The Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy Demo Impressions

Written by Ross Locksley on 19 Feb 2025

We were offered a chance to take a look at the latest project from the writers behind Dangonronpa (Kazutaka Kodaka) and Zero Escape, (Kotaro Uchikoshi) in their first ever joint venture, a game with the enticing moniker of The Hundred Line: Last Defence Academy - certainly sounds as doom-laden as the previous games!

The intro to the game is quite lengthy at 10 minutes, but it looks great. Well animated characters in nicely rendered surroundings have come on a long way over the years, and while not quite TV series animation quality, they look very good indeed.

You're introduced to Takumi Sumino, a teenager living a relatively hum-drum life inside the Tokyo Residential Complex, a shielded facility that looks much like modern day Tokyo, but exists under a dome and is clearly an artificial environment. When the sirens go off one morning, Takumi is forced into a shelter with his childhood friend Karua - after the emergency is over, Karua chases a dog to what looks like a deserted school, and it's here where you're handed control and must roam the halls until he finds the dog - which turns into a weird translucent egg with a visible brain and heart that wants to recruit you for a war. You're given a choice of fighting or doing nothing, amusingly choosing the latter ends the game (with a nod to how the game was too short) so it's interesting to see a few important narrative choices will be open to you going forward. 

Battles take place using a typical turn-based grid system

You're given the power to activate your "Hemoanima", a blood based power activated by stabbing yourself in the chest. This allows you to take the battle to the invader via a grid system that uses action points to dictate your available options in terms of attack, defence and special abilities. Win/Lose conditions are outlined before the fighting begins so that you can work on your strategy, the grid squares are coloured to show areas you can move to (green) and those you can attack (red). You're able to save unused action points for the next turn, which again has to play into your strategy as you need to keep the field clear of minor enemies (which will swarm you if left unchecked) and leaving enough room to go after the main threat. Once the baddie is on its knees, you can choose which character will deliver the killing blow, the side effect of which is an upgrade to their Hemoanima abilities. The demo forces your choice, but this should be up to you later in the full  game.

It's nothing a JRPG fan won't be familiar with.

Menus are simple enough, just select your actions from the available options and manage yourself and your team in order to meet the objectives. 

You'll spend a lot of time interacting with your fellow classmates, arguably the focal point of the game

The bulk of the demo is spent chatting to classmates and managing your time. Each day is split into day/night sections and you'll be given a map to follow to move the story forward. There are also periods wherein you can spend your time as you wish, interacting with other characters which in turn opens up side-events and gives you grades, which are one side of the coin to upgrading your character. On the flipside you'll also need materials which can be found outside the campus in a board-game style environment where you can find items and activate random battles. . Get the right ingredients together and you can use the training room to upgrade your stats and weapons in order to be more effective when fighting. 

After playing for a while, meeting my classmates and spending a good amount of time reading the story - which took up an hour of playtime after the initial battle - I was reminded of the recent Goblin Slayer Another Adventurer: Nightmare Feast, where the fights were really second to the story and the choices you make within it. I don't expect the strategy elements to get much deeper in the full game than is offered in the demo, so the hook is really the situation, the characters and quality of writing. Keeping your favorites alive and perhaps even making the choice to sacrifice one to save another should provide plenty of tension.

Happily the first 7 days (around 3 hours of gameplay) manages to deftly introduce some inventive characters for you to interact with. Never let it be said that the talent involved can't create intriguing concepts and beguiling characters to place within them - despite the passive nature of the gameplay, I was never bored or disconnected seeing events unfold. The dialogue has wit and narrative hooks that keep you interested, which at this stage is promising indeed.

I was pleased to see that the game runs without issue on the Steam Deck - games like this certainly lend themselves to portable play, so for me this is a major plus. Especially as the demo is now live on Steam! If you're using SteamgridDB, I've also uploaded a few images you can use to make the game look prettier in your virtual collection. I do a lot of covers/heroes for SteamgridDB, you can find them under my handle of Acteon.

However, if you want to pick up the physical game for Nintendo Switch, you'll find a tempting looking limited edition available which contains a short story, artbook, metal collector pin, art cards, acrylic stand, soundtrack and lenticular art card. 

All the shiny things can be yours on Nintendo Switch

For action junkies this is going to be a hard sell, it has the style of its forebears and the same bloodthirsty tendencies, but if you enjoyed the Persona series this might be a good segue into a similarly bizarre and electrifying world. 

Since the save game will carry over into the full release in April, we'll be keeping an eye on The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy to see if it can live up the excellent premise. 

I'll give the last word to the story trailer, seeing as it represents the game's style and world far better than I can describe in words - take a look and see if you want to join the last line of defence for humanity!

If you'd like more information, check out the official The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy website.