I’ve played games without an ending, games with just one ending, some that have a few endings based on meaningless choices right at the conclusion, and even one with dozens. But I’ve never played a game with one hundred endings. Granted, this is a bizarre proposition, especially when it takes over 30 hours just to reach the first ending.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy for Nintendo Switch and Steam isn’t really about its endings though. From the combined minds of Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, creators of the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series respectively, Last Defense Academy plays like half deranged high school simulator and half Fire Emblem battler. Its eclectic cast turns from abrasive to lovable over the literal one hundred days you play out in game, and there’s even quite a few voiced lines.
On the other hand, Last Defense Academy is really about its endings, or the journey to get there at least. The story reaches a somewhat natural conclusion, but then you get access to a branching timeline ala the Nonary games that throw constant wrenches into the works. The Hundred Line is not a game for the faint of free time.
I’ll be honest, I don’t have infinite free time, but this game clawed away what it could before I burned out. There’s definitely a “it’s so over/we’re so back” rollercoaster feel to the game: with the main game requiring you to play one hundred days and then tossing you back to day one to begin progression on your second ending, you’re in for a long ride. The game is buoyed by a fantastic cast of characters and a battle system you can sink your teeth into, but some stretches of the visual novel portion can feel very long.
You’ll spend the majority of your time working through the main story, there’s not much to side stories or character dating outside a simple gift giving system. In Danganronpa tradition, your high school protagonist is mysteriously trapped in a run down school along with an assortment of other kids ranging from grease monkey to girl who wears a pumpkin on their head. But with a twist, you all come from the last standing human population on Earth that is routinely attacked by monsters. Now you’re on the front lines of that battle.
There’s a bunch of other big mysteries to figure out, and honestly very few answers for a large majority of the game, even the large majority of the endings. Many of the branches that lead to endings usually end up with most of the kids dying in very bloody ways, with a serial killer or hidden monster responsible. These are decidedly very silly, but can also take a helluva long time to resolve. Calling them endings is a misnomer, these are near-full playthroughs. Multiple of them.
Hundred Line has a few quality of life features in place to speed up replays, the biggest allowing you to bypass most fights after you beat them the first time, even when coming in with a different cast of fighters. You can also grind repeatedly on the same stage if you’d really like, but I found simply leveling up Tsubasa to max was enough for her map-spanning movement to wipe armies in a single turn. Even still, you have to go through the day's beginning and end announcements every single day, and certain revelations will be treated as brand new information on different paths, making some “twists” downright grueling to experience again and again.
I made the somewhat unfortunate choice after beating the game to begin plundering the endings with what the game would consider to be the “wrong” choice. Of the 21 major endings documented, only four of them follow that choice, and some of those endings were still blocked by paths I needed to take with the “correct” choice. This meant dozens of hours of chasing down serial killers and participating in killing games, while fun, I can’t see any of these as canon in my head.
What kept me going was the great cast of characters. Many of them feel like stereotypes when you first meet them, many of them even hate you! But spending time with the kids, seeing them from many sides across the game’s many branches, reveals their many facets. Love blooms on the battlefield, and in alternate timelines where you’re stranded outside of school at night.
I don’t regret my time with The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, at least the first playthrough of it. I wish there was some more in-game guidance towards canon events, I put dozens of hours into the game even after beating it, and feel literally no steps closer to a true ending. I got to witness and play a bunch of ridiculous and funny events, but none of them feel conclusive. I’m sure you know by now if this game will be your jam or not, it’s 90% visual novel, 9.0% strategic turn-based battles, and 0.9% weird resource gathering board game that’s not worth mentioning. Oh hey, good old 999* is back!
If you're wondering what the remaining 0.1% is, it's a terrible side running mini-game where you just hold left or right.
