Danganronpacreator Kazutaka Kodakaonce told his Twitter followersthat he doesn’t care if his projects sell well; instead preferring to make games that he and those with similar sensibilities will enjoy. The fact thatThe Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-starts off with a twenty-minute anime-style cutscene would seem to suggest that his game design philosophy hasn’t changed all that much in the time since that aforementioned tweet, although that’s not to say that his upcoming title isn’t still packed full of interesting new ideas.
Away from the hustle and bustle of theTokyo Game Show, high up on the 48th floor of a nearby hotel, around 40 video game journalists and influencers have gathered from all over the world to hear Kodaka speak about his new game. To begin with, he seems a little nervous, but as the event goes on, he starts to grow in confidence, spurred on, perhaps, by his obvious passion for the project and the positive reaction from the audience. He’s eager to share as much as he can with them about his latest creation, but also keen to avoid giving too much away too soon.
The Hundred Line Combines Story and Tactical RPG Elements
First revealed during a Nintendo Direct back in June,The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-is a tactical RPG with adventure game elements. Its story follows Takumi Sumino, a regular teenager who lives in a domed city known as the Tokyo Residential Complex. After monsters invade the city, a strange creature named SIREI appears and offers Takumi the strength needed to protect those he loves, but awakening this power causes him to lose consciousness. When he finally comes to, he finds himself in a mysterious school with 14 strangers, and together, this rag-tag bunch will need to fend off the Invaders and survive for the next 100 days.
On most of these days, players will be free to explore the titular academy, where they’ll be able to train or interact with Takumi’s fellow classmates. There isn’t time to go through all of them today, but Kodaka does share a few of his favorites. There’s Amemiya Darumi: an emotionally unstable girl with “crazy eyes” and a love of death games; and Takemaru Yakushiji: an “old-fashioned yankey” who rides a motorcycle into battle. Their designs are very much in keeping with those found in theDanganronpagames, so fans of Kodaka’s earlier work should feel right at home here.
Speaking of Kodaka’s previous titles, around half of the voice actors inThe Hundred Lineare ones that Kodaka has worked with before. This includes fan-favorite Megumi Ogata, who played Makoto Naegi and Nagito Komaeda intheDanganronpaseries. Kodaka jokes that he and the team wanted to hire Sylvester Stallone to play SIREI, although the actor that they ended up with seems equally adept. All of the game’s main characters are voiced in some capacity and will have numerous interactions available over the course of the hundred days, encouraging players to engage with them regularly between battles.
The Hundred Line’s Battle System Has Several Unique Mechanics
Battles inThe Hundred Lineareturn-basedand take place on a grid, with players having to protect a tower from several waves of Invaders before taking on a boss. Each character has their own unique attacks and abilities inspired by their personalities and certain enemies are faster than others, so players will need to think about how best to spend their AP and the order in which they take down the Invaders. Kodaka explains that it’s also possible to carry unspent AP over into the next turn, so there may be situations where it’s better to end a turn prematurely rather than fruitlessly fight on.
As they perform more actions, players will build up a special gauge known as the Voltage Meter, which, once full, will allow them to perform a devastating attack that ends their current turn. Players will also be able to sacrifice characters who are low on health by using the “decisive death” mechanic, although as there’s no way to revive characters in battle, they’ll need to think carefully about how and when to use this. Sacrificing a character too early may lead to players being left short-handed later on in the fight, while waiting too long to trigger a decisive death could result ina character dying in vain.
Although the player’s healing options are limited, Takumi does havethe ability to rewind time, meaning that players will be able to replay parts of a battle with the knowledge of what’s to come. Kodaka describes this as a kind of easy mode, but given how many mechanics are in play and how differently all of the game’s playable characters behave in combat, masteringThe Hundred Line’s battle system will still require a fair amount of skill and strategy even with this prior knowledge, particularly when it comes to the commander fights.
The Hundred Line Should Appeal to Danganronpa Fans
It’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into designing the game’s battle system, but Kodaka still seesThe Hundred Line’s story as its main selling point. He reveals that there’s a heavy emphasis placed on player agency, with poor decisions both in and out of combat able to get certain characters permanently killed. Although he wasn’t able to elaborate further, he claims thatThe Hundred Lineis “radically different” fromother multi-ending games, with 100 “extreme despair-filled endings” available in total. Players won’t need to see all of these to understand the story, but there’s plenty of extra lore there for those who want it.
Based on all of the above, it seems fair to say thatThe Hundred Lineshares more than a few similarities with theDanganronpaseries, the most obvious of which being that they both havestories that take place primarily in schools. When asked why this is, Kodaka explains that he prefers working with teenage protagonists, as they’re generally a lot more interesting than older characters and he finds it much easier to show them grow and mature as the story unfolds. He seems fairly unphased by theDanganronpacomparisons, though, which, given the success of the cult classic series, probably shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.
Kodaka may not care how well his games sell, but he appears to have an awful lot riding on the performance ofThe Hundred Line. Ina recent interview with Famitsu, he revealed that his company had gone into debt in order to fund the early stages of the game’s development. They’ve since been able to find a publishing partner in Aniplex, but the fact that Kodaka and his team were willing to go to such extreme measures to secure funding for the game shows just how much they believe in it. If this event was anything to go by, their confidence in the project seems more than justified.
The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-
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Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi join forces for the first time to deliver the ULTIMATE adventure game! 15 students are tasked with defending a school from grotesque monsters for 100 days. Can they make it to the end? And will they survive long enough to uncover the truth?Takumi Sumino is a totally average teenager living in the Tokyo Residential Complex, a place where every day is much like the last and nothing bad ever happens. All that changes when freakish monsters attack the town and start wreaking havoc. A strange creature calling himself Sirei appears and offers Takumi the power to protect those he holds dear… All he has to do is stab himself in the chest!
The next thing he knows, Takumi is in Last Defense Academy, a school in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a wall of otherworldly flames. He and 14 other students have been drafted into the Special Defense Unit, a team tasked with keeping the school safe for the next 100 days. How much are they willing to sacrifice to take back their normal lives and save the world from the grotesque school invaders?The curtain rises on 100 days of war and despair…
