Manic Emo Dream GhoulSo far I recognised like 99999 danganronpa references, a persona reference, and a black lagoon (???!?!) reference from Darumi. Because it's Darumi, somehow it's not forced at all.
I'm a bit worried about the mean buns on the convoy belt in the kitchen, but somehow I suspect Darumi would be all about cannibalism.
PROJECTILE VOMIT IS LIKE THE BEST WEAPON EVER WHY ISN'T TSUBASA TRULY EMBRACE IT
Like when I was a child right, I could vomit by command. And so I- ok im sparing you the details but trust me, it's a useful skill
At this point, I feel that the general cast of Hundred Line is a lot intentionally nicer and normaller than Danganronpa, and I mean this both in a positive and negative way. Even the abrasive characters are not intensively and pointlessly antagonising like say Miu or Kokichi, and even the mutiny so far isn't pure anarchy like Danganronpa.
Now I think Hiruko is a dreadful leader, even just from the lack of transparency and how all she achieved so far is build mistrust. But it's also not quite like trolling for shit and giggles either.
I kinda miss the way the cast would organise themselves in rebellion in Danganronpa instead. Everyone here just felt so diplomatic and reasonable in comparison. Good in reality, in a chaotic fiction I just wish someone would move swing the fan around when shit hits, so there's a good even coating of the shit mist.
My Darumi theory is, there is a distinctive and intentional decision from the writers to make a Danganronpa character, but likable.
This is to say I really appreciate characters like Junko or Miu, but it's actually nice that someone has their energy don't also genuinely terrify me.
Sorry I kinda don't care about Hiruko. Her only strength was in extra info, which she made a theatrical show on withholding on; and as an ingame combater she's Z tier.
Which I'm sure is the real decoy in this game's 5D chess but still. The game play is basically screaming this is the one character made to be sacrificed early.
The real power fantasy is playing as someone who has an innate circadian rhythm. I'm sure Takimi isn't time blind either. Bastard.
I'm also super impressed how he's a teenager and maintained that neat bedroom for three weeks. Even accounting he owns nothing, I'd still struggle to do the same.
In a rare moment of (?unscripted) ludonarrative concordance, I made Takumi blow himself up during the exploration, and then he was abandoned in a building to die lol.
Whoops sorry.
Ok, not that sorry.
Something I just noticed, beneath each character in the report cards page, there seems to be a unique trait in Kanji. Of course I don't read Kanji, so there's another layer of vagueness and do not trust any of my translation. It's also flash and the words get blocked by the character art, so I'm guessing a lot of it, so also do not trust any of my transcription.
Takumi: 敗失 (Failure and loss)
Takemaru: 走爆 (Explosive)
Hiruko: 殺虐 (Killing by torture)
Darumi: 法魔 (Occultist)
Eito: 運幸 (Fortune)
Tsubasa: 車造改 (Vehicle modification)
Gaku: 事家 (Domestic/odd jobs)
Ima: 力能超 (Superpower)
Kako: 秘神 (Mystic deity)
Shouma: 盾 (Shield)
Nozomi: 護看 (Nurse and observator)
Kurara: 作工魔 (Construction demon)
Kyoshika: 道士武 (...Combat Taoist?)
Yugamu: 驗実体人 (Physical experiencer)
Moko: 魂闘 (Spirit fighter)
Eva: ☒☒☒（☒☒☒）
Mad props for not being subtle about unwinnable scripted losing fights.
I'm also loving the existence of Second To Last Defence Academy.
Thankfully that's over. Hope I'll never have to interact with Shouma ever again. I'm mostly bitter about losing 4 days where I couldn't do any scavenging or stats building because someone else is doing something else completely unrelated to what I can do with my time.
Darumi gets it.
This Confusion Commander fight is in-fucking-furiating.
Darumi is right, kill your confused team, they will revive the next wave, as if this isn't the shit you've been telling your team to blow themselves up for the past 44 days
Takumi is fired as team leader
Ok I kinda hate this specific battle, because the only reason it's hard is because the narrative forced your team to be complete idiots. So now I absolutely detest Takumi, as well as I hate the entire shitty Second Last Academy
I wouldn't mind the handicap so much if it wasn't written in such a way that essentially makes you lose respect for your entire team.
Lol and the only reason I lost the first time around was because I ~~~~couldn't get incapacitate my friends ~~~~ who was attacking the base, who's be revived within 5 min, then the only way to win next time around was to blow them all up.
Takumi sucks ass
Just got to the World Death reveal part. So far the alleged plot is Earth is sentient and it's sick of humans so the Earth commits suicide.
Knowing it's Too Kyo, this is absolutely not what's happening. Unless Darumi is like the literal humanoid spirit of the suicidal Earth.
Shouma is just so aggressive, in a cast of comically aggressive people. It's not the usual kind of, dude has low self esteem so he's out of the way, but more like Reddit Nice Guy kind of bringing every conversation back to how he's worthless everyone he's interrupting again because he's worthless wait you are doing something anything that isn't centred around Shouma's feelfeels how dare you he needs to stand on a table to yell about well actually as a Shouma
Which is irritating enough, but also I need literacy points and he's the only person who can provide that which is just. Give him gift block your ears and do a runner.
You know what. I don't even care what the actual plot is. My entire point of this game is to lose my shit at everything Darumi ever say ever.
PS, how good is the pixel splash screen
I'm at day 75, 25 days to go.
So far I unlocked 48 event images, with 520 yet to be unlocked. This is wild maths. Like, is it just gonna be 500 pictures of protagonist screaming
Videos: unlocked 53, pending to unlock 151.
At least about half of the music was unlocked.
what the FUCK
Edit: that interlude was hella cool-creepy
The plot so far be like:
> Humans destroyed Earth's ecolog
> Earth as a life form activated its own immune system to wipeout humanity
> Humans have the technology to leave Earth and thrive in space
> Instead of that, humans opted to kill everything that's alive on Earth instead, somehow believe that will make Earth inhabitable again
Yeah I don't know what metaphor it's trying to make but damn
Ah, pity. I like Eito.
And to be fair, humanity isn't exactly lovable in this series.
And clever move to make the character screen "commanders absorption" number rather than "souls absorption" because, hey if technically speaking the absorbed are not commanders...
Huh so the ending suggestion is:
Because Takumi gets levelled up special power by absorbing Eito with levelled up special power, who in turn got levelled up special power by absorbing ???; AND Takumi can retain all his stats and just jump to a different time line.
So just... Kill every one the moment he meets them, absorb all their powers, then just restart with full god tier powers? Like killing your team don't even matter if they can be re-done from beginning, while keeping your stats
If it's anything like Zero Escape, I'm estimating I'm at 45% of game completion. Tbh at this moment it feels less satisfying than either the first run of Zero Time Dilemma as well as Danganronpa V3, specifically because I hate pseudo choices and Zero Time Dilemma fully embraced throwing a hard WTF at the player right in the first playthrough without pseudo choice that later turned out to be core to the main plot.
I sure hope there's a good inbuilt ending map though, no way I'd be able to remember what ending was caused by what and how what what the f
You know that thing in Zero Time Dilemma where you start the game, flip a coin of life and death at 15 minutes, immediately get a good ending with credit rolling and be like what the actual fuck just happened.
The Hundred Line isn't quite that over the top, but I'm getting sus that the real game is about to start from the point and onwards, as there hasn't been any decision trees other than the infuriating pseudo decision. Ultimately what I liked about Zero Time Dilemma is it's a linear game with many branches that acts as parallel chapters, and it's well communicated accordingly.
What I would really want now, is a clear route path laid out in flowchart. Zero Time Dilemma, Raging Loop, Quantum Suicide, and Ai the Somnium did this well. Gnosia barely gets away without it only because of achieving each ending is fairly straightforward with a guide.
I'm just too old and too tired to keep track on 100 routes otherwise, even super good games like Buried Stars just left me with, nah, I can't force myself through that many repeats and hope something's gonna change.
HOLY SHIT THE TITLE SCREEN'S BACK GROUND VERTICAL RED LINE TURNED INTO A RED 2.
So, upon game completion, it's The Hundred Line 1 -> The Hundred Line 2.
Zero Escape team, please fuck me up. I expect a lot now.
Edit: yes "The Hundred Line 2" is completely expected to be the second half of the branched out game. Look at on the saving file, it stated number of clears is 0 even though we've seen the credit once already.
Roflmao not only continued at where the first playthrough ended, if you go to backlog it has the backlog of the last conversation you had at the end of the last ending. It's basically Day 101 rather than NG+.
Also your entire party kept their stats, and the various rocks, rags and sticks you collected from last game are still here. I don't even want to know what their storage looks like.
I fully admit I have the temptation of wiping my entire team to absorb their powers, then reset to a new game.
Thankfully the actual game play don't reward this. Thinking about how Raging Loop got to the point that the characters were murdering each other for fun because they were so sick of the loops.
Lol finally there are actual options in a game that's all about 100 endings.
Interestingly so far Eito comes across as a lot more in the right than everyone else, considering what's allegedly done by humankind is so demonic that getting rid of humans is doing this world a service.
But also it's one of those games less about playing as me, and more about fuck around and find out. So behaving outrageously is the entire point.
Not a spoiler, things people probably want to know getting into The Hundred Line, QoL wise.
1. There is a good, clear laid out flowchart of choices. I was most worried about not having this and losing track.
2. While it started off screaming Danganronpa, indeed the Zero Escape shines through later on. Seems like you can't fuck up lost forevers in terms of the branching stories, though I can't confirm it at this point.
3. While the battle system isn't quite Nippon Ichi, as far as Too Kyo goes it's competent enough. I was worried it's another replaying skateboard minigame hell, but thankfully I'm wrong.
4. One good decision made that I don't expect to love, is the mandatory flow of time. Given the scope, the game don't want you to be dwindling on one day for 25 hours. Which is wise.
Sometimes I get to a point and think, hmm I should get an achievement/trophy pop up now, except because it's Switch such a thing don't exist, and I feel such relief for the lacking of another silly KPI that I should know better to care about. So I might not 100% the game. I'll play until I had enough then I will stop.
I opted to keep Eito alive mostly to see what shit and giggles he's gonna come up with.
My theory is Hiruko is someone who time travelled a lot more than Takumi, a common trope that's more common than the trope where protagonist is the only time traveller, also her specialty is "torture and murder". I also suspect there will be more core characters because of the weird empty gaps in explore layouts.
I'VE ALREADY GOT THE TRUE ENDING
AND ALSO WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING IN THIS TIMELINE
I remember an earlier The Hundred Line interview pre release, where the comment was something like the routes written by Kotaro Uchikoshi are incredibly obvious that they are written by Kotaro Uchikoshi.
Yup.
Interestingly it felt less like Zero Escape and more Ai the Somnium. Also made me realise how rest of the game are way more Danganronpa in mood than anything else.
"Nothing new is gonna happen since 001 route and will all be side stories"
And now I'm just WTF
Ahhh look, last post on this timeline was August. As if I'll remember anything at all lol.
I like Hiruko now, but even then I can't think of a worse partner (domestic, friendship, collegial etc) than her. She withholds so much important information because she's got a ego problem that she admitted to, she has long complex conversations with herself in her own head filled with self made jargons and acronyms then is surprised that no one else knew wtf she's on about.
Tldr really believable in the context of why team work is a learnt skill that she just really never paid attention to.
Ohhhh I am so ready. I think I'm on Romance route? Usually my least favourite genre but I can suck it.
Don't make me date my precious Darumi though I treasure her too much for this.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
This whole this movie Takumi tried to watch with Kurara was super unpleasant because the plot sucked but also the sex scenes just refuse to end thing
Oh The Hundred Line I love how you get me
Takemaru has some unique solutions to "not fighting a woman". The best part is, we all know Kyoshika would win regardless of all other variables.
For what it's worth, Kyoshika is probably one of the few cast who give me cis girl energy.
I usually would say the Persuasion segment of The Hundred Line is the weakest thing about this game. However this Takemaru Persuasion is narrative masterpiece and comedy goldmine, because this guy is so simple that it took ONE part to goad him.
Every other Persuasion was 4, 5 parts long.
Darumi forgive me for taking the killing game away from you.
Also how does THL2's chapter system even works lol. Killing Game route seems to be sharing a chapter with a different route.
Liking the implied ongoing G'ie storyline.
Want more from Ruby Tear/Retsnom storyline.
Darumi is probably THE most relatable fictional character outside of Sawyer the Cleaner in Gure Gure Girl.
This is in the context that there a serial murderer at school, and they considered to have a lure.
I feel like, this route is what happened when the writers completely forgot that there's a threatening message on day 2 mystery, and a planet war over arching mystery going on.
Like what is even (not) happening here.
Starting a new thread on generic overall THL2 comments, might migrate a few other posts here.
Something I love is in every timeline, people just flatly ignore Shouma when he interrupts to bring the conversation back to him and trying to demand pity. Like people just flatly talk over his interruption, the only way to deal with this kind of personality.
He reminds me half of The Bear's Jamie's mother, half of circa 2000 Nice Guys who tried to use their low self esteem performance to get pity sex. Maybe also a bit like Dead Loch's serial murderer.
To his credit, in route 11 he actually managed to do something not entirely self centred. I'm pleasantly surprised.
I have to give Nozomi credit on this: the routes I've done so far, she's a master at effortlessly stirring up drama. Almost all events can be squirt sideways and you can argue it isn't really her fault, and being characters who don't know about split branches it's easy to overlook her centre role in every one of them. Except having the over view, it's always Nozomi. Eito can only hope to be this sleek.
There's something about the special kind of creepiness where she can go from remorseful and teary and demand to be told she did nothing wrong when someone died because of her, to jolly and hyper-optimistic and all giggle; within five sentences. And Takumi doesn't see anything wrong with it.
I wonder if she's a homage to Akane Kurashiki. I can't say I like Akane given her particular kind of sociopathic traits, but I do consider her one of the most interesting villains. She's just so gentle and so nice and love to talk about morality, what could possibly go wrong.