One of the cool things that we’ve seen over the past generation or so, is that well-defined subgenres that have typically gravitated towards certain styles and themes have gotten more diverse. For a category like tactical strategy you’d have traditionally seen it paired with something like a war-time setting, or at least something more serious. Certainly games like the classic Advance Wars series helped to generally speed things up and give them a lighter tone, and more recently a variety of indie titles have continued to run with that ball, giving us quite a bit of variety in the process.

In The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, the tone is a mix of flavors, ranging from light-hearted to more intense, and that’s mostly accomplished through its diverse collection of characters. After being introduced to the somewhat strangely colorful and somewhat goofy-looking world-ending creatures that have descended on your town, you’ll find yourself transported to the Last Defense Academy, paired with quite a mix of fellow students that range from more buttoned up and serious to outright odd. But in order for you all to try to endure 100 days of attacks in the hope of turning things around, you’re going to need to do your best to get to know and understand them all.

Gameplay alternates between tackling tactical combat, trying to make the best use of the characters you’ve got, and then alternatively off days where you can choose to explore, take on practice battles, or try to build relationships in a variety of ways in the hopes of improving your combat prowess. If you’re not down for both of these pretty different flavors, simply preferring to stick to the satisfying combat or the odd story beats and relationship building you’re going to be pretty well out of luck. Thankfully your tactical options at least feel diverse and fresh, with rewards for developing and changing up which characters you use, and some nice touches like linked attack bonuses that do a better than average job of keeping your head in the battle, rather than just going through the motions. The more story-driven side may be a harder sell for people who’d just prefer to keep being challenged, but since there are payoffs for making smart use of your time off, there’s at least an incentive to pay attention to what you’re doing.

Putting it all together, this is absolutely an odd-but-engaging package though, showing care on both sides of the coin rather than settling for only getting some areas right but not others. I suppose it may all come off as a bit too strange for some folks, or perhaps a bit pricey, but if you’re willing to just strap in and enjoy the ride it feels determined to try to win you over. If you’ve been looking for something a bit off-center that delivers some challenging tactical fun, it’s certainly worth considering.