Recent reviews by Aster

In Hatoful Boyfriend, you play as Hiyoko Tosaka (or whatever you choose to name her), the only human in a school of pigeons. You can even get yourself a birdy boyfriend! There's Ryouta the childhood friend, Sakuya the fancypants, Yuuya the ladies man, and many more amazing avians. It plays out like a regular otome/visual novel does, read the text and make some choices. I bet you're thinking "omg so random, dating pigeons lol", and that's a natural response. But if you were to look up the definition of "don't judge a book by its cover", I'm pretty sure there would be a picture of Hatoful Boyfriend there.

You see, the pigeon dating sim premise is just a cover for the real story. After you unlock certain endings with different birds, you can start a new game and the true story will reveal itself, aka the Hurtful Boyfriend (or Bad Boys Love) route. In BBL you will learn why Hiyoko is the only human at the pigeon school, why the pigeons can talk, why she needs to form a bond with the birds, and much more. I can only say so much without spoiling it, but be prepared for a mental meltdown. It is filled with drama, tragedy and unsettling content. After seeing certain endings in the dating sim part, you'll probably be thinking "well, I've already seen some disturbing stuff... This will be a piece of cake". LOL NOPE. The dating sim endings are nothing compared to the true BBL route.

To put it simply, this game is like one of those sweet & sour candies; it looks and tastes sweet on the outside, but once you delve deeper in you'll reel back in shock and wonder wtf happened to the sugary outer shell.

Bought this game while on sale thinking it was gonna be pretty so-so. I'd heard things about Vampire: The Masquerade before, but never actually tried it. Boy am I glad I did. This game is like a hidden gem. The graphics are outdated, but what else can you expect from a game that's over 10 years old? If you enjoyed being able to make your own story in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, you may enjoy Vampire: The Masquerade, as it allows you to choose conversation options and shape your character's path.

Although you can't customise the appearance of your character (other than clothing), you can choose between 7 different races of vampires of each gender, each with different abilities. Other clothing options can later be bought from the different locations throughout the game, each giving more armour and a different look from the last.

The story begins with your character and the opposite gender version of your character's race getting 'friendly', and your character will be Embraced (turned). Unfortunately, your sire has commited a violation of the Masquerade by Embracing someone without permission, and is executed for their crimes. Left sireless, after an intervention by the vampire Nines you are allowed a chance to live, but you must 'serve' LaCroix, the prince. During the story, you'll learn what Sabbat, Camarilla, Kuel'jin and many other things are. But I won't spoil the story for you, go play it yourself.

The downside of this game is that, in order to play it, you must do a few things. There are a few bugs that will not allow the game to play on Steam. To combat this, you must run Steam in administrator mode and change the compatibility properties of Vampire: The Masquerade. I changed the properties to run the program in compatibility mode for Windows XP (Service Pack 3), and disabled visual themes and desktop compositions. Doing these steps should allow you to run the game. But that's not all. Even though this game is old, there are still unofficial patches being made for it. I recommend installing Wesp's unofficial patch 8.9 at least, as this will fix the resolution error with the game and make the interface clear instead of blurry. Each patch contains everything from the patches before, so you can install the latest one without missing anything. The patches fix a lot of bugs and add things to the game. However, with each patch you must make it a fresh install, delete everything from the patches before (this includes your save files) and replace them with the new patch. The game may crash if you do not do this. You should replace the folder named Vampire inside your Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines folder with the patch folder, which will also be named Vampire. You must also disable the auto updates for the game in the Steam properties, or it may install the old official patch over your unofficial one.

Overall, I really enjoyed this game. Some of the boss fights were quite challenging, there is a lot of side quests and missions to keep you occupied, and you can choose your character's destiny in the world of darkness. You can choose to be a saucy seductress, a badmouthed badass, anything really. And if you choose a Malkavian, you'll have different conversation options than the other races, as Malkavian's have a sort of split personality and insanity. I wish there was a sequel or something. Sucks that the World of Darkness MMO based on this universe was recently cancelled as I was looking forward to it, but what can you do.

~ 9/10 ~