Kazutaka Kodaka, best known as the lead behind the wild Danganronpa series, has helped build something even more over-the-top in The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a non-linear, darkly comedic, violent, sexy, visual novel-inspired strategy RPG with 100 endings. Kodaka is glad for the chance to make something so weird it might not sell – but he'd really rather you buy a copy.
"I’ll say it again – this game is absolutely insane, and I really want everyone to play it," Kodaka said on Twitter yesterday, responding to a fan who'd just completed their first run through Hundred Line. "I don’t think anyone will ever make something like this again."
He expanded on that sentiment in another tweet today. "Hundred Line is a pretty edgy game – but that’s exactly what it takes to give players a truly new experience," Kodaka continued. "The feedback has been really positive, and I believe it really resonated with the people it was meant for. Even if it doesn’t sell well, I’m genuinely glad we made it."
It's impossible to get a real sense of how Hundred Line is performing financially from an outside perspective. The Steam version – the game is also available on Switch – currently has 1,000 Steam reviews and a peak concurrent player count of 10,026. That could indicate a great success for a small indie game or a Reddit thread-generating failure for a AAA title, but it's a lot tougher to tell for something in between those scales, like Hundred Line.
Regardless of how the game's selling, Kodaka reckons that "sometimes, it’s good to have a crazy game out there – the kind no one else would ever dare to make, right? But… yeah, I still want it to sell so we can keep the company going. So please, support us if you can!"
For those who have played it, Kodaka's certainly right that Hundred Line seems to be resonating. Those 1,000 Steam reviews are 91% positive, and the Metacritic score is a respectable 85. The director behind Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, the other big new RPG of the moment, is a fan too. We're all feasting – or maybe drowning – with this many options on how to spend our RPG-playing time.
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