I thought I knew what to expect from The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, and I was wrong

When I first saw The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-, I thought I was in for the same ride I've seen before. I blame part of it on the artystyle; Rui Komatsuzaki's distinctive work on Kazutaka Kodaka's other works made me put my guard down. I assumed despite all of the marketing around the game pointing out that The Hundred Line is a joint project between Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, that it was going to be the same sort of game and structure I'd seen before in Kodaka's previous works - ignoring the other strong creative in the room.

I get ahead of myself, though. Decidedly unlike both creative's previous works, The Hundred Line has a much stronger focus on its gameplay hook; in addition to being a classical narrative adventure game, much like the Zero Escapes and Danganronpas that came before it, players are now tasked with a Tactical RPG. As the last bastion's of humanity's hope, you're tasked with defending the Last Defense Academy against the Invaders that hope to steal whatever mysterious "final hope" for humanity awaits locked inside.

Unlike many TRPGs, The Hundred Line almost always places battles on the same map. You'd think this would mean that battles would get old quickly, but thankfully that's not the case - depending on both the enemies you're up against, and the students available to you, battles can have a drastically different feel. This is because every student has a completely unique moveset, similar to something like how different units act in Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth. One character rides a motorcycle, and for every tile he moves during his turn, he'll gain shield; another will have her entire moveset change depending on whether she's tired from having already moved during a single turn. One's attacks will fan out in a V-shape, dealing extra damage if the enemy targeted doesn't any neighboring enemies to their left or right. Another can place sentry towers, attacking any and all enemies in range at the end of her turn, among other constructs.

The end result of such a varied cast is that each and every fight can feel radically different; even if you have the same characters, where they spawn and what enemies they're up against can change how you tackle each fight. It wouldn't be offbase to say that each encounter feels like a puzzle, waiting for you to solve - with your party members being the tools with which you tackle it. The glue that holds everything together is the AP system; almost every action during a turn will use AP, and by defeating medium and large enemies you'll gain AP back. While smaller enemies don't offer that same luxury, it's not like they're pushovers either - in sufficient numbers, they can become a problem if not handled with due care.

During the course of the battle, you'll also gain Voltage. This is a resource that can be used to either buff a unit during a turn, to execute a special move that will deal a ton of damage alongside other effects without using AP - though leaving the selected character unable to act on the next turn. One wrinkle to this system is death; usually in a TRPG, letting a unit die is a bad thing, but in The Hundred Line that's decidedly not the case. One of the things you'll be graded on are "Great Kills", and one way to guarantee those is by letting a unit that's low on health activate the Desperation version of their special attack. Instead of using Voltage, this results in the selected unit dying. One part of the strategy in The Hundred Line is knowing when a unit is an untenable situation, and when letting them kill themselves in a blaze of glory might just be their next best move.

Outside of the scripted battles, players engage with a narrative adventure not unlike Danganronpa. Things play out in a side scrolling system not unlike Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair; during Free Time, players can interact with fellow students or read books to enhance their academic stats, run mock VR battles to gain resources, upgrade their equipment, or head out beyond the wall of Undying Flames to explore the ruined city beyond, gathering even more resources and even key items required to craft gifts which - when offered to the right students - can even further enhance your academic stats. You can't choose to do everything, as whatever you choose to pursue will pass the time, forcing the narrative to move forward.

If you choose to escape the confines of the school for a day, the gameplay outside the walls of the academy plays out like a board game. You have a number of cards that let you move a set number of squares, and you have some control over which direction you'll go whenever reaching a branching path. On each square, you're presented with either a guaranteed item drop, a preset event that asks you how to proceed in a hypothetical scenario, or a battle. Depending on your actions, you can gain resources, lose HP, reroll tiles on the map, and more. Some segments of the area outside the Academy are blocked off by the story, requiring an upgrade to your extinguisher that allows you to bypass the purple flames that block your path.

From a gameplay perspective, The Hundred Line is compelling. To upgrade your units, specific academic levels and resources that you'll only be able to acquire outside the school are required; so it's a balancing act between figuring out what gifts work best for each character, and gathering the necessary resources. Some are obvious, core elements of their character traits that they wear on their sleeve - others are revealed as keywords that you gain by spending time with them. As a result, you're incentivized to actively juggle the game's systems, as exclusively focusing on one over the others will eventually leave to roadblocks before long.

I don't want to share too much about the story, least of all because the Preview guidelines are actually rather strict on what I'm actually allowed to talk about. What I will say, however, is that another aspect I was blindsided by was both the characters, and the story. It's easy to fall into the trap and assume that The Hundred Line is mostly Kodaka's work within the first hours of the game; before long, however, it becomes increasingly clear that Uchikoshi's finger prints are just as evident, if not more-so. I haven't finished The Hundred Line, yet. However, while the scope allowed for previews is a small slice of the game - the first month or so - I can tell you this; The Hundred Line is a very, very ambitious game, to the point I'm almost scared to see how far the rabbit hole goes.

I anticipate that my first playthrough alone will likely take upwards of 30 hours, and it's immediately obvious that a single playthrough won't be enough to see the whole story through. Of course, that much isn't breaking any embargoes - Too Kyo has proudly said as much - but I want to reiterate that, yes, The Hundred Line is a game you'll clearly want to play multiple times. Blessedly, the game is a perfect fit for Steam Deck; and the entirety of my current playthrough, which is just now shy of 20 hours, has been on Valve's PC gaming handheld.

It's still early days, and I foresee dozens more hours awaiting me. Yet if I wasn't quite sold on The Hundred Line before, I am now; this is a game to keep an eye on. Exactly how well it holds up over the rest of a playthrough remains to be seen, but we might just have something truly special on our hands. I can't wait to find out for sure.