Last Defense Academy makes confusion part of the fun

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy begins off by asking a easy query: what occurs if you pluck a handful of colourful youngsters from their properties, plop them in a state-of-the-art college stuffed with each comfort, then pressure them to combat for his or her lives? Your information as you navigate this query is an unsettling and creepy-cute mascot that is aware of greater than it’s let on, and there’s an overarching thriller to the world that you may’t fairly put your finger on.

In case you, like I, answered “Danganronpa!” — as this premise sounds very very similar to the plot of the quirky and irreverent murder-mystery sequence from Spike Chunsoft — then congratulations! We’re each completely improper! And after 45 in-game days with LDA, I nonetheless don’t know what’s occurring, and I adore it.

I’m going to be mild with myself and also you for considering LDA is one other entry within the style of excessive school-themed killing video games. In spite of everything, it was developed by Kazutaka Kodaka, creator and author of the Danganronpa franchise, in collaboration with Kotaro Uchikoshi, identified for his work on the adventure-puzzle sport sequence Zero Escape. And although LDA oozes with the DNA from each sequence, it stands so fully aside mechanically and narratively that whereas I can get a grasp on the previous, I’m misplaced with the latter.

The premise is easy sufficient. You play as Takumi Sumino, who will get whisked away to the Final Protection Academy, the place he and a bunch of others use their newly woke up powers to defend the college from monster assaults for 100 days. Ought to they fail, the invaders will destroy the college and thereby… due to plot… all of humanity. Normally previous a sure level, I can determine a sport’s core gameplay loop and tough narrative thrust. When the primary physique dropped in Danganronpa, I instantly understood that I’d be spending the remainder of the sport fixing my classmates’ murders. However I haven’t been ready to determine LDA.

I perceive the gameplay loop simply sufficient: it’s a tactical RPG with visible novel-like relationship-building parts. Fight takes place on a gridded battlefield with every combatant capable of assault in a special configuration, much like chess. Certainly one of Takumi’s skills assaults enemies in a straight line. My ally, Gaku, assaults in an oblong sample. Every of my allies’ assaults contributes to a voltage meter that permits us to make use of our particular skills when full. And if one in every of my allies ought to fall, they’ll be revived earlier than the following wave of enemies.

I like how the tactical fight isn’t like Hearth Emblem or Triangle Technique. LDA is exclusive, as you’re not attempting to handle the advanced rock-paper-scissors components of what weapons are sturdy or weak in opposition to one another. As an alternative, life is the engine that drives fight. Actions you are taking are decided by what number of motion factors, or AP, you might have, and killing sure enemies grants you extra AP. On the flip aspect, allies who’re close to demise can unleash large particular assaults that may clear complete battlefields at the price of dropping them for the remainder of the wave.

Fight then turns into a operate of taking part in with life totals — my enemies and mine. I’ll organize my assaults in such a manner that each time I act, I kill an enemy and acquire extra AP so I can simply maintain going, denying my enemies the prospect to combat again. Then, after I’m out of AP, I can unleash a killing blow that ends the spherical. My allies get revived the following spherical, and I can begin the method another time. I’ve been left so unhappy by the crop of tactical RPGs these days, and LDA fills the gaping gap Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes couldn’t repair.

However whereas I’ve received a deal with on the fight, I nonetheless haven’t the faintest clue of the story it’s attempting to inform. My confusion is so thorough that as I’m going by means of every new day, my experiences begin sounding like wartime letters from the entrance strains.

It’s day 33. Our self-proclaimed chief, Hiruko, continues to be lacking. We’re beginning to suspect she’ll by no means return. In the meantime, the enemy retains hurling themselves at our defenses. To this point, we’ve been capable of maintain them off. Gaku not too long ago developed his energy, revealing himself to be a peerless ranged fighter. However our forces are nowhere close to full energy, since Ima, Kako, and Shouma refuse to combat. And alas! Our foodstores have wiped out and I worry we’ll starve quickly. Battle is grim, however I combat figuring out the nearer I get to the a hundredth day is a day I’m nearer to returning residence… or so I hope.

LDA’s narrative is so not like something I’ve ever skilled that not figuring out what’s taking place subsequent is a part of the enjoyable. I like getting dragged alongside for the experience, discovering new developments alongside the characters, who’re themselves a delight. As other outlets have pointed out, Darumi Amemiya is the bodily manifestation of the irony-poisoned and terminally on-line dirtbag edgel(ady), and I am keen on her even when her characterization will get uncomfortably acquainted typically.

I additionally actually take pleasure in how the characters are over-the-top caricatures themselves — Darumi’s the creepy murder-obsessed emo woman, Takemaru’s the standard fighting-obsessed delinquent — however make choices like regular folks. I usually wrestle to get into “transported to a different world” tales as a result of not one of the choices made in them have ever made sense to me, a girl who can’t flip off her overly logical and reason-obsessed mind as a way to simply drift. So it’s extremely refreshing to see these characters push again on the circumstances they’ve been dropped in.

As an alternative of simply accepting that they’ve been taken from every little thing they’ve ever identified and compelled to combat and die (even when that demise is momentary), a few of my allies keep a wholesome stage of skepticism, query every little thing, and refuse to combat. I do know I might! And even higher, different characters within the sport perceive and acknowledge that as an affordable place. There’s no rah-rah speech of “It’s essential to combat!” that convinces them to take up arms. The reluctant characters are given the house to return round on their very own time and for their very own causes.

That will sound boring. In spite of everything, in an isekai-like narrative, the characters are normally compelled to get on board rapidly in any other case there wouldn’t be a plot. So seeing a sport take its time with the reluctant characters, letting them work by means of their hangups in a pure and unforced manner, was pleasing to my mind.

Within the virtually 50 days I’ve spent with LDA, I do have some working theories as to the place the general story will go. The way it will get there, although, I’ve no clue, however I’m excited to see what twists the sport will take alongside the way in which.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is out now on Change and PC.