The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy Review – A True Last Stand

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy on Nintendo Switch

In many ways, Too Kyo Games and Media.Vision’s latest game, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, is the definition of an underdog story. Directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, who were the creators of the Danganronpa and Zero Escape franchises, respectively, The Hundred Line is a game that’s a make-or-break moment for their studio, because if it fails, it will most likely lead to the end of Too Kyo Games.

The studio has gone on record numerous times saying they went into debt to create this game, so a lot is riding on it to succeed. Given that it released the same week as the critically and commercially successful Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, another Cinderella story, and how Sandfall Interactive has been encouraging people to try out The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, I’m optimistic that it can succeed.

Even if it doesn’t, then I can at least respect the big risks they took making it, blending visual novels, SRPGs, life sims, and even Mario Party into a strange post-apocalyptic anime-inspired cocktail. First and foremost, if you’re aiming to see everything that The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy has to offer, then be ready to experience a beast of a story.

You play as Takumi Sumino, a teenager who lives in the Tokyo Residential Complex, a peaceful and critically constructed community. When the complex comes under attack by alien invaders, Takumi discovers he can manipulate a substance in his body called hemoanima, which allows him to create weapons and armour via his blood. He’s then whisked away to Last Defense Academy, a school where other users of hemoanima have been taken to, with one simple goal: defend the school for 100 days.

Obviously, there’s way more to the plot than just that simple premise, and plenty of mysteries are revealed throughout. For every answer you get, three more questions pop up, so you’re always trying to parse out the truth. On the whole, the story is incredibly well constructed and has a lot of great moments, but the pacing is oftentimes abysmal.

Unlike the Danganronpa games, which broke up their overarching stories with several exciting yet small murder mysteries, there are countless days where you’re just waiting for the plot to pick back up again. But by the time you reach the end of the 100 days 25-30 hours later, that’s when it hits you – that was the tutorial for The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy.

Without going into spoilers, at the end of your first playthrough, you’ll unlock what is, effectively, the rest of the game and be able to make decisions on how the story progresses. You can replay the past 100 days, make new decisions, and unlock the game’s 100 endings. While some endings are just slight variations of one another, others are pretty substantial and can lead to entirely different paths and revelations not present in other endings. Even if you’re the kind of person who wants to see the true ending, there are technically two true endings, one of which requires you to have seen other endings, so if you want to see the full story, you’ll have your work cut out for you.

It’s a lot to take in, but again, the quality of the story in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy does help to keep me engaged. It didn’t reach some of the ludicrous highs of Kodaka and Uchikoshi’s prior works, but it also doesn’t have as many crushing lows (11037 anyone?). I would say The Hundred Line is more consistent with its plot and characters. You spend a lot of time getting to know the cast in detail, though again, given the game’s pacing, it does take a while for them to grow on you, as many of them will stubbornly refuse to accept the situation they’re in.

While the story is undeniably the primary focus of the game, this isn’t solely defined as a visual novel. When the story says it’s time to fight the invaders, it shifts into a strategy RPG where you’ll move the characters around a grid and have them attack nearby enemies with their hemoanima powers.

Every character has their unique characteristics, like how the biker Takemaru rides around on his motorcycle to hit adjacent enemies while boosting his defence, or Kako, a glass cannon sharpshooter that becomes more powerful if you keep her in one spot. You can only act a set number of times each turn based on how much AP you have, but you can gain more AP each time you kill a strong enemy.

Because of this, the combat in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy encourages you to be as aggressive as possible. Characters can move and attack as often as you would like per turn, provided you have enough AP, and each time you act, you gain Voltage. Earn enough Voltage, and you can perform a powerful move that will defeat a large chunk of enemies.

However, if your characters have low health, they can pull off their super move at the cost of being removed from battle. There’s no permadeath in the game, which makes a fun loop of throwing your squadmates headfirst into danger, letting them soak up damage, and then going out in a blaze of glory. The game even incentivises you to defeat each wave of enemies in a single turn, which is entirely doable with the right strategy.

However, while as fun as it may be to go all-out and cause mass destruction, there is a catch. By making the combat highly aggressive, it barely poses a challenge. Even if you make a poor decision and your squad is on the brink of death, the game seems to reward you for your poor choices by giving you unbelievable power, making most combat encounters pose little threat.

Even the game’s final boss, which is built up throughout the game as the supreme threat you have to overcome, felt more like a pushover when you realise you can just bum rush it the same as every other foe. The combat is fun, don’t get me wrong, but this isn’t Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics. Planning three moves ahead isn’t necessary to succeed.

In between story sequences and combat, you’re able to explore the academy at your own leisure. During this time can increase your teammates’ stats, craft items, or engage in VR training missions. While that’s all well and good, you’ll spend most of your free time interacting with the other students at Last Defense Academy. The conversations are generally tame, but by interacting with them, you’ll boost skills called academics. Much like the Persona games, there are five academic areas to improve, and the higher rank you have in certain academics, the more you can upgrade your party members’ attacks and abilities.

While you can upgrade your academics by simply engaging in conversations with the rest of the cast, it’s much faster to give them gifts, which will boost your academics by a ludicrous degree. While it can take several interactions to figure out what type of gifts each person likes, if you want to make these gifts, you’ll have to collect resources in the game’s exploration system. By leaving the academy, you’ll navigate around a Mario Party board and land on spaces. On each space, you’ll be given a choice, and depending on your answer, you’ll gain or lose resources, health, and maybe even be forced into a battle. You’ll also find unique items that can unlock new gifts, so it pays to explore outside every now and then. That is, until you max out your stats.

Once your academics are maxed, there’s no real reason to explore the outside world anymore, and the benefits from interacting with your teammates are pointless since once you reach the max level, you can upgrade every character’s abilities to the max as well. There’s not even a romance mechanic to incentivize players to keep interacting with their favorite party members other than learning about some of their backstories, but that’s already done fairly naturally in the game’s plot. While there are some romance options in the game, they’re locked behind story sequences and endings, making the side conversations feel nebulous after a while.

It’s weird because the longer I played The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, the better and worse it got. While the story becomes incredibly riveting with numerous branching paths and revelations, the gameplay sequences to get there become dull. Conversely, while the early hours of the story are rough as we get to know the game’s large cast and slowly roll out the playable characters, that’s when the combat feels challenging given your low level and abilities, the life sim bits have tangible benefits, and exploration mechanics require planning and forethought.

Ultimately, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is a hard game to recommend. It’s not because the game isn’t good, because it is, but it’s because if you’re looking at it solely as a game, it loses steam about 15-20 hours in. The story more than makes up for it, but asking a player to play for 25-30 hours before a game really opens up is a big ask. It is worth it though, if only for the sheer scale of branching pathways available to the player that present radically different and bonkers endings. Making a game like The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy was a big gamble, and while it’s not clear if that gamble paid off for Too Kyo Games, it at least delivered one of the most ambitious, if uneven, visual novels of its generation.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is now available on Steam and Nintendo Switch.