Good lord, I wasn’t expecting this to be this good.

I haven’t finished it yet but I can assure you that I won’t need to finish it fully to make this review happen. It has a demo, so you can try it out for yourself.

Information

Name: The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-
Developed by: Too Kyo Games, Media.Vision
Published by: Aniplex
Type: Singleplayer, Turn Based, Tower Defense, Visual Novel
Released on: 2025/04/24
Price: 60 USD (for the Regular Edition)
Platforms: PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
Played on PC

“The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-” is a game made by Too Kyo Games and Media.Vision, published by Aniplex. It is written by both Kazutaka Kodaka (Danganronpa series) and Kotaro Uchikoshi (Ever17, Zero Escape, AI: The Somnium Files series), with character design by Rui Komatsuzaki (Danganronpa series) and original soundtrack by Masafumi Takada (Danganronpaseries).

So it’s just Danganronpa 4, right? Or 5, considering Master Detective Archives: Rain Code came out first. It’s not, but it’s better.

Warning: There are spoilers due to the nature of the game. Also expect a lot of dying, with all characters, including the main character.

Takumi Sumino lives inside the Tokyo Residential Complex with long time friend Karua Kishimiya. One day the Complex is attacked by creatures and Takumi has to defend the place, after being recruited by a little creature called Sirei. He stabs himself with a knife only to be granted the power of ‘hemoanima’. He passes out after battle and finds himself inside a school, Last Defense Academy. Sirei tells him and a group of other students that this place will be their life for the next 100 days, defending the school from the invaders. Once 100 days pass, they’ll be able to get away.

While the demo closes off at day 7, the game goes all the way to day 100. And what a fantastic ride it has been. Once you finish the 100 days, you’ll be able to go back in time and fix any mistakes in-universe, opening the branches for new routes.

It is a bit of Danganronpa and a bit of Zero Escape. Makes sense, it’s from both writers. But Danganronpa is mostly the style here, which is not bad, if you like it. I personally do.

Now that I’ve said my piece, let’s judge it as a game.

What is The Hundred Line?

“The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-” is a Strategy Turn-Based Tower Defense game with a large Visual Novel part attached to it. Technically you can call it an RPG but I wouldn’t call it as such. Defending the school against the invaders triggers the Tower Defense part, where you need to kill all enemies, surviving their waves. You fail if all characters die, or the defensive barriers are gone.

Adding to that, there’s Super Moves with their in-universe power-up, hemoanima. These Super Moves can be done after getting the Voltage bar filled up. Voltage is filled up by attacking enemies, getting attacked or dying in battle. Thankfully death isn’t final in the Tower Defense part, characters will be revived at the end of the waves, to go to the next one. Just don’t kill off everyone or you’ll fail the wave! If you don’t want to fail the waves and are just here for the collab, the game offers an easy mode so you’ll probably won’t fail.

In between the invader attacks, there’s the largest Visual Novel I’ve ever experienced. As I said, I’m making this review with only 30 endings done, and it’s over 70h of play, just insanity. There’s a lot of systems, including something similar to Panic Talk Attack from DR1 called ‘Persuasion’, functioning similarly to that. You can walk around the school in a DR2 fashion, although the character and the area are fully 3D.

In essence, unlike Rain Code, this is essentially Danganronpa 4. Some might have tried to say that that Kodaka doesn’t want to make DR again, but clearly he does, and this game is exactly what we would expect from him. The music is also great, as expected from Masafumi Takada. Perhaps making a new franchise was a good idea to make some ideas flourish and this is where it differs from being Danganronpa.

Remember that the writer from Zero Escape series is also here? After finishing the game for the first time, you’ll be granted the ability to jump between timelines and make decisions. They are as simple as picking who was behind something, or what action you should take, like ‘Kick the Attacker’ or ‘Dodge the Attack’, which can lead to entirely new routes to take.

And of course, Story Locks, meaning you can’t progress a certain route until you have watched an ending. However, these routes do go mostly for the entire 100 days duration, meaning that there’s at least several gamesworth of content. Danganronpa1 had a runtime of like 25h in my experience, and so was Zero Escape: Virtue’s Last Reward. I’m at least at 70h and I only got less than 1/3 of the 100 endings. Clearly an ambitious game.

And yes, it does have 100 endings as advertised. Some of them are more significant that the others, but they are voiced, at least some lines. The voice actors and actresses did a great job on showing up the vibes for each of them and making everything sound as perfect as it could be. But still… It does have 100 endings that aren’t just slides copouts, with several of them having multiple consequences and implications.

As for the PC version, it’s fine. It runs fairly decently on my PC, and I’ve tried on my AYN Loki, and I got good framerate and framepacing although on low settings. The controls are mapped okay, and the interface is intuitive. The only real lack to it, is the fact that mouse is emulated like the analog stick, so it’s a little awkward to navigate. But nothing too breaking. No info about the Switch version since I don’t own that, but I assume it’ll run like crap nowadays.

Conclusion

Maybe he was tired of making Danganronpabecause the game got too formulaic. But it’s clear that he can’tstop making it, and we all love him for that. Then you add some Zero Escape shenanigans, and an ambitious amount of endings, and you get yourself a new IP.

“The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-” is certainly a game that will leave a mark on you and on the industry as the most ambitious visual novel in recent years, only because it has a lot of content. It is worth of at least 5 games, but all compressed into one, with twists and turns. You’ll experience a lot of emotions while playing the game, and as put in the Stanley Parable, ‘The End is Never The End’.

It is, however, a beginning of a new franchise that most likely will either go for another 100 endings, 200 endings, or be a one-off. Either way, we finally got our Danganronpa game, and it only took almost a decade for it to be made since DRV3. But damn, isn’t it a good one.

Overall Score and Recommendation

Score: 9/10

Recommended? Yes, get it.