Masquerade Hell Academy BL Game Review – A Twisted and Intense Blast from the Past

Masquerade Hell Academy is an intense experience that is not for the faint of heart. This is torture porn, plain and simple. So don’t expect any warm tender embraces or sweet confessions, because you’ll find none of that here. In fact, the writers of Masquerade seems to delight in thinking up increasingly more debased situations for Hiroshi and his unfortunate companions to be subjected to. From basic humiliation and physical violence all the way up to sexual sadism and my personal favorite (heavy sarcasm) scatological torture. While you can toggle the latter off, its inclusion is worth noting for those with delicate sensibilities.

Game Details

• Genre: Psychological | Boys Love | Violence
• System: Steam (All-Ages) | PC (Adult Uncensored)
• Rating: NSFW (explicit sexual content, violence, non/dub-con)
• Developer & Publisher: PIL/SLASH & JAST BLUE

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About Masquerade Hell Academy

The quiet Numata Hiroshi is being blackmailed by his classmate, Himehara Yoritake, into performing sexual acts for him. One day, Himehara orders Numata to steal the exam answers off the teacher’s desk, which sets off a chain of events culminating in the two men being among the captives taken by a criminal impersonating a police officer.

Their captor demands increasingly depraved acts from his hostages, and if they’re going to survive, they have no choice but to comply…

Masquerade Hell Academy Review

The premise of Masquerade is fairly simple, Hiroshi, is being sexually exploited by his classmate, Himehara. While that situation is pretty terrible, Hiroshi harbors complicated feelings for Himehara that render him incapable of defying him. So when Himehara forces him to steal the answers for the upcoming exam, Hiroshi is quick to comply despite the risk of potential expulsion. Unfortunately, this puts Hiroshi in the crosshairs of a deranged criminal who is impersonating a police officer and hiding out at the school. Soon he and others are pulled into the depths of hell, becoming the unwitting pawns in their captor’s twisted games. With their lives on the line, they’ll need to comply with all his demands if they’re going to survive the night…

I have played my share of traumatic boys love games, Naked Butlers, Slow Damage and more recently, Paradise. And while my enjoyment varies between them, I can honestly say there is some enjoyment to be derived from a truly unhinged story. But, where it’s more modern peers offer some level of social commentary or introspection with their torture porn, Masquerade is lacking in depth. As a whole we’ve grown beyond trauma for the sake of trauma. Gone are the days where dubious consent and toxic dynamics where enough to entertain.

There isn’t even a buildup of anxiety as we wait with bated breath for “help” to arrive. The cops show up at the school almost immediately after Aota does and rather than storming the school and rescuing the hostages, they end up sitting on their hands in an attempt to wait him out. What’s even more bizarre, is that the police, end up giving Aota more people to torture.

On top of that any sense of danger from Aota is almost nonexistent, aside from a few idle threats he doesn’t actually do anything to the hostages. He seems content to sit back and watch the hostages fuck each other’s brains out. Which is increasingly baffling when it’s revealed that he doesn’t even derive pleasure from any of it, in fact, Aota seems disgusted with the sex acts themselves. Which begs the question: What is the point of any of this?!

Maybe if I’d had the chance to play Masquerade in 2006 (as the BL gods intended), the premise would have felt relatively fresh. But, in 2024, the novelty of Masquerade‘s “shocking” premise rings hollow in the face of more nuanced boys love media. The increasingly depraved acts the characters are subjected to are mentally exhausting to witness–which I suppose may be the point. As we the player are merely voyeurs in Aota’s sick and twisted game, powerless to help alleviate the torment.

There is no tension or urgency, just a seemingly never-ending slew of debauchery that makes the fairly short runtime of the game feel like an eternity. The most unsettling aspect of the game is just how little tension there is. There is no battle of wits between the hostages and Aota, as each side fight for dominance. The hostages don’t really work together to overpower him or even try and run away. They just do whatever crazy shit Aota tells them to with little resistance.

Which if I’m being generous, speaks to how exposure to traumatic situations can gradually push people into making decisions they otherwise wouldn’t make under normal circumstances. Gradually breaking down their mental faculties, until they become little more than compliant dolls. Which is what I think Masquerade is going for.

Parade does something similar in Room No. 9, where the main characters are forced to perform increasingly horrific acts on one another for survival. But, unlike the slow, methodical introduction of the torture methods in Room No. 9, Masquerade beats you over the head with unpredictable and seemingly senseless violence at every turn. There is no rhyme or reason to anything that happens and because of this it makes it increasingly difficult to fully immerse yourself in the story or the plights of the characters.

I found it especially difficult to relate to Hiroshi, he’s small and unassuming and spends much of the game sputtering and fumbling over his words. He’s deliberately setup to be someone you kind of want to see get tortured, if not to get some kind of reaction out of him. Though, one aspect that I did find interesting is that despite his small stature, Hiroshi has a really big dick. I wouldn’t normally bring this up, but because of his long schlong Hiroshi can and does wind up being a top in some of the routes.

The sex scenes are numerous and unique, but generally of the non-con persuasion so your mileage may vary. Lots of object insertion and orgies, which if that’s your thing, you’ll have a field day with Masquerade. I vividly remember a graphic scene where a wire was inserted into a character’s urethra that I had to blindly skip through… and let us not talk about the way they waste food in this game.

If like me, that’s not your jam, the truly consensual “fluffy” stuff is saved for the very end of the game. And while the romantic finales make for a welcome reprieve from the torture porn, it’s over far too quickly to leave a lasting impression. But, I will note that one highlight is that the mosaics from the original release were removed and the penises are all uncensored for our viewing pleasure in this localization. Yay!

The localization for Masquerade is actually a lot of fun. I mentioned this in my Paradise review, but folks are on the fence about some of JAST Blue’s localization choices, but I tend to find them pretty entertaining. They do modernize the dialogue a bit and there were some lines that were hammed up a bit (for some much needed laughs). “Start cranking those shabby cocks” is gonna live rent free in my head till the day I ascend to the next plane… 🤣

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Is Masquerade Hell Academy worth playing?

Masquerade Hell Academy is just not for me and that’s okay. I’ll admit that, whips and chains do not excite me. The novelty of Masquerade‘s “shocking” story has been done already and it just doesn’t pack the punch it would have back in the early aughts. Where publishers like, Nitro+chiral temper some of their more bleak storylines with interesting characters and thought provoking writing, PIL/SLASH (at least in the two games I’ve played) seem content to just traumatize. Paradise at least had an interesting mystery to keep me clicking through all the gore, but with Masquerade I just wanted the story to be over. I lived through the lawlessness of early aughts, I gave myself over to all the bleak, angsty, dub con and straight up non-con of BL from back in the day. I have seen things that I WISH I could forget.

The fandom has grown and yet we continue to get BL game localizations that harken back to the traumatic stories of the past. Which I suppose speaks to current trends in the Japanese BL games market and less on the localization publishers themselves.

I knew what I was getting into when I started the game, but I can’t help but long for a fluffy slice of life BL game localization. Something that doesn’t give me war flashbacks when I talk about it to friends. But, it seems I’ll have to look towards indie developers for softer BL gaming experiences or at the very least, games that I don’t need to down an entire bottle of wine to get through.

The BL space has grown considerably in the years since Masquerade was first release, delivering more progressive and nuanced storytelling and ideas. Masquerade is a nostalgic look at the bygone days of yaoi media and while I’m kind of over that sort of thing, I do acknowledge that this definitely was… something I won’t soon forget.

Thank you to JAST Blue for providing a copy of Masquerade Hell Academy for this review!

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