The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy has been a surprisingly enjoyable visual novel style game with tower defense combat to jump in and out of over the last couple of weeks. I’ve got around 60 hours of playtime with one full playthrough and I am currently making my way through NG+ to unlock some of the various endings and reveal more of the truth of what is going on.
I didn’t actively follow this game but instead saw a tweet from Sandfall Interactive (the team behind Expedition 33) recommending it and you know what seeing smaller developers recommending other smaller developers games is a pretty nice thing to do.
So I looked into it a bit more and found out that The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy was a collaboration creation from two directors; one of which Kotaro Uchikoshi I was familiar with having played (two of) the Zero Escape games and AI: The Somnium Files. So from that, whilst this was an original IP I had some familiarity with the type of gameplay to expect. Being a fan of the Persona series and also having played 13 Sentinels visual novel style gameplay is something I’ve enjoyed a lot in the last couple of years mostly thanks to having some excellent recommendations to start in this genre with.
The Hundred Line takes place in an academy that you are tasked with defending from Invaders for the next 100 days. You play mostly as Takumi Sumino who has a very mundane life until one day he gets jump scared by a dog and it turns his life around. For the better, or worse? Well, it takes 100 (in game) days to really figure that out. The first full playthrough of The Hundred Line has you following a series of events in the Last Defense Academy alongside a group of unique characters who are there to fight alongside with you. At first, not everyone wants to fight, and its up to the protagonist to convince everyone to work together. This is dotted in with a mix of visual novel style cutscenes, bonding events to raise stats, exploration for materials to upgrade things like weapons or create gifts for your classmates and tower defense style battles where you defend the academy from an onslaught of invaders.
The game really opens up with the New Game+ feature which allows the player to use Chapter Select in order to alter decisions made for different outcomes. Each decision made slightly alters the timeline the player experiences and allows you to uncover mysteries and secrets. Supposedly the game has 100 endings but you’re not required to do all of them to find out the truth of what is going on. I believe there are achievements for around 20 unique endings. I intend to try and get as many of them as I possibly can.
The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy has been fun to play. It is quite gore-graphic with blood so that’s something to be aware of if you’re uncomfortable with that. The characters unlock hemoanima to access their powers which includes stabbing themselves and going into a blood cocoon before each fight so they can access their Class Weapons. Each character has unique abilities, some are great for support, others good for building up voltage (lets you access your superpower moves and buffs) and some make excellent tanks, alongside your heavy hitters. I found the combat engaging enough and subsequent playthroughs allow the player to skip battles they’ve already completed in alternative playthroughs of the game which does make getting a few routes easier than others. Each battle gives you rewards for upgrading your Class weapons and skills to make you stronger in combat or increase the amount of power ups and traps you can lay around the grid in each round.
My favourite character is Hiruko Shizuhara because she acts like a complete badass and has a massive axe to one shot enemies in combat. I found her one of the more intriguing characters for *story reasons* that I wont spoil and because there is still, even for me, some mystery there as I too am trying to avoid spoilers for potential endings and circumstances. Plenty of other characters have something interesting to add to the story. Some are, as can be expected with a large cast, more annoying than others.
Its a game I can see myself going in and out of still over the next few weeks as I navigate other paths and choices. Being a visual novel I find it easy to dip in and out of when I feel like it but the first playthrough really was pretty engaging enough to get me hooked in through those first 100 days. The Hundred Line – Last Defense Academy is available to play on Switch and PC. I’ve been playing through Steam.
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