55 hours into The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Too Kyo Games’ visible novel turn-based technique recreation, I encountered a very touching scene. Two characters, who just a few days earlier discovered one thing notably shocking–one of a number of moments within the recreation that recontextualizes the entire experience–get up early and find yourself watching the solar rise collectively. It’s a bit second of tranquility, of two individuals bonding over pure magnificence amid a very tough string of days, and it landed superbly. It felt like the sport was tapping into one thing a bit deeper, a bit extra melancholic, than what I’d seen earlier than.According to on-line estimates of the sport’s whole size, on the level I noticed this scene, I had one other 90-120 hours to go till I might actually say that I’d “finished” the sport, relying on my velocity and persistence. The identify The Hundred Line refers back to the variety of days the scholars of Last Defense Academy need to defend their college for as waves of invaders periodically power them into tactical fight. But the identify truly has one other that means that you just uncover as soon as these 100 days go for the primary time, about 30 hours into the sport: This recreation has 100 unlockable endings, and to get the total image, you may need to see all of them.
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Now Playing: The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-: Official Launch Trailer
The promise of 100 endings feels just like the type of advertising and marketing mistruth that pops up in a press launch to play up how a lot the sport is formed by your decisions. A recreation that claims to have 12 endings may truly imply 4 endings, every with just a few minor potential variations. And sure, among the endings in The Hundred Line are sort of dishonest, or are similar to every other–not each ending is created equal. But there actually are 100 of them, consisting of 21 completely different “routes” that may all finish at numerous completely different factors.At the purpose that these two characters took within the dawn, I had seen eight endings; I used to be nonetheless a very good 5 hours from getting my ninth (though endings 10-12 had been all unlocked inside an hour after that). Seeking out these endings had revealed new details about the sport world: The paths resulting in these endings had proven characters in a brand new gentle, and a number of other of them had poked at new corners of this recreation world or revealed new lore. They’d been foolish, unhappy, a bit scary, and alternately humorous and tragic. Different characters died every time, and the feelings I felt over each had been completely different. As I wrapped up the pathway that, I consider, is the closest factor the sport has to a “canon” ending, I knew that I’d maintain going, and that realizing all the things I’d discovered on my strategy to that ending would solely deepen my understanding and appreciation of the various paths I nonetheless needed to take.The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is co-directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, greatest recognized, respectively, for the Danganronpa and Zero Escape video games: two sequence recognized for his or her big twists, hyperactive narratives, and penchant for killing off solid members. This new recreation has all of that too, and it throws in a reasonably competent Fire Emblem-style fight system on prime. That’s to not point out the bonding stats with every particular person scholar, the board-game-like “exploration” mode, or the RPG-style character stats and loadouts you possibly can steadily tweak as the sport progresses.Usually, in video games that promise a narrative formed by the alternatives you have made, a significant enchantment is the notion of attending to the tip and experiencing the conclusion of the story that you’ve co-authored with the sport’s writers and designers, discovering the conclusion that represents the pathway you cast by means of the expertise. Maybe you may play once more and make completely different decisions to expertise some completely different scenes; extra probably you may merely take it as a on condition that if you happen to did, the story could be a bit completely different subsequent time.The Hundred Line takes a unique method: It’s a choose-your-own journey story, however as an alternative of needing to maintain one finger again on the web page the place you made your final selection in case it would not pan out, you’ve a neat timeline that permits you to revisit each single selection within the recreation.The most empowering factor about this recreation is that your individual decisions do not actually matter, as a result of one of the simplest ways to play the sport is to make all of them and see each final result. There are actually some pathways that offer you extra info or a deeper story, endings that really feel “good” or “bad” or some shade between, however there is no sense of punishment, or of being denied sure story beats due to your decisions.There’s a uncommon, thrilling feeling that I do not expertise typically with video games of this scale: the sense that the builders had been capable of pursue their precise imaginative and prescient by means of to the tip. The Hundred Line is the sort of recreation that no enterprise strategist or market skilled would advise an organization to make and launch in 2025. A recreation this big, with no further monetization, with a pointed deal with storytelling, with a $60 price ticket and a whole lot of unusual and difficult themes: It could possibly be a possible recipe for catastrophe, particularly when it depends on 3D fashions for its tactical fight system and quite a few cutscenes. It’s a recreation that many media and influencers are going to be a bit scared to the touch, too, since it is so prolonged and text-heavy.The Hundred LineThe Hundred Line took over 5 years to develop, and the script–which should comprise one thing within the ballpark of 1 million words–would have made localization terribly costly, particularly if you think about voice appearing. In a pre-release interview with Nintendo Life, Kodaka admitted that if the sport didn’t promote nicely, the studio “may be done” after taking out loans to fund growth. Per week after the sport got here out, in response to a fan on Bluesky, Kokoda acknowledged that the corporate was “still on the brink of going under.”And but, The Hundred Line has been successful. By July, three months after launch, the sport was promoting nicely sufficient that Kodaka informed Bloomberg, “I don’t see bankruptcy as a serious future.” Exact gross sales figures haven’t been launched, however plainly the chance Too Kyo Games took in spending a lot effort and time on creating this behemoth paid off.Part of it, I feel, is that Kodaka and Uchikoshi have constructed up good will with their earlier sequence: the Danganronpa and Zero Escape sequence amassed world fanbases over an extended interval. The Hundred Line can also be audacious in a method that’s plain and unusual: the sheer dimension of the factor is thrilling, extra so than a recreation that supplied, say, 30 completely different endings. It additionally helps that the tactical battles are fairly satisfying, with simply sufficient depth and originality in order that going into battle by no means feels tedious.Beyond all of that, although, the storytelling in The Hundred Line is–to boil down an immense amount of labor right into a simplistic sentiment–very good, with wonderful character dialogue, unbelievable voice appearing, and a terrific many “what if” eventualities you possibly can discover. The characters are all fascinating, creating and deepening over time, and seeing how they modify and adapt to the vastly completely different tales you possibly can discover is fascinating–it’s spectacular to see the sport preserve consistency throughout completely different paths.As reviews proceed to return in of builders tightening their belts because the trade shifts in the direction of extra conservative, confirmed ways to show a revenue, seeing an organization taking an enormous threat to make one thing each huge and weird, and having it repay, is heartening. Even with out that context, although, The Hundred Line would nonetheless be my favourite recreation of 2025. It’s a wide ranging achievement in narrative design, a very wild instance of simply how a lot you are able to do with participant selection, and one of the vital formidable visible novels ever made.