By comfortable coincidence, I completed taking part in Danganronpa V3: Killing Concord for the primary time earlier this month – which means that I’ve lastly conquered the complete primary story of an enormous multimedia franchise that is had a chokehold on my consideration ever since I obtained swept up by its mini-renaissance in the course of the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Extra to the purpose, although, it additionally signifies that I went into the demo for The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy at this month’s Steam Subsequent Fest with the ending to co-creator Kazutaka Kodaka’s most well-known physique of labor about as contemporary in my reminiscence because it will get.
Kodaka and a number of other different notable ex-Spike Chunsoft staff based their impartial studio Too Kyo Video games across the time of V3’s launch in 2017, and since then a number of of the video games they’ve launched have been enthusiastically picked up on as doubtlessly being Danganronpa 4 in spirit if not in title. This led followers to minor disappointment within the case of each World’s Finish Membership in 2020 and Grasp Detective Archives: Rain Code in 2023, each of which clearly share a lot of DNA with Danganronpa however diverge on some essential part (no killing recreation in World’s Finish Membership; no faculty life in Rain Code).
Now, naturally, The Hundred Line is getting the identical remedy, and having performed the demo, it is positively leaning into the comparability even more durable than anything Too Kyo have put out to date. Some musical motifs and sound cues can be so acquainted to Danganronpa followers that the callbacks border on straight-up reuse; to say nothing of the artwork fashion and archetypes used to assemble a forged of characters who give the identical feeling of heat and but barely surreal overfamiliarity you get when assembly your mates’ first cousins at a marriage.
All of that is in fact solely emphasised by the truth that the opening half hour of the sport – which performs out in a back-to-back collection of fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes that really feel barely uncanny if you happen to’re used to Danganronpa’s visible novel fashion of supply – performs out virtually beat-for-beat like its non secular predecessors. A painfully peculiar teenage boy and his she’s-not-my-girlfriend are interrupted on their technique to a traditional day in school by a collection of misadventures, culminating in our protagonist waking up in an unknown classroom filled with strangers and face-to-face with an effed-up trying cartoon mascot who’s operating the present.
Too Kyo are so eager to tease you for pondering what they know you are pondering at this level that there is even a member of the group who’s extraordinarily puffed up on the prospect that they are all about to be pressured into some kind of last-kid-standing struggle to the dying. Which is the place the narratives diverge, in fact, as a result of The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is a turn-based technique wherein the characters are tasked with working collectively to struggle evil robots and freaky monsters, and thus actively avert the form of world-ending disaster that often exists within the bigger-picture background of the Dangaronpa collection.
As a comparatively current convert to the delights of turn-based fight, I do not really feel fairly so certified to evaluate The Hundred Line’s deserves as a technique recreation as I do to speak about its relationship to Danganronpa. However I am not a complete novice both, and to date it is offered me with an attention-grabbing strategic puzzle in locations with out doing something I would think about groundbreaking, which is what I’ve come to count on when an skilled staff specialising in narrative-led video games department out into a complete new gameplay fashion. I would take an informed guess, although, that The Hundred Line will work higher as an entry-level technique recreation expertise for visible novel followers than the opposite method round.
The demo covers the primary seven in-game days and ends with a cliffhanger which I will not spoil right here however which ought to fulfill gamers who’ve arrived on the recreation by way of the creators’ earlier works. However that is not to say that I feel The Hundred Line is cleverly hiding its true intention to reboot the killing recreation idea beneath the bait-and-switch cowl of a very completely different style, and actually, I would a lot choose it to remain that method. In any case, I actually simply completed taking part in Kodaka’s 60-hour justification as to why he should not need to hold making Danganronpa again and again until he decides he actually desires to once more; and provided that Too Kyo’s relationship with the IP holders at Spike Chunsoft is by all accounts nonetheless superb, I feel that Danganronpa 4, if and when it arrives, will most likely be referred to as… effectively, Danganronpa 4, or some variation thereon.
You most likely will not do your self or the sport any favours by going into The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy merely hoping for extra Danganronpa. However nonetheless, The Hundred Line desires you to know that it understands what you appreciated about Danganronpa, and that Too Kyo can nonetheless ship the weird-yet-lovable characters and wild plots you need – simply with out being restricted to the identical fashion of gameplay, or the very tight (certainly, by the tip, noticeably repetitive) method that stated franchise adopted for its central trilogy.
Thus far what I’ve seen of this recreation has managed admirably to strike a troublesome steadiness between brand-new enterprise and self-conscious nostalgia journey, and whereas I am by no means positive which half will emerge victorious within the full launch, it is obtained me satisfied to tag alongside for the trip. And if you consider it, there’s one thing very well timed a couple of sort-of-follow-up to Danganronpa popping out in 2025 that reminds us we’re really all the time higher off banding collectively than permitting ourselves to be pitted in opposition to each other. Checked out that method, possibly it is not a lot a subversion of established tropes as a pure evolution of them.
The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy demo is on the market on Steam now, with the complete recreation anticipated to launch on April twenty fourth for Home windows and Nintendo Change. And there is excellent news for PC gamers, since progress from this demo may be carried over to the complete launch.
