It was about eight years ago that Too Kyo Games made its first public appearance and revealed a lineup of games that it was going to develop. Typically, funding of new video game companies is not a noteworthy event in the world of gaming. Still, when the people behind the company are some of the biggest creators in the genre they are looking to develop in, it instantly becomes a massive deal. One of these games is the long-awaited The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a game whose ambitions were so immense that it almost put the newly founded company into bankruptcy. Was the bet worth it?
The minds behind two great visual novel franchises, Danganronpa and Zero Escape, have joined forces to create one of the largest visual novel projects of all time. How large? This is a visual novel with 100 different endings spread across over 20 routes of a wide variety of genres, and almost every route is as long as, if not longer than, most visual novels on the market. A massive endeavour indeed, which pushes new boundaries in the genre.
The story takes place at a mysterious school in a post-apocalyptic world where a group of abducted teenagers are tasked by the enigmatic robot Sirei to save mankind from a strange disaster known as “World Death”. To do so, they must at any cost protect their school from a group of invaders for 100 days. It is a daunting task only possible thanks to a new superpower they have been given called Hemoanima.
It is a pretty unassuming story that doesn’t say too much, but its strength lies in its simplicity. To create a story that can branch out as much as it does, it is vital to have an initial premise that is easy to mold in several different ways. The core setting of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy allows it to take so many excellent and diverse turns thanks to what it doesn’t give the reader without first having to delve deeper into the different routes, leaving spicy and interesting surprises far beyond the first 100 hours of playtime.
While the core story is powerful and works phenomenally well on a macro scale, there are some glaring issues with it upon closer inspection. The biggest one is, ironically for a game made by the most prominent creators in the killing game genre, that it does not kill its darlings. On the surface, it is really amazing that they managed to make a game with 100 different endings, and the sheer length of the piece itself is something few, if any, pieces of fictional works ever written can rival. It is questionable if this was the wisest choice from the perspective of writing the best possible story.
The result of this is that one of the most glaring issues when playing through The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is that so much of it at times feels like filler. One of the worst offenders is, regrettably, the mandatory first playthrough. The first couple of in-game days are very slow and establish way too much of the setting, making them feel like a massive infodump. Then what happens for most of that playthrough? Minor bickering between the characters in the group while the main plot becomes more of a side show to what at times feels like constantly repeating characterising one-liners from every person in the party in every conversation.
Sure, it is charming sometimes, but when the party’s self-described manic pixie emo girlfriend, Darumi, for the hundredth time, suggests they all just stop quarrelling and start a killing game, even as charming a personality trait as a chronic death fetish starts to grow stale. Not to mention the effect it has on genuinely annoying characters in the group, such as the whiny, greedy, perverted Gaku, who otherwise is an excellent palette cleanser from the more serious tone.
While most other routes are far better in this regard, there is one route in particular that feels like one of the most disrespectful ways to treat the readers’ time in all of history. Not to spoil too much, but part of the route involves spending about an hour reading about how people drink milk and the philosophical and psychological aspects of milk drinking. No, this is not a joke or an exaggeration.
These are issues that would likely have been ironed out if there had been a few more editing rounds rather than adding new routes. Quality over quantity, especially when there is oh so much quantity.
While there has been quite a bit of focus on the negative aspects of the writing, it does not mean it lacks quality. Quite the opposite, actually, and that is what makes the fact that they did not kill more darlings such a visible problem. The problem becomes clear not because the lows are really low, but because the highs are so high.
Most of the time, the writing in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is right up there with the best in class. Not just for a video game story, but fiction in general. The characters are colourful and diverse, while still, for the most part, feeling like actual teenagers. It is hard to forget even a single one of them, which is quite impressive considering the size of the cast is that of a real class of students.
The themes of the different routes are also phenomenal and as well ranged as the characters. There is, for example, a route strongly focusing on PTSD and how to handle and create a rich life with it. Then there are, as is almost expected from writer Kazutaka Kodaka, several routes focusing on the terrifying and ruthless nature of mankind. While most of the routes tackle serious topics in interesting settings, there is also room for lighter routes that focus more on comedy and day-to-day character interactions.
What is really impressive about The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is how it actually manages to tie everything together with very few continuity errors. It manages to create a universe where it is plausible that the timeline can split into everything from a zombie apocalypse to a Dragon Ball-style treasure hunt for magic wish-granting MacGuffins. It is a testament to how much work was actually put into the macro space of the story.
As the story is, after all, about defending a school from invaders, of course there are gameplay elements regarding that. Multiple, actually. The largest and most impactful one is the combat system, which, for a game that is a visual novel primarily, feels remarkably well developed. It is a robust TRPG system that features several interesting tweaks to allow for the combat to work regardless of the number of party members.
The core, and the genius of it, is how the action management works. Unlike most games in the genre where each character gets to move once per turn, the battle system in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy gives the entire party a pool of action points to take per turn that can increase by defeating bigger targets, or by filling up the voltage meter, which can be used to either increase the power of a unit for the entire fight, or to get an extra action.
The problem with this is that it leads to a unique issue that few TRPGs suffer from, which is that combat often becomes one character running around and doing everything. In contrast, the rest of the party becomes cheerleaders (literally, thanks to a particular ability in the game). The developers tried to mitigate this by adding in a pretty clever fatigue system that makes it so that once a character has moved, their movement becomes heavily limited for the rest of the turn. The issue is that there are a couple of characters in the game that have special abilities that get around that limitation. Guess twice which characters are the best units in the game by a landslide?
Another quite interesting aspect of the combat system is that, unlike most games in the genre, most notably the Fire Emblem franchise, there is no penalty for the characters dying. Actually, the player is rewarded both in combat and in the combat score for having their units die. One of the most unique aspects of this is a suicide attack the characters can use when they are low on HP that deals massive damage and does not use up an action outside of a new difficulty level that was added post-release, which will be discussed more shortly. It makes the combat system feel very different from most games in the genre and more like a puzzle than a battle in itself. It is a good grade for a game’s combat system when one thinks about it, even after turning off the game.
There is a big flaw with the combat, though. It is far too easy to make the fights feel as impactful as they are narratively. Easy as in it is easy for people with experience in the genre to beat the final boss without the enemy getting a single turn on the highest difficulty setting. An FTK (first turn kill), as they are called. The developers tried to fix this by adding a new difficulty mode post-release. The result was not exactly great.
Sure, the difficulty makes the game close to impossible for anyone who had no reason to complain about the difficulty before the patch by making all enemies deal 99 damage per attack if unprotected (the strongest player character has a massive health bar of 16) and the suicide attacks cost two action points instead of zero. However, it did absolutely nothing to stop the players who complained that the combat was too easy, as the patch, in reality, only lowered the number of viable strategies from two to one.
All in all, just like with the story, this is a problem in the details of an, at large, very well-developed system, and the fact that the developers keep pushing out new updates after launch is a good sign for the future health of the game.
It is obvious while playing The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy that it is a passion project that the creators put a lot of love into. While there are many problems, it is inevitable when exploring uncharted territory. Making a game of the scope of this one is bound to have some issues. It is apparent that they have taken help and inspiration from games that have similar elements to it, but most titles that move in the fourth dimension by exploring the same period repeatedly usually only do so for three days or so. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy takes up that concept for 100 days. All in all, this is definitely one of the most interesting visual novels of 2025, and maybe of all time.
i felt bad for darumi
Yeah… The things she had to go through were so heartbreaking. :/