The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-

It’s a 200 hours game, I have a lot to say about it, but I know people looking in Steam reviews mostly just want a short yes or no. [b]Yes[/b], I do recommend Hundred Line. However, I think most people will [b]not enjoy or want to experience it fully, to say the “100 endings” that the game advertises[/b]. That’s simply because most of those endings do not have the same amount of investment as the clearly two more well developed routes: Route 0 and 2nd Scenario. Route 0 is the “Prologue” or “1st Scenario”, the first 100 days that you have to play before starting making choices and getting your own endings. 2nd Scenario is a specific route that shows the main themes that the director and writer, Kazutaka Kodaka, had in mind with this work. If you play through those two routes, you will be playing for around 40~60 hours, and I think you will leave very satisfied with the game. I’m not saying those two routes are the “best” or my favorites, just the ones were the secrets and themes of the narrative make the most sense and have the biggest impact, while also having a higher “budget” overall in the sense of having new soundtracks, cutscenes and fights. So yeah, go play it. A bit expensive game I would say, so maybe wait for a sale. You can easily find a spoiler free guide on how to get the 2nd Scenario on Google. … If you did go through those two routes, is there anything else the game can offer? Yes, it has, but how much is up to you. Down bellow there is a bit of spoilers in the form of the name of the other routes, but I will not talk in depth about them, just a short comment on their contents and to who I would recommend it. [spoiler]The game has 20 other routes: Reset, Goodbye Eito, Rebellion, Eva, Multiple Eito’s, Serial Battles, Conspiracy, Casual, Box of Blessings, Box of Calamity, Cult of Takumi, V’ehxness, Coming of Age, Retsnom, S.F., Romance, Slasher, Comedy, Killing Game and Mystery. If you want a short read that ventures in content not fully explored in Route 0 and 2nd Scenario, but still connected to it, I would recommend reading Goodbye Eito and V’ehxness. Goodbye Eito is a short “what if” where we see the narrative at the end of the 2nd Scenario by Eito point of view. Great to read regardless if you like him or not. V’ehxness route shows a bit more of the Commander’s side, including V’ehxness herself. Isn’t as much as I would have liked, but it is good to see other sides of those characters that we see through the game so many times, giving them a bit more of characterization. If you want more “meaty” routes, somewhat like 2nd Scenario, Killing Game and S.F. would be the other two options. Killing Game is the closest of something like 2nd Scenario in the sense of a story that we see more sides of the characters and go a bit deeper in their personalities, while also having a more developed story line that makes you attached to it. S.F. is the “dessert” of the game, meant to be played after you played the other routes, to give the player some sense of conclusion to the whole thing, while also giving a lot of focus in the character of Hiruko Shizuhara. There are other routes who focus on character development, but they end giving up in making an interesting story line that connects the dots to just focusing on the character in the spotlight. Those would be Eva, Multiple’s Eito’s, Retsnom and Romance. Eva honestly isn’t exactly a route that I would recommend even if you liked her character; I think you can get more out of her on the Killing Game route, but it is more content of her. Multiple’s Eito’s is interesting if you want more of that hate and antagonism that we see at the end of Route 0, but like Eva, I think the character has other routes where he is better (2nd Scenario, Goodbye Eito, Coming of Age). Retsnom is a bit of a sad tragic story, but it gives a lot to Darumi Amamiya as a character; even if you disliked her, I would recommend this route. Romance focus on three characters: Kurara Oosuzuki, Kiyoshika Magadori and Tsubasa Kawana. There is also quite a bit of Moko Mojiro. It’s like three shorts routes connected one to another, allowing for a pleasant read that gives you a better insight on those four. Even if you aren’t particularly found in any of them, I think you will at the end of the route enjoy them more. If you want more “fanservice” routes, I believe that would enlist Coming of Age and Cult of Takumi. Coming of Age is fanservice in the sense of “what if the story was happier and simpler, like a shounen manga”. It has setbacks and it does develop some characters more, but it isn’t as meaty as the Killing Game route and it does ends having somewhat easy solutions to problems and conflicts. Cult of Takumi is fanservice as you would expect out of reading the term: it has a lot of fanservice CG’s while also having a power fantasy narrative. Finally, if you want “thriller” routes, there is the already mentioned Killing Game, but also Slasher, Mystery and Box of Calamity. I honestly don’t have much to say about each of those, they are good and check that box of “I want things to be more tense”, even if it isn’t quite to the level of other Kodaka or Uchikoshi past works. Slasher is all around nice for that niche, one of the scariest endings for me is here. Mystery is frustrating to get early on because it sets some expectations that will be left unfulfilled by the game. Box of Calamity is ok, but the narrative drags a bit too much. And then there is the other routes: Reset, Rebellion, Serial Battles, Conspiracy, Casual, Box of Blessings and Comedy. Reset isn’t really a full route, just a alternative ending to 2nd Scenario, taking at best 5 minutes of your time. Casual is a somewhat short what if scenario that is conceptually interesting and fresh to read, not on top of route recommendation but good to do so after you played the game a bit. Rebellion has some great ideas but doesn’t go much deeper on them unfortunately. Conspiracy is on the same spectrum, but ends up being worst since it’s a lot of even shorter rushed endings that go nowhere. Serial Battles is a route that seems like it wants to focus on the gameplay aspect of the game, but since the battles are so very similar and repetitive it doesn’t really achieve much of it, with the narrative being just “let’s fight” from start to finish. Box of Blessings has nothing to write home about and suffers from the same banes as Box of Calamity: the day by day drags a lot. Comedy is just Hundred Line cast in silly situations.[/spoiler] That’s it for a short resume and recommendation about the routes. There is a bit to everyone while also a bit to no one at times, so take your poison.

(Post-100%, no major spoilers review): For better or worse, the routes in this game often feel like fanfiction of itself. It seems that during its production, the Hundred Line writers were doing a Hundred Lines (of coke) You will see a character talk as if they're channelling the spirit of a master detective, only to then, in another route, have their 2 braincels locked in solitary confinement Often held together by duct-tape and dreams, the amount of holes in the game's plot and its characters, rivals that of a cartoon's depiction of moth-infested articles of clothing Certain characters' writing is baffling. Such as a character, who, in all 22 routes, is written to be unlikeable. To the point where if his annoyance were profitable, he'd have enough funds to get his family and himself out of debt Multiple characterisation and plot points are also regurgitations of the Danganronpa series, and speaking of regurgitation, there is no shortage of the writers' barely disguised vomit fetish, with sprinkles of other fixations, such as a character who often talks about literal feces Keeping it vague, the twist villains are predictable, full of plot holes, and given plot-armor. The game loves to stroke its own ego with "Ooooh I bet you didn't see that one coming, did you!" Yes I did. About 4 days after the sub-route started. We're now like 70 days in, and you never gave me the option to expose them early on. Is their plot armor made of titanium? Which brings me onto my next point. The choices. You will not be given the choice over whether or not we should brainwash the prisoner of war, and force them to act against their best interest, violating the Geneva convention in the process...but you will get the choice of the students eating meat or fish for a meal in a silly route With 22 different routes, 100 different endings, 15 different students, 7-8/15 students don't even have their own focus route!!! "I sure like Kako in route 0. I can't wait until I play a route that focuses on her" NOPE! 500 MORBILLION ROUTES TO EITO!!! 200 QUINTILLION ROUTES WITH TSUBASA AS THE PLOT-DEVICE CHARACTER!!! AAAAAAAAAA And out of the 15 students, I actively disliked/hated 5 of them. That's 1/3 of the main cast! And there are multiple others that get little to no character development!! It's like Danganronpa, I suppose. You know the writing often sucks, but you're still invested in the characters and the story. That's how I felt when playing this game. It made me feel lots of different things, which is much better than a game I have little attachment or thoughts on

The main pull of this game is its sheer size, but it'd be a much better game if it was not so big. It gets you excited for whats to come the first 30 hrs or so and ends up being a let down with so many of the routes feeling completely random and pointless. A LOT of it feels VERY repititive soon, and although you could argue you're not supposed to play it in one go you kinda feel like you have to since you hardly learn anything about the main plot most of the time. The writing quality is also all over the place If you really want to like it you should probably use a guide to only get very specific endings, but saying "this game is good if you take all the bad stuff out of it" isnt doing it any favors

Also spoilers for Danganronpa 2 and V3, I guess. The more I think about this game, the more it pisses me off. [spoiler] Honestly, it feels like a compilation of Kodaka’s absolute worst tendencies: cringe dialogue, dumb fanservice, gross moments, and unbelievably annoying characters. And dear god, these characters are unbearable. I’m starting to think I liked Danganronpa mostly because the people on screen kept dying. These are clichés cranked up to [b]100[/b]. We’ve got: the unbearable pervert, the complete moron, the guy who can’t go a second without talking about what a piece of ♥♥♥♥ he is, the maniac, the mountain of muscles, and basically every other trope imaginable. The only exceptions are the protagonist, who has the personality of plain white bread, his primary love interest - basically white bread with a pinch of salt - and someone like Tsubasa, who was just sliced bread. Every now and then the game genuinely tries to give the cast some development, only to forget about it five minutes later. And god, nobody is worse than Eito. He’s the dumbest and most unintentionally hilarious character in the entire game. The whole time I kept hoping he’d turn out to be a normal, positive guy because that would’ve actually been surprising. But nope, they had to make him completely unhinged. Except unlike Nagito, where the insanity actually worked, here it’s a complete trainwreck. Apparently he literally sees humans as disgusting monsters and therefore wants humanity to go extinct. It’s so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ stupid. Since I’ve already brought up Danganronpa, let’s address the elephant in the room. Maybe I misunderstood V3, but its ending felt like Kodaka saying: “Guys, I’m tired of making the same thing over and over. Let me stop before this turns to ♥♥♥♥.” And then he releases a game that physically cannot stop referencing Danganronpa every five minutes. “OOOO LOOK HAHA JUST LIKE DANGANRONPA, REMEMBER THAT?” The first callback made me smirk. After that it became a complete farce because the dude literally cannot stop doing it. And from what I know, one route is just a straight-up killing game. Before talking about the routes, though, I should talk about the plot. If someone asked me what this game is about, I’d say it’s about teenagers doing stupid horny ♥♥♥♥. If they asked me what the plot actually is? ♥♥♥♥ if I know. A bunch of teens saving Earth, maybe? To its credit, the game does maintain mystery well, and there are some genuinely surprising moments. But in the end it all becomes so stupid and meaningless. Especially because of how the routes are structured. For the first 20 hours or so, you’re completely railroaded with no ability to affect the story. The game constantly gatekeeps information by killing off characters who hold the answers, while dropping vague revelations you inevitably misinterpret without context. Honestly, that part is cool. It works. Especially since the initial ending is bleak and answers almost nothing, slowly nudging you toward the realization that you can now alter your choices and unlock one of the [b]100[/b] different endings. You know what else there are [b]100[/b] of? Gameplay “days.” Every route lasts [b]100[/b] days except time passes however fast the story feels like. And when the developers clearly had no idea how to stretch a route to [b]100[/b] days, they skipped them in the dumbest ways imaginable. Example: in one route the protagonist literally slept for weeks for absolutely no reason. And I don’t mean “nothing interesting happened off-screen.” No. The dude was literally unconscious. Everyone was worried about him, he himself didn’t understand why he kept randomly passing out. Do they ever explain it or tie it into the route somehow? Lol no. They just had no clue how to pad the runtime. But the funniest thing was the locked routes. After beating the main story, the game basically tells you: “Brother, this is your story now. Go wild.” Naturally, I picked choices that genuinely felt right to me. And where did it lead me? To a route that near the end suddenly told me: “Go play five other routes TO SEE THE CONCLUSION OF THIS ONE.” What the ♥♥♥♥. That is some of the dumbest ♥♥♥♥ I’ve ever seen. Am I going to see spoilers for the other routes if I continue? Isn’t the whole point of a branching narrative that you discover things naturally? If so, don’t structure your game like this. So yeah, I was extremely disappointed. The next route I played almost exactly the same way except I changed my very first choice - whether or not to kill Eito, the insane dude who had literally already murdered your “friends.” That led me to one of the blandest endings imaginable. Turns out that ending actually had THREE variations, all of which changed only a microscopic detail at the very end, yet they still count as separate endings toward the total of [b]100[/b]. To be fair, I saw that coming. I genuinely can’t imagine who could realistically make [b]100[/b] fully unique endings. By that point I’d also learned there was apparently a CANON ending, which I found really stupid because I thought the entire point was finding your own ideal outcome. And this route was an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Every ridiculous moment and every asspull the game had already thrown at me just got doubled. It literally felt like a playground argument: “WELL HERE IS MY SUPERPOWER!” “WELL HERE IS MY SUPERPOWER AND IT BEATS YOURS!” Then all the lobotomy nonsense started, then clones, then whatever other garbage they decided to dump on me. Eva, probably the only character I remotely cared about, got dragged through the mud, while my beloved Eito somehow received the dumbest character arc imaginable: going from a lobotomized idiot (which of course didn’t stick), back to being a traitor, to trying to overcome his weakness by literally gouging his own eyes out, only to keep fighting blind as if nothing changed. THIS GAME IS SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ STUPID. The funny thing is, the actual ending was surprisingly decent. It’s just a shame the journey there was utterly moronic and felt incredibly rushed. Those are all the routes I completed. Technically two and a half out of a hundred. I simply couldn’t take any more. Not just because the dialogue is stupid and perverse, and not just because it’s repetitive. It’s because besides being a visual novel, the game also has a second half: a light TRPG system. And that absolutely murdered my interest. Honestly, it’s not even that bad at first. But later it becomes a complete slog. Half the fights have to be repeated across routes, and you can only skip them if you’ve already done the exact same battle before. Except even in identical fights, they love adding one extra enemy just to trigger a line like: “Where did YOU come from?!” The battles themselves are piss easy anyway, especially once you upgrade your consumables a bit - resources for which are gathered through what’s basically a board game where you roll dice and pray. As the game explains, the characters have special blood that lets them create weapons, resurrect from death, and do all sorts of crazy ♥♥♥♥. The developers translated this gimmick directly into gameplay. Every character has an ultimate ability that can either be activated by spending [b]100[/b] points and stunning yourself afterward, or by using it at low HP, which outright kills the character. You know what happens when a character dies? You gain [b]100[/b] points. Now imagine having tons of consumables that reduce characters to 1 HP, plus a roster of 15 people you can basically treat as disposable livestock. Exactly. The entire combat system turns into a circus. At some point I realized I just didn’t want to keep doing this anymore. Maybe one of those endings really was hidden gold, but I guess I’ll never know. “Brother dearest, sister dearest” my ass. [/spoiler]

this is a game i recommend in the same way people recommend homestuck. this game will change you as a person, both in how it's extremely good and in how it's extremely bad. it will change the way you view the medium, and as a gamedev myself i am very much taking notes. Here's some of those notes. -The way this game does pacing and flow, especially early on in the 40-hour first act, is incredible. The game mixes up different modes of play enough to always keep you guessing what comes next. it's very compelling, the game equivalent of a page-turner. -Although the sheer size of the game feels excessive, no two routes feel the same. even if you take all the dialogue out, the routes play differently enough that they each have their own identity. Repeat battles are a problem though, which leads me to... -This game's combat is some of the most unique I've seen in the genre, despite it wearing its inspirations on its sleeve. It's got that Into The Breach sensibility where there is no missing, so each turn plays out like a puzzle. Everything you do has some kind of cost: moving inflicts fatigue, using a metered super puts you in stun, and if you don't want to spend meter you can just use a suicide super to do the same damage. Your units come back to life in the next wave, and killing them is actively rewarded. So while the game makes you feel the physical cost of fighting, it also gets you to take on a very heartless mindset towards the people in your squad. If you want a clear example of how mechanics can create a mood, play this game. -But I mentioned that Into The Breach is an inspiration for this game's combat, and unlike Into The Breach, The Hundred Line doesn't do randomized encounters. And because a game of this size will inevitably have to cut corners, there are a fair few repeated fights if you play multiple routes. So after a while, the battles become samey, and there isn't any output randomness like missing that would make the same fight play differently. A patch added the option to skip repeat fights, but if a much-demanded feature of your game is the ability to play less of it, that really says something. -On that note though, while the combat leaves an extremely strong first impression, I find myself frustrated with it after 200 hours. Because it has very little in the way of randomness, it's not too hard to "solve" even on the highest difficulty. I won't give away the solution, and in fact there are many, but I will just say that The Hundred Line's combat is a game about action points. Once you know how to efficiently gain and spend AP, there is very little the game can do to challenge it. It especially doesn't help if you upgrade your units or stockpile on items, but, to be fair, "Progression systems are a difficulty slider that only goes one way" is a complaint I have about most RPGs. -Some routes in this game are very good. Peak, one might say. Others are not very good, and people have pointed this out already. And the game doesn't really tell you how to get to "the good ones." There is an extremely good route that feels like a proper ending to the game, that is buried behind half a dozen choices and no indication this is the way to go. This is a feature, not a bug. Some routes seem to be designed deliberately to waste your time, and while most people will hate this I have to admit I have a certain respect for it. This is a game that is ABOUT its size, about trying to find meaning and closure in an endless stream of possibilities. I've gotten 80 out of the 100 endings, and I'm still not sure if that search will be successful. But the pursuit of meaning is, itself, meaningful, and the game's given me a lot to think about. -The game is very horny in very particular ways, that some people, including me, will find tasteless. To be clear, I am not shaming anyone here. There's a route where you become an evil woman's pet boy, and I was all over that, and even the parts I'm about to complain about are still very compelling. But the way it handles subjects like sexual assault with a combination of titillation and mean-spiritedness comes off extremely callous if you're like me and have actually been through some of it. I'm not saying any of these scenes are bad or that i'd want them gone, but like. Too Kyo, come on. You've already patched in the ability to skip most of the gameplay. If this is the part you stick to your guns on, I'm... well, not mad. Just disappointed. Despite all this, I still think very highly of the game. It's one that knows how to make a moment. There are so many moments in this game, big and small, positive and negative, interactive and not, that I will probably remember for the next ten years. Usually when I use a term like "peak" I mean it somewhat derisively. Like, "Ace Attorney Investigations 2 isn't the best, but it is peak!" But here I mean it completely genuinely. This game is amazing. It's changed how I think about art, and easily would have been my game of the year if unbeatable hadn't come out in December. I took a break from THL for months after one of its scenes hit a bit too close to home, but in those months I waiting to finally be ready to get back into it. And it is still so good. If you have any desire to play this game, play it. You won't like everything, but you'll love enough of it that you're willing to forgive it. Also the voices in my head are starting to sound a lot more like Darumi now.

this is probs the only game to have released in recent times where you get your ENTIRE money's worth. at first, i wasn't sure if i was gonna play all 100 endings because that seems long but each route is so different that i said f*ck it and went for it. boyyyyyyy am i glad i did. each route is so weird, funny and unique that it doesn't feel like you're playing the exact same thing over and over again. kodaka is a genius and i need everyone to play this game because i need him to make more games. the characters, music, writing, everything is just absolutely amazing. i can't recommend this game enough

After 42 hours played, I've come to the conclusion that I unfortunately cannot recommend this game, not even to fans of Zero Escape or Danganronpa. While it has its moments, the majority of my experience has simply not been fun or exciting, and I find myself once again disappointed by a studio I thought was capable of so much better, but perhaps they have officially lost their touch. This is first and foremost a visual novel, which mandates that the story and writing be its best qualities, but they're just not. The pacing is atrocious. The story drip feeds you the interesting and engaging bits in a piecemeal fashion every ~2 hours, but the time spent in between is a snoozefest of repetitive actions and uninteresting subplots. Characters will have nonsensical conflicts and motivations. The dialogue is often cartoonishly bad. They mostly just voice silly lines that reinforce their one most identifiable trait, ad nauseum, and they have a tendency to talk about events like they expect a six year old is playing, laying out every single detail, with repetition for emphasis, like we can't see or think for ourselves. I am not drawn to 90% of the 2-dimensional-at-best characters, and many of them are designed to be unlikable, aloof, annoying, or strange. I don't feel motivated to spend more time with these people. When the story does have its brief moments of getting interesting it's often accompanied with a feeling of either "well I guess that's a thing now" with no set up or foreshadowing, or "yep, saw that coming." The story has been mostly stretches of insufferably boring *nothing* interspersed by rare moments of sudden developments that either come out of nowhere or felt obvious, failing to be a twist. Does the story have its moments? Sure. But they're few and far between. The strategic combat sequences are [i]fine[/i], but nothing to write home about. I never felt particularly challenged or engaged, and achieved S ranks almost every time. The outside tile-hopping minigame is a boring time-waster that quickly loses its novelty, and the devs know it which is why they offer the option to skip it. The Free Time is an overabundant chore that massively pads the game out and further makes it all a slog to get through. I'd enjoy it more if I felt the characters were worth hanging out with. Without saying much, after my mostly mid-to-negative experience thus far, the "route" system does little to motivate me to explore more. I'm just so over it all at this point--I've decided I'm not interested. The presentation is, as usual for this studio, honestly great, with the graphics, effects, music, UI, and cinematic direction all being high quality. The voice actors are talented performers as well, and definitely earned their pay for these roles. But those are the only compliments I have for a game that's not fun or engaging to play. Last thing: it's impossible not to compare this game to Danganronpa, so I briefly will. Danganronpa had more likable characters I wanted to spend time with. The meta-plot of "what is going on here" was also fed bit by bit, but the in between parts were filled with other exciting stories, discoveries, and mysteries. The courtroom battles were more fun to play through than this game's combat battles. It was also, seemingly, five times shorter in length, and never wasted my time. It's just a better game in every way. I wish the devs understood why and recaptured that formula, but after Zanki Zero, Rain Code, and now this, I fear they never will. They keep coming close by making something comparable, but just not getting it. I'll probably be putting this game down to avoid succumbing to more sunk cost fallacy. I'm very disappointed at how mid this game is, and I don't recommend it.

Solid game but definitely for the unemployed lol. Doesn't respect your time at all and the amount of repetition for a nugget of new info each ending can be infuriating.

Honestly after finishing the game I can 100% say this is my favorite game of all time. I love all the characters, all the music, 99% of the routes (serial battle routes...), and everything about it. I love this game with all my heart. And I love the special defense unit...

엔딩 100개 꾸엮꾸역 다봤고 도전과제도 다깼읍니다 -단간론파 오디션 참가할 의향이 있다 -사회에서 도태됐다 -똥싸다 끊기는것에 흥분한다 다 포함되시면 추천합니다 그리고 만약 할 거라면, 트레이너를 깔아줘... 치트엔진을 깔아줘... 날 칭찬해줘... 내동상을세워줘...... 날 초고교급희망이라 불러줘...