The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- TGS 2024 gameplay shows off characters and suicide attacks
The 2024 Tokyo Game Show played host to Too Kyo Games' upcoming strategy RPG, The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-. In a livestreamed event, creator Kazutaka Kodaka, voice actor Taihi Kimura (who plays in-game protagonist Takumi), and actor Kanata Hongo showed off live gameplay from it for the first time. The demo included scenes from early in the game, as well as a battle to show off The Hundred Line's combat system.
You can check out the live-translated demo stream archive below, which kicks off at the 10-minute mark. The untranslated stream can be found at this link.
The stream formally introduces the game's premise, which was first outlined when The Hundred Line was announced in June 2024. Takumi Sumino is an ordinary young man who has is everyday existence destroyed by the invasion of strange monsters. To protect his childhood friend Karua, he accepts a "Gakuryokutou" weapon from SIREI, a mascot-like creature claiming to be his commander. Plunging the sword into his heart, he activates a strange power, and is whisked away to a the Last Defense Academy, a weird school surrounded by flames that never stop burning. SIREI drafts fifteen youngsters into the Special Defense Squad, ordering them to defend the school from the monster siege for 100 days, in order to return to their everyday lives.
The Hundred Line will have a total of fifteen playable characters, who gain fighting powers when deploying into combat by stabbing the Gakuryokutou into their chests. The demo scenes and battle gameplay featured three characters in particular besides Takumi: Darumi Amemiya, a twisted girl with an exposed jawline and a love of death games, Takemaru Yakushiji, a tough biker, and Hiruko Shizuhara, a taciturn, no-nonsense woman. A fourth character, Eito Aotsuki, appears to be voiced by Megumi Ogata (who also played Makoto Naegi and Nagito Komaeda in the Danganronpa games), but Kodaka played coy as to their personality and role in the story.
Combat-wise, The Hundred Line focuses on grid-based, turn-based tactical combat, with each team assigned to defend a tower on school grounds from large numbers of monsters. The monsters greatly outnumber the defenders, meaning that positioning and properly managing the areas of effect of each character's skills is critical to keeping the tower safe. Each character has a unique weapon and set of skills. Takumi can slash wide single rows with his sword, while Hiruko has a very short reach but can annihilate single targets with her axe. Darumi can target groups from safety using her ranged skills, while Takemaru's motorcyle lets him crush large numbers of enemies in a circle around himself. As they fight, the defenders charge "Voltage," which can be used to power ultimate attacks or activate buffs. When at low health, characters can also use a suicide ultimate of sorts, incapacitating themselves in exchange for a heavily damaging attack that also maxes out the Voltage gauge. The idea behind the suicide attacks is to make sacrifice plays a valid part of combat instead of a mark of failure. During the boss battle portion, Kanata Hongo (who was playing) sacrificed two of his team members (including Takumi) to power up Eito enough to finish off the boss in one blow.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- will launch on PC and Switch on April 24, 2025 in Japan.
