Last Defense Academy Is The Dangonronpa and Persona Fusion I Didn’t Know I Needed
A tantalizing fusion.
At the beginning of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a bunch of innocent teenagers get kidnapped by an anthropomorphic mascot and wake up locked in a school. Sound familiar? It should.
Last Defense Academy is the meeting of two brilliant creators, Dangaronpa writer and designer Kazutaka Kodaka, and Kotaro Uchikoshi, the mind behind the Zero Escape franchise — which consists of 999, Virtue’s Last Reward, and Zero Time Dilemma. Both of these creators have iconically distinct styles, and Last Defense Academy feels like a fusion of both, drawing elements from both Zero Escape and Dangonronpa to create something that truly feels fresh and vibrant — while also taking some key bits from both Persona and Fire Emblem. After playing a few hours of the new strategy RPG, it already feels destined to be one of the sleeper hits of the year.
For Last Defense Academy, developer Tookyo Games has partnered with anime and manga producer Aniplex — investing heavily in the game’s animation and cinematic nature.
In The Hundred Line you play as Takumi Sumino, an ordinary teenager just living a hum-drum life in Tokyo — or at least it seems normal until you learn there’s a giant dome around the entire city. While the game doesn’t immediately lay out its world and story, there’s an imminent sense that something is wrong — something has happened to the world that we don’t know about. That feeling only heightens when the city is attacked by monsters and Takumi is granted a power called “Hemoanima” that grants him supernatural powers.
But after using it Takumi passes out and awakens in the titular Last Defense Academy, alongside a dozen other teenagers. There, a downright bizarre being that’s literally a floating brain and heart in a ghost body tells them they have to fend off alien invaders from taking over the school, or all of mankind will be destroyed.
After playing over five hours of Last Defense Academy, the most captivating thing about the game is how clearly so many of its elements are inspired by other games — but how all of those disparate elements manage to fuse into something that feels shockingly distinctive. The game takes the artistic style and setup of Dangonronpa, the character-focused writing of Zero escape, the tactical battles of Three Houses, and the time management of Persona, and throws it all into a blender.
It’s not a Kodaka game without an unsettling mascot character.
Much like all of Kodaka’s other games there’s a core sense of intrigue to Last Defense Academy, as you piece together the story and state of the world. But unlike those games you aren’t being trained to distrust all of the other characters, instead, you’re building bonds with them — unpiecing aspects of their character and the role they have to play. It’s a brilliant inversion of the Dangonronpa formula. And there’s a reason for that, as Kodaka tells Inverse simply “It’s our first in-house IP, so we wanted to do something like the games we love to create.”
That equally applies to the games the studio has clearly been inspired by, and it’s hard to look at the free time elements and school setting and not think of Persona. But when asked about the similarities, Kodaka only coyly responds, “If you like Persona, this is the game you should play. We hope it sells more than Persona.” Every question I asked the pair was met with almost cryptic responses, providing just enough of a hint to what’s in the game to leave me wanting more.
Both Kodaka and Uchikoshi are known for the almost rebellious style of their games — experiences that more often than not break the mold and veer off into wildly experimental territory. For Last Defense Academy, that experimental sense seems to already be applying to both the story and gameplay.
The academy itself has a variety of different rooms and services.
While the signature Dangonronpa style and sense of humor is immediately apparent, the influence of Uchikoshi’s Zero Escape franchise takes some time to see. One of the most iconic elements of that series, and Uchikoshi’s AI games, is what’s known as the Flowchart. These games play out through nonlinear storytelling that involves multiple choices, diverging storylines, and time travel. The massive web of choices and story routes is displayed through the Flowchart, and the real joy of the Zero Escape games is how these branching pathways lay out a breadcrumb trail that lets you uncover the overarching story bit by bit.
That idea returns in Last Defense Academy, and the demo booth I played the game in had the flowchart stuck on the wall — with literally hundreds of nodes across multiple panels. Last Defense Academy supposedly has nearly 100 endings, and Uchikoshi told me the flowchart I saw wasn’t even the full thing. In that dense web of nodes, apparently every character gets their own story and arc — oftentimes dealing with a variety of different narrative themes, from “friendship and love, to science fiction,” Uchikoshi says.
There are obviously a variety of choices you’ll be making to branch the narrative, but the key difference with Last Defense Academy is how the story plays out. Essentially, the game is split into two halves — battles and free time. The setup is, if your team can survive one hundred days they’ll be freed from the prison of the academy. Battles play out every few days, and between those you can use free time to bond with characters, craft items, or explore around the academy for materials. Again very Persona-esque, but with a twist.
Tactical combat has an interesting spin that focuses heavily on defense, with each character having a defined role.
The tactical battles of the game do feel a lot like Fire Emblem, but with a unique twist that’s all about resource management and defense. Essentially, each battle has you defending the school from waves of invaders, taking turns between your team and the enemy team. At first, you’re only defending one side of the academy with a few characters, but as you progress you’ll be defending the school from all angles — controlling up to fifteen characters in battle. Each turn you have a set number of AP (action points) to use, and each character has a unique set of moves and abilities. Every character fills a very specific role in combat, and you need to learn how to effectively use them.
For example, Takemaru is a defense-focused character who rides a bike, and every square he moves adds to a defensive barrier. Meanwhile, Hiruko is heavy on offense and can only hit a few enemies at once but has high damage — but she’s also a glass cannon that can go down quickly if surrounded. At the same time, you have a Voltage meter that constantly builds, allowing you to use special attacks and giving characters permanent buffs in battle. So while the basic of combat is the same as other tactical RPGs, it becomes a game of combining the right characters together, prioritizing placement and area-of-effect attacks, managing Voltage, and ensuring you aren’t letting enemies through. Later on, you’ll be able to develop a variety of items to use in battle, including blockades to stop enemies or bombs that hit a huge area. There’s clearly a lot of depth, especially when tied to strengthening characters by making smart uses of your free time.
Much of the game’s story plays out through a visual novel style.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about my time with Last Defense Academy is that I already feel nostalgic playing it. The game is so reminiscent of the time I’ve spent with series like Dangonronpa, that I almost feel like I’ve been with these characters before. But that’s a good thing in this case, as it means I could instantly buy into the game’s concept.
What Last Defense Academy really feels like, is two visionary developers putting everything they’ve learned into a single experience. You can practically see the threads of other games in the tapestry of the game, but it feels like a unique strength. Ironically, despite all those similarities to other games, Last Defense Academy feels anything but derivative — and we may be looking back on it in a year’s time as one of the biggest cult classics of the generation.
