The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy Is Persona For Sickos

After 40 hours of tactical battles and disturbing twists, I rolled credits on Last Defense Academy — and it became clear I’d only just started seeing the game’s depth.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is one of the most indulgent games I’ve ever played, a clear example of what happens when visionary creators are allowed to run wild. It’s a bizarre fusion of Danganronpa, Persona, and Groundhog Day that somehow turns into an impressively cohesive package. It’s one of the most unique RPGs I’ve seen in the last decade, and it takes a tremendous risk by pushing its “formula” to the breaking point. Last Defense Academy is a very specific kind of game made for a very specific kind of player, but if you can buy into its vision, there’s something truly incredible to uncover here.

Last Defense Academy is a grand collaboration between two legendary creators. On one side is Kazutaka Kodaka, the mind behind the cult classic Danganronpa franchise, where a handful of teenagers are thrown into a demented Saw-like killing game. On the other side is Kotaro Uchikoshi, the creator of AI: The Somnium Files and the twisty time-traveling Zero Escape franchise.

At its core, Last Defense Academy is a fusion of their distinct visual and storytelling styles, and you can see both elements peek through. But this is really the Danganronpa formula pushed to its absolute extreme, and the game constantly references that; one character even keeps saying that she wishes she were in a “killing game.”

In Last Defense Academy, you follow Takumi Sumino, a young high schooler who lives in the “Tokyo Metropolitan Complex,” a sort of underground mega-city. After aliens attack, Takumi blacks out and wakes up in a bizarre military school called the Last Defense Academy. There, he and a handful of other teenagers are told they’re humanity’s last hope. They have to protect the school from the Invaders for the next 100 days, and if they fail, it’s the end of the human race.

How they got here, what they’re fighting for, and what’s really happening is what plays out across Last Defense Academy’s 100-plus hour story. But what’s remarkable is how that story plays out, and the jaw-droppingly bold narrative swings the game repeatedly takes. Your lengthy first playthrough is essentially an extended tutorial, liberally introducing you to the world’s characters and rules before dropping a Zero Escape-esque timeline on you that allows you to jump around events and see how things could play out differently.

There are a staggering 100 endings in Last Defense Academy. Some are minor alternates, some are major narrative swings, and some are gag endings, but everything feels substantial. I’ve seen a dozen endings after 80 hours, and I still have so much to uncover. Despite its length, there’s an impeccable sense of pacing in how the mystery unfolds, introduces twists, and tackles harrowing topics, like the loss of childhood innocence. Every character is set up as an archetype, like the self-deprecating loser, but each and every one is eventually given meaningful layers that flip those tropes on their head.

That hearkens to Last Defense Academy’s other core strength: the clear inspiration of the Persona games. At this point, comparing something to Persona is almost a meme, but this is truly the first “Persona-inspired” game that actually does something interesting with that social-focused gameplay.

Danganronpa games are all about lies and deceit as they question the nature of being human, find hope in despair, and ask whether the ends justify the means. By comparison, Last Defense Academy offers a more hopeful look at human nature; if Danganronpa is about lies, then this game is about camaraderie. Kodaka and Uchikoshi clearly wanted to take Persona’s bond-building gameplay and filter it through the lens of Danganronpa’s twisty narrative formula, so it crams Persona’s social simulation into one building and sees what happens when everyone gets locked in. That’s exactly what makes it so unique; the game feels like a cross between those two series, with intrigue and unique gameplay to drive its themes home.

The Hundred Line is essentially split between its visual novel-style story and its tactical battles. There’s a lot of text in this game, and much of your time is spent simply playing through the narrative. But you also have “Free Time” where you can hang out with your classmates, build traps and potions for battle, make gifts for other characters, and explore the wasteland around the school. These function like they would in Persona, deepening your understanding of characters and enhancing the entire school’s combat ability.

That extrapolates into the battles where you defend the school from Invaders on a grid-like map. These feel more like puzzles than anything else, as the influence of Uchikoshi’s puzzle-based games comes into play. You have a set amount of action points each turn, each character has unique attacks and specials, and by killing certain enemies, you can earn more AP. This means every battle becomes a game of meticulously planning out your moves to efficiently maximize your AP. The combat has enough complexity to satisfy tactical RPG fans, but the puzzle element makes it feel different from anything else out there.

The single downside to Last Defense Academy is how long-winded it is. This is a dense visual novel that’ll take well over 100 hours to beat, and much of that time is spent sifting through the story and dialogue. The game knows the destination it wants to reach, but the path to get there can feel long and meandering.

Last Defense Academy is indulgent in every sense. It’s filled to the brim with complex characters and systems, an absurdly deep story, and wild new art styles and gameplay twists. Kodaka and Tookyo Games know the exact kind of player they designed this game for: the sickos who revel in the off-the-wall absurdity, complexity, and violence of games like Danganronpa. It doubles down on its bizarre ideas instead of making concessions to appeal to a wider audience, and it’s better off for it. You’ll need to commit to Last Defense Academy to really see it through, but if you can, you won’t regret it for a second.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy launches on April 24 for Nintendo Switch and PC. Inverse reviewed the Nintendo Switch version.

INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.