Final Protection Academy makes confusion a part of the enjoyable

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy begins off by asking a easy query: what occurs while you pluck a handful of colourful youngsters from their houses, plop them in a state-of-the-art faculty crammed with each comfort, then drive them to combat for his or her lives? Your information as you navigate this query is an unsettling and creepy-cute mascot that is aware of greater than it’s let on, and there’s an overarching thriller to the world that you could’t fairly put your finger on.

If you happen to, like I, answered “Danganronpa!” — as this premise sounds very very similar to the plot of the quirky and irreverent murder-mystery sequence from Spike Chunsoft — then congratulations! We’re each completely flawed! And after 45 in-game days with LDA, I nonetheless don’t know what’s happening, and I find it irresistible.

I’m going to be mild with myself and also you for considering LDA is one other entry within the style of excessive school-themed killing video games. In any case, it was developed by Kazutaka Kodaka, creator and author of the Danganronpa franchise, in collaboration with Kotaro Uchikoshi, identified for his work on the adventure-puzzle sport sequence Zero Escape. And although LDA oozes with the DNA from each sequence, it stands so utterly aside mechanically and narratively that whereas I can get a grasp on the previous, I’m misplaced with the latter.

The premise is straightforward sufficient. You play as Takumi Sumino, who will get whisked away to the Final Protection Academy, the place he and a bunch of others use their newly woke up powers to defend the college from monster assaults for 100 days. Ought to they fail, the invaders will destroy the college and thereby… due to plot… all of humanity. Often previous a sure level, I can work out a sport’s core gameplay loop and tough narrative thrust. When the primary physique dropped in Danganronpa, I instantly understood that I’d be spending the remainder of the sport fixing my classmates’ murders. However I haven’t been ready to determine LDA.

I perceive the gameplay loop simply sufficient: it’s a tactical RPG with visible novel-like relationship-building parts. Fight takes place on a gridded battlefield with every combatant capable of assault in a unique configuration, just like chess. One among Takumi’s skills assaults enemies in a straight line. My ally, Gaku, assaults in an oblong sample. Every of my allies’ assaults contributes to a voltage meter that enables us to make use of our particular skills when full. And if certainly one of my allies ought to fall, they’ll be revived earlier than the subsequent wave of enemies.

I like how the tactical fight isn’t like Hearth Emblem or Triangle Technique. LDA is exclusive, as you’re not making an attempt to handle the advanced rock-paper-scissors components of what weapons are sturdy or weak towards one another. As a substitute, life is the engine that drives fight. Actions you’re taking are decided by what number of motion factors, or AP, you’ve gotten, and killing sure enemies grants you extra AP. On the flip facet, allies who’re close to loss of life can unleash massive particular assaults that may clear complete battlefields at the price of shedding them for the remainder of the wave.

Fight then turns into a operate of enjoying with life totals — my enemies and mine. I’ll prepare my assaults in such a means that each time I act, I kill an enemy and achieve extra AP so I can simply hold going, denying my enemies the prospect to combat again. Then, once I’m out of AP, I can unleash a killing blow that ends the spherical. My allies get revived the subsequent spherical, and I can begin the method yet again. I’ve been left so unhappy by the crop of tactical RPGs currently, and LDA fills the gaping gap Hearth Emblem Have interaction created and the Advance Wars remakes couldn’t repair.

However whereas I’ve obtained a deal with on the fight, I nonetheless haven’t the faintest clue of the story it’s making an attempt to inform. My confusion is so thorough that as I am going by every new day, my experiences begin sounding like wartime letters from the entrance strains.

It’s day 33. Our self-proclaimed chief, Hiruko, remains to be lacking. We’re beginning to suspect she’ll by no means return. In the meantime, the enemy retains hurling themselves at our defenses. To this point, we’ve been capable of maintain them off. Gaku lately developed his energy, revealing himself to be a peerless ranged fighter. However our forces are nowhere close to full power, since Ima, Kako, and Shouma refuse to combat. And alas! Our foodstores have wiped out and I worry we’ll starve quickly. Warfare is grim, however I combat realizing the nearer I get to the a centesimal day is a day I’m nearer to returning house… or so I hope.

LDA’s narrative is so in contrast to something I’ve ever skilled that not realizing what’s occurring subsequent is a part of the enjoyable. I like getting dragged alongside for the journey, discovering new developments alongside the characters, who’re themselves a delight. As different retailers have identified, Darumi Amemiya is the bodily manifestation of the irony-poisoned and terminally on-line dirtbag edgel(ady), and I like her even when her characterization will get uncomfortably acquainted generally.

I additionally actually get pleasure from how the characters are over-the-top caricatures themselves — Darumi’s the creepy murder-obsessed emo lady, Takemaru’s the standard fighting-obsessed delinquent — however make choices like regular folks. I usually wrestle to get into “transported to a different world” tales as a result of not one of the choices made in them have ever made sense to me, a lady who can’t flip off her overly logical and reason-obsessed mind to be able to simply flow. So it’s extremely refreshing to see these characters push again on the circumstances they’ve been dropped in.

As a substitute of simply accepting that they’ve been taken from the whole lot they’ve ever identified and compelled to combat and die (even when that loss of life is momentary), a few of my allies preserve a wholesome stage of skepticism, query the whole lot, and refuse to combat. I do know I’d! And even higher, different characters within the sport perceive and acknowledge that as an affordable place. There’s no rah-rah speech of “It’s essential to combat!” that convinces them to take up arms. The reluctant characters are given the house to come back round on their very own time and for their very own causes.

Which will sound boring. In any case, in an isekai-like narrative, the characters are often compelled to get on board rapidly in any other case there wouldn’t be a plot. So seeing a sport take its time with the reluctant characters, letting them work by their hangups in a pure and unforced means, was pleasing to my mind.

Within the nearly 50 days I’ve spent with LDA, I do have some working theories as to the place the general story will go. The way it will get there, although, I’ve no clue, however I’m excited to see what twists the sport will take alongside the best way.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is out now on Swap and PC.