The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy starts off by asking a simple question: what happens when you pluck a handful of colorful teenagers from their homes, plop them in a state-of-the-art school filled with every convenience, then force them to fight for their lives? Your guide as you navigate this question is an unsettling and creepy-cute mascot that knows more than it’s let on, and there’s an overarching mystery to the world that you can’t quite put your finger on.
If you, like I, answered “Danganronpa!” — as this premise sounds very much like the plot of the quirky and irreverent murder-mystery series from Spike Chunsoft — then congratulations! We’re both totally wrong! And after 45 in-game days with LDA, I still have no idea what’s going on, and I love it.
I’m going to be gentle with myself and you for thinking LDA is another entry in the genre of high school-themed killing games. After all, it was developed by Kazutaka Kodaka, creator and writer of the Danganronpa franchise, in collaboration with Kotaro Uchikoshi, known for his work on the adventure-puzzle game series Zero Escape. And though LDA oozes with the DNA from both series, it stands so completely apart mechanically and narratively that while I can get a grasp on the former, I’m lost with the latter.
The premise is simple enough. You play as Takumi Sumino, who gets whisked away to the Last Defense Academy, where he and a group of others use their newly awakened powers to defend the school from monster attacks for 100 days. Should they fail, the invaders will destroy the school and thereby… because of plot… all of humanity. Usually past a certain point, I can figure out a game’s core gameplay loop and rough narrative thrust. When the first body dropped in Danganronpa, I immediately understood that I’d be spending the rest of the game solving my classmates’ murders. But I haven’t been able to figure out LDA.
LDA fills the gaping hole Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes could not fix
I understand the gameplay loop easily enough: it’s a tactical RPG with visual novel-like relationship-building elements. Combat takes place on a gridded battlefield with each combatant able to attack in a different configuration, similar to chess. One of Takumi’s abilities attacks enemies in a straight line. My ally, Gaku, attacks in a rectangular pattern. Each of my allies’ attacks contributes to a voltage meter that allows us to use our special abilities when full. And if one of my allies should fall, they’ll be revived before the next wave of enemies.
I like how the tactical combat isn’t like Fire Emblem or Triangle Strategy. LDA is unique, as you’re not trying to manage the complex rock-paper-scissors formula of what weapons are strong or weak against each other. Instead, life is the engine that drives combat. Actions you take are determined by how many action points, or AP, you have, and killing certain enemies grants you more AP. On the flip side, allies who are near death can unleash big special attacks that can clear entire battlefields at the cost of losing them for the rest of the wave.
Combat then becomes a function of playing with life totals — my enemies and mine. I’ll arrange my attacks in such a way that every time I act, I kill an enemy and gain more AP so I can just keep going, denying my enemies the chance to fight back. Then, when I’m out of AP, I can unleash a killing blow that ends the round. My allies get revived the next round, and I can start the process all over again. I’ve been left so unsatisfied by the crop of tactical RPGs lately, and LDA fills the gaping hole Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes could not fix.
But while I’ve got a handle on the combat, I still haven’t the faintest clue of the story it’s trying to tell. My confusion is so thorough that as I go through each new day, my experiences start sounding like wartime letters from the front lines.
It’s day 33. Our self-proclaimed leader, Hiruko, is still missing. We’re starting to suspect she’ll never return. Meanwhile, the enemy keeps hurling themselves at our defenses. So far, we’ve been able to hold them off. Gaku recently developed his power, revealing himself to be a peerless ranged fighter. But our forces are nowhere near full strength, since Ima, Kako, and Shouma refuse to fight. And alas! Our foodstores have burnt up and I fear we’ll starve soon. War is grim, but I fight knowing the closer I get to the 100th day is a day I am closer to returning home… or so I hope.
LDA’s narrative is so unlike anything I’ve ever experienced that not knowing what’s happening next is part of the fun. I like getting dragged along for the ride, discovering new developments alongside the characters, who are themselves a delight. As other outlets have pointed out, Darumi Amemiya is the physical manifestation of the irony-poisoned and terminally online dirtbag edgel(ady), and I adore her even if her characterization gets uncomfortably familiar sometimes.
I also really enjoy how the characters are over-the-top caricatures themselves — Darumi’s the creepy murder-obsessed emo girl, Takemaru’s the typical fighting-obsessed delinquent — but make decisions like normal people. I often struggle to get into “transported to another world” stories because none of the decisions made in them have ever made sense to me, a woman who can’t turn off her overly logical and reason-obsessed brain in order to just go with the flow. So it’s incredibly refreshing to see these characters push back on the circumstances they’ve been dropped in.
Instead of just accepting that they’ve been taken from everything they’ve ever known and forced to fight and die (even if that death is temporary), some of my allies maintain a healthy level of skepticism, question everything, and refuse to fight. I know I would! And even better, other characters in the game understand and acknowledge that as a reasonable position. There’s no rah-rah speech of “You must fight!” that convinces them to take up arms. The reluctant characters are given the space to come around on their own time and for their own reasons.
That may sound boring. After all, in an isekai-like narrative, the characters are usually forced to get on board quickly otherwise there wouldn’t be a plot. So seeing a game take its time with the reluctant characters, letting them work through their hangups in a natural and unforced way, was pleasing to my brain.
In the almost 50 days I’ve spent with LDA, I do have some working theories as to where the overall story will go. How it gets there, though, I have no clue, but I’m excited to see what twists the game will take along the way.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is out now on Switch and PC.
