A highly rated RPG that released alongside Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has made headlines for its staggering script length.
Despite receiving high praise from both fans and critics alike, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy has flown under the radar. The ambitious RPG was released on April 24, the same day as Clair Obscur – a turn-based game our review hailed as a Game of the Year contender.
While The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy may not have beaten Clair Obscur’s as the top-rated game of 2025, it has wowed players with its compelling story. Well, it turns out the story features a total of 100 endings and enough text to fill 60 paperback books.
This RPG script can fill 60 paperback books
In a recent interview with Denfaminicogamer, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy director, Kazutaka Kodaka, spoke about the length of his ambitious RPG.
“When I first measured it, it was 5 million characters, but it grew from there. I guess it’s about 6 million characters. If it were a paperback novel, it would be about 60 volumes.”
Due to the length of the script, translators working on the game told Kodaka to reduce the word count. “I was told, ‘the translation is tough, so please reduce it,’ so I reduced it once,” said the director.
However, despite his best efforts to cut the amount of text, he ended up with even more. One of the major reasons behind the game being so text-rich is that Hundred Line features 100 endings — and I thought Nier Automata’s 26 was ambitious!
With so many endings, Kodaka has urged players that they don’t need to experience every single one. “You can of course leave a route partway through – and by doing so, cross between the 100 different routes to find the ending that truly feels right for you,” he wrote on X. “That’s what this story experience is all about!”
Despite having enough text to fill 60 paperback novels, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy’s main story only takes an average of 30 hours to beat. So, it’s the same length as Clair Obscur’s campaign. However, if you want to do a completionist run, then How Long to Beat has revealed that players will need to spend an average of 193 hours.
So, before you go delving into the world of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, you’ll need to be prepared to do a lot of reading.
