Tokyo Hosto is a bit of an oddball of a visual novel. Although it is certainly not worth its pricetag, being incredibly short (which makes it easy to finish), terribly drawn & written (which adds to its irreverent ways) as well as being mechanically unsound -- no options menus, no real saving, no 'skipping', having to press "Enter" to progress every single time -- it still managed to grab my attention for long enough to finish the game, and I can't say I regret it.

In its thirty-or-so minutes experience it ends up being both funny and enjoyable, and I would definitely recommend it... provided you're getting it on the cheap, or for free as I did. Add an actual options menu and an hour or two of content and you've really got something here.

Stay clear. Overly short game that pretends it has different ways you can progress, but if you choose the wrong answer, you fail and it's game over. Took developer ages to even sort something out to even get it the game to start. Save your money, this isn't worth it. try a flash game instead, they're free and probably mroe fun.

Purchased for the lulz...

- Art is terrible
- Music is non existent
- Voice acting is hideously hilarious
- Dialogue is a joke ("This is so awkward that you're making a disembodied voice feel uncomfortable") - LOL, just what?
- Great for playing a drinking game with (drink to horrendous artwork, drink to weird plot devices, drink to randomness)
- Cheaper than a pint down your local pub

1/10 - Tokyo Garbago; Complete Trash...

You get a job working as a Hosto; basically a male escort who is paid to socialize; managed by your boss/pimp. The next 25 minutes consist of you 'socializing' with clients and things don't go so well! The whole premise of the game isn't good; but the execution was equally flawed.

Major issues with the launch; tried a plethora of things to make it launch within Steam to no avail. Baller Studios said they would fix this issue around a year ago and nothing go fixed. You CAN launch from the .exe as an administrator; but that sucks and no game time can be logged. (Was this Accidentally On Purpose?! Less bad reviews and more people will mistakenly purchase the game?)

So... I clicked the launch button 30 or more times in 10 second intervals to clock my 5 minutes, just so I could let you know to stay clear of this game! It's short, doesn't launch and overall it sucks.

It’s Worth Nothing. Don't buy this one!

This is a kinda funny stupid game that is intentionally garbage. Now that alone wouldn't necessarily be worth a down vote because gag games have their purpose but this particular game can't even be run from Steam without changing the executable file name and even then you have to run it from the folder. That's 3 extra steps that are needed to play. Also it lacks a lot of the minimum conventions of a regular VN such as full screen mode, multiple saves and options. I spent about half an hour playing before I lost interest in the game. Even the crude attempts at humor were quickly fleeting.

There's some games that are so bad they're good but this isn't one of them.

Let me tell you something about this game, it's so broken in every aspect, the Art is so horrible, the dialogue is totally a big ugly fat joke, poorly made voice acting, no music, incredibly short game-play, no choices at all (if you choose the wrong answer the game ends), so overpriced, oh and the ending .. after wasting 30 mins of your life on this garbage you'll find out that you was a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ dog that was dreaming about hosting women all the time. how could the devs possibly came out with such a dumb ending like that one, i mean .. seriously?
To conclude with, it's true that there are some games that are so bad what's make them so fun but i could never consider this as one of them, do not waste your life, stay away from this! please!
1/10 Would find out that i i'm a dreaming dog again!

I don't usually write reviews for things I don't like but here I am. I got this game only because it was in a bundle and wasn't expecting anything in particular from it, I knew I probably wouldn't even have liked it.
Half an hour later and having finished playing, the only thing I'm sure about is that Tokyo Hosto managed to make me hate it more than every other vn I've ever played in my entire life. And boy, do I have my fair share of visual novels played!

I won't even be talking about the art style or the voice acting or the plot itself since they are not the reason of my dislike of this game.

The first thing that made me cringe so hard was at the beginning: there's an option on the main menu that you can select so that you will know what host clubs are. You get a narrator speaking but there are neither subs nor written text. The same thing happens with an introduction at the start of the game.
Uh, excuse me? If I'm pretending to have something from a visual novel, that one thing is written text! Not everyone can understand spoken English so well and the nice thing about this genre of games is that it's hearing impaired friendly since, you know, you're supposed to read written text for every line of dialogue and narration!!
How difficult would have been to add the text in the voice-over narration since it's already present in the most part of the game?

Not even 5 minutes in and you find out that this game is homophobic. I don't even think that this was what the author(s) intended to happen but the final result disturbed me in a way that other works usually don't manage to.
The main character gets introduced to the owner of the bar, called Toby '♥♥♥♥' Lau. Who is not gay at all. In fact, he becomes horrified at the mention that he might be gay. He is obviously the most heterosexual man ever. And don't even dare to do something so indecent as to suggest that you don't mind having male clients! You are not in that kind of bar.
It is later explained that '♥♥♥♥' Lau has his nickname because he owns a house?? Duh.
The thing that makes this whole scene a disaster is that Toby is supposed to be a closeted gay character—for example he has a tattoo with the name of his supposed partner/crush—but his voice actor and his dialogues and story in general give this character no other chance to escape from the one-dimensional Hysterical Gay Man™ trope.

In Tokyo Hosto you can only press 'enter' every single time you want to read a new line. Considering also that there does not seem to be a skipping function, it's really easy to press 'enter' one time too much—expecially while replaying already seen text—so you'll end up having accidentally clicked (by pressing 'enter') the first option in a choice selection that will probably reveal to be the wrong choice and will make you start the same scene again. And while replaying it by having to continuously press 'enter', you'll find yourself pressing that button one time too much again. Welcome to replay hell.

There are lots of amateurish visual novels better than this. In fact, I am now convinced that all the other amateurish visual novels might be better than this. Go find some free vn, it will be better than this one for sure.
If you just spent 5 minutes by reading this review, don't bother spending 5 other minutes of your life by playing this. Drink a healthy herbal tea instead. I love you. Take care.

Really short and really bad, but I'm sure nobody bought this game because they thought it was going to be good. Now, unlike some other terrible VNs, this one actually IS so bad that it's funny. Not because of the terrible writing and voice acting, that stuff is mostly just boring rather than funny, but because the art is really bad. The artist just doesn't know how to draw faces, and it is hilarious. So if you got it for free or in a bundle, play it once. I mean, it only takes 30 minutes, why not?

Pros? Cons? (what am I doing with my life?)
* Toby when happy looks like a blow up doll. Correction: hosts when happy look like blow up dolls.
* There is music somewhere in the intro and then it's just voice acting. No sorry, there is music at end credits.

I think this game killed too many of my brain cells. Ability to form coherent sentences disturbed. Abort. Abort. System shutdown initiated....

...30 minutes of my life gone. Forever. I am so done with this.

No, wait, not yet. There is a price tag on this? Seriously? No, just no. I got it in a bundle (so close to having it for free) and I still regret having it. If I had a friend gift this to me I'd call an exorcist on them. So yeah, stay away from this.

A hilarious short story providing roughly half an hour of black humour, you play as an aspiring employee in a local Tokyo host club as you meet a variety of characters and climb your way to success at the top. If you happen to need a refresher on host clubs, a menu choice will get you up to speed in twenty seconds.

The game is divided into short stages with a few decision branches to be made during each. Neutral/good choices proceed the story towards Victory, while bad choices can either have no lasting effect or give you an immediate Epic Fail in which case you must restart the stage (by trial and error you will easily pass after a few restarts at most).

Aside from the above checkpoints, the game provides absolutely no menus or text skipping/logging/rewinding/manipulation in any way. I finished the game in one playthrough, but it seems that it does autosave between stages, so it is possible to exit the game and pick up at where you left using the Continue function.

An interesting attempt at black comedy, the story starts off uninterestingly but quickly either captivates you with its ridiculous humour or throws you off after a few minutes of WTF. The length, while being incredibly short, seems suitable for the amount of sitcom jokes that can only hold your attention for so long, while still providing acceptable coherency. The wide cast of characters are not given much screen-time, possibly surprising you when reaching the length of the credits, and their personalities are shallow at best.

The subtitles suffer from not being properly spell-checked, but if you can live with imperfect grammar, the text is clearly understandable.

Very sub-par for the average VN, but the art style still manages to reasonably distinguish the different character types and their personalities, and it could be a lot worse. A variety of artwork ensures that the story proceeds smoothly.

All characters including the narrator are voice-acted in an amateurish (recordings are not completely, but reasonably clean of noise) but convincing (and slightly over-the-top) way. The protagonist is the only person without a voice but apart from player dialogue choices (that are not shown after being selected) he almost never speaks on his own anyway, so the immersion is kept safe.

There are a few attempts at cutscenes, most notably in the menu option 'What is a host?' that'll make you cringe, as they are basically just still frame slides accompanied by a particularly bad set of aforementioned voice recordings. Fortunately, most of the game avoids these and makes better use of its limited artwork and sound. There is no background music in the actual game except for the menu and ending credits (although there are (in)appropriate sound effects scattered around).

A quirky VN for a little bit of brain-dead entertainment, Tokyo Hosto is definitely only worth picking up in a cheap bundle key or at a big sale (no more than €1), and only if you are the least bit interested in sitcom humour delivered in VN form. With that said, its attempt at being a joke game with a decent storyline and the necessities to back it up definitely prevents it from reaching bottom grade, and you will hopefully leave with the feeling that you actually didn't waste your time (too much).


Gameplay: N/A
Story: 6/10
Graphics: 4/10
Media: 6/10

Overall: 6/10