Publisher(s): XSEED Games; Aniplex
Platform(s): PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
Release Date: April 24, 2025
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, the first completely original in-house game by Too Kyo Games, is a scenario brainchild of Kazutaka Kodaka (Danganronpa series scenario writer) and Kotaro Uchikoshi (scenario writer for Zero Escape series, including for Zero Time Dilemma). Set in an alternate reality, The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- takes place over 100 days as several students are tasked with defending a school from various monsters who want to attack it. During my hands-on demo, I played through Day 29 of the storyline- but don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling it.
The scenario itself is utterly compelling, and you can see both Kodaka-san and Uchikoshi-san’s storytelling fingerprints all over it. The first day is quite long (which is necessary in order to set up the story), but the story gets rolling and doesn’t stop after. There are 100 different endings to The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, and I only experienced a couple of them throughout my time with the game. That makes sense, since I wanted to finish the demo! I will say a couple of the characters appear to be fairly one-note, and didn’t show much depth (so far, at least) to them, and I would practically roll my eyes as I could predict what they were going to say next. That said, there are some characters (and one in particular!) I absolutely adored, and I found myself growing quickly attached. And yes, you’ll know who that one-in-particular-character is when you meet them.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-‘s gameplay itself is split into two sections: combat and non-combat. The non-combat section is where the majority of the storytelling takes place through visual novel-lite visuals. There is a lot of reading of story text with static images of characters overlaying it. There is not as much atmospheric detailing as you would see in Uchikoshi-san’s prior works, but there is definitely enough flavoring to add into the environment of the school.
Taking up the combat aspect first: it is done in a tactical RPG-style. You have multiple units you can move around the map and have perform different attacks. Your goal is (usually) to defeat the enemies without having all of your classmates wiped or to have your barrier generator destroyed. Remarkably, each of your classmates play differently, and I never felt like one was merely an echo of another. Some were more attack oriented, some were more healing oriented, and some were more terrain-trap oriented. The enemy AI is tough, but fair, and you have to really think about how you want to employ your different units to ensure the battle DOES go your way. With each action you take (expending AP along the way- you start with a set number of AP each turn, and your player turn ends when you either run out or you choose to end it, and any leftover AP carries over), you build up your voltage meter. When your voltage meter goes over 100%, you can use special, extremely damaging moves upon enemies as well. There are certain other ways to build up your voltage meter ever quicker, such as killing off a classmate in a final, spectacular attack, that will automatically put your voltage meter over 100%.
Finally: There is this one aspect to the battles I’m not going to spoil for you here, but it is sufficient to say that only Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi could have come up with it. My jaw dropped the first time it happened, and it only served to remind me exactly who is creating the scenario for the The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-.
When you’re not in combat or working through the different story cutscenes, you will get ‘Free Time’ at school. This is where you can go explore the outside world on what amounts to a board game that you move spaces between based upon whichever of two random number cards pop up. You will land on spaces that have you fight enemies, risk your characters taking damage, collect resource items, and more. If you decide to not go outside, you can stay inside the school and do practice battles, level up your attributes through reading books and talking to your fellow classmates, or even level up your weapons and weapon skills based upon your expendable resources. Or, if you want to not do anything, you can just go to bed and let the time pass. I wouldn’t recommend that, though.
This ‘Free Time’ is really where The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- sets itself apart and lets you develop your own gameplay strategies. What I ended up doing during my free time was leveling up one particular character’s weapon, unlocking another of his weapon skills, and leveling both of those skills up. I also leveled up my primary character’s attributes, leveled up his weapon, and leveled up/unlocked his skills too. I was able to turn them into a two-person wrecking ball, that with the proper support from other characters and a fairly consistent AP generation system, was able to mow down lots and lots of kills within a single turn. I picked that particular way, but there are absolutely other, equally valid ways to play as well.
The fact there seems to be no truly ‘right or wrong’ way to configure your characters is a real testament to The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-‘s gameplay design. The combat is a lot of fun because of this, and I enjoyed hacking and slashing and fighting my way through hordes of enemies. Plus, combat keeps from becoming stale because you are never really sure when a battle will happen next (if you’re not doing a practice battle, of course). And if you aren’t great at tactical RPG gameplay, you can turn on a mode that completely refills your characters and barrier generator’s health bars when each Player turn starts so you can just focus on the story instead. This addition will greatly help to expand The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-‘s appeal to a wider audience and I am glad Too Kyo Games included it.
If there is one thing that I wish I could do in The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- that I didn’t see in the demo, it is to save anytime I want and return to that exact same place. When I started a battle or a cutscene, I had to play it through to the end to be able to manually save. If I exited during a story visual-novel sequence, the game would put me back at the beginning of it. Even though there is an autosave, I found myself pushing through just a bit more content to where I could manually save just to be sure.
Overall, I loved my time with my 29 Day demo of The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- and it is hard to believe this is Too Kyo Game’s maiden voyage into making their own in-house indie title. The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- releases on April 24, 2025, and I can’t wait to play it through all the way to the end! If you preorder the game, you get a separate original novel written under Kazutaka Kodaka’s supervision titled The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- Former Lives of the Special Defense Unit: File 03 Hiruko Shizuhara’s First Battle. Additionally, there are standard and limited editions for the Nintendo Switch and a standard and deluxe edition for Steam.
Are you excited for The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- to be released?
What other titles by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi have you played in the past?
Let us know in the comments below!
