The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-

The game was provided by Aniplex Inc. for review. Thank you!

There were two things that stuck out to me when I first played Danganronpa. First was the character's art style, which wowed me with its unique style of anime aesthetics. Both 2D and 3D styles are distinct from other anime-themed games, and I can easily pick out which game artist Rui Komatsuzaki has a hand in. Then, we have the gameplay style. The game is very text-heavy and feels like a visual novel, but has interactive elements that elevate the experience, along with fantastic UI design and art direction. It's such a great game that I can't help but recommend it.

I was hopeful that the next game from Danganronpa's and Zero Escape's creators, who left their old jobs at Spike Chunsoft to form their own studio called Too Kyo Games, would have the same exciting feeling I had from their older titles. I went into The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- with these high expectations, which I admit can be unfair to a lot of games, but Hundred Line more than steps up to create an engrossing experience with a story filled with intrigue and surprises, with gameplay that starts slow, but ends up feeling more enjoyable the longer you play.

Before I begin discussing the game, I want to affirm that everything I discuss and all screenshots are spoiler-free. I don't want to ruin any part of the story as it truly deserves to just be experienced.

For some background on the story, you follow Takumi Sumino, an average teenager who lives in a place called the Tokyo Residential Complex. You are living your own life, when suddenly, creatures attack and you are forced by this translucent mascot, Sirei, to fight off these monsters. Next thing you know, you are in a classroom at a place called the Last Defense Academy, where you have to fight monsters trying to get into the school for 100 days.

What ensues over the next 100 days is a whirlwind of events that explain why you are there, what you are actually protecting, and who these monsters are. There's so much information to pad out the story, and it's told at a great pace that kept me intrigued the entire time. I was hungry to learn more as the game went on, and whenever some burning question I had was answered, a new question emerged. However, it was always satisfying and interesting to see play out, regardless of the scenarios I ended up in.

Then we have the cast we will be interacting with. The team knows how to create a diverse cast of characters that have their own unique quirks and personality style, and that’s on full display again with The Hundred Line. Every single one of the characters stands out in some way, making them memorable and enjoyable to interact with or see them interact with others. Whether it be Tsubasa’s love of engineering, Hirito’s serious nature and fascination with how the monsters look inside, Ima’s insane obsession with his sister, or Darumi’s crazy personality and constant desire to start a killing game, each person was memorable in good and bad ways, and I loved learning about them and their pasts.

And if you’ve played Danganronpa, the Killing Game references from Darumi will sound strangely familiar, and she also has some poses that vaguely remind me of Junko Enoshima.

The game has branching storylines with multiple endings, and these will play out based on the decisions you make in-game. Not only does it feel enjoyable to go through each storyline to see how the days play out, but it always feels like something distinctive happens in each timeline that sets it apart from the rest. Too Kyo Games does a great job at blending the serious "WOW" moments with ridiculous humor throughout all the branches of the narrative, and it never gets old. And thanks to an easy way to go back and select specific moments in the story that branch off, with no loss to your progression, social stats, or bonds, it's easy to go back and try a different story route.

To complement the story, we have a mix of more interactive gameplay elements with a progression system that feels like a hit and miss at times, and a fantastic soundtrack. Every so often, you will partake in tactical, Fire Emblem-esque combat to kill the invaders trying to destroy the school. However, unlike a majority of Fire Emblem-esque games, the mechanics and goals are quite distinct from them.

Each character in The Hundred Line has their own attacks and movesets, but the way they are used is where it differs. Instead of killing 10-20 different enemies on the field, you use your attacks to destroy tons of smaller enemies before they get to your barrier generator. It's similar to tower-defense games in this way. You fight off against waves of enemies, and each wave has its own objective to complete to move onto the next wave.

Your character's moves will affect multiple tiles on the board, with your goal to kill off as many as you can. With most enemies only having 1 HP, it comes down to killing cannon fodder, with some enemies that have more health giving you extra actions to take before your turn ends and the enemy moves. As you kill more enemies, you will also increase your Voltage bar. When it reaches 100%, you can do an ultimate move that covers an even larger area and deals more damage.

It's a departure from what I am used to with this type of gameplay, and while I did enjoy it a lot in the end, it was a slow start. There is a lot of emphasis on the Voltage bar and using it to either buff your characters or use their ultimate attacks. The ultimate attacks do have one of two drawbacks, depending on how they are used: Stun your character for the next turn or kill them for the rest of the wave. Unlike other games, death is actually encouraged, and if a character dies, it increases the Voltage meter by 100%, and they come back in the next wave. This adds another strategic element of whether to sacrifice your character to power another up, and the decision becomes an essential one to consider later on.

Instead of traditionally powering your allies up, you will use currency and materials to improve their movesets. This will both increase the amount of Voltage the moves generate, how many steps you can take, and power up its attack once fully maxed out. You can also learn other moves, which can be helpful depending on the person, but I found that maxing out their basic move was enough for me. There were a couple of characters I found myself using their entire moveset, but most of the rest were mostly focused on their basic attack and ultimate. There are also some ways to improve your ultimate's power when defeating Commanders, and while these are more limited, I wasn't worried about finding more to make my moves more powerful.

Outside of combat, you will move around your classroom, talk to the other students, and power yourself up in a Persona-esque social system. You will get your "grades" up, build gifts to grow your bond with the team, and unlock side conversations to learn more about them, and you can go out to explore the outside world to collect new materials. For exploration, you will choose a team of four and go across a board game-like board to get more materials. It's a little tedious to do, but the materials you get will allow you to build gifts and enhance your character's moves.

Even with the gameplay's ups and downs, it's hard not to love The Hundred Line in its entirety. It isn't perfect, but the story is strong, the gameplay is enjoyable most of the time, and it runs really well on the Steam Deck.

The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- Steam Deck Performance

The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- is a fantastic game to play on the Steam Deck, and it feels right at home on the device. There are two ways I would recommend playing the game, but regardless of your choice, there will be little to no compromises that need to be made.

Recommended Settings

For the recommended settings, I wouldn't change a thing. The game starts on the highest quality settings at 60 FPS, and it holds at this framerate the entire time. Throughout the game, the battery drain averages around 12W - 14W, with some areas of the game going up to 17W - 20W. However, the majority will be on the lower side, and with the quality settings as high as they are, the game will look beautiful and feel fantastic.

I did notice that the game defaults to 1920x1080 instead of the Deck's native resolution of 1280x720, but when I changed it to 720p, it looked blurry. With how great and sharp the game looks at 1080p, and being able to stick to 60 FPS, I don't see any reason to downgrade.

Battery Saver Settings

I love how the game looks on the highest settings, and I found that changing the graphics doesn't help the framerate and battery drain in most of the scenes you will be playing through. So, I feel that playing at the highest quality is the best way to go. You can lower the framerate to 50 FPS/Hz to save some battery, but any lower makes the game start to feel a little sluggish. You can also set the resolution to 1280x720 and it will end up saving a good chunk of battery. I still wouldn't recommend it as much over the default, but it's an option.

Accessibility

In the settings, you can change the cursor and text speed, toggle whether text advnacves automatically and how much time it waits to move on, enable subtitles and snap camera to speaker, change the battle difficulty, change language, audio settings, and re-bind controls.

The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it does have controller support and cloud saves. There are no HDR settings.

Conclusion

The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- has been one of my favorite experiences this year. The story is engaging, exciting, and surprising, with enough depth that made me feel like it was worthwhile to go back and discover all the endings the game has to offer. The combat started off slow for me, but became a lot better the more I played. The exploration section became a bit tedious due to the randomness of events and difficulty moving around the map. But the pros heavily outweigh the cons, and I enjoyed learning about the fantastic cast and the intriguing world.

It also runs exceptionally well on the Steam Deck. Apart from some minor problems here and there with some high battery drain, it runs at 60 FPS with the highest graphical settings. It's hard not to love it, and I highly recommend playing this way.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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