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I had started to lose faith in Kodaka after he decided to abandon his one good IP - Danganronpa - and instead foray into an obscure FMV nobody played, some weird 2d adventure game about kids that nobody played and then the poorly-conceived Resident Evil reference that was Raincode. Uchikoshi is known for cranking out cult bangers with the Infinity series and even though Zero Escape was wracked with financial difficulties it just oozed with charm and the ideas presented were interesting, fresh and zany. While AI:The Somnium Files seemed a little opaque and without the fun puzzles of the previous franchise, the first one was pretty good. The second one was shit.
So these two geezers decided to do a fresh colab on their hit new ARPG VN Hybrid 'Hundred Line: The Last Defence Academy' and as soon as I see the trailer I'm like... 'okay so we're going back to high school again? And they decided to add in a new marketable mascot? Does Kodaka know how to write a protagonist that isn't so utterly milquetoast that it's French toast (if French toast was made from cardboard), because this guy looks like a total nothingburger seasoned with red anime hair.
Of course, the real question we were all asking: Will the ghost mascots in this game be as fuckable as the one from before?
My initial thoughts were that none of the characters were anywhere remotely likeable. I thought this was going to be a thing where you initially loathe the characters but through the writer's magic ink you grow to like them, not so. All of them are just weird gimmicky characters that never go anywhere!
Here's a sampler:
- Twink assassin that jokes about fuckin ur ass and that's his whole bit.
- Weeaboo LARPing as a samurai (many jokes about fucking her sword for some reason).
- Highfalutin rich bitch that wears a tomato mask (for reasons, she becomes super kawaii moe when you take it off (⸝⸝⸝>﹏<⸝⸝⸝) ).
- An incest pairing??? THIS IS THE THIRD GAME KODAKA!!!
All of the other characters are the same like Kodaka just had a billboard of degenerate, dumbass concepts and threw darts to pick character traits, not even trying. Then he decided he could not be bothered to add substantial character development leaving them as 1D gimmick concepts for the whole game!
The sole exception is the antagonist who was blackpilled AF but a funny antagonist can't carry the slop that is the rest of this game.
Okay, so that's fun. A whole roster of AI-generated characters IDGAF about. The tower defence battles are fun but the rest of the gameplay sux. Everything else is a regression; exploration is the most tedious thing I have ever endured and they completely stripped the pretty decent social system of Danganronpa, it's now complete fluff.
What I was interested in was the story, because these two old boys have written some pretty cool mysteries in the past. Out of nowhere you are forced into a draft with 16 other students and have to defend the highschool (apparently the last bastion of humanity) from a bunch of mysterious monster invaders. Okay, intriguing enough, and yet I will never know the whole story of this dogshit game because THEY DECIDED TO MAKE IT OVER 100 HOURS LONG.
I've played 40 hours and I just... can't. Uchikoshi is known for his time travel games, his elaborate timelines... this game is no exception. The reason it's called 'hundred-line' is because (aside from the game taking place in a hundred days) instead of having a cohesive, exhilarating single narrative they decided to split the game into a hundred of the sloppiest, nothing branching pathways imaginable. Uchikoshi... UCHIKOSHI. It does not matter if there are 100 endings if I literally want to GOUGE MY EYES OUT WHENEVER ONE OF THE CHARACTERS DOES THEIR WEIRD LITTLE ANIME MOANS EVERY LINE INSTEAD OF HAVING VOICED DIALOGUE. Maybe there's the next Foucalt's Pendulum buried in here somewhere but honestly I cannot play another hour of this slop without wanting to blow my brains out. In fact I am genuinely angry that they decided to waste the cool concept of going back in time to alter the previous 100 days and get a different ending on this steaming trash heap.
I have lost faith... 2/10.
There will be no more good visual novels. You can generate more engaging narratives and characters with AI. It's OVER.
So these two geezers decided to do a fresh colab on their hit new ARPG VN Hybrid 'Hundred Line: The Last Defence Academy' and as soon as I see the trailer I'm like... 'okay so we're going back to high school again? And they decided to add in a new marketable mascot? Does Kodaka know how to write a protagonist that isn't so utterly milquetoast that it's French toast (if French toast was made from cardboard), because this guy looks like a total nothingburger seasoned with red anime hair.
Of course, the real question we were all asking: Will the ghost mascots in this game be as fuckable as the one from before?
My initial thoughts were that none of the characters were anywhere remotely likeable. I thought this was going to be a thing where you initially loathe the characters but through the writer's magic ink you grow to like them, not so. All of them are just weird gimmicky characters that never go anywhere!
Here's a sampler:
- Twink assassin that jokes about fuckin ur ass and that's his whole bit.
- Weeaboo LARPing as a samurai (many jokes about fucking her sword for some reason).
- Highfalutin rich bitch that wears a tomato mask (for reasons, she becomes super kawaii moe when you take it off (⸝⸝⸝>﹏<⸝⸝⸝) ).
- An incest pairing??? THIS IS THE THIRD GAME KODAKA!!!
All of the other characters are the same like Kodaka just had a billboard of degenerate, dumbass concepts and threw darts to pick character traits, not even trying. Then he decided he could not be bothered to add substantial character development leaving them as 1D gimmick concepts for the whole game!
The sole exception is the antagonist who was blackpilled AF but a funny antagonist can't carry the slop that is the rest of this game.
Okay, so that's fun. A whole roster of AI-generated characters IDGAF about. The tower defence battles are fun but the rest of the gameplay sux. Everything else is a regression; exploration is the most tedious thing I have ever endured and they completely stripped the pretty decent social system of Danganronpa, it's now complete fluff.
What I was interested in was the story, because these two old boys have written some pretty cool mysteries in the past. Out of nowhere you are forced into a draft with 16 other students and have to defend the highschool (apparently the last bastion of humanity) from a bunch of mysterious monster invaders. Okay, intriguing enough, and yet I will never know the whole story of this dogshit game because THEY DECIDED TO MAKE IT OVER 100 HOURS LONG.
I've played 40 hours and I just... can't. Uchikoshi is known for his time travel games, his elaborate timelines... this game is no exception. The reason it's called 'hundred-line' is because (aside from the game taking place in a hundred days) instead of having a cohesive, exhilarating single narrative they decided to split the game into a hundred of the sloppiest, nothing branching pathways imaginable. Uchikoshi... UCHIKOSHI. It does not matter if there are 100 endings if I literally want to GOUGE MY EYES OUT WHENEVER ONE OF THE CHARACTERS DOES THEIR WEIRD LITTLE ANIME MOANS EVERY LINE INSTEAD OF HAVING VOICED DIALOGUE. Maybe there's the next Foucalt's Pendulum buried in here somewhere but honestly I cannot play another hour of this slop without wanting to blow my brains out. In fact I am genuinely angry that they decided to waste the cool concept of going back in time to alter the previous 100 days and get a different ending on this steaming trash heap.
I have lost faith... 2/10.
There will be no more good visual novels. You can generate more engaging narratives and characters with AI. It's OVER.
