The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-

Genre: Visual Novel / Turn-Based Strategy-RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, from here on referred to simply as Last Defense Academy for Simplicity’s sake, is a Visual Novel and Turn-Based Strategy-RPG released in 2025 on PC and Nintendo Switch, and it answers the question, “what if the creator of the Danganronpa series made a game where long Visual Novel segments were interspersed with Strategy-RPG battles?”

As you might expect from said creator, Kazutaka Kodaka, the story of Last Defense Academy is bonkers, and goes on some wild twists and turns throughout its play time. The plot follows teenager Takumi Sumino who is a resident of Tokyo Residential Complex, a city enclosed within a dome where daily life is frequently interrupted by raid sirens causing the residents to seek shelter from some unknown threat.

One day during such a siren, the city is breached by hostile creatures and Takumi is approached by a strange mascot-like creature offering a way to fight back. After doing so, he finds himself taken to a school surrounded by unending pink flames where he and about a dozen or so other similar-aged youths are now trapped. Unlike the Danganronpa series, they’re not expected to kill each other (much to the disappointment of one of these teens whose unhinged obsession with Danganronpa-style stories is unsettling), but must instead agree to fend off more invaders trying to break into the school for 100 days, and they’re told that failing to do so will result in the deaths of everyone living in Tokyo Residential Complex.

At least, that’s the premise at the start. As I’ve said, this game’s story is bonkers, and goes on a roller-coaster ride of surprises and revelations throughout its playtime. If you’ve played through a Danganronpa game, you have some idea how ridiculous things can get, so I’ll just leave it at that. However, I do want to take a moment to discuss this game’s characters.

I’ll just say now, I had trouble connecting with almost this entire cast of characters, almost all of whom seem less like people and more like broad cartoonish caricatures built around one personality trait taken to an extreme. You have the aggressive hothead who wants to fight everyone, the cold and uncaring arrogant woman who thinks she’s better than everyone, the guy whose every comment reflects his ridiculous low self-esteem, the mentally-unhinged girl who thrills at the idea of killing and being killed, the extreme sycophant whose obsession with his sister is beyond creepy… and so on. In any other game, Takumi’s listless personality would make him unlikeable, but here he seems like an island of sanity in a sea of absurdity.

Another problem is the aforementioned mascot character, Sirei. He is very clearly taking the role of this game’s version of Danganronpa’s Monokuma character, mixed with the attitude of a stereotypical military general with plenty of offhand references to various war films and tropes. Everything about this character frustrates me – we’re apparently supposed to take him seriously when he looks and acts in a silly manner, and at a time when stakes are high and it’s supposedly important for everyone to get onboard and cooperate, he is extremely coy and withholding of important information.

The teenagers need to protect the school why? Because something in it needs to be protected or everyone will die. How so? Not telling. What are the monsters? Not telling. Why were these people chosen? Not telling. It’s so absurd that when one of the group is killed by a monster, traumatizing everyone else in the group, Sirei apparently forgets to mention that they had a way of reviving the slain person the entire time and they’re perfectly fine. Combine this lack of telling pertinent information with the way the game repeatedly regurgitates what little you already do know, and it absolutely feels like this game is padding out the plot and trying to create drama for drama’s sake without making characters act in a way that is sensible.

This plot padding is extra frustrating because it means that we go on for long stretches of time between the game’s fights, which take the form of Turn-Based Strategy-RPG battles, and are actually pretty good. Players tend to be protecting something, often the school’s force field, from invading enemies, and the unique hook here is that there are quite a lot of enemies, with most being smaller enemies that can be dispatched in a single hit, with a few tougher enemies sprinkled in.

To fight these enemies, many of your characters use area attacks in different patterns, and one of the challenges here is to determine which characters can be most effective in which positions based on the current enemy patterns. All characters pull from a single pool of action points each turn, so you’ll need to weigh the effectiveness of using a single character multiple times compared to using multiple characters in different places. Plus, when a special move charges up, you’ll have to determine who gets to use it.

It’s stunning that such a thoughtful Strategy-RPG gameplay premise comes within a game that is so heavily, heavily focused on its more unhinged Visual Novel elements, and it’s disheartening that we’re made to wade through those off-putting Visual Novel sections for lengthy periods of time to get to the next battle.

I should note that the presentation here outside of battles stays pretty close to its Danganronpa roots, with 2D anime-styled characters in 3D environments, with cutscenes that have these characters in cel-shaded 3D. Meanwhile, in battles, the game uses 3D visuals from a distance so the details aren’t as easy to make out, but they look okay, nothing especially impressive apart from some of the character designs. These visuals are joined by some voice acting that varies in quality (and honestly, given this game’s wildly inconsistent tone, it would be tough for any voice actor to match that), and backed by a soundtrack that shifts from whimsical to unsettling to chill depending on the tone of the current scene.

Overall, I felt really conflicted about Last Defense Academy, because it has some really strong elements, and some really poor elements too. The Strategy-RPG gameplay is surprisingly good, and the art style and character designs are excellent, but the story is dragged out, the characters are unlikeable and far too over-the-top to empathize with, and the pacing is just overall sluggish. If you have the patience to put up with the parts of this game that don’t work, I think you’ll find the rest worthwhile… but that’s a lot that you’ll be putting up with.

tl;dr – Last Defense Academy blends Visual Novel elements that are similar to the Danganronpa franchise with turn-based Strategy-RPG gameplay, with a story about a group of teenagers made to fight to defend a school against invading monsters. The characters are unlikeable and the story drags, while the Strategy-RPG elements are surprisingly creative and original… which makes stretches of time the game takes with its Visual Novel elements extra-frustrating. If you can put up with the bad, the good here is quite good, but you’ll be putting up with a lot of bad.

Grade: C+

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