I’ll admit I was a little nervous about reviewing The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy. Considering my experience with the last experience with a Too Kyo Game, I was worried similar issues would impede my enjoyment, but seeing this game take the form of a Fire Emblem-style turn-based strategy game certainly put some of those worries to bed.
Unfortunately, my initial worries were confirmed almost immediately once I started playing, and while I’ll concede that The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy is definitely a better experience than its predecessor, it possesses so much of what was wrong that I was almost never having fun.
The story is fairly simple and was essentially covered when the game was announced during the June 2024 Nintendo Direct. Players take on the role of Takumi Sumino, a teenager who has been living his whole life in a residential complex under a protective dome. However, one day, demonic (or possibly alien) forces invade his home and begin killing everyone without discretion.
In order to protect not only himself but the girl he has a tsundere relationship with, a strange ghost-like character named Sirei—who looks an awful lot like the ghost version of Shinigami from Master Detective Archives: RAINCODE—gives him the power to kill these creatures. But before he can even come to grips with what’s happening, he is whisked away to a school alongside 15 other teenagers. From there, they are informed that they must protect the school for 100 days and upon completion, they will be returned to their previous lives.
“The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy isn’t ‘too anime,’ it’s too stereotypical anime.”
If you’ve watched any anime, then it’ll probably feel like a pretty familiar plot. Some of the characters want to fight, some don’t, there are mysteries about the Sirei’s intentions, the school and what they’re being meant to protect and the “Invaders” themselves that need to be discovered. However, it’s not so much the story that is the problem, but—broken record time—how it’s told. Perhaps it’s because I’ve gotten less patient with age, but I genuinely cannot come to grips with games, narratively driven or not, taking 30 solid minutes before letting the player PLAY the game. For heaven’s sake, even Death Stranding only takes five minutes before letting players actually play the game.
Furthermore, while I was playing The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy, I noticed myself doing something I did during my time with Master Detective Archives: RAINCODE: skipping through the dialogue. So much of the text in this game feels so extraneous and doesn’t really do anything to add to the cookie-cutter archetypes each of the 15 characters has. Once you get their shtick, it’s pretty easy to understand who they are without pages upon pages of dialogue that add nothing other than to pad out the run time of this glorified interactive novel.
And speaking of the characters, that was probably the biggest issue I had with The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy. I have never met a group of protagonists that was so immediately unlikeable. Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t help but feel like in a game like this, you’d want to have endearing characters who you’d want to place on your turn-based team and want to see survive the turmoil ahead. But of all the characters, there wasn’t a single one that wasn’t deeply annoying.
It’s a problem I had with Master Detective Archives: RAINCODE, where I said in my review, “I genuinely hate how anime everything has to be,” but I realized this was an unfair statement. I’ve watched a decent amount of anime, and there are a lot of good ones out there. But The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy isn’t “too anime,” it’s too stereotypical anime. Everything that can be explained in two sentences needs whole tomes to get through, there’s so much needless repetition of plot points, and characters are either completely hollow or gross—would you believe there’s a weird guy who wants to bone his sister?
Gameplay is…fine. It’s a fairly standard Fire Emblem-like mixed with a little bit of Persona. Players will play through the 100 days, either exploring the school and building their characters through Free Time, or engaging in turn-based strategy battles. The battles themselves are probably where The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy is actually at its strongest, finding unique ways to build on the foundation of this kind of gameplay.
“The battles themselves are probably where The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy is actually at its strongest…”
While at its core, it is a turn-based strategy where characters have distinct movement and attack options, it feels a little bit like a tower defence as enemies of differing strengths appear in waves and in unique formations as they approach the school’s defence system. Players need to strategize and plan effectively since moves are pulled from a pool of Action Points, and not all characters can be used in a single turn. Adding to this, each character has interesting mechanics that make them more versatile than the standard Unit Types available in these kinds of games.
One character, who was shown in the initial announcement trailer, attacks with a motorcycle which is a pretty fun design in its own right, however he also gains defensive points for every space he moves and can attack in a full square around him, so moving him around the map to take out small groups gives him a advantage from bigger enemies he might draw aggro from. Another character who weilds a giant axe gains an attack bonus from every enemy she kills, so keeping her to the sidelines and letting her pick off the stragglers gives her a bonus when boss-type “Commanders” enter the battle.
Furthermore, it has a lot of interesting mechanics where attacks build a Tension meter, allowing characters to use Special Attacks. However, these specials will leave them vulnerable for a single turn. Not only that, since, as part of the plot, death within the school isn’t permanent, there’s an interesting mechanic where if characters reach low health, they can use devastating Last Ditch attacks at the cost of their remaining and any downed characters will be revived at the start of the next wave. There are a lot of really unique and interesting ideas built into the combat that make it a really engaging experience.
Visually, The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy is kind of mixed. While the game does have a nice aesthetic with a broad use of colour combined with an interesting neon aesthetic, for a game defined by its characters, they’re all really boring. I already mentioned that Sirei looks almost exactly like the ghost Shinigami, but one of the characters almost looked exactly like her human form. So many characters looked almost indistinct from other Too Kyo games to the point it almost seemed like a joke. I get having a distinct art style, but I don’t think any of these characters would pass the “Silhouette Test.”
I will say, in the audio department, The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy is decent enough. The voice actors are doing a commendable job with their characters, and even though I couldn’t stand 90% of the dialogue in this game, they did deliver each line with passion and commitment. They’re trying to bring these characters to life, and they’re definitely doing an excellent job both in English and the Japanese voice-over. Furthermore, the soundtrack does a lot to set the mood of the game, particularly in battle, which has a distinct, almost horror vibe while being fast-paced and maintaining the tension of fights.
While this review has come off mostly negative, I will say there’s a lot I really want to like about The Hundred Line – Last Defence Academy. While its turn-based gameplay was really interesting, its core component—the story—constantly kept me wanting to disengage with it. I’ll reiterate what I said about Master Detective Archives: RAINCODE, I have no doubt that there’s an audience for it, but it was far too aggravating to salvage the rock-solid gameplay.
