The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy- was a game that kind of appeared out of thin air right under my nose. I think in the past I had heard rumblings of such an ambitious project, of the fabled “visual novel with an unreasonable number of endings”, but news of the release kind of just exploded in my face as a pretty welcome surprise. And with the cryptic messaging surrounding the game’s structure, and the massive hype around so much unexplored territory, I have to say this was one of the rare times that I jumped on a game right on release. Because I’m so lazy and because I like stupid gimmicks just as much as the game itself, I’m going to semi-organizedly frame my thoughts in a list of a Hundred Lines. And just like the actual endings, some of them are going to be relatively more meaningful and fleshed out, while others will just be dumb thoughts in passing.

I will be including spoilers, though I hope not to make them in the most explicit way. By the way, I haven’t even finished all the endings, currently at about 90, but none of the remaining ones are “serious”. It’s basically just Casual and Serial Battles.

First Impressions/Route 1

1. The intro movies were seriously well done in my opinion, the animations were crisp, but the tone did feel quite different from how the rest of the game’s atmosphere felt.
2. When the story started taking off, it was interesting to theorize how the divergent branches of the story would actually work, and to be honest I was slightly disappointed that it was ultimately standard branching.
3. I was even hoping that choosing the character to perform executions would contribute to branching in some way.
4. Speaking of the execution animation, god damn was it over the top and so edgy, but I guess that makes it kind of iconic.
5. You can kinda get more understanding about each of the characters based on how they react after executing.
6. The 100 day cycle of the game was honestly exhausting. 
7. Eventually it all just felt way too slow and spaced out given how chaotic the story was supposed to be, but free time and random dumb quests had to be shoehorned in somehow.
8. In fact that’s basically why it’s a meme that Takumi passes out all the time, since they couldn’t fit so much volume of writing for all 100 days on all routes.
9. For the first playthrough, I thought it was stupid that 40+ days were just spent meeting and convincing everyone, in the grand scheme of things it makes sense but makes the first run not really able to stand on its own.
10. Considering how half the endings were filler, I wouldn’t have been against the game being like “The Fifty Line’ with 50 days and 50 endings, but that wouldn’t be so good for marketing, probably.
11. Not gonna beat around the bush, Settler Colonialism is a huge portion of the theming in the game, but I thought it was even more directly suggestive of … a certain relevant conflict.
12. You probably know what I’m referring to.
13. It’s so telling with the rhetoric of “defense academy”, the dehumanization of the enemies, the idea of sending super soldiers made for battle on behalf of a distant population, literally promoting genocide…
14. I wouldn’t say I 100% agree with the game’s take on how to reconcile the conflict, though are we really supposed to be taking lessons for real life here?
15. Like, they wrote Vehx’ness as a sort of “rogue” dictator instead of as someone who could actually be understood apart from her short and limited ending.
16. Overall though, it was quite an expected twist to be like “yeah we are the baddie invaders, actually”.

Characters

17. I liked how most of the character designs felt based on current urban fashion without looking totally unrealistic.
18. Sirei and Nigou are like… okay as mascots I guess, but I have basically no strong feelings considering their simplicity of design.
19. As the main character, it’s nice that Takumi actually has a personality but damn is this guy such a normie.
20. Same with Karua/Nozomi, but that’s probably the whole point.
21. Nozomi is weird to me, she acts a little in the uncanny valley, but that’s probably just the way she’s sold as a bit of an outsider.
22. Ima is annoying other than when he got turned into Sirei.
23. Kako was less annoying until she became [redacted]. 
24. Darumi is a bit of a character that makes more sense on a meta level, because she’s hinting towards unhinged Danganronpa fans in real life.
25. She’d otherwise be just way too annoying, but from what you learn about her later on, she makes a lot more sense.
26. Hiruko is an awesome and truly quite a character well expanded upon by Uchikoshi, but there’s literally no way you could sell the “high school girl” image of her to me.
27. As per the bundled “prologue”, the image of her participating in rap battles… pfffftttt hahahahahahaha
28. She’s just way too extreme, I would never want her to be a surgeon.
29. That’s a job for my GOAT Yugamu.
30. Speaking of Yugamu, I don’t know what it is but they keep trying to sell him as some kind of sicko pervert, but he just doesn’t seem like that to me.
31. Maybe it’s intentional that he just says unhinged things for kicks, but his actions are more rational than the image that is sold.
32. I wish we had more Kurara with her mask off, not because it’s cute, but of course because I hate when characters keep hiding how they actually feel.
33. Also putting instant coffee in curry [as per promo video] is utterly deranged and terrifying.
34. Maybe I just never liked the tsundere trope.
35. Kyoshika might be another jab at the cringe part of fandoms, and also is another Kodaka-ism “servant character”.
36. Tsubasa’s vomiting shtick was weird because she literally never does it on screen, surely we could have thought up a better way to show extreme anxiety.
37. But as usual, she unsurprisingly is mostly just the Kodaka dark skinned girl with social skills.
38. Shouma is unironically the best human being in the group.
39. I keep forgetting about Gaku, he’s okay I guess.
40. I feel really bad for Eva and Kamyuhn, they need justice (and more screen time).
41. It was brought to my attention by my friends how Eva basically always suffers human rights violations, but I guess that’s just another part of the commentary on war and colonialism.
42. Why did they name him both Fireboy and Shion? lol
43. Cool guy though, I find his existence a good thought experiment especially relating to Sirei’s relationship with him.
44. Eito, being the unhinged poster boy, unfortunately doesn’t have as much meme value as like, Nagito, but at least he’s gay or something.
45. I don’t think living in a Saya no Uta world was that much of a good reason to be such a hater though.
46. In general to be honest, it’s just infinitely annoying that the characters aren’t in touch with their own emotions enough, and I keep wishing they would learn.
47. I wanted to have even deeper dives into the hearts of these characters, even beyond what we already have through frankly underwhelming bond events.
48. Moko for example, we literally don’t see her for the entire first loop, and she is frankly unimportant for most routes but I want to see how her character actually ticks instead of corny lines forever.
49. Her only serious moments are bond events, off-screen (and likely dead), or that one ending in the Romance route.

Gameplay/Music

50. The gameplay sucked, was not balanced for anything other than the first loop, and ended up being a real waste of time.
51. The core cycle and concept of leveraging death to everyone’s advantage, as well as the character identities were nice, but there was so little diversity in enemy designs and overall battle creativity that it was a snorefest.
52. The enemy design also got old super quickly, though the commander designs and personalities were a nice touch.
53. Turamtammi’s appearance cutscene was a well-executed subversion.
54. Near the end it became just destroying everything in 1 turn because Nozomi’s ability to heal stun completely breaks the game, and you have way too many item resources.
55. The newly added Extreme & Despair difficulty didn’t help solve any of it and it’s still basically just figuring out how you can one-shot everything in one turn.
56. I kind of liked the world map exploration concept and its funny flavor text but that was also quite small and got old quickly.
57. Also I have very little to say about the music and sound design in the game, it’s very stock standard.
58. Except for licensing RUMBLE by Paledusk as Eito’s boss theme, now that’s a  banger tune.

Routes/Plotlines

59. The overall story arc and plotline is a similar way, we keep being given crazy rugpulls in individual arcs but there is nothing really unifying them together – there’s no single satisfying climax that leaves everything concluded.
60. Ending 001 is the closest you get to that, but it completely ignores the entire strong plot twist line that Uchikoshi wrote for SF, for example. 
61. Though, Second Scenario as a whole was as close as you could get to a compelling and cathartic ending.
62. Reset and Rebellion were also somewhat expected, and it is odd, because you could argue that in Rebellion, there are endings that could be considered “good”, like how peace is achieved after years of war, and Takumi and Kamyuhn are able to become the new leaders.
63. The SF ending is a classic Uchikoshi adventure but feels like a cruel joke as there’s a whole bigass celebration at the end that you’ve escaped the “cursed cycle”, until, lol lmao, you haven’t
64. Not to mention that whole “coin-flipping” part being a massive plothole really, like couldn’t you just do that over and over and clone everyone forever?
65. I was honestly hoping for some crazy Everything Everywhere All At Once type climax in the SF route, basically.
66. But now we have a real reason for Hiruko to be likeable.
67. Retsnom was my first ending, and I thought it was quite compelling, especially with how it was basically the only one to give more depth to Darumi’s character.
68. Especially true for “What Was Darumi Thinking?” ending which showed a level of depth and empathy for a character that was purposefully previously played mostly for laughs.
69. Vehx’ness getting melted was a crazy scene because it implies the level of strength Retsnom had attained through Darumi.
70. Mystery and Slasher kind of need to be considered together.
71. I had a very good feeling that Takumi was indeed the murderer, but the explanation for it was so unhinged and I felt it should have had some even more insane effects on the whole timeline. 
72. Like, it would have been crazy if there was some STEINS;GATE style fight for control of the timelines against the G’ie who try to take over everything, or something like that.
73. Maybe Uchikoshi or whoever may have run out of time or ideas for a twist with what the Escape Codes actually do, but he has a track record of making “the building blows up” as a punchline.
74. The Killing Game route had good pacing, but I felt the Tsubasa romance was shoehorned in a bit.
75. That ending where you think you escaped but Tsubasa dies anyways was expected but quite a well-executed tone shift.
76. Comedy route was screenshot farming (Shouma drip line goes hard) but unfortunately fish jokes must have been a lot better in Japanese.
77. Conspiracy route was by far the worst, I think it was a guest writer, but damn was it totally pointless filler that could have been a big brain red herring but ended up just boring.
78. Coming of Age route had some great jokes and humor from the guest writer for that one but the overall plot and tone of it was kind of discohesive.
79. Especially Eito with that whole peace and love shtick then turning heel to break the relaxed mood, bruh
80. Multiple Eitos route was so gay and edgy; I know the point is that he’s inescapable but I felt that making it so Takumi couldn’t beat his dumb little game was a mood killer.
81. Goodbye Eito on the other hand was an absolutely wonderful short treat and deeply humanly emotional.
82. I wish some other routes or endings were planned like that.
83. Serial Battles: terribly executed unfortunately.
84. Boxes of Blessing and Boxes of Calamity were probably just a way to get fetch quests into the game, but I guess they also tied into the whole G’ie arc.
85. I liked how they tied into the SF story but those two sure had a lot of unsatisfying filler.
86. Turamtammi’s house is cool though. Can we visit the other commanders?
87. Cult of Takumi route… definitely the most unhinged one, where do I even begin?
88. First of all I know the fujoshis are rejoicing but it’s actually insane to me that they canonically included an ending with SA.
89. And to be honest, for the conquest ending of this route, I really wanted to see Takumi’s gradual descent into madness in a more extreme way and have him actually turn into some kind of monster.
90. Would have been even more extra cool if he had some kind of tragedy-style fall with that too.
91. Or some kind of Macbeth style thing with Nozomi.
92. You can probably tell… there’s a lot of “could have beens” with this game.
93. Romance: Exactly what you’d expect but Moko’s involvement was a fun touch.
94. Vehx’ness Route: She likes you but still only because her only purpose in life is to fight still, which keeps her one-dimensional.
95. Lastly I think the Eva route is quite underrated, like I said, she deserves justice.

Conclusions

96. Overall, considering everything, such an ambitious project ended up being a little diluted and slow, but still overall enjoyable for a huge myriad of reasons.
97. I realize most of these points ended up being about characters or individual routes… but who knows, maybe I’ll write about another aspect sometime in the future.
98. When you look back, a lot of crazy stuff happens, but one also has to remember that it takes basically 100+ hours to get through it.
99. In my opinion, it’s at least better than Danganronpa, haha.
100. I ended up rating it 8.3/10 on VNDB.