes (started by taking the job at the cafe) can be done in the middle of any other story, but you'll need to have a save before you finish the Azumi story because it dead ends. The cafe ending will just continue on your established route
-both Shuu, Sakuya, and Okosan have true and normal endings, so just slightly deviating your stats (I think is what influences these, but I can't really remember) at the end might be enough to change you from the true to the normal routes. You need both to get the BBL route
-finish all the routes before starting BBL. It's worth it!
 
Just finished the BBL route and loved it. That had no right to be as good as it was.

I ended up switching from Vita to PS4 though, thanks to cross save. The Vita version was way too buggy for my liking.
 
Just finished the BBL route and loved it. That had no right to be as good as it was.

I ended up switching from Vita to PS4 though, thanks to cross save. The Vita version was way too buggy for my liking.

Is the BBL route something you do after getting the other endings? I didn't know it was cross-save, that's good to know.
 

KC Denton

Member
Is the BBL route something you do after getting the other endings? I didn't know it was cross-save, that's good to know.
Yes, you get a prompt when starting a new game after getting all the endings (this includes the regular and true endings for characters which have those) IIRC. There's a few new things that get sprinkled in before the route actually starts so I wouldn't recommend fast forwarding.
 

Mandelbo

Member
I bought this yesterday, and it's not really what I expected it to be - more specifically, I wasn't expecting the pacing to be so snappy. There are some scenes that are literally ten lines long! It's still good though, and there definitely seems to be more going on than meets the eye.
Shuu just tried to lock me in a storeroom after I got my phone from the chemistry lab. He asked if I'd seen anything, and Nanaki is clearly in on it as well. Are they trying to kill me?
The Vita version is horrendously buggy though. This is an audio glitch I ran into earlier, and I'm astounded something like it made it into the full game.
 

BTA

Member
How to spot someone that never touched the game and has no idea what it's about.

I haven't played it yet myself but since I (unfortunately) vaguely know some of the later twists... I can't really blame people for feeling that way, as much as it annoys me. It spawned a ton of "wouldn't it be funny if you were dating _ instead of humans" games/mockups/jokes that really didn't commit to taking it seriously or going anywhere with it like Hatoful does. I wish people were more accepting of otome/dating sim games in general too, since that's in play here as well.

In any case, I'm excited to finally play the Vita version this weekend. Sucks that it's apparently buggy, though.
 
Got half of the options so far.
While this is a B-Movie script, it is still enjoyable. The game is better than any right it should be like Yojinbo.
 

Alfredo

Member
The music sometimes gets distorted on the Vita, which is pretty disappointing. Doesn't seem like a great port. How does the PS4 version run?
 
I'm in the middle of BBL. That really took me by surprise! Totally justifies going through the game so many times, though I do think they could have added in a bit more variety based on your stats, and who you're going for. There was way too much repetition for the non-club-related birds.
 

yagal

Member
I can't cross save, error NP-318446-2. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
 

Shizuka

Member
I bought this yesterday, but I won't get to play it anytime soon. Not that it matters, I can wait if they decide to fix the Vita version, because that's the one I'll be playing.
 

Shizuka

Member
I played for a few hours, got my first ending, the port was solid. Then I went for the full ending of the bird I chose, decided to skip the dialogue just to make the right choices and the audio got fucked up.

Like, really fucked up. Vita version here. I had to remove my headphones because the music ended and just these weird and loud screeches were on. Devolver and Mediatonic should fix this, it's unacceptable.
 

Jimrpg

Member
My idea is that each episode will be the entire school year with Hyoko dating each person getting their full ending each episode will be the final chapter or the full true ending of each characters story/relationship arc, everything seems like it's setting up to another generic love interest story until the last episode or two when the Bad Boy Love comes up and blows everyone away with it's story.

The birds will mostly be appeared as humans because of the "powerful visualization module." So most scenes will be them viewed as humanoids (to help with animation, and logic purposes), but will be switched on and off to birds for a more realistic world effect, fan service, and plot purposes.

I can easily see this becoming a show that lasts a good 12 episodes.



Sadly you have to play through each story and complete each ending to unlock Bad Boy Love, which is the deep story of the game. It plays more like a visual novel, and you need the exploration of playing through all the stories to understand the background of all the characters to understand most of the deep story of Bad Boy Love. But I assure you the ending is worth it, and playing the game as it's entirety would make the experience even more amazing. But if you're looking for amazing game-play you bought the wrong game.

This would be a much better anime than a video game.

The 'true' ending is buried WAY too deep into the game and only the real dedicated fans are going to get there. Mainly because there's a ton of repetition as you have to play the game 13 something times and Act 1 is basically the same everytime. I made it through 4 endings before deciding I was done.

I just wrote a review about it on my blog here, and would love someone to correct me on my stance of the game but as it stands right now, I can't see myself going back to it.
 

Stanng243

Member
This game is odd. I don't know what I expected, but what I got was a pidgeon dating sim. At least with
Ryouta's ending.
I thought this was supposed to have a deeper story.
 

KC Denton

Member
This game is odd. I don't know what I expected, but what I got was a pidgeon dating sim. At least with
Ryouta's ending.
I thought this was supposed to have a deeper story.
The deeper parts require you to go through the other paths in the game, and the secret path requires you to get all the other endings. It's definitely buried deeper than it probably should have, but there's hints of it during the "normal" stories.
 

Venom Fox

Banned
What the fuck is this game? I just found it on the PS store, watched the trailer and then curled up in a ball, scared of that big fat pigeon thing.
Wtf do pigeons have to do with boyfriends?
Wtf is a Hatoful?
Wtf is happening to games?
 
What the fuck is this game? I just found it on the PS store, watched the trailer and then curled up in a ball, scared of that big fat pigeon thing.
Wtf do pigeons have to do with boyfriends?
Wtf is a Hatoful?
Wtf is happening to games?

Uh, we are all birds. Aren't you a bird? Don't tell me you're a HUMAN?
 

BTA

Member
Is the PC remake Devolver put out really as barebones as this version is? It's surprising to me that they'd go through the effort of remaking it in another engine but still not add a text log function or a better skip function than this one, which goes slowly, doesn't differentiate between new and previously seen text, and sometimes arbitrarily toggles off during scene changes.

That being said, I'm enjoying it a ton, as I expected. It's just disappointing that they didn't seem to put much effort into it beyond what already existed. Not to mention the bugs on the Vita version: the audio crackling a ton is bad enough, but lines sometimes lagging when loading in? Really? In a VN? That should have been a sign that this maybe shouldn't have been released yet.
 

addik

Member
So I got this game pretty much on a whim and I already had two playthroughs.

On my first run I flirted with the teacher and got that ending. I also completed the cafe storyline. My second playthrough consisted with flirting with Yuuya to get to know more about what's going on in the infirmary. LOLWTH I didn't see that political faction coming.

Anything else I should be prepared for in my upcoming playthroughs?
 

BTA

Member
I ended up playing through the entirety of it yesterday. It was excellent, but those audio bugs I initially wrote off as being annoying become incredibly frustrating when every emotional scene in the final route had crackling BGM. Having it pop up there kinda dulled the impact of some of those scenes, unfortunately. I also ran into a few instances of it happening on the scale that someone posted a video of earlier in the thread, where it was making glitched out beeps, and in one case it sounded like it was suddenly playing a glitchy version of an entirely different BGM suddenly.

You also DEFINITELY need to be careful and save during the final route. It's very long and I had a crash happen in a specific place twice before it let me proceed; thankfully I was lucky and had actually saved a few minutes before that (with a few saves further back).

Essentially, the Vita version's a mess and I really hope that Holiday Star's port isn't released in such a disappointing state. Hopefully they'll patch this too, but if they released it in this state I don't have great expectations.

So I got this game pretty much on a whim and I already had two playthroughs.

On my first run I flirted with the teacher and got that ending. I also completed the cafe storyline. My second playthrough consisted with flirting with Yuuya to get to know more about what's going on in the infirmary. LOLWTH I didn't see that political faction coming.

Anything else I should be prepared for in my upcoming playthroughs?

What would you like to know? I guess an important tip would be that several characters have true/extended endings tied to having max (or close to it, in one case, since I had to replay from the start when I got the true ending even after choosing a different class on the last possible day) in a specific stat. I can be more specific about that if you'd like, since it can be annoying to play from the start instead of the second term to get the other ending if you've messed up with that.
 

Shizuka

Member
I just got back to the game, still unpatched and with audio glitches. I guess Devolver just won't bother to patch the game, despite knowing how the game has been released.

I'm going for the other endings now, but I don't remember if the triangle button is "skip all" or "skip read".
 

nicolajNN

Member
I bought this in the previous EU PSN sale, I have gotten two endings, but wondering how hard is it to get the different endings, I really do not want to be looking a a guide or something like that to get through it
I'm going for the other endings now, but I don't remember if the triangle button is "skip all" or "skip read".

It just speeds up and automatically progresses through the text, it also seems to stop when starting a new scene or something like that
 

Shizuka

Member
I bought this in the previous EU PSN sale, I have gotten two endings, but wondering how hard is it to get the different endings, I really do not want to be looking a a guide or something like that to get through it

It just speeds up and automatically progresses through the text, it also seems to stop when starting a new scene or something like that

Thanks for the help. Regarding other endings, you just need to go with your instincts. Each bachelor is tied to an area and the game is pretty clear when it allows you to ask different guys on certain events. That said, there are spoiler-free guides, if you want.
 
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