The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy isn’t Danganronpa 4, but it’s happy to revisit some fan-favourite tropes

By completely satisfied coincidence, I completed enjoying Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony for the primary time earlier this month – that means that I’ve lastly conquered the complete fundamental story of a large multimedia franchise that is had a chokehold on my consideration ever since I received swept up by its mini-renaissance through the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Extra to the purpose, although, it additionally implies that I went into the demo for The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy at this month’s Steam Subsequent Fest with the ending to co-creator Kazutaka Kodaka’s most well-known physique of labor about as recent in my reminiscence because it will get.

Kodaka and a number of other different notable ex-Spike Chunsoft staff based their impartial studio Too Kyo Video games across the time of V3’s launch in 2017, and since then a number of of the video games they’ve launched have been enthusiastically picked up on as probably being Danganronpa 4 in spirit if not in title. This led followers to minor disappointment within the case of each World’s Finish Membership in 2020 and Master Detective Archives: Rain Code in 2023, each of which clearly share a lot of DNA with Danganronpa however diverge on some essential part (no killing recreation in World’s Finish Membership; no faculty life in Rain Code).

Now, naturally, The Hundred Line is getting the identical therapy, and having performed the demo, it is undoubtedly leaning into the comparability even more durable than the rest Too Kyo have put out thus far. Some musical motifs and sound cues might be so acquainted to Danganronpa followers that the callbacks border on straight-up reuse; to say nothing of the artwork fashion and archetypes used to assemble a forged of characters who give the identical feeling of heat and but barely surreal overfamiliarity you get when assembly your mates’ first cousins at a marriage.

All of that is after all solely emphasised by the truth that the opening half hour of the sport – which performs out in a back-to-back sequence of fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes that really feel barely uncanny in case you’re used to Danganronpa’s visible novel fashion of supply – performs out nearly beat-for-beat like its religious predecessors. A painfully abnormal teenage boy and his she’s-not-my-girlfriend are interrupted on their strategy to a traditional day in school by a sequence of misadventures, culminating in our protagonist waking up in an unknown classroom filled with strangers and face-to-face with an effed-up wanting cartoon mascot who’s operating the present.

Too Kyo are so eager to tease you for considering what they know you are considering at this level that there is even a member of the group who’s extraordinarily overvalued on the prospect that they are all about to be compelled into some form of last-kid-standing battle to the dying. Which is the place the narratives diverge, after all, as a result of The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is a turn-based technique during which the characters are tasked with working collectively to battle evil robots and freaky monsters, and thus actively avert the form of world-ending disaster that normally exists within the bigger-picture background of the Dangaronpa sequence.

As a comparatively current convert to the delights of turn-based fight, I do not really feel fairly so certified to evaluate The Hundred Line’s deserves as a technique recreation as I do to speak about its relationship to Danganronpa. However I am not a complete novice both, and thus far it is offered me with an attention-grabbing strategic puzzle in locations with out doing something I would think about groundbreaking, which is what I’ve come to anticipate when an skilled workforce specialising in narrative-led video games department out into a complete new gameplay fashion. I would take an informed guess, although, that The Hundred Line will work higher as an entry-level technique recreation expertise for visible novel followers than the opposite approach round.

The demo covers the primary seven in-game days and ends with a cliffhanger which I will not spoil right here however which ought to fulfill gamers who’ve arrived on the recreation through the creators’ earlier works. However that is not to say that I feel The Hundred Line is cleverly hiding its true intention to reboot the killing recreation idea below the bait-and-switch cowl of a totally totally different style, and actually, I would a lot choose it to remain that approach. In spite of everything, I actually simply completed enjoying Kodaka’s 60-hour justification as to why he should not need to maintain making Danganronpa time and again unless he decides he really wants to again; and provided that Too Kyo’s relationship with the IP holders at Spike Chunsoft is by all accounts nonetheless superb, I feel that Danganronpa 4, if and when it arrives, will in all probability be referred to as… properly, Danganronpa 4, or some variation thereon.

You in all probability will not do your self or the sport any favours by going into The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy merely hoping for extra Danganronpa. However however, The Hundred Line desires you to know that it understands what you favored about Danganronpa, and that Too Kyo can nonetheless ship the weird-yet-lovable characters and wild plots you need – simply with out being restricted to the identical fashion of gameplay, or the very tight (certainly, by the top, noticeably repetitive) components that stated franchise adopted for its central trilogy.

Up to now what I’ve seen of this recreation has managed admirably to strike a tough steadiness between brand-new enterprise and self-conscious nostalgia journey, and whereas I am under no circumstances certain which half will emerge victorious within the full launch, it is received me satisfied to tag alongside for the journey. And if you concentrate on it, there’s one thing very well timed a couple of sort-of-follow-up to Danganronpa popping out in 2025 that reminds us we’re really all the time higher off banding collectively than permitting ourselves to be pitted towards each other. Checked out that approach, perhaps it is not a lot a subversion of established tropes as a pure evolution of them.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy demo is available on Steam now, with the complete recreation anticipated to launch on April twenty fourth for Home windows and Nintendo Change. And there is excellent news for PC gamers, since progress from this demo might be carried over to the complete launch.