No matter your desired path, the beginning of each playthrough begins the same: You enter school, meet the datable birds, and rush through your first term. It was a bit annoying that it took me multiple playthroughs to find a benefit to leveling certain stats. Wisdom, vitality, and charisma can be leveled up on elective days and through random events, but it’s not immediately apparent how leveling them benefits you. Regrettably, the stats system misses that mark. While one click usually gets you through a sentence or two of dialogue, sometimes only one word or phrase appear with a click. Like most dating simulations, Hatoful Boyfriend is a visual novel and only requires mouse clicks to progress, but it creatively uses that very simple interaction to build suspense and add to the mood.
HATOFUL BOYFRIEND CHARACTERS ARCHIVE
I was intrigued by the potential for numerous endings shown in the gallery, and in mysterious documents in the archive that give little details about the world. This didn’t feel like a burden, because allusions to greater mysteries in other birds’ paths did a great job of encouraging me to replay it well over 10 times. To really complete it, however, requires you to replay multiple times in order to explore the alternate paths of the eight datable birds. If you don’t use the fast-forward button to skip through the text, Hatoful Boyfriend takes a little over an hour to play through.