The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is not Danganronpa 4, however it’s completely happy to revisit some fan-favourite tropes Players Enviornment

By completely happy coincidence, I completed enjoying Danganronpa V3: Killing Concord for the primary time earlier this month – that means that I’ve lastly conquered the complete major story of a large multimedia franchise that is had a chokehold on my consideration ever since I received swept up by its mini-renaissance through the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Extra to the purpose, although, it additionally implies 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 unbiased 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 probably being Danganronpa 4 in spirit if not in identify. 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 element (no killing recreation in World’s Finish Membership; no faculty life in Rain Code).

Now, naturally, The Hundred Line is getting the identical therapy, and having performed the demo, it is positively leaning into the comparability even more durable than the rest Too Kyo have put out to date. Some musical motifs and sound cues will likely be so acquainted to Danganronpa followers that the callbacks border on straight-up reuse; to say nothing of the artwork model 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 pals’ 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 sequence of fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes that really feel barely uncanny in the event you’re used to Danganronpa’s visible novel model of supply – performs out virtually beat-for-beat like its non secular predecessors. A painfully extraordinary teenage boy and his she’s-not-my-girlfriend are interrupted on their solution to a traditional day at college by a sequence 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 working the present.

Too Kyo are so eager to tease you for considering what they know you are considering at this level that there is even a member of the group who’s extraordinarily overrated on the prospect that they are all about to be pressured into some type of last-kid-standing struggle to the loss of life. Which is the place the narratives diverge, in fact, as a result of The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is a turn-based technique during which the characters are tasked with working collectively to struggle evil robots and freaky monsters, and thus actively avert the sort of world-ending disaster that often exists within the bigger-picture background of the Dangaronpa sequence.

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 method recreation as I do to speak about its relationship to Danganronpa. However I am not a complete novice both, and to date it is introduced me with an fascinating strategic puzzle in locations with out doing something I would contemplate groundbreaking, which is what I’ve come to anticipate when an skilled staff specialising in narrative-led video games department out into a complete new gameplay model. 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 approach 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 below the bait-and-switch cowl of a totally completely different style, and actually, I would a lot favor it to remain that approach. In any case, I actually simply completed enjoying Kodaka’s 60-hour justification as to why he should not need to preserve making Danganronpa time 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 excellent, I feel that Danganronpa 4, if and when it arrives, will in all probability be referred to as… effectively, Danganronpa 4, or some variation thereon.

You in all probability 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 however, The Hundred Line desires you to know that it understands what you preferred 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 model of gameplay, or the very tight (certainly, by the top, noticeably repetitive) method that stated franchise adopted for its central trilogy.

Up to now 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 in no way positive which half will emerge victorious within the full launch, it is received 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 truly at all times higher off banding collectively than permitting ourselves to be pitted in opposition to each other. Checked out that approach, perhaps it isn’t a lot a subversion of established tropes as a pure evolution of them.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy demo is obtainable 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 could be carried over to the complete launch.