Despite having spent 45 hours with the game, I’m still not quite ready to slap “The Kotaku Review” on anything I write about The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy yet. Too Kyo Games’ tactical RPG has 100 endings and I’ve only seen a handful, the game’s “true” route not among them. But, my god, I gotta get more of my feelings about this game out of my system. I know we’re all talking about big games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Kingdom Come: Deliverance II as early Game of the Year contenders, but if you’re a fan of tactics RPGs and branching narratives, and you can tolerate a bit of cringe, The Hundred Line is a game too ambitious to let pass you by. If you’re okay with some spoilers (no, I’m not about to tell you the ending), let me try and sell you on it.
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The Hundred Line follows a group of high school students conscripted into a war against alien-like “Invaders” attacking the titular academy. The group is told that they’re defending something within the walls of the school that is vital to humanity’s survival against the Invaders, but before they can be told what they’re actually defending, Sirei, the ghost-like mascot in charge of the whole operation, is found massacred by an unknown assailant, his remains discarded in a trash can. The “Last Defense Squad” is left with no real explanation for their mission, but they have to defend the school for 100 days, lest everyone they’ve ever known and loved be doomed to an agonizing death at the hands of the Invaders.
The uncertainty that springs up from Sirei’s early demise is a key part of the tension across all 100 days in the Last Defense Academy. Some of the students have agreed to fight in this war, while others have to be convinced to take up a weapon in the game’s turn-based tactical battles. As the war goes on, people betray each other and mysteries are uncovered, and by the time you reach day 100, there’s still a lot you don’t know.
I’m gonna get into some major spoiler territory here, because talking about what makes The Hundred Line such an incredible game, one worthy of being seen as a contender for 2025’s Game of the Year, requires me to blow the lid off of some of its secrets. I fully understand that not everyone wants to see something get cracked wide open as they listen to a game recommendation, but I do believe that if the initial premise isn’t enough to fully win you over, hearing about the full scope of what The Hundred Line offers might push you over the edge. I’ve talked to people who had no interest in playing the game until I told them about the midgame twist, and then they completely changed their tune.
Screenshot: Too Kyo Games / Kotaku
As you approach the 100th day of your mission as the Last Defense Squad, pretty much everything that could have gone wrong has. You’ve lost people, the mission was a failure, and all that’s really left to do is take your team’s escape pod and reunite with the rest of humanity’s doomed remnants. However, throughout this series of unfortunate events, protagonist Takumi Sumino has gotten an unintended upgrade. Each member of the Last Defense Squad has a “Specialist Skill” in combat that lets them do something their teammates can’t. Eito, the team’s scythe wielder, gains random buffs each time he attacks, for instance. Meanwhile Ima, the group’s troublemaking little shit, becomes more powerful when his sister, Kako, is below a certain health threshold. And Takumi has the ability to reset turns in battle if you find yourself in a pickle. Because of some of the late-game reveals, Takumi’s Specialist Skill goes into overdrive, and he becomes able to go back farther than one battle. In fact, he can go back all 100 days and try this entire mission over. Maybe this time he’ll succeed.
When I reached this reveal while playing the game before its release, I felt a mix of awe and anxiety. The latter was only because I was on a deadline and was taken aback upon realizing that The Hundred Line was going to be, at a minimum, twice as long as I was expecting. But holy shit, finding out that what you thought was the full game was basically just a 30-hour prologue for the real thing is a bonkers twist not many developers can pull off. The Hundred Line is a collaborative effort led by Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and Zero Escape lead Kotaro Uchikoshi, two writers known for huge narrative swings, and if you asked me to pick two game developers who could pull off such a maddening, ambitious twist, I would have likely chosen them.
Screenshot: Too Kyo Games / Kotaku
Kodaka and Uchikoshi’s collaboration here sees each one’s creative tendencies brought to their most extreme. The Hundred Line’s first half is full of Danganronpa’s signature school life, ham-fisted (complimentary) themes of hope and despair, and the same disruptive slapstick humor that frustrates as much as it delights. The second half is when Zero Escape’s time travel influence takes over, and Takumi’s second chance at success adds a new layer to the storytelling: branching paths. You’ve seen this whole thing play out once already. Surely you can use all that knowledge to find the “good” ending, right? It’s up to you to make the right decisions, save everyone, and uncover every truth hiding within Last Defense Academy’s walls. This stretch of The Hundred Line has you repeatedly walking through an elaborate time loop, keeping your hand against the wall and feeling your way through every turn in the dark, hoping you’re on the right path.
Some choices feel small, such as whether or not to reveal a secret to the group you only know because you’ve experienced these 100 days before, but doing so can completely change a route’s trajectory in ways you can’t anticipate. You might think you’re doing everything right, but by the time you reach the end of a route, your choices may have snowballed into something unsalvageable. If moving through hours of compelling narrative branches just to find yourself at a dead end sounds more frustrating to you than rewarding, I understand, but as someone who is always drawn in by Kodaka’s grandiose, exaggerated themes and writing, I’ve been enjoying seeing just how many ways this team can riff on the same concept.
I’ve spoken to several others who have been chipping away at The Hundred Line and learned about routes I couldn’t have even fathomed. I guess there have to be some pretty wild variations for there to be 100 endings. I don’t know that I want to put in the work to see them all, but I will find the true ending if it’s the last thing I do.
Screenshot: Too Kyo Games / Kotaku
Kodaka has been pretty candid about the fact that securing funding for The Hundred Line put Too Kyo Games into a great amount of debt, and despite some high praise and decent sales, the studio is “still on the brink of going under.” While nothing has quite reached the highs of Kodaka’s work on Danganronpa for me, I have a lot of love for the studio’s projects like Master Detective Archives: Rain Code and the Akudama Drive anime. I enjoyed those projects, but The Hundred Line feels like Too Kyo Games finally finding its footing. Its premise is such an incredible Hail Mary that it would be an absolute tragedy if we lost this studio just as it had put out its breakout game. So if you’re a fan of tactics games, social sims, and the kind of plot twists that would make M. Night Shyamalan blush, I can’t recommend The Hundred Line enough. I would love to see it in conversations around Game of the Year come December, and it would be great if Too Kyo Games still exists then, too.
