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There’s an awful lot to take in withThe Hundred Line: Last Defense Academyright off the top: you’re a teenage boy whose home is attacked by rainbow aliens, told to stab yourself in the chest to fight them off in a top-down turn-based tactics battle - no pressure.
You’ve probably got several questions about The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, and we’re here to help straighten some of them out, providing both the answer and some pro tips. Your decisions are going to end up mattering to the story in the long run, so be mindful as you play!
How Many Endings Are There?
The first time you play through The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, there’s a singular canonical ending that you’ll work towards through your first 100 days at the Academy. This is the main story, and there’s plenty you’ll need to learn and experience for the plot before theover 100 possible endingsbecome available.
This is, of course, unless you count the ending at the very beginning of the game, should Takumi decline to fight to save Karua.
After you’ve reached the main ending of the game, you’ll unlock achapter selectionsystem on the main menu that allows you to go back through and begin making different decisions, leading to the20 achievement-based endingsyou’ll notice onthe list of achievements for the game. These are numbered for easy tracking, and that’s how you’ll experience all kinds of different things like a cult forming, a happiness-based route, and even the often-mentioned Killing Game if your bloodlust hasn’t been sated.
On Which Consoles Can You Play The Game?
At launch, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is available on theSteamstore, and it’s also available for theNintendo Switch. Older Switches may experience some slight graphical lag during the combat sections or in scenes with multiple sprites on screen at once, but the game runs smoothly otherwise on the console (though you won’t be tracking achievements this way).
For those with aSteam Deck, you’ll be happy to know that the game runs natively and smoothly on the handheld as well. You can even tinker with your settings between visual novel segments and combat scenes, since one is much more graphically demanding than the other - save some battery life where you can, since the game is pretty long.
How Much Of The Game Is Battle, And How Much Is Visual Novel?
While The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is very much split between visual novel and tactics, you’ll find it to be a somewhat uneven split. The gameleans heavily into the visual novelelement more often than the tactical aspect, which isn’t a bad thing if you’re someone who loves visual novels and all the quirks that come with them! But if you’d rather battle more than chat, you can do still do so in a number of ways.
You’ll findjust overa dozen majorbattlesthroughout the game unless you choose touse your Free Time to fight morethan is required by the game’s story. Beginning on Day 003, you can head up to the third floor anduse the VR machineup in the Training Room, on which new missions unlock regularly throughout the main story. It’s a good way topractice using new teammates and movesafter they’ve unlocked if you want some experience before the next major story battle.
Additionally, when you’reout on expeditionsbeyond the Undying Flames, whether ones you’re forced into doing for story purposes or ones you choose to undertake there are tons of chances for fightson exploration missions. You’ll have plenty of options tochoose Battle Spaceson the board, the ones with the monster icons whose difficulty level is decided by the color of the tile, and even occasionally on chance cards with higher difficulty levels (but which yield significantly more valuable prizes when beaten).
When Do You Get New Teammates?
Like most of Kodaka’s games, you’ll meet a rag-tag group of anime high school kids on your first day at the Academy, promiseda slew of teammatesin the game’s description but arriving to find thatonly three classmates will fight at first- Takemaru the biker, Darumi the blue-haired emo girl, and Hiruko the combat-minded fighter who seems to know much more than she’s letting on. On the first day, you’ll fight using the three of them and Takumi, but you’ll find your teammate list changing often throughout each ofthe game’s main battles.
Some characters go missing before long into the story, while others will join the fight by your side aftera little bit of persuasion. This gives you a chance toacquaint yourself with combat using staple teammatesto learn how the game’s mechanics work before other teammates, who may have more developed or specific abilities, take up arms in the war against the school invaders.
Overall, you’ll unlock new characters to use in battleduring key boss battlesalong the way, arriving just in time to save your team when the situation otherwise would have been hopeless. Once you’ve got more characters to use in battle, it’s important to figure out what combat style works for you andrely on a balance of offense and defensealong the way. Plenty of characters are offensive fighters, but you’ll unlock support and defense characters later in the story as well.
When you unlock new fighters, you’ll often have a specific wave of the fight dedicated to learning to use them. Your mascot at the time will offer up some information about how that character fights before a short dialogue scene plays out and returns you to combat to try them out. In general, when you unlock a new teammate during the time between waves in battle, you’ll often want to use them on the next incoming wave - it’s practically designed to help acquaint you with that new teammate and their abilities.
Additionally, not every teammate will be available for every fight - there are plenty of times story reasons will sideline characters you like using, so it’s a good idea tobe comfortable using everyonebefore too long, even if it meansspending some Free Timedoing extra battles. The combat only gets tougher as the game goes on, so you’ll want to vary your reliance on teammates and know how to use whoever is around when they join the fight.
What Do Battle Scores Mean?
After you’ve slashed your way through every wave of enemies in any given battle and satisfied the win conditions, whatever they may be, you’ll see a Results screen featuring the character that dealt the last attack in battle, whether that’s to a Commander during the main squad battles throughout the story or simply whoever finished the fight during VR trainings or expedition battles.
There’s a lot to consider on this screen, such as:
Each of the above factors into your final battle scores, and while there’sno penalty for lower scoresduring the game, nor any achievements based on earning specific scores, you’llearn more Battle Points for getting higher scores. Given that you’lluse this BPto raise everyone’s Class Weapon stats, you’ll want as much BP as you can earn, so it definitely pays to be effective on the battlefield.
Why Would You Kill Your Teammates?
It’s jarring to see it happen the first time, butsacrificing teammates offers staggering combat boostswhen they choose to die on the field. When a teammate is low on HP after an Enemy Turn but survived it nonetheless, you’ll see their information on the team list on the left side of your screen drenched in a red hue to denote them being near death. Should an invader kill them, the enemy will get a combat buff, butsacrificing a teammate who’s about to die takes invaders out with theminstead.
On the Special Attack screen, every teammate has a unique swan song move, performing awide-ranged high-power attackon your turn in battle at the cost ofdying after said attackhas finished landing. You’ll see this teammate picked up by the coffin drones, and thankfully,sacrificed teammates return on the next wave, so you’ll only need to make it to the end of the fight before you see them again.Nozomi is the exceptionto this, though, sodo not let her diein battle!
What’s The Report Card For?
Early in the game, you’ll notice thatTakumi has a report cardon the main menu, expending intofive subjectsthat each cover two categories to comprise a full curriculum for you to study across your 100 days at the Academy. While it may be tempting to spend the bulk of your time fighting, it definitely behooves to raise your grades, sincebetter grades unlock new combat abilitiesfor your teammates.
In the Garage or in the Training Room, you can upgrade Class Weapons, but you’ll need a steady supply of BP toperform these upgrades. Even so, you’ll find thathigher-skill combat moves require improved grades, so you’ll need to work out which teammates help with which subjects, diligentlyspending time with classmatesand learning what they like.
Hanging out is always good, but you’ll also want togive beloved giftsto get the biggest report card increases. Everyone prefers a category over everything else, and you’ll learn different tags to help you better organize the massive list of potentialpresents in the Gift-o-Matic. Any time you spend with a classmate during Free Time will raise your grade in the subject they help improve, which often relates to the subject you’llneedto improve to help that character level up in combat.
Do You Need To Have Played Danganronpa Or Zero Escape Before The Last Defense Academy?
While it definitely has a lot of the same trappings of a visual novel seriesas iconic as Danganronpa(which tracks, given that creator Kazutaka Kodaka made this game as well), and the branching ending system was iconic in the Zero Escape games from Kotaro Uchikoshi is familiar to those who’ve played these games. And you’ll findplentyof reference jokes back to the series throughout The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy,you don’t need to play Danganronpato understand this game.
In fact, those expecting too much Danganronpa flavor have their hopes dashedduring the first battle, but one of the many endings for the game does see you and your teammates at the Last Defense Academy entering a Killing Game of your own.
