When the reveal trailer for first aired as part of the June 2024 Nintendo Direct, I immediately wrote an article about how the game seemed like “Danganronpa for people who didn’t likeꦆ Danganronpa.” But I was so young back then, so naive. Now t♊hat I’ve joined the Academy myself, I’m not too pr🥀oud to admit that I could not have been more incorrect.
You play as Takumi, a teenage boy who lives in the Tokyo Residential Zone, a domed city that routinely sees its citizens huddled into shelters below ground during sporadic alien attacks. During one such siege, a ghost comes to Takumi, hands🧔 him a strange blade, and tells him that stabbing himself in the heart with that ‘infuser’ will give him the power to fight the aliens that are about to kill his best friend, triggering the turn-based tactics fights that we were p💙romised.
Anime Teens Killing Aliens Instead Of Each Other
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy was made by a dream duo for anyone who’s spent the last two decades enjoying a couple of strange but iconic visual novels. Kazutaka Kodaka, creator of Danganronpa, and Kotaro Uchikoshi, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:creator of Zero Escape, have come together in a beautiful partnership for this title, and their influence and impact are decisive and clear. They knew dang well that there’d be zero escape (eh?) from direct comparisons, but instead of shying away from t🍸hat, they toss us in a familiar coating of neon anime ridiculousness straight from the start.
Visual Novels Deserve To Be More Than Justꦕ 🐷a Joke
Pocketpair made the most boring April Fools' Day joke again this year, and I'm sick of i✤t.
One of your first teammates is Darumi, a blu🔴e-haired emo girl who will not stop talking about her plans for when “the killing game” begins. She fights by your side in your first battle at the Academy, only to be killed off almost immediately, squished to d🃏eath in the vice-grip of an oversized and particularly tough foe. Her eyes turn white as she spurts graphic red blood, her limp body ragdolling to the ground when the invader drops her before being collected by a mysterious coffin drone and flown off into the school.
Even for someone who ravenously consumed the Danganronpa and Zero Escape games, imagine my surprise when Darumi traipsed back into the school after our battꦦle, just as bouncy, boisterous, and alive as she was that morning. Students are revived upon death in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, so you can live to fight all 100 days of your service to the school, and killing themselves in battle gives you and your team some pretty powerful perks.
While that amount of time fighting aliens and seeing our friends getting killed seems daunting, the game gradually peels back the layers of its content and lets you acclimate to the water before tur൩ning up the heat. Before you know it, a few weeks have passed for Takumi and team, and eve🀅ry question you answer seems to lead to at least five additional oddities.
Sirei, your vintage cap buddy mascot, goes missing, and you take your team out to play a giant board game beyond the defensive flames surrounding the school to find him and gather resources to level up your attacks before the next big battle. Half your classmates don’t want to fight at first, sinc♎e Darumi confirms they’ll still feel the full pain of death before being revived, but you can convince them to take up arms by offering snacks or a peculiar hand-made gift (like a decorative vomit bag for the girl who anxiety-pukes, for example), and having a conversation in a minigame that tests your empathy and people skills.
It’s important to remember that The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy isn’t Danganronpa or Zero Escape, despite feeling like a blend of the two more often than not. I’m still working past the trepidations I felt at the beginning as🔯 a fan of the two. Even knowing my teammates would come back after they were murdered, unlike in Danganronpa, I still hesitated to pick favorites, so sure the shoe would drop. Something about not knowing what was coming next at any point in a game that felt incredibly familiar only amplified the experience of playing.
A Beautiful Hybrid Of An Off-Center Visual Novel And A Decent TRPG
Maybe that’s why my favorite parts of a game that covers so many genre bases at once were the narrative elements over the tactical ones. W♏hile the grid-based battles elements of thꦜe game are entertaining and require the planning and thought, there’s a lot of quirky story and weird characters to get through before you get to the actual battlefield.
If you’re tempted by the idea of colorful weirdos engaged in tactical fighting between Free Time events, raising your friendship by gift-giving or occasionally venturing out to explore the outside world a la Mario Party-esque board game, though, then the ta💜ctics element is thorough enough to keep you entertained without ever feeling too overwhelming. As someone who thoroughly enjoys this mish-mash of game elements, I’m having a great time going back across the multiple endings and seeing what I can tinker with along the way - especially when it comes to min/maxing my battle teams.
You’re able to retry your fights, thankfully, because I’m not proud of how many times my team got demolished before I got the hang of the game’s combat. Your teammates each have passive skills that offer perks throughout, special moves they can perform once they’ve powered up enough, and there’s plenty of consideration to pay to the areas of effect on your attacks, and the battles are fun when you’d like a break from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the staple visual novel stuff and are craving a grid-based fight.
I also experienced a couple of graphical hiccups – rough edges when loading too many chara♐cter sprites against animated backgrounds in fights and in the cafeteria, and slight lag when venturing beyond the wall of flames – but I’m also playing on my lau🍃nch-day Switch, so that may take some of the blame.
Overall, if you devoured the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series in the same way that I did, and you’re also cool with playing a decent tactics game as you unfurl the mysteries instead of going to trial or solving escape room puzzles, then you’ll feel fully satisfiedꦕ by what feels like a natural progression of these two series blending together. It’ll never escape apples-to-oranges comparisons with so much in-your-face Danganronpa, which might be off-putting for some, but that’s a highlight for people like me who loved that series and the games it inspired. Though the tactical elements never quite felt like they were prioritized as heavily as the narrative, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy earns its stripes as the next in the line of spiritual successors, given how close a chord it strikes to both Danganronpa and Zero Escape.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: The Hundr✃ed Line -Last Defense Academy-
- Released
- April 24, 2025
- ESRB
- Mature 17+ // Blood, Partial Nudity, Sexua🍒l Themes, Strong Language, Violence
- Developer(s)
- 🦩 Too Kyo Games, Media.Vision
- Publisher(s)
- Aniplex Inc., 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvelous
- Number of Players
- Single-player
- Steam Deck Compatibility
- Unknown
- PC Release Date
- April 24, 2025
- Scratches the Danganronpa itch with a hint of Zero Escape.
- Varied gameplay and winding mysteries keep things fun throughout.
- Tactical battles require effort, selective powering up, and practice to win.
- Plenty of times I laughed out loud at the zany characters and dynamics.
- The battles are fun and thoughtful, but the narrative always feels like the more important element.
- Occasional technical hitches playing on older hardware
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