The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy’s Enormous Size Was A Huge Risk – But It Paid Off

55 hours into The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, Too Kyo Video games’ visible novel turn-based technique recreation, I encountered a very touching scene. Two characters, who a number of days earlier realized one thing significantly shocking–one of a number of moments within the recreation that recontextualizes the entire experience–get up early and find yourself watching the solar rise collectively. It is a bit second of tranquility, of two folks bonding over pure magnificence amid a very tough string of days, and it landed fantastically. It felt like the sport was tapping into one thing a bit deeper, a bit extra melancholic, than what I might seen earlier than.

In line with on-line estimates of the sport’s whole size, on the level I noticed this scene, I had one other 90-120 hours to go till I may actually say that I might “completed” the sport, relying on my velocity and persistence. The identify The Hundred Line refers back to the variety of days the scholars of Final Protection Academy must defend their college for as waves of invaders periodically drive them into tactical fight. However the identify truly has one other which means that you just uncover as soon as these 100 days cross for the primary time, about 30 hours into the sport: This recreation has 100 unlockable endings, and to get the complete image, you may need to see all of them.

The promise of 100 endings feels just like the kind of advertising and marketing mistruth that pops up in a press launch to play up how a lot the sport is formed by your decisions. A recreation that claims to have 12 endings would possibly truly imply 4 endings, every with a number of minor potential variations. And sure, a few of the endings in The Hundred Line are sort of dishonest, or are similar to every other–not each ending is created equal. However there actually are 100 of them, consisting of 21 completely different “routes” that may all finish at numerous completely different factors.

On the level that these two characters took within the dawn, I had seen eight endings; I used to be nonetheless an excellent 5 hours from getting my ninth (though endings 10-12 have been all unlocked inside an hour after that). In search of out these endings had revealed new details about the sport world: The paths resulting in these endings had proven characters in a brand new mild, and several other of them had poked at new corners of this recreation world or revealed new lore. They’d been foolish, unhappy, a bit scary, and alternately humorous and tragic. Completely different characters died every time, and the feelings I felt over each have been completely different. As I wrapped up the pathway that, I imagine, is the closest factor the sport has to a “canon” ending, I knew that I might preserve going, and that understanding every part I might realized on my strategy to that ending would solely deepen my understanding and appreciation of the various paths I nonetheless needed to take.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is co-directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, finest recognized, respectively, for the Danganronpa and Zero Escape video games: two collection recognized for his or her big twists, hyperactive narratives, and penchant for killing off solid members. This new recreation has all of that too, and it throws in a reasonably competent Fireplace Emblem-style fight system on prime. That is to not point out the bonding stats with every particular person pupil, the board-game-like “exploration” mode, or the RPG-style character stats and loadouts you’ll be able to regularly tweak as the sport progresses.

Often, in video games that promise a narrative formed by the alternatives you’ve got made, a serious attraction is the notion of attending to the tip and experiencing the conclusion of the story that you’ve got co-authored with the sport’s writers and designers, discovering the conclusion that represents the pathway you cast via the expertise. Possibly you may play once more and make completely different decisions to expertise some completely different scenes; extra probably you may merely take it as a on condition that in the event you did, the story can be a bit completely different subsequent time.

The Hundred Line takes a distinct method: It is a choose-your-own journey story, however as an alternative of needing to maintain one finger again on the web page the place you made your final alternative in case it does not pan out, you’ve a neat timeline that permits you to revisit each single alternative within the recreation.

Probably the most empowering factor about this recreation is that your individual decisions do not actually matter, as a result of one of the best ways to play the sport is to make all of them and see each final result. There are definitely some pathways that provide you with extra data or a deeper story, endings that really feel “good” or “unhealthy” or some shade between, however there is not any sense of punishment, or of being denied sure story beats due to your decisions.

There is a uncommon, thrilling feeling that I do not expertise typically with video games of this scale: the sense that the builders have been capable of pursue their actual imaginative and prescient via to the tip. The Hundred Line is the sort of recreation that no enterprise strategist or market skilled would advise an organization to make and launch in 2025. A recreation this big, with no further monetization, with a pointed deal with storytelling, with a $60 price ticket and a variety of unusual and difficult themes: It might be a possible recipe for catastrophe, particularly when it depends on 3D fashions for its tactical fight system and quite a few cutscenes. It is a recreation that many media and influencers are going to be a bit scared to the touch, too, since it is so prolonged and text-heavy.

The Hundred Line took over 5 years to develop, and the script–which should include one thing within the ballpark of 1 million words–would have made localization terribly costly, particularly while you consider voice appearing. In a pre-release interview with Nintendo Life, Kodaka admitted that if the sport didn’t promote effectively, the studio “could also be performed” after taking out loans to fund growth. Per week after the sport got here out, in response to a fan on Bluesky, Kokoda stated that the corporate was “nonetheless on the point of going underneath.”

And but, The Hundred Line has been a hit. By July, three months after launch, the sport was promoting effectively sufficient that Kodaka advised Bloomberg, “I do not see chapter as a critical future.” Precise gross sales figures haven’t been launched, however evidently the danger Too Kyo Video games took in spending a lot effort and time on creating this behemoth paid off.

A part of it, I believe, is that Kodaka and Uchikoshi have constructed up good will with their earlier collection: the Danganronpa and Zero Escape collection amassed world fanbases over an extended interval. The Hundred Line can be audacious in a method that’s simple and unusual: the sheer dimension of the factor is thrilling, extra so than a recreation that supplied, say, 30 completely different endings. It additionally helps that the tactical battles are fairly gratifying, with simply sufficient depth and originality in order that going into battle by no means feels tedious.

Past all of that, although, the storytelling in The Hundred Line is–to boil down an immense amount of labor right into a simplistic sentiment–very good, with glorious character dialogue, improbable voice appearing, and an important many “what if” situations you’ll be able to discover. The characters are all attention-grabbing, creating and deepening over time, and seeing how they alter and adapt to the vastly completely different tales you’ll be able to discover is fascinating–it’s spectacular to see the sport keep consistency throughout completely different paths.

As experiences proceed to come back in of builders tightening their belts because the business shifts in the direction of extra conservative, confirmed techniques to show a revenue, seeing an organization taking an enormous danger to make one thing each huge and weird, and having it repay, is heartening. Even with out that context, although, The Hundred Line would nonetheless be my favourite recreation of 2025. It is a breathtaking achievement in narrative design, a very wild instance of simply how a lot you are able to do with participant alternative, and probably the most formidable visible novels ever made.