Following its announcement back in June, we got a chance to get a special preview of The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- just a few days ago during the Tokyo Game Show 2024 week. This preview was a special one as it featured director Kazutaka Kodaka himself showing off the game’s combat system and characters, after which he answered some of our burning questions.
Before we start though, it’s important to know what exactly The Hundred Line is. For fans of Danganronpa, this should already be a game on their wishlist. After all, this game is the latest from Kodaka-san, the creator of Danganronpa. As such, fans can expect a similarly memorable story complete with despair-filled moments.
What also makes this special is the fact that Kotaro Uchikoshi is the game’s co-director. Uchikoshi is the creator of the Zero Escape series, and as such, fans can expect some sci-fi twists to The Hundred Line’s story.
On top of The Hundred Line being a collab between two notable game creators, it also promises to be a fresh experience for both fans of Danganronpa and Zero Escape. While it will also feature signature visual novel elements from both Kodaka and Uchikoshi’s games, -Last Defense Academy- features a tactical RPG combat system with a focus on defense.
Intriguing Tactical Tower Defense Gameplay
Kodaka-san’s gameplay preview began with a quick tutorial that will show the players the basics of how combat works. During each turn, players can move their characters in green spaces. Meanwhile, red spaces indicate areas where a character can attack. Finally, yellow squares signify the effect area for skills. Actions during turns consume AP, and when your AP runs out, the turn ends.
During the tutorial, only the protagonist Takumi Sumino is playable, meaning getting a hang of the combat system should be easy for those who aren’t used to tactical RPGs. However, even veteran TPG players will need to keep in mind that this game has more defense-focused combat. Instead of enemies aiming to take down your characters, their goal is to destroy your defensive towers.
This means enemies will charge at your defensive towers, and you lose the battle when your towers are taken out. As such, you have to be smart about positioning your characters, especially given that later levels will feature enemies all around you instead of them coming from just one direction like in the tutorial.
To help turn the tides of battle, characters can use powerful special moves like the Hemoanima Special Kill when the Voltage meter reaches 100%. The Voltage meter fills up when attacking or defending against enemies, though they can only be used at the start of the turn, meaning if you reach 100% Voltage in the middle of your turn, you’ll have to wait for the next one.
These basic concepts were shown in the tutorial, though these first battles were quite simple. Soon though, Kodaka-san booted up more scenarios that take place some hours after the game’s opening. Here, we saw the combat system in full action.
In the following encounters that Kodaka-san played for us, he controlled four characters in his party. Alongside Takumi is Amemiya Darumi, Takemaru Yakushiji, and Hiruko Shizuhara. Each character not only has unique skills, but they also have their own attack patterns.
For instance, Takumi can attack enemies in a straight line. Meanwhile, Takemaru can attack all enemies in blocks surrounding him thanks to his motorcycle. Moving to Darumi, her attack pattern is a cross which is helpful for enemies bunched up together. Finally, Shizuhara can only attack one enemy, though her attack power is much stronger.
Given these, you’ll have to keep in mind positioning during battles as you’d want the right character to be near the tower to defend it. You’d also want other characters to go more on the offensive, depending on the makeup of the enemy units. Sometimes, there are powerful units that give you more AP when you defeat them, adding another wrinkle to the combat encounters.
Enemies come in waves, and at the end, there’s often a boss called a “Commander.” While we only saw one boss encounter during the preview, it was a tough one, even when using the Voltage skills.
At some point, some characters may be in danger of dying. Given that the game has limited ways to heal characters, there’s a function called “Decisive Death.” This is a kamikaze move where the character sacrifices himself/herself to use a special move even without Voltage. While using this is not an easy decision given that characters don’t come back to life (as Kodaka-san mentioned during the preview’s Q&A phase), it is a key mechanic so that a character’s death won’t be wasted if they are already nearly dead anyway.
During the boss fight that Kodaka-san showed, some characters had to use this “Decisive Death” to take down the commander. This indicates that the game’s combat system will be quite challenging, though Kodaka-san said that newer players shouldn’t be too worried as there are ways to mitigate this for beginners. For instance, players can start with a certain amount of VOLTAGE saved when the game is over.
Even though I wasn’t able to play the game myself, the preview already had me interested in giving it a try as its tactical combat system has a lot of promise. Aside from the fact that the mechanics are quite solid, there are plenty of other characters and enemies that weren’t shown, meaning there should be plenty of variety.
If that’s not enough, the tactical combat is just one part of this game as The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- also features a major social simulation element.
Familiar Yet Fresh Story
Outside combat, players can explore the school in a side-scrolling format. Then, when interacting with other characters, the game shifts to a visual novel-style presentation. Expect many of these visual novel moments to happen in the game given that The Hundred Line is still very much a story-driven experience.
For its premise, the game follows Takumi Sumino whose life is turned upside down when monsters attack the Tokyo Residential Complex where he lives. Soon, a mysterious creature called Sirei appears and helps Sumino unlock the power “Hemoanima” by stabbing himself in the chest.
After unlocking this ability, Sumino is put into the Special Defense Unit alongside 14 other students. Their goal is to keep the school safe from the monsters for 100 days. If they fail, the world will be in peril.
What’s sure to delight Danganronpa fans here is that there will be lots of despair-filled moments, with the game also having 100 endings. Kodaka-san did not go into specifics about these endings, though when we asked him about how difficult it was to make them, he mentioned that it was challenging to keep track of them, especially considering the central mystery, not to mention the large cast.
Yes, this game a big part of the game’s story is the group of students that make up the Last Defense Academy. In the preview, we were introduced to some notable ones like Darumi aka the Landmine Girl. She should be familiar looks-wise to fans of Kodaka-san’s work, and as expected, she has quite a crazy personality.
While the entire cast wasn’t revealed, Kodaka-san mentioned that they will have their own personalities and motivations. They will also be voiced by notable names, which Kodaka-san said will be revealed sometime in the future.
What he also mentioned was the fact that the game has a “best” ending, which we assume is an ending where no major character dies. Of course, Kodaka-san said that this will be a difficult one to achieve, and it will be important to choose the right options during story sequences. Plus, players are also encouraged to explore the school and make gifts for characters to hopefully unlock this good ending.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- Initial Impressions
After a meaty gameplay preview and a Q&A session, we came away quite impressed with The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-. As expected, fans of Kazutaka Kodaka’s work will likely play this as soon as it comes out based on what we saw. What’s surprising is how intriguing it is, even for those who haven’t played Danganronpa yet. A lot of this is down to the interesting premise along with the tactical gameplay which seems to be quite engaging to play.
It remains to be seen if this will live up to the promise, but it is a title that is no doubt on our radar when it comes to 2025 game releases.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- will be released on Nintendo Switch and PC on April 24, 2025. It will have a simultaneous release worldwide.