![]() The narrative builds suspense by pacing the clues to the metaplot. The story gets deeper, darker and weirder as the episodes progress. Since the mechanics guide players to focus on a single bird, the episodes serve as in-depth introductions to their characters while leaving clues to the overarching plot. The narrative builds suspense by structuring each playthrough of the dating sim portion as episodes. Each playthrough leaves clues and dead ends to encourage the player to keep playing and satisfy his or her curiosity. While forcing you to be monogamous is pretty lame, it serves an important purpose: Since each playthrough is devoted to one pigeon, you get to know each of their personalities. Unfortunately, the mechanics don’t allow for playing the field, and you’re dramatically punished if your affections are unfocused. If you’re like me, your first impulse was to try and date at least two birds at once. PigeonNations progress as you attend electives and unlock wacky school drama, like weird brotherly sexual tension and fights over the legitimacy of cafeteria pudding. These tropes are familiar to fans of male ensemble mangas targeted to women, kind of like an all pigeon Ouran High School Host Club with less fawning school girls. There’s also a creepy doctor whose sinister chuckling foreshadows the evil shit you’re about to discover. There’s the Nice Bird you’ve known since he was barely hatched, the Rich, arrogant French Bird, his Mysterious sexy half-brother, your Sensitive, narcoleptic home room teacher, the Track Star who only cares about pudding. Your bird classmates and teachers are all different flavors of magical anime boy archetypes. At school you attend classes and clubs to flirt with your classmates, altering your interests and choices to please the birdie of your affections-all tame dating sim stuff with a heavy dose of bird puns. You’re the first and only human attending the world’s most prestigious boarding school for gifted birds, St.PigeonNations. It begins as the pigeon dating simulator of your dreams. Even if visual novels aren’t your thing, Hatoful Boyfriend is worth playing. Hatoful ’s absurd humor thaws even the most icy cynic’s defenses to deliver an unpredictable and fascinating narrative. While it’s all fun and birds to begin with, shit gets real fast, in the best way possible. With a premise as absurd as pigeon-dating, I expected to spend the game laughing. It’s a dating sim set at an academy for pigeons. There’s not much to say about Hatoful Boyfriend that hasn’t already been said.
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