Running out of something you love sucks. It’s a problem that I seem to run into all the time when it comes to mystery visual novels. They suck me in and get me hooked on the mysteries within, then before I know it, the whole thing is over, and I’m left wondering what to do with myself. Enter The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a game seemingly designed for people like me who do not want these games to end and that might just be a monkey’s paw in disguise.
What Is The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy?
If you’ve not already heard of the director before, then you probably won’t know, but The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is a sci-fi, mystery visual novel/SRPG hybrid that tells the story of a bunch of young people stuck in a school-like building and forced to go through horrific experiences for poorly explained reasons. The difference between this and the director’s previous work, Danganronpa, is that this time, you occasionally have to do a strategy RPG every so often between mystery story segments.
Beyond that, the tone, style and themes of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy are pretty much on par with what you get in Danganronpa: slick visuals with a unique blend between 3D and 2D graphics, some pretty awesome music, and more tropey characters/dialogue than you can shake a stick at. Frankly, if you’re already a fan of Danganronpa, I can tell you right now that you’ll probably like this one. With that in mind, I’m also going to be trying to go into this one spoiler-free, but I also highly recommend going in without any preamble if you’re already sure you want to play it. Consider yourself warned.
I Came Here to Lead, Not to Read
As with any good visual novel, the main crux of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is the storyline. Most of your time is spent reading about what is happening and occasionally making decisions to change the direction of the narrative. Many VNs also feature a ‘bonus’ gameplay element. For Danganronpa, it was action debate sequences, for Zero Escape, it was escape room sequences, and in The Hundred Line, it’s all about those grid-based strategy RPG battles against colourful cartoon monsters. These elements gel relatively well, and there are even various ‘story moments’ during a combat sequence, though how much you’ll get on with them depends on how into the style you are.
In fairness, the combat is really solid, with a decent amount of variety due to the huge cast of characters and the relatively expansive list of new abilities and mechanics that you slowly get drip-fed. The biggest complaint I could make about the combat is the lack of different enemy types and maps to fight on. There’s only a handful of different locations where combat can take place, and by the end of the game (if you ever make it that far), you’ll have been fighting the same 9-10 enemies over and over again since the start of the game. And no, having those enemies covered in black goo does not count as a different enemy type.
Also, if you’re a visual novel fan and you’re worried about how well you’ll get on with the combat, don’t panic. Not only does it start out relatively easy and stay that way for a looong time, but you can always turn on ‘safety’ mode in the options. This basically heals you after every single turn, making the game almost (but not entirely) impossible to lose. Of course, you’ll still have to go through the motions with combat, but at least you’ll get to experience all of the cool special attack animations.
My Ordinary(-ish) Life
Of course, it’s actually the storyline and the choices that are the bread-and-butter of the genre, though perhaps it would be fair to admit that you’ll only be working with bread for your first run through. That is to say that there are very few choices to be made on your first run-through of the game. It’s only after you see those credits roll through that you actually get to make choices and see different branching paths, as well as unlock a decent chunk of the mechanics. It’s a sign of the almost ridiculous scale at which this storyline is operating.
You control Takumi Sumino, a teenager living in the Tokyo Residential Complex, a huge underground complex for the survivors of a devastated planet Earth. After a traumatic attack by unknown creatures, you are given superpowers to fight against them and then find yourself dragged to a strange school outside of the complex and told you have to do battle with these monstrous enemies of humanity for 100 days to save the human race. On your first run through, you don’t really learn much more than that, with many of the plot elements, including entire characters, saved for subsequent playthroughs.
Once you actually hit your second playthrough, you start to learn about the plethora of twists and turns that actually lie behind the goings on in this world, and the game actually starts to open up, and when I say open up, I really mean it. At this point, the game branches into so many winding pathways that there are 100 endings to find in total.
It’s Off the F**kin’ Scale!
100 endings is an impressive number, and it matches the theming quite well, with the title and 100 days mechanic. It also means you’ll probably be playing for well over 100 hours if you want to see everything the game has to offer. Even at the time of writing, I’ve not managed to get everything done, though I have seen at least 30 of the insane number of available endings, representing nearly 100 hours on its own. So far, I think I’ve got a grasp on most of the twists and turns, but with another 70 endings still to go, I can’t even be that sure.
The huge variety of endings means that you’ll end up running through pretty much every available anime trope you could possibly expect. There are the horrific endings, comedy endings, romance endings, serious endings and even unsatisfying endings. It’s almost tempting to go into my favourites, but it’s best to experience them yourself if you’re inclined to play the game. A few of the different paths and endings are excellent, some are just plain goofy, and one or two were downright annoying. I’m not sure if the game gets many points for having good or interesting endings, though. If you’re going to throw literally 100 endings at the narrative board, it’s not a shock when a bunch of those endings actually stick.
Luckily, the characters and dialogue, generally speaking, are relatively well-written, if you’re into Kazutaka Kodaka’s style at the very least. This basically feels like a cross between Danganronpa and Zero Escape on steroids, in terms of everything from the characters you’re working with to the insane twists and turns that you end up taking.
A Collective of Characters
When all is said and done, the sheer insanity of the storyline and the scale of the twists and paths you can take mean that the real anchor for the story is the group of characters you spend your time with. Starting out, it would be easy to dismiss them as mostly a bunch of trope-reliant archetypes that blend various characters from Danganronpa into ‘new’ amalgamations, and in fairness, that’s not exactly too far from the mark. You’ve got your typical ‘heart of gold thug’ character, you’ve got ice-queens and genki girls. Basically, this thing is gonna’ have the folks at TV Tropes running a field day (if they haven’t already.)
Tropes aside, assuming that there’s nothing more to these characters would be a mistake. During some of the ‘mainer’ storylines, you get to know more about them, and in most cases, they do a decent job of endearing themselves to you. A great example of this is Darumi Amemiya. Starting out, I hated this character because she came across like a meta-dialogue-spouting meme with zero depth. By the end of a particular storyline, she had ended up as my favourite character. Admittedly, she’s now vying for space with several of the other characters in the game who also managed to make themselves very appealing in one storyline or another, but I hope it demonstrates the strength of at least some of these characters and their ability to either defy or utilize the tropes they’re supposedly built around.
That said, a slight downfall of some characters is due to the huge number of endings. Characters can and will have their entire personality change in a certain storyline to serve the joke or whatever particular narrative thread has to happen due to the choices you made. Sure, it’s funny that several characters change personalities wildly for seemingly no reason, but it also gives those characters less consistent characterisations, which can remove some of the edge.
The Final Thought
Realistically, there’s plenty to like in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. It’s got solid combat, great characters and Kodaka’s signature writing style, for better or for worse. That said, it’s also so insanely huge and bloated that it almost feels never-ending. While that’s great for those out there who feel depressed whenever they finish their current visual novel (myself included), it does leave some of the storylines feeling less impactful than they could be. Not only do you have zero idea about when the game is going to finish due to the randomness of the pacing, but because you don’t know what routes each choice is going to lead you down, there’s no control from the developers on when certain big twists or threads are actually revealed, leaving your own experience down to luck unless you plan on playing using a guide.
There’s so much here to love for fans of the director’s other work, but it’s hard to see this game attracting anyone who isn’t already sold on the concept. This is certainly the culmination of a hell of a lot of hard work from Too Kyo Games, and they should be proud of what they wrought, but I won’t be able to blame anyone for preferring Danganronpa or Zero Escape to the monolith that is The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.
Developer: Too Kyo Games
Publisher: Xseed Games
Platforms: PC, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 24th April 2025
Gaming Respawn’s copy of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy was provided by the publisher.
