Current Events > The Hundred Line - Last Defense Academy is getting scarily good reviews

(+) Yeah! (+)

Got to Day 90 and uhh I can't be the only one to notice Nozomi is missing from the 90 days announcement lmao. I'm guessing that's what everybody is going ... on. Meanwhile, obviously we know the reason why. I get why she's pushing to keep fighting cuz that's all she has, and I'm probably gonna pick that option to simp for her and to play the role of Takumi in a way. But my logical brain tells me running away is the right answer. It's probably already doomed

Also unsubtly, it feels like the commanders are parallels of the main cast, and it's very obviously voiced by them. I can't tell if the supreme commander is voiced by the VA (eng) of Kyoshika but she was kinda fumbling the Invader language it feels like. She was waaay English-ifying it imo. Also it's hard to tell whose parallel the prisoner would be since we saw her face, which is what I'm hesitant about this theory with.

legendarylemur posted...

Also unsubtly, it feels like the commanders are parallels of the main cast, and it's very obviously voiced by them. I can't tell if the supreme commander is voiced by the VA (eng) of Kyoshika but she was kinda fumbling the Invader language it feels like. She was waaay English-ifying it imo. Also it's hard to tell whose parallel the prisoner would be since we saw her face, which is what I'm hesitant about this theory with.

I had a theory on my first playthrough that the prisoner was Hiruko because I assumed that the invaders were converting people into their own ranks.

Another theory I have, though I'm still only on my second playthrough (I'm taking it slower from now on) is that because Danganronpa got me to notice details and take them literally a lot in these games, that the whole digitization of rooms forming digitally when you enter them, and commanders' POV glitching/losing connection when they're killed and consumed by the party, that this whole thing might be a Matrix situation. The whole thing about the pods is still not explained for me, so...

Something I've noted in the game is that unlike Danganronpa, characters don't slowly wittle down (amazing observation, I know). Because of that, it feels like characters have a lot less to say, more one-liners and cheer-y dialogue. Danganronpa starts out slow, but because you have less and less characters as it goes on, it speeds up while characters still have fairly engaging dialogue. In LDA (what abbreviation has the fandom settled on for this game anyway?) most characters really aren't that interesting most of the time.

It makes sense, I guess, but I kind of miss it.

Got to Day 95 and uhh waaat I definitely couldn't see that coming (I literally called it exactly how it was lmao)

Finally got to Day 100 and uhh yeah this is where the shit really goes down. Man Kodaka really wants to kill the childhood friend at every opportunity he gets, huh? The plot has a lot of Uchikoshi feel though even though he supposedly mostly helped with structure and not much else. It has his prints all over the game I personally think, but maybe it's his assistants. This is the real game huh? It's 100 days worth of tutorial

Day ch13...B >.> What the fuck did I land myself into lmfao. All the sudden I'm in a harem route? Takumi has to gaslight himself into saying he doesn't see Nozomi romantically? Bro what is you saying

Listen I just chose the kiss option cuz the girlboss doesn't like indecisive people. It's also because she's like... whew...

Brothers, am I really in a freaking dating sim route?

Y'all really gotta be smarter about your spoiler tags.
With no way of knowing what's in the spoilers I can't click on anything...

Day 30 So I feel like Eito is probably the bad guy. Went missing in the same place we found Sirei's corpse. Was the only other person to know that Boss Lady was going to give us useful information. And like. His skills are called Judge, Jury, and Executioner. Extremely suspicious. I don't know what his game plan is, but I don't trust him at all.

I feel kind of bad because so far the best use I've found for Nozomi is leaving her somewhere she can get hit so that she'll trip the limit for getting the free AoE heal off. She can lead to really strong combinations like Takumi SP > Nozomi SP > Takumi SP. 20 odd damage in one turn plus huge area clear and healing is pretty nice. I do miss Hiruko though...she was so damn strong >.>

Speaking of her. The way she talked made me think this is a time-looping story. She's probably from a prior loop and knew some of what goes down. But was struggling to play keep up because whatever was happening this time didn't align with her experiences last time. Would also explain the 100+ Endings thing this game does too. Uchikoshi at the very least loves stories where alternate timelines somehow manage to influence events in others in ways they shouldn't.

As for other stuff I think might be going on. I think there's like many different TRC's out there, and each student comes from a different one. Each TRC was perhaps a simulation (could explain the pods) designed to raise up a specific kind of fighter. To that end. Nozomi is not Karua, just someone who shared that same genetic blueprint in some other TRC.

When it comes to these two, I tend to be 100% accurate approximately 20% of the time. So we'll see what ends up right and wrong. (I think I got most of the twists in MDA: Rain Code pretty early on, but I feel like this game is going to throw me for so many loops.)

Day 1 and I'm in love with darumi tbh

Of fucking course they kill the best character, I'm getting extraordinarily tired of this series killing off good characters early, it gets old extremely fast

Nevermind, this game keeps throwing curveballs at me, I love it

I am unfortunately at the point where combat is just playing Solitaire with Tsubasa. It's fun the first 5 times, but I really wish there was a way to skip combat now that it's nearly identical every time.

So I've found out the whole truth (barring some 11th hour twist) behind these battles. Half of it I was already starting to suspect based on wording. The other half, however, was not.

If everyone's just a clone of the boy on fire/FB/Shion with fake memories, how fucked did the process have to go for Eito to turn out that way.

https://x.com/eitosodomizer/status/1919012042775626102?s=46&t=ZlLwBsSo-gBjAeX0eT54sg

Yeah, upgrading Nozomi to cure stun means easy ult spam, lol. I've been taking down bosses in like two turns thanks to her and some Desperation Potions to give me extra Voltage.

Exploration RNG is upsetting.

Is this game kinda like Fire Emblem Three Houses?

I wish I can spoiler tag properly. I think there's basically 0 way to actually spoiler tag stuff without spoiling something or another at my point of the game.

If somebody spoilers their whole thing, it's probably prudent to not look at it at all

Garioshi posted...

https://x.com/eitosodomizer/status/1919012042775626102?s=46&t=ZlLwBsSo-gBjAeX0eT54sg

Wait... REALLY?!

Alright, I wasn't sure where the story was fucking going on this route but Ch 13b, Kurara is unexpectedly a good match. I still don't know why Takumi is convincing himself that he has 0 romantic feelings for Nozomi/Karua (Here I'm actually suspecting there are actually 2 of them, and Takumi's probably met Nozomi b4 thinking she was Karua). However, I'm guessing it's cuz it allows for harem routes like this where the other girls can at least look like they can have some feelings for Takumi. I'm kinda on edge for the Tsubasa one cuz I like her as a character

legendarylemur posted...

Alright, I wasn't sure where the story was fucking going on this route but Ch 13b, Kurara is unexpectedly a good match. I still don't know why Takumi is convincing himself that he has 0 romantic feelings for Nozomi/Karua (Here I'm actually suspecting there are actually 2 of them, and Takumi's probably met Nozomi b4 thinking she was Karua). However, I'm guessing it's cuz it allows for harem routes like this where the other girls can at least look like they can have some feelings for Takumi. I'm kinda on edge for the Tsubasa one cuz I like her as a character

Getting to 13B immediately after getting to Day 100 must be so fucking weird my man. At least you didn't land yourself in Chapter 14 as your first path.

I still don't know where my path has taken me yet, lol. Save file still says "Chapter 00" even though I made several choices by now. The Chapter Select says "Chapter00_0_a-016" on the current day I'm in right now. I guess that's actually just Chapter 00 in the branching path.

I'm up to 18 endings now. This game keeps blowing me away with how damn much there is.

Garioshi posted...

I'm up to 18 endings now. This game keeps blowing me away with how damn much there is.

At the pace I'm going the game is legitimately gonna last me the entire year and it sounds like I'll always have something cool to look forward to, lmao.

dancing_cactuar posted...

Getting to 13B immediately after getting to Day 100 must be so fucking weird my man. At least you didn't land yourself in Chapter 14 as your first path.

I merely chose options that made more sense to me. But yes, this is a huge whiplash, but the writing seems to at least take into account this is right after... that event. I'm not sure if they have some complicated conditionals, but the writing makes enough sense

legendarylemur posted...

I merely chose options that made more sense to me. But yes, this is a huge whiplash, but the writing seems to at least take into account this is right after... that event. I'm not sure if they have some complicated conditionals, but the writing makes enough sense

I killed Eito when first going back so I had a completely different thing going on in probably every conceivable way including tone, but yeah after deciding to go spare the asshole's life, I landed myself in the timeline that you're on.

dancing_cactuar posted...

I killed Eito when first going back so I had a completely different thing going on in probably every conceivable way including tone, but yeah after deciding to go spare the asshole's life, I landed myself in the timeline that you're on.

Yes, I agonized a bit, but I was like hmm... I feel like killing somebody is gonna be a pretty big deal no matter how much of an asshole Eito was. It's probably gonna cause a rift. Heck, it almost felt like Eito wasn't actually out to be a complete asshole in the regular Ch 13 route, then everything got completely sidelined cuz of my lust towards Hiruko. I didn't want Takumi to cheat on Nozomi though ngl. I almost considered just resetting towards the other option, but this route was like... ok I need to see where the fuck this is going.

I feel like I got the true ending given the credits difference and the ending name. If that's the true ending, though, what the hell was going on in the satellite humanity was on that made Tsubasa and Takemaru radio in to tell Takumi not to roll back the clock? I thought we were going to get (don't click if you haven't played through literally all of Chapter 14) something like the Sprawl from Dead Space 2 where the G'ie somehow infected everyone onboard and we had insane murderous people running among a zombie outbreak, but there was no hint of that.

After what I consider the tutorials, I think this has to be Kodaka's strongest character writing thus far. I mean you get to spend so much time with each and every character. It's better cuz in Danganronpa, any reason any of the side characters got any characterization at all was just so you can feel something b4 they kill or get killed or whatever, and you basically never hear about 90% of them ever again lol.

He's improved his writing in general, though he still has the same type of hang ups. The words, hope and despair, and his bizarre fixation on them never convinced me because they're extremely simple concepts that are thrown around like the term egoist in Blue Lock, yet for how many times they're mentioned, they're never even explored in a thought provoking way. It's almost a bit childish sometimes, the way they use certain words as their main theme. I think Uchikoshi, despite only taking credit for his help with the story structure past... that certain point, makes a ton of mark on the overall writing. I like the... "second half" a lot more because it feels like the story fixates less on survival

If you think to Zero Escape and how much conversations there were that didn't necessarily pertain to the main story, but the allegories made a lot of parallels to what eventually does happen in the story made these side conversations far more interesting and easy to read into. Some of them are so goofy, you kinda remember them even if they don't have story relevance, or perhaps precisely because they don't have story relevance. Remember funyarinpa?

Thinking back especially to Danganronpa 1~2 and the animes, Kodaka has always been less strong in writing his side conversations that breathes more character into his usually large cast, but Hundred Line is the first time where he's made me interested in the quirky side convos and situations the characters get themselves into, BUT they weren't as interesting in the "first half." I use the term "half" lightly here. I think it's because the story needed to happen to give more space to what comes after. I thought I wouldn't like it, but reading a lot of it now, it's the first time where I couldn't wait to see what happens next. Did it need to take like 20-30 hours to get here? Eh I'm patient. I think the payoff is so much bigger, and ultimately the writing leaves Kodaka's previous affairs in the dust. It just feels overall far less childish in the writing

legendarylemur posted...

The words, hope and despair, and his bizarre fixation on them never convinced me because they're extremely simple concepts that are thrown around like the term egoist in Blue Lock

If you haven't played it, I'd recommend Rain Code. It's not the strongest writing ever. You can kind of tell Kodaka doesn't know what to do if the story isn't set in a high-school, but it's got some of his stronger twists imo. There's also a lot less Hope and Despair nonsense thrown around. It's got a whole host of other problems: like the cast being too small, not having much attachment to most of the victims or villains, and none of the characters really having much to do or say unless it's their designated arc. Most of these problems tie into that first point. Without the high-school setting to force interactions between people who otherwise wouldn't associate with one another; Rain Code can't really afford to spend time getting you attached to people.

That said, by the end the faults kind of became part of the charm. It stands out to me because of how it's not Danganronpa. And despite its faults, it manages to absolutely nail the ending. I also just absolutely love the vibes of exploring Kanai Ward. If Too Kyo Games makes another Master Detective Archives, I'm 100% on board.

Progress Update for LDA: Currently on Day 45 I think? My previous speculation remains unchanged, I think. In fact several characters bringing up parallel worlds theory makes me much more inclined to believe that it's not parallel worlds. And is instead more likely to be something related to simulations and / or multiple pre-fabbed TRCs that served as sort of, "Personality Tests" for raising up the fighters who'd save the world. Now, if one more fucking character arbitrarily decides to withhold information about what the fuck is going on I'm going to scream. I get they've got 100 days to get through and things need to get paced out, but these anti-twists are starting to get old.

I wish Rain Code was better. I love noir stuff and the characters are great, but... it's very rough. In every way.

I think my biggest complaint aside form those already outlined is just. The giant infinite hallways inside the Labyrinth. Feels like an attempt to remove the visual novel feel from what is essentially still a visual novel. "Walk down the hall while the characters converse".

If they tighten up the writing (which from what people are saying about LDA, it sounds like they might be capable of), improve the "Dungeon" gameplay, then they'd easily have an instant classic imo.

I dunno, I think basically everything about the game was pretty mediocre at best. The minigames in the mystery dungeon are without exception inferior versions of similar ones in Danganronpa. The cases are unbelievably easy to figure out and if you run out the Reasoning Deathmatch timer, Shinigami will basically give you the answer, whereas in Danganronpa you'd get an often not straight forward hint. The detective points system means nothing because your reward is skills that just remove gameplay elements from a game that is already very easy. The labyrinths, in particular the first one are very nonsensical in a way that feels like it breaks the rules set up. The sidequests are very bad and feels like a poor way to engage with the world. And also the game just ran like absolute shit on the Switch, which was the only console it was released on initially. I don't know if that changed when it got ported later, but it was a really shitty experience.

But it's not all bad. The characters are really good and I like case 3 and 5 a lot. Conversely, case 4 is probably the worst of all Kodaka cases.

Been on hiatus Im still on day 70 or 80 something, Ill beat Ff7r2 tomorrow or the day after most likely and then Ill be able to focus on this guilt free. Glad to see people are mostly enjoying this game tho

https://x.com/0k7taratara/status/1919202796282216910

On Day 48 of Ch 13b... Ugh... I had to. Even though I know the choices probably don't matter that much because you can switch paths freely, I couldn't allow myself to pick anybody but Nozomi. But it really really hurt to reject Kurara. This ch made me like her quite a bit, but I mean come on... even she noticed how much Nozomi and Karua means to Takumi. You don't ever want to be a third wheel

The projector scene after was very somber. Ngl man like I can't even imagine how much the Kyoshika chapter would have to do for me to feel anything about her. At least Kurara was always sassy with that quirk of being shy on the inside, quite literally. But Kyoshika is just... perverted and kinda dumb and a bit violent. I get she's also paradoxically innocent but they would have to do so much to make me have a higher opinion of her. All I know is Tsubasa's chapter will happen one day and uhh yeah that's gonna be fucking impossible dawg

Btw, late first playthrough spoilers, I actually kinda wonder if there's a storyline fully dedicated to the hallucination induced by that invader music. The absolutely normal school life in a different art style. Something tells me it wasn't actually just a hallucination.

Up to 30 endings now. Just another 70 to go...

Day 74 or so. The story is finally picking up but so far none of my main theories have really changed. The invaders being some kind of human is such an obvious turn it didn't bare mention. I assume there's something deeper involved there but I'm unsure if the reveal will be we're the baddies vs Invaders are the baddies or what.

Im gonna start playing again this weekend

i presume the first ending constitutes most of the game and that different endings are far shorter to obtain. Maybe in a (zero escape spoilers) branch based system with different dates having branching paths etc
How long on average do different endings take once youve got to the first?

Rika_Furude posted...

Im gonna start playing again this weekend

i presume the first ending constitutes most of the game and that different endings are far shorter to obtain. Maybe in a (zero escape spoilers) branch based system with different dates having branching paths etc
How long on average do different endings take once youve got to the first?

it depends on the routes
i have a little over 35 endings and I'm sixty hours into the game

Rika_Furude posted...

Im gonna start playing again this weekend

i presume the first ending constitutes most of the game and that different endings are far shorter to obtain. Maybe in a (zero escape spoilers) branch based system with different dates having branching paths etc
How long on average do different endings take once youve got to the first?

No, I think the intent is that your first ending has a lot of conditionals that add different new context, and the later runs don't put as much emphasis on it. But from the little I've seen, most of the endings feel like similar lengths and have their own importance

Rika_Furude posted...

Im gonna start playing again this weekend

i presume the first ending constitutes most of the game and that different endings are far shorter to obtain. Maybe in a (zero escape spoilers) branch based system with different dates having branching paths etc
How long on average do different endings take once youve got to the first?

From what I can tell, the first ending is the tutorial/prologue for the game, lol.

Rika_Furude posted...

Im gonna start playing again this weekend

i presume the first ending constitutes most of the game and that different endings are far shorter to obtain.

You sweet summer child.

Given the fact that routes were advertised, I'm gonna suggest that we definitely don't need to spoiler-text chapter / day numbers. Leaving that unmarked would, imo, make it much easier to know what's safe to click on and what's not. For example...

Chapter 14 - Day 8 I immediately like Takumi much better as a character now that he's willing to be proactive. I only really realized late into Chapter 00 that was precisely what was happening. Takumi, indecisive and unconfident just repeatedly went with the flow and bad things kept happening because Eito dictated the story's events. Now Takumi's in charge. I'm not super happy with the choice to kill Eito personally, but I chose this because I knew I wouldn't like that, and because one of my friends chose the other route. I want to make sure I have a different experience than he did.

Random combat stuff - Takumi seems like one of the strongest characters imo. I'd say that Kako is probably the weakest, but then. Shouma seems to get even less use than her. I've more or less maxed Takumi since you always have him and I wanted to prioritize his stuff. I wonder who I ought to priotize next. Probably Tsubasa or Darumi, they're both pretty exceptional in different ways.

Kako is not the worst. I think the best thing for her is to get 1 huge jab per turn to start the turn against a boss or a 6 hp guy. She's just not a carry.

Also if you move her and do the big 3x3 AOE in place, it can sometimes be the best bang for your 2 AP bucks.

Shouma at the very least has the advantage of having the best ult in the game. But I can't, in good conscious, let him kill a commander.

I can agree with letting the shackles loose on the Chapter numbers. I guess it doesn't necessarily make sense for anybody who isn't there yet. Unless somebody objects

So I definitely made an oopsie and took a wrong turn in my otherwise perfectly middle-of-the-road Chapter 00 run...

Chapter 00 - Day 57 Had the chance to decide Eito's fate again and I chose to kill him this time because he'd probably cause more issues. Uh...he ended up taking over my psyche and made everyone of Takumi's friends look like Eito. There's a couple other choices branching off from here but I ended up picking a route where Takumi went crazy with hatred for Eito and ended up killing everybody permanently by absorbing their blood. I might as well go for the other endings on this short route before going back to spare Eito, though I have a feeling they'll end in basically the same way.

Chapter 14B - Day 20ish What the fuck is even happening anymore. Weird ass Scuba men attacked Takumi and Hiruka and then they woke up the next day with no memory of it. Uhh, my guess is that these people are, for some reason, the administrators of the school. There was some weirdness going on with dream-memories in the first route. I imagine our memories are likely being falsified. Perhaps these guys are the ones who do that. But how are they? Where are they hiding when not in the school?

Stupid sexy Clair Obscur keeping me from playing this.

I got Moko.

...I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't in this ball park.

On another note, I'm really digging the "Carousel" credits song. Gives me some nostalgia towards early 2000s women artist hip-hop, if that's accurate.

BakonBitz posted...

On another note, I'm really digging the "Carousel" credits song. Gives me some nostalgia towards early 2000s women artist hip-hop, if that's accurate.

All the credits songs are pretty kino.

DodogamaRayBrst posted...

I got Moko.

...I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't in this ball park.

I know, she's such a darling.

Uta posted...

Chapter 14B - Day 20ish What the fuck is even happening anymore.

That Chapter was what convinced me that the "hundred line" in the title refers not to anything in the game but rather referring to the length in meters of coke that was snorted before writing the game.