The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy begins off by asking a easy query: what occurs once you pluck a handful of colourful youngsters from their properties, plop them in a state-of-the-art college crammed with each comfort, then drive them to combat for his or her lives? Your information as you navigate this query is an unsettling and creepy-cute mascot that is aware of greater than it’s let on, and there’s an overarching thriller to the world that you may’t fairly put your finger on.
If you, like I, answered “Danganronpa!” — as this premise sounds very very like the plot of the quirky and irreverent murder-mystery sequence from Spike Chunsoft — then congratulations! We’re each completely unsuitable! And after 45 in-game days with LDA, I nonetheless do not know what’s occurring, and I find it irresistible.
I’m going to be light with myself and also you for pondering LDA is one other entry within the style of excessive school-themed killing video games. After all, it was developed by Kazutaka Kodaka, creator and author of the Danganronpa franchise, in collaboration with Kotaro Uchikoshi, identified for his work on the adventure-puzzle recreation sequence Zero Escape. And although LDA oozes with the DNA from each sequence, it stands so utterly aside mechanically and narratively that whereas I can get a grasp on the previous, I’m misplaced with the latter.
The premise is straightforward sufficient. You play as Takumi Sumino, who will get whisked away to the Last Defense Academy, the place he and a gaggle of others use their newly woke up powers to defend the college from monster assaults for 100 days. Should they fail, the invaders will destroy the college and thereby… due to plot… all of humanity. Usually previous a sure level, I can determine a recreation’s core gameplay loop and tough narrative thrust. When the primary physique dropped in Danganronpa, I instantly understood that I’d be spending the remainder of the sport fixing my classmates’ murders. But I haven’t been ready to determine LDA.
LDA fills the gaping gap Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes couldn’t repair
I perceive the gameplay loop simply sufficient: it’s a tactical RPG with visible novel-like relationship-building components. Combat takes place on a gridded battlefield with every combatant capable of assault in a special configuration, just like chess. One of Takumi’s talents assaults enemies in a straight line. My ally, Gaku, assaults in an oblong sample. Each of my allies’ assaults contributes to a voltage meter that permits us to make use of our particular talents when full. And if certainly one of my allies ought to fall, they’ll be revived earlier than the following wave of enemies.
I like how the tactical fight isn’t like Fire Emblem or Triangle Strategy. LDA is exclusive, as you’re not attempting to handle the advanced rock-paper-scissors method of what weapons are sturdy or weak towards one another. Instead, life is the engine that drives fight. Actions you’re taking are decided by what number of motion factors, or AP, you might have, and killing sure enemies grants you extra AP. On the flip aspect, allies who’re close to loss of life can unleash huge particular assaults that may clear whole battlefields at the price of dropping them for the remainder of the wave.
Combat then turns into a perform of taking part in with life totals — my enemies and mine. I’ll prepare my assaults in such a means that each time I act, I kill an enemy and achieve extra AP so I can simply maintain going, denying my enemies the prospect to combat again. Then, after I’m out of AP, I can unleash a killing blow that ends the spherical. My allies get revived the following spherical, and I can begin the method another time. I’ve been left so unhappy by the crop of tactical RPGs currently, and LDA fills the gaping gap Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes couldn’t repair.
But whereas I’ve received a deal with on the fight, I nonetheless haven’t the faintest clue of the story it’s attempting to inform. My confusion is so thorough that as I am going via every new day, my experiences begin sounding like wartime letters from the entrance strains.
It’s day 33. Our self-proclaimed chief, Hiruko, continues to be lacking. We’re beginning to suspect she’ll by no means return. Meanwhile, the enemy retains hurling themselves at our defenses. So far, we’ve been capable of maintain them off. Gaku not too long ago developed his energy, revealing himself to be a peerless ranged fighter. But our forces are nowhere close to full power, since Ima, Kako, and Shouma refuse to combat. And alas! Our foodstores have wiped out and I worry we’ll starve quickly. War is grim, however I combat understanding the nearer I get to the one centesimal day is a day I’m nearer to returning house… or so I hope.
LDA’s narrative is so not like something I’ve ever skilled that not understanding what’s occurring subsequent is a part of the enjoyable. I like getting dragged alongside for the journey, discovering new developments alongside the characters, who’re themselves a delight. As different shops have identified, Darumi Amemiya is the bodily manifestation of the irony-poisoned and terminally on-line dirtbag edgel(ady), and I am keen on her even when her characterization will get uncomfortably acquainted generally.
I additionally actually take pleasure in how the characters are over-the-top caricatures themselves — Darumi’s the creepy murder-obsessed emo woman, Takemaru’s the everyday fighting-obsessed delinquent — however make choices like regular folks. I usually battle to get into “transported to a different world” tales as a result of not one of the choices made in them have ever made sense to me, a girl who can’t flip off her overly logical and reason-obsessed mind in an effort to simply waft. So it’s extremely refreshing to see these characters push again on the circumstances they’ve been dropped in.
Instead of simply accepting that they’ve been taken from all the things they’ve ever identified and compelled to combat and die (even when that loss of life is short-term), a few of my allies preserve a wholesome degree of skepticism, query all the things, and refuse to combat. I do know I might! And even higher, different characters within the recreation perceive and acknowledge that as an inexpensive place. There’s no rah-rah speech of “You should combat!” that convinces them to take up arms. The reluctant characters are given the house to return round on their very own time and for their very own causes.
That might sound boring. After all, in an isekai-like narrative, the characters are normally compelled to get on board rapidly in any other case there wouldn’t be a plot. So seeing a recreation take its time with the reluctant characters, letting them work via their hangups in a pure and unforced means, was pleasing to my mind.
In the just about 50 days I’ve spent with LDA, I do have some working theories as to the place the general story will go. How it will get there, although, I’ve no clue, however I’m excited to see what twists the sport will take alongside the best way.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is out now on Switch and PC.
