it's been a pretty long while since i finished the truth route of the hundred line, and for a while i was wanting to make this post, but when i tried to do so i very quickly was confronted by the fact that this game is completely insane and consequently i did NOT have my thoughts in order. now i am here... Months later... and i have my thoughts mostly in order...
i think hundred line is definitely my goty for this year, tied probably with pokemon legends za but in a different coordinate space because i like them for completely different reasons that are like incomparable. this game is just such an incredibly unique, strange experience that i don't think will ever leave me.
overview
the hundred line: last defense academy is a game created by tookyo games, with kazutaka kodaka (of danganronpa) and kotaro uchikoshi (of zero escape) at the helm. i would say that this game definitely feels more like a kodaka game than an uchikoshi game if that means anything to you.
the setting of the game is that the protagonist, takumi sumino, is a regular guy living in the tokyo residential complex. one day, the TRC is invaded by strange monsters, and takumi must protect his childhood friend, karua kashimiya, using a mysterious power. after this, he awakens at the titular last defense academy, where he must spend 100 days to protect the school with his fellow classmates from the enemies of humanity, with the fate of all humanity - including karua - on the line.
a large part of this game's claim to fame is its 100 endings, but in your first playthrough, you'll go through a ~20 hour "route 0" that sets up a lot of the mysteries and introduces you to all of the characters (and also sets up the central theme in an interesting way). the 100 endings are separated generally into "routes", of which there are like 20 or so, and a lot of the routes will have different routes. these routes aren't created equal, and i'll have a section on the routes later...
story and characters
the story is really the meat and potatoes of this game. i'll have to talk a little bit more about some premise-related spoilers for this section, so if you're worried about that, stop reading now!
i'm mostly referring to route 0 and the truth route in this section, as i think those are the most important, and the most focused in terms of the overall game!
the story is very insane and very full of twists (if you've played any kodaka game before you might feel intensely unsurprised by this), but importantly, none of these twists feel contradictory to established facts. kodaka does an incredibly fantastic job of having characters speculate on mysteries and the truth - the player will absolutely not be the only person pursuing the truth, and, very importantly, the characters will ALSO frequently be incorrect (much like the player, because you will not be figuring out the answers to the mysteries very easily).
at times the story can get a bit slow, especially in route 0, but i found that the truth route had basically no stops on the insanecoaster. the truth route also doesn't shy away from introducing more mysteries, which is a ton of fun, and route 0 also doesn't show its whole hand right away. the game is also immensely good at playing with your expectations - if you take something for granted as the truth, there's probably more to it.
the characters are also surprisingly very delightful generally - the main routes do a really great job of highlighting a set of the characters, but naturally it can't really focus on all of them given the size of the cast, but even still all of the characters more or less end up being likeable at a baseline. the routes end up being where a lot of other characters get more time to shine - for instance, i didn't care about darumi until i played retsnom, and i didn't care about hiruko until i played slasher, and after those routes those characters (and others) wormed their way into my heart.
the story's overall theme is centered around choices and decisions. almost all parts of the setting feed into this - the story is set within a war, and the route branches are depending on decisions that the player makes. a lot of routes don't necessarily focus as much on this theme, but there's definitely an undercurrent of it in every route, and it's intensely important to route 0 and the truth route. the ending of the truth route is really where this theme culminates and sings. i have a lot of the final dialogue and cutscene seared into my mind, and the credits theme honestly still threatens to make me tear up.
gameplay
the gameplay for hundred line is a little bit hard to talk about past a certain point because eventually you don't really do much of the gameplay honestly LOL. this game's combat gameplay is somewhat similar to fire emblem in some regards in that it's a grid turn-based ordeal, but it doesn't have exp or levels. your characters attacks are (mostly) aoe based, and a lot of the gameplay ends up being something like a puzzle box, where you have to figure out the best way to utilize your units and limited actions to kill as many enemies as you can on your turn.
it's honestly a ton of fun, but for duplicate battles between routes, the game offers you the option to skip the battle - a choice you'll likely take for the most part because the routes are very long and you probably don't want to be replaying battles you've played before. i actually do adore the combat gameplay, and while i wish that there could have been more of it, or more route-specific battles, i also understand that like. Scope. LOL. definitely not remotely feasible for them to have had more unique stuff between routes.
the gameplay does also do an awesome job of integrating into the game's story. hover over the next thing to see some early game spoiler stuff of one way this manifests.
in the setting, there is a thing called the revive-o-matic that brings students back to life when they die so they can continue to fight in the totally awesome war, so this game works very different from a lot of games in this similar gameplay genre, in that you are actively incentivized a lot of the time to kill your units. when your characters are low on health, you can use a very powerful attack that will kill your character, and in the next wave (not turn - wave), your character will return to the battlefield. it adds such a unique flavour to the game that is honestly SO satisfying to utilize in strategy.
there's also a ton of other ways the gameplay and story are married!! it's so fucking awesome.
other than that, the gameplay is largely visual novel. if you don't like visual novels, you will not like this game at all.
there's also the school stuff where you can raise stats for ranking up your skills using a currency. not really much to say for review purposes.
route tier list
i haven't played all of the routes, but here's my general thoughts on the routes i've played. i generally will try to avoid spoilers, but i'll briefly touch on the premise of a route:
ss tier: truth
i did touch on this route a good bit in the story section, but this is basically the route where you will find out all of the answers to every central mystery introduced in route 0. this route was written by kodaka, and it is extremely phenomenal. it is gut-wrenching in so many ways, and at the end of it i cried and felt an amount of emotion that i don't think a game has made me feel in like forever. it's an incredibly, extremely beautiful story that really cemented hundred line's place as my goty.
this route is also called 2nd Scenario but i'm not calling it that... just doesn't roll off the tongue...
ss tier: goodbye (spoiler)
the name of this route WOULD be kind of a spoiler so i don't want to say the full name, but this route is somewhat of a companion piece to the truth route because it branches off pretty late. it's a character exploration into one specific character, and it has a perspective shift that was a sickeningly fantastic choice. you get to see into this characters head in a way that you don't get to see a lot in this game, and it really helps to reinforce their characterization, and more importantly, the way that the events of the story have changed them. i would consider this route a must play - before or after the truth route for sure.
s tier: slasher
the slasher route is a really fun route that has two sides to it: a zombie side, and a slasher side. the plot in this route isn't super crazy or anything but it's extremely solid, but the character writing is really what stands out here. i'd say it captures a large number of characters best out of any non-kodaka route, and it really made me love a lot more of the cast. i played this pretty early out of my route adventures, and it was honestly a god pull.
s tier: retsnom
this route is basically an exploration into darumi's character, but it also does an insanely good job of capturing every other character in the short instances where other characters have some relevancy. in a lot of other routes, darumi is a lot more of a gag character, so this route is pretty surprisingly serious and somber in comparison, and it works incredibly well. this route honestly easily brought darumi up to being one of my favourite characters in this game, and the endings are fucking crazy in the best possible way and philosophically fascinating.
b tier: multiple (spoiler)
this is also another route where the name of the route is a slight spoiler so i won't say it LOL. this isn't like the best route ever, and it's overall a lot more comedic and silly than a lot of other routes, and it's pretty short. it's really fun though, especially if you like the main characters of the route. i wouldn't say it's a must-play, but if you're enjoying the game and you like these characters, it's short enough to where there's no point in not playing it.
c tier: box of calamity
in a lot of ways this route kind of just felt like a less interesting version of the slasher route. i can't really say why without spoilers. the bigger issue though is really just that the character writing is very bland and the plot isn't interesting enough to carry. i don't think this route is the worst ever written, but it was just not very compelling and was pretty forgettable.
d tier: romance
this route was actually the first route that i did after the route split, and i ended up here because i was doing my choices blind. i honestly don't have much to say here because it's just a boring route. the characters aren't written well enough to make me care and i think the fact they still try to do some main story events is to the route's detriment because it breaks the flow and the last thing i want to do between slop dating scenes is a defensive battle.
e tier: mystery
i am so sorry to the uchikoshi fans. but this route and our f tier route singlehandedly made me think that i just do not like uchikoshi at all. this route is trying to be danganronpa in a lot of ways, and basically follows takumi going in and out of comas, waking up just in time for some fuckass mystery to require solving. the character writing is non-existent; characters act however the narrative requires them to in order for the mystery to get set up.
the last twist threatens to be compelling, before hitting you with a story lock - requiring you to complete some other route checkpoint first. regrettably, this threat is almost immediately eliminated when the answer is completely obvious and extremely stupid in both setup and execution. the ending was one of the worst in the game, largely because it was completely and utterly divorced from the entire rest of the route, and also, again, because the character writing in this route is non-existent, so it is genuinely impossible to feel anything about the conclusion.
i highly recommend NOT playing this route.
f tier: steady fundamental
this route is another uchikoshi route and once again i have to apologise but seeing the fan response to this route and the wholehearted praise made me genuinely feel like i played a completely different route from the general populace.
the character writing is unfathomably bad. takumi received a personalitectomy, and had the brain of a 13 year old boy who freshly discovered porn transplanted into his skull. hiruko, the only other character present in this route, became the vessel for uchikoshi's transparent and extremely underdeveloped dommy-mommy kink. i found myself wanting to be smited while reading their dialogue with an unprecedented frequency. genuinely no other characters are relevant to this route, which is a problem that he actually genuinely points out within this route, before going right back to ignoring the issue altogether - and it IS an issue because of the nature of this route, unlike most other character-focused routes.
the plot is also just extremely boring. honestly very little happens. there's a pretty decent premise, but the execution isn't good at all. this route very much presents itself as something like a golden route, especially in the way its main ending goes, but after playing the truth route, it genuinely feels like uchikoshi doesn't even know what the theme of the story was, and it feels like he just forgot large swathes of the story. there are also large, glaring plot holes - some of which are even contradicting with route 0. it's just baffling how little care seemingly went into this route.
unless you are specifically a horny straight man who has a dommy mommy fetish, do not play this route. i'm serious as fuck.
music
ngl this is like an afterthought section lowkey because i don't want to go straight from talking about how much i hate uchikoshi straight to the conclusion of the article but masafumi takada knocks it out of the park as usual. my favourites are the piano songs as usual. something that hundred line has that danganronpa doesn't really have is the insert songs. the song that plays in the last battle in route 0 is frankly fucking crazy and i'm kind of obsessed with it. the credits songs are also really good, especially the truth ending credits song, which might be the best song choice ever and makes me feel nauseous and emotional.
conclusion
hundred line is a one of a kind game that is absolutely kodaka's magnum opus. it's a whole ass experience and if it clicks with you, you will probably be playing it for at least a month or two if you're also working during it. like most days were me going to work and then playing hundred line and then bedtime. it's incredibly long and consuming and rewarding.
if you like visual novels, give it a try. if you like danganronpa, you should absolutely play this game.
i will probably never stop thinking about this game. thank you for reading xoxo