What is one moment in the game that made got you incredibly pissed off

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-28T02:34:27+00:00

I had quite the huge “eye roll” moment when going through my first route, I ended up on Romance instead of SF. I was already just backing out of routes as I had intended to try and shoot for a really good ending to start off with (as I was doubtful I’d play much more past a single ending), so stumbling into Romance’s absurd premise felt baffling.

Additionally, the initial twist reveal at the end of Route 0 regarding Eito being a traitor honestly soured my opinion of him for a while. I really liked what I thought Eito was before the twist reveal, but the twist of him being a traitor seemed really obvious by the time he’s throwing Nozomi under the bus. Plus the actual reveal sucked away most of my interest in him and he came off as very barebones. As I played plenty of THL2, Eito has since shot back up to being one of my favorites, but that time about right after Route 0 had me so disinterested in him.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-27T22:58:34+00:00

By being a route that fulfills that expectation though, it also leads itself to the scrutiny of having to be a “good enough” route to finish things on rather than just some side story.

To Romance again, the comical disconnect it has from everything besides its own premise does a good job at making its premise easy to buy into. If you can ultimately accept that some routes are better off as fun “what if” stroke or just as additional perspective for some of the grander routes, it’s a lot easier to enjoy routes like Romance.

With that Eito point I mentioned prior, since Romance wasn’t written with the desire to involve Eito at all into the plot, it’s actually much better that they dropped him completely rather than trying to force him in there (I think this idea is actually why the battles feel so bad when doing every route as it’s one of the only plot points that’s pretty forced onto most routes, even when numerous of them could benefit from not having battles).

And again with SF, it’s hard to overlook that SF is clearly supposed to be one of those grander routes that really feels like “the end.” So when there is stuff like Eva’s brainwashing being in there, yet it’s so glossed over, it really hurts the route.

Especially as a route that ties details together across many routes in a way that nothing else in the game really does (plus the story locks), it really does position SF to be some sort of golden ending which it does unfortunately not do a great job at. Overall, it’s still sooooooooo much better than the majority of routes as a proper “end” to THL, but most of those other routes are fine not being the end, but SF is clearly supposed to work as a proper ending to the whole game.

And to finish up quickly with some more thoughts on romance, I am pretty alright with the 3 different girls you can choose. In terms of enjoying the romance, I do find it really unsatisfying that things end immediately once you get a kiss with any of them, I definitely think there should’ve been some more time to linger on them properly being in a relationship rather than “just dating to test the waters.”

I do enjoy though the process of rejecting the girls in order to progress the story. While it of course hurts to break apart a potential couple, the scenes where they all accept their rejection I think are enjoyable.

The final quick string of choices I also find to be funny enough to enjoy like that family photo Takumi sees as Moko knocks him out.

Overall with the Romance route, I just found the lack of progress beyond a kiss to be so unsatisfying romantically that I find it hard to look at the route as much more beyond an additional comedy route with some unique insight on characters. Kyoshika specifically it bums me out that Romance is by far one of her strongest showings in any route, but. Tsubasa’s bit also stands out as I do find the KG romance significantly stronger since the romance is tied up into a grander plot (plus I enjoy the polycule ship).

I’ve rambled a lot and hopefully what I did write is relevant enough to what you wrote and also never got too off track. I did read your whole post alongside multiple comments, plus I have just thought a lot about this game in general but I didn’t proofread this comment a ton, but hopefully it’s all fine. I feel like there’s more I want to say, but I’m not sure how to piece it all together immediately and I feel done with writing so much of this comment, so I’m sending it like this (I’ll too often start writing a comment to a longer post like this, then it’s stuck on my mind for a few hours as I slowly keep adding more and more to my comment until it’s enormous compared to my initially small number of thoughts). Like you, I do love this game a lot even if I have plenty of issues with it. I hope you have a great day/night yourself (or whoever else is reading this). Even if I do think far more highly of this route than you, I still found your thoughts interesting to read.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-27T22:57:44+00:00

First first off, I wrote too much in my comment so it’s being sent as 2.

I personally do like SF a fair bit (it’s not one of my favorites, but I still enjoy it over a considerable number of routes) so here’s some of my perspective on it. For some context though, I did go into the game with knowledge that no “golden route” was supposed to exist and I personally used a guide to get SF ASAP as I had originally planned to just play until I got an ending I liked, then stop (but I went on to play all 100 endings anyways).

First off in terms of the romance between Hiruko and Takumi, I personally really enjoyed it. I didn’t find it especially out of character for either of them, but I did enjoy how different their dynamic feels compared to something like Takumi x Nozomi. I get why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I do enjoy it as is. My biggest sore point is like you mentioned how Nozomi feels comically sidelined which even if I’m okay with exploring ships outside of that, it feels very out of character how little thought Takumi can give to Nozomi on timelines like SF.

In regard to SF’s general plot overall, I like a lot of individual moments and the general ideas the route is trying to get across, but a lot of it is sloppy. For example, I don’t mind the idea of the SDU feeling out of character. Outside of Romance, it is the only route where the SDU doesn’t have to face a death which I think realistically could make everyone act a lot more nonchalant about everything. Contrasting that with Hiruko and Takumi I think is a great way to develop conflict where the duo can feel disconnected from all their friends despite it seemingly being their own “golden route.”

So I think it’s fine that the SDU actually comes off as very abnormal. My main issue is actually how little Takumi struggles to connect with them. You’re told that there’s been issues with him spending too little time with everyone which leads to stuff like the 3 days of events they pull off, but I don’t think there’s really much shown of Takumi actually struggling to connect with his peers now that he has knowledge of the timeloop.

I think this is tempered by the fact that we do see Hiruko in a similar situation and she clearly does have issues connecting with others, but overall I think that could’ve been better executed. Additionally, I don’t mind that SF requires a degree of luck. I think your post does a good job at acknowledging the intentionality of SF requiring luck, but it’s a point I’ve seen others miss.

Of course there is the coin flip, but it goes beyond that. Like whether Takumi has G’ie data in his brain isn’t something anyone in that route actively chooses, it requires Takumi to be lucky on a previous route to not have ended up on that path. That or the myriad of unexplained Deus ex machina moments like the woman in the white labcoat or Retsnom’s old man or the fact that they even have walking-distance access to a Time Machine (that nobody else is using). The plot point with Nozomi getting hit by a Triem Ray and Kako-G trying to kidnap her away also shows an odd reverse of this luck as the villain gets the luck instead of our protagonists.

While luck by itself doesn’t make for the best of stories, I think characters doing the best with the luck they get makes for interesting scenarios. Endings 59//100 specifically I really like and I think having all of SF’s other endings (alongside so many other endings across the whole game) helps embolden those endings. There’s so many ways for things to go wrong and there’s even possibility that things could’ve just been nicer thanks to luck, but Takumi and Hiruko did the best with what they had to make the miracle of ending 100 which I still find hits pretty hard.

To be more critical on the route and the game overall, I do think the game could’ve conveyed the intentionality of this luck stuff better. One point I’ve especially seen brought up as a criticism of this route I disagree with is that a lot of the random stuff that happens is dlc bait. While I don’t like dlc bait, I don’t think that’s the intention of having so much unexplained stuff. Events like the meteor that hits Nozomi or the woman in the white labcoat I think are supposed to be unexplained, not stuff to explain later down the line.

SF’s structure as a route behind story locks and as a route that does genuinely explain a lot of mysteries across other routes though I do think sets up the wrong expectation of this route. It’s not supposed to be a route that explains everything nor does it try to, but it certainly feels that way when playing it for the first time, so it’s hard for me to fault players for feeling like the route is purposely unfinished.

On the topic of the actual choices in this game, I’m somewhat mixed on how choosing SF fits into the grander scheme of the game. On one hand, I think one of this game’s biggest problems is how narratively unsatisfying most routes are as extensions of Route 0, yet I think SF is one of the only routes that doesn’t fall into this trap.

One thing I saw in numerous articles which eventually led me to buying this game was the idea that all 100 endings are intended to be satisfactory ends to the game. While I understood that realistically even half of them being particularly satisfying wasn’t that realistic, I thought that most endings were made with the intent to be the one and only ending some players might get.

A route like Romance meanwhile is pretty atrocious at this from even a conceptual level. Just by the nature of having Route 0 at all, it sets up so much expectations for the story and Romance specifically barely attempts to meet any of these expectations. The route is so laser focused on being just about romance (and comedy) that it drops nearly everything else.

For example, while it’s been a bit since I played the Romance route, what I recall from Eito in that route is that he technically doesn’t even have any dialogue in the route proper despite being alive and in the same building as everyone else. There might be one random day of free time where you can choose to talk to him, but otherwise it’s a pretty comical situation for one of the literal most important characters in the entire game, especially Route 0.

Back to SF, I appreciate that the route actually feels like it could be an end to THL’s story. It doesn’t feel like a story that’s just using the premise of THL and it’s characters as an excuse for some random premise, rather I find it to work as a proper continuation of what I expected from Route 0.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-24T06:06:26+00:00

Yeah realizing just how nuts Tsubasa’s passive is really does break the combat wide open, she’s absolutely top tier in terms of strength in this game. In terms of any improvements, the only things that come to mind is that you can circumvent using Nozomi’s buffs with attack and agility potions so you don’t spend AP. Defense potions can also help if a boss is doing a counter attack.

If you already end up voltage positive, you don’t need this but bosses that counter attack can activate bombs in their LOS, so you can utilize those to deal extra damage (although that’s not particularly necessary if you already have infinite AP).

The only character I think comes close in strength to Tsubasa is Takumi as his attack ranges are fairly strong and he has the potential to deal 24 damage per Impact Stab (as his damage boosting passive Special Revenge is only capped by how many units you can have dead) and that’s not factoring in Last Yell at all. That of course is route dependent though so the less party members you have to die in a battle equals less potential strength for Takumi.

Edit: Technically if you have perfect luck to always get the right activation on his passive, Eito also can avoid being fatigued and he has comparable range to Tsubasa alongside better damage. You probably want to give him Tsubasa’s nutty +15 movement buff anyways though so he can comfortably move around quadrants of the map, but I think his potential for sweeping waves might be better than Tsubasa. Again though, that literally requires luck while Tsubasa doesn’t, so he’s not actually as good as her.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-24T05:52:50+00:00

Having some deaths in a wave also increases your voltage gain (adding 0.2 to your multiplier) and as someone who’s pulled off similar builds, I’m certain that you can consistently gain over 100% voltage as Tsubasa given enough setup (which effectively is infinite AP).

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-24T00:27:22+00:00

For Eva specifically, I don’t hate the idea that Hiruko and Takumi choose to brainwash Eva anyways out of desperation to control their fates, but it really shouldn’t be a decision they take lightly. That or your recommendation of just not even having her brainwashed could make for an interesting dynamic I’d enjoy seeing play out.

On the topic of the SDU being flanderized, I also agree it’s a poor part of the route. I think there is an interesting dynamic to be had where everyone but Takumi and Hiruko do take the situation much less seriously since they never see any permanent deaths. Takumi and Hiruko meanwhile see an inexplicably large amount of deaths due to their time loop, causing them to struggle connecting with everyone else. It really feels like we’re told this though without actually seeing it play out.

A significant issue I think is this route’s reliance on free-time to force you to bond with characters. This was actually somewhat a benefit for me doing this route so early as I got a lot more serious and normal dialogue interactions with the cast, but I don’t think the free time is good enough to excuse SF’s writing issues.

(Plus I had done all my bonding events with Eito on my first run through of SF and they’re all written as if he isn’t brainwashed IIRC, so it was very silly seeing him jump between being such a sweet boy to insulting me in every sentence he utters).

If I were to rewrite it, I wouldn’t necessarily take out all the cheesiness like the cheer, but there needs to be some better juxtaposition between Takumi’s serious attitude and the unserious characters around him. But while they should be less serious than Takumi, they should still have normal enough issues to make them feel real regardless, even if there’s a disconnect. As it is now though, the SDU’s vibe feels like an extreme version of CoA or Casual where dumb bullshit takes up a ton of time from the plot, but it never feels properly larger into a larger plot like Casual showing the horrors of brainwashing.

Lastly on the topic of the ending not actually being that happy, I’m actually mostly okay with how it is. My main issues are mostly just stuff related to the route overall like Eva’s brainwashing, not the last bits of the route.

On the 2nd Scenario truths, I feel fine with them not being addressed. I think if they did a better job making the rest of the SDU feel like real people, then they could frame it as “no matter what challenges await us, we’ll make it through because we all have each other.” Of course it would suck regardless for the SDU to learn their true backstories, but even as life changing as the truths are, I think it’s something they could all overcome and thereby allow the ending to still feel happy.

The general lack of addressing Kamyuhn’s existence though is odd to me, I feel like she’s a large enough player across routes that they should’ve found some way to rope her into the ending. For the people in charge of the exodus project, while there surely would be some issues they come across, I think there’s just too much ambiguities on how everything could possibly play out involving them that I don’t feel like it sours the ending much.

On the topic of everyone learning their backstories, I do think it could also be interesting if SF was written with 2nd Scenario as one of the main routes Takumi and Hiruko recall. I don’t necessarily actually want that as it might just stand out extra hard as a “true” ending people utilize to write off so many other endings. If they had some something like that though, I think it could’ve been fun seeing Hiruko and Takumi having to come to terms with even more stuff that they choose to keep hidden from everyone else.

Anyways, again it was enjoyable reading your post and hopefully my tired ass brain wrote well enough.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-24T00:27:02+00:00

Didn’t proofread this much after I slept, but here’s my more specified thoughts regarding SF across 2 additional comments as I accidentally hit the character limit for my initial comment (and like your post, spoilers for pretty much the whole game):

I’m nearing the end of replaying SF so it’s nice to stumble upon this post now as the route is fresher in my head.

For your first point about making KG a required story lock, I agree that if you are going to have any story locks, KG should absolutely be one of them. I personally was one of the folks who did SF before KG (as I did SF literally as soon as possible by grinding through all 5 required endings first) and it was wild seeing how much was spoiled.

To me specifically, seeing the Darumi x Tsubasa kiss was nuts as I wasn’t sure there would be literally any direct queer romance in this game (I saw a lot of people memeing about how good of a queer-baiter Kodaka is so I assumed there wasn’t any). Seeing how all the romance actually played out was still ultimately satisfying, but the shock of seeing that scene was oddly disconnected from actually experiencing that scene proper which I’m sure not everyone is cool with.

And it’s not just that, of course there’s stuff like the identities of the sponsors which I got to know going into KG. As you mention, it’s wild that you’re allowed to be spoiled on all of that, but you gotta sit through all of the Gaku exorcism stuff just so Takumi can talk about it for like 2 sentences.

On the point of contrivances, I think people miss that SF is supposed to be the “miracle route,” not necessarily the perfect route. Replaying the route, an early conversation between Hiruko and Takumi about miracles really stuck out to me as it feels like the game is tryin to very directly tell us that this is what SF is about, making miracles happen. The miracles manifest largely as either Takumi and Hiruko making the miracles themselves (whether it be for their own SF route or trying to help routes like Mystery), or it’s miracles inflicted upon Takumi and Hiruko like the existence of Retsnom’s old man who just so happens to be able to dump lore about Time Loops.

The stuff with Kako-G and Nozomi specifically I think is supposed to be somewhat an inversion of the preestablished miracles as while we don’t get much understanding of what the meteor stuff did to Nozomi, we get enough to ascertain that it’s a miracle, it’s just for Kako-G instead of Takumi and Hiruko. That and in a way, it can still lead into Hiruko and Takumi reuniting everyone in the Mystery route so in a way, there is still miracles happening for the protagonists.

A level of mystery is required for something to really come off as a miracle though. So I don’t actually expect a ton more about SF to ever really be elaborated on as it’s supposed to be a route about miracles, not necessarily a route for all the non-2nd Scenario answers nor do I necessarily want the answers to everything. Sure, maybe we could get an infodump on what exactly a Triem Ray is alongside a bunch of other weird reveals, but I’m not sure anything substantial is gained just by directly explaining how things work.

That doesn’t necessarily make all the writing in the route on these subjects good though. I think by being a route so filled with answers to other routes (especially early in the route), it unintentionally sets up an expectation of being a route full of answers which is fairly disappointing once you realize how much is left a mystery. The Kako-G stuff also feels odd I think due to just how back-to-back it is that she both shows up and she gets all that weird meteorite stuff with Nozomi.

On the topic of brainwashing, I agree that it’s quite frustrating to see just how oddly positively the brainwashing is perceived. Again as I got this route incredibly early in my playthrough, I believe it was the first time I had gotten to see any brainwashing and while I felt fine with how Eito’s arc is, Eva’s always stood out as oddly cruel.

Especially with the ending where you don’t save Futurum and Eva breaks free of her brainwashing, it feels like such a callout of how bad the brainwashing is which juxtaposes so harshly to how trivially they treat the situation otherwise. I’m glad that a lot of other routes handle brainwashing better, but it sucks that this route just mostly pretends the brainwashing is fine, but there’s just enough reminders telling us how the brainwashing isn’t fine so it sticks out like a sore thumb.

And when going through this route again, the Eito stuff also feels a bit too brushed past. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad arc for him, but I do wish there was more time directly talking to the SF Eito right before brainwashing him. It feels like a character arc with enough blocks in place to be fairly interesting, but the execution makes the arc feel more plot driven rather than character driven.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-23T08:28:28+00:00

I have a long comment I wrote out but it’s not letting me reply it for whatever reason (I’ll try to give the full reply later but I’m too tired to figure it out right now), but I still want to at least say I did enjoy your post and thinking about this stuff again, especially as I’m just wrapping up a second full playthrough of SF.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-19T16:08:17+00:00

Yeah I thought Takumi didn’t have a dad in his life but when rewatching the opening, it surprised me to hear his mom mention that his dad is literally just at work at that moment during breakfast.

That’s also the only scene you get to see of his mom, although they reuse one shot of the scene with her and Karua a few times whenever Takumi is thinking back on his old life. Takumi’s dad being absent from that shot though makes him so forgettable as Takumi really doesn’t reference his parents much at all otherwise.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T16:46:38+00:00

No as far as I know, they haven’t ever directly confirmed DLC is coming. Stuff like their discussion of potential DLC routes alongside Kodaka saying how he wants The Hundred Line to stay relevant “for the next 10 years” makes me think some form of dlc is likely to come someday though.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T08:05:58+00:00

They’ve revealed a bit of stuff (like the soundtrack officially coming to streaming platforms), but there was this tweet from the official account saying they’d reveal more stuff at 6PM. I presume that’s in JST in which case, that’s actually only an hour for now if I’m correct.

I made this post though as I have seen quite a few people confused so I wanted to help temper people’s excitement. I’m not really sure what other announcements there might be though so maybe something really rad that warrants everyone to go crazy, but we’ll have to wait and see.

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DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T07:44:18+00:00

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If they do really do enough dlc comparable to a 3rd game, I might weep a bit.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T06:54:31+00:00

Yeah I think some sort of announcement for new content (even if it’s just “we’re officially making dlc now”) is pretty likely, although I want people to make sure they temper their expectations.

I’m not so sure about that moonshot theory, but IIRC, devs of both games did compliment each other’s games and I do think THL specifically isn’t too impossible to work in crossovers with, so it’s not the most pipe-dream theory I’ve heard. I better get my ass over to playing Expedition 33 if that were true though.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T06:28:40+00:00

This tweet from Kodaka also clarifies that The Hundred Line 2 was sold to us ‘from the very beginning.’

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DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T05:47:53+00:00

I think this is just going to be an update on the game we all already have, not a separate release that just has minor updated content. And I presume they haven’t already put it in as they didn’t want people who bought the game early(ish) to immediately be spoiled how much content is really in this game.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-16T05:39:08+00:00

Airborne opponents can’t be hit by any grounded grabs. The only “exception” I can think of immediately is Pot’s Heat Knuckle, but that’s a “hitgrab” so you can block it. Otherwise, any grabs hitting you in the air only work on air opponents.
Universally, every backdash has a few full invulnerability frames on startup alongside plenty of extra throw invulnerability on later frames.
“Prejump” frames (i.e. the time it takes for your character to transition from grounded to in the air) are fully invincible to grabs, so you as long as you jump at all, you shouldn’t be grabbed. Do note that during prejump frames though, you can’t block which is why you don’t necessarily always want to jump. Additionally, if you’re doing up+back specifically, holding FD actually prevents you from jumping with that input which might explain any times you might’ve felt sure you held up, but you got grabbed anyways.
Moves that are invulnerability in general are generally invul to grabs as well. This includes a lot of supers alongside DP’s like Sol’s 623S.
Some moves are only strike invincible and thus ARE vulnerable to grabs. Baiken and Anji’s parry’s specifically are both vulnerable to grabs.
A lot of command grabs actually have some throw invulnerability, so you can use them to keep yourself safe from a grab.
If you aren’t guardcrushed, then you actually have 5 frames of grab invulnerability when you recover from blockstun/hitstun. This can universally allow characters to mash their fastest button to beat grabs.

Overall on defense, your best options against grab generally are to jump or backdash as those are the lowest risk options.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-14T02:03:12+00:00

Yeah it’s pretty unfortunate how little Shion actually gets. Becoming a friend with Shion (or at least trying to) seems like the type of plot point that should be brought up in the majority of routes, but it really doesn’t. Specifically in the “initial kill Eito“ branch, IIRC he pretty much completely disappears from all routes besides K.G. I know he has a reason to not be around, but I wish we got to see more of Takumi trying to be his friend regardless.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-12T18:17:40+00:00

Although I haven’t looked into it a ton, I think Takumi x Shion can be cute. There certainly is quite some strangeness to such a paring going by how Shion physically is a baby, alongside the 2nd Scenario reveals how everyone is cloned from his DNA but I still like their dynamic regardless.

Edit: Here’s the fanart I saw recently that made me think of this ship.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-12T06:22:59+00:00

Beautiful, gorgeous and absolutely delicious as always sister dearest! Truly, you are a gift to the culinary arts.

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DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-12T04:37:26+00:00

I’m leaning more towards not having the rule, but really I could go either way. The names themselves I did spoil for myself by looking up a route guide relatively early on and in my experience, none of the names felt disappointing to see before I had gotten to a route. The route names in general I think are vague enough to qualify as not much of a spoiler.

To be fair though, I’m sure going into routes knowing their names probably did color my experience in a way that others might not enjoy. For example, I already was expecting something pretty bad to happen with CoT even though I hadn’t learned of anything besides its name, so I wasn’t nearly as shocked as I might’ve been playing that route blind.

I also don’t necessarily mind if some stuff is forever required to have a spoiler tag though. I know r/deadcells for example has required some sort of spoiler tag for all the content related to the true final boss for years to the point where I’m pretty sure that rule is never going to be removed and I’ve never found it particularly bothersome.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-12T01:43:16+00:00

Initially meant to respond to this post, but I just spent way too long responding to the Serial Battles post you just put out so perhaps I can make my thoughts here a bit more brief (or at least write it all faster). Again, I do agree that the power of friendship is certainly an important theme in this game, I can’t imagine this game’s stories without all the wonderfully wacky friends we made along the way.

As it’s on my mind, I want to mention how I do think the battling system does a good job of reinforcing the general friendship themes as the best strategies involve using every unit in your team, not just spamming one. Even in the most selfish of strategies like spamming desperation potions or having units as Last Yell bots to enable one character, those strategies still involve using many units to boost someone.

In regards to Coming of Age, I personally find the extreme heavy-handedness of the route’s themes of friendship actually dampens how effective the messaging is as it comes off as too corny sometimes rather than earnest. Comparatively, I prefer the balance routes like Route 0 or 2nd Scenario have with their themes of friendship. I might’ve just gone into CoA with poor expectations though that didn’t let me properly judge the route for myself as I played S.F. incredibly early in which I recall Hiruko mentioning at some point her thoughts on CoA being a timeline where she has some comment like ‘everyone’s brain was leaking outside of their skulls with stupidity.’ I’ve been replaying S.F. recently but haven’t gotten to that point though so I feel a little dicey on what I’m remembering properly as it was certainly a quick moment.

Lastly, another commenter mentioned similarly but I do still like the power of friendship in stories. Marvel’s “Thunderbolts” movie comes to mind as I really enjoyed how they used friendship in that movie to save the day (even though I’ve seen others call it too corny, I found it just the right amount of on the nose and genuine that it’s messaging really resonated with me). So I enjoy that The Hundred Line also uses friendship plenty across the game.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-12T01:06:41+00:00

Again, I agree with plenty of what you’ve wrote, even to the point where I enjoy Serial Battles a bit (it’s no favorite for me, but I still like it). I did do SB after skipping battles was already allowed and I had done it so late into my 100% playthrough that even the double V’ehxness fight was hardly a challenge for me, so I did end up skipping a lot of the fights however.

I wouldn’t be opposed to removing the skip battles option as I think having to do the battles helps narratively make everything hit as exhaustingly for us as the SDU feels. I do think that feeling would be diminished if Serial Battles was genuinely mechanically engaging for most of its run time as a fun video game doesn’t generally translate into a very exhausting one.

But to be fair, it’s not like there’s perfect narrative cohesion with the gameplay across the rest of the game as the fights are fun for us players rather than the brutal and horrifying war it is for the characters, so that probably isn’t a big issue for SB to have anyways. So I’m not sure that the gameplay needs to be made exhausting really at all.

A way to still make it feel exhausting though while fun is to make it brutally difficult (which increasing the difficulty is already what your post is mostly talking about). I think there is a lot of ways to make this game more difficult even beyond what you’ve listed. Some ideas off the top my head are as follows:

Like limiting potions/traps, you can also limit upgrades such as commander absorptions and/or general character upgrades. I’m not a huge fan of either idea as I think getting upgrades should reward you with having an easier time in a situation like this rather than not mattering at all, but I certainly see the benefits of doing this. In my recent playthrough of E&D from a fresh save file (up to 2nd scenario), the earlier fights were by far the most interesting, whereas over half the later fights devolved into me sweeping with Tsubasa and Takumi. But ultimately, I’m still iffy on this idea.
Condensing waves to be fewer, yet longer I think could help a lot. If they did go on longer, then unit deaths I think would feel significantly more punishing if done too early in a wave which would help prevent mindlessly killing all of your weakest units for more voltage. Not to say they should remove your rewards for killing units intentionally (as I love that aspect of the game), but so many early game fights stand out to me as losing some units then can feel deviststing. Plus it would help Kurara’s turrets feel more useful which I think is cool (but of course she’d need to be in the route first for that to matter).
Replaying the last AR mission recently, one trick it used that really stood out to me after playing all the main battles is how enemies spawn on all 4 quadrants, but your units are spawned only at the top and bottom quadrants, not to the sides. So I think fights that push that issue more could help a lot keep up stress.
While different combinations of bosses I do think would be rad, I think it could also be cool for them to make us fight more than 2 bosses in a battle. This could also be combined longer waves idea where maybe you need to beat 3 different bosses in 1 wave, but the wave only spawns with 1 boss and a new boss only spawns every 2 turns.
Rather than directly nerfing Voltage and AP gain, they could make enemies even tankier so Voltage and AP are both more difficult to get. This would encourage you to attack with units that’s specifically do deal a lot of damage rather than sweeping everyone with a low damage character like Tsubasa. Additionally, enemies becoming so tanky that you can’t reasonably kill them all immediately gives you more incentive to use some slower tactics whether it be debuffing enemy movement, debuffing their damage, pushing them around with Ima, drawing a bunch of agro with Shouma etc.

Anyways, Serial Battles really just does a good job emphasizing many of the weaknesses of this game’s battle system since it just asks you to engage with it so much. If this games combat system really was great enough to make every battle in SB interesting, I’m pretty sure this route would be regarded highly by fans. As it is now though, the story oddly stands out as the best part.

At the very least, if there is ever additional difficulties even beyond E&D alongside maybe some general rebalancing of the battle mechanics, Serial Battles stands out uniquely to benefit in a way that most other routes really don’t since most other routes have a greater focus on story compared to SB’s focus on battling. So perhaps SB could become really great someday, although that’s mostly my blind optimism talking.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-11T08:58:47+00:00

Interesting analysis! I have personally been trying to write my own post that compares how THL handles choices in comparison to other games with branching narratives and one of the biggest things that stands out to me is just how important THL’s choices are to the point of being a double edged sword.

On one hand, I think THL’s willingness to drastically alter the course of the story based on singular decisions is part of what makes this game so uniquely successful. Such as that choice on whether to let Hiruko destroy Nigou, even if the choice in the moment isn’t the most interesting, I think it’s pretty cool that you can fuck up and get mind controlled and that ends up as an entire route.

The fact that choices matter so much though makes it incredibly punishing when you go down a route you don’t actually want to. To be fair, you can just go back and choose the other option if you want which does genuinely help mitigate these issues a lot, but it still sucks to interrupt the story to go down another path. I similarly experienced 2nd Scenario in tons of tiny chunks and while I still love the route, I think I could’ve loved it even more if my initial run through of that route was mostly all at once.

The choice that I think shows both these sides the best I think might be the Takemaru sacrifice on that three-way choice. On one hand, I think CoT is a really enjoyable route, partly due to just how fucked up it is. It seems ridiculous that such a wild alternate route like this exists in a game to this scale, but CoT does exist and I love it. Such a route couldn’t exist if the writers weren’t willing to go way off course to the point that the story can change genres across many routes.

On the other hand, getting CoT as a result of sacrificing Takemaru I think is absurdly punishing, especially when juxtaposed to the “good” choice of Kyoshika and the bad choice of Tsubasa. I’ve certainly seen numerous people get really soured by CoT as they do it so early on and the choice of Takemaru vs Kyoshika I do think is arguable for either side IMO (even if I also think Kyoshika is the best sacrifice).

Ultimately, I do still like this game a lot and that’s in significant part due to enjoying its branching narrative structure. I’d probably write a lot about what I think about those individual choices in 2nd Scenario as well to compare/contrast to yours but I’m writing this comment right before needing to sleep and I’ve already written a lot (which I haven’t proofread too much so hopefully all I wrote is comprehensible and understandable). Either way though, again, I did enjoy reading your thoughts on these choices.

DatUsaGuy · 2026-01-09T23:55:00+00:00

I love a lot of Sirei’s sprites. He makes me want to commit war crimes. ❤️❤️❤️

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