Ledgerbound

I'm not sure I'd recommend Ledgerbound to everyone, but I think my experience is going to be more positive than negative. I'm going to lay out the rest of my thoughts as "Pros" and "Cons", but I think it's all very subjective, and clearly others have liked what I disliked and vice versa. Pros [list] [*]The tactical gameplay is fun, and I enjoy the loop of no save combat with a more forgiving replay mode after. It's taken some getting used to, for sure, in a world where we're all a little too used to save scumming, but when I let myself fail, the replay is actually very fun and has a great in-universe explanation. [*]The voice acting. Obviously, there are some great names here--particularly Cherami Leigh, whose enthusiastic tour guide Sylvie is 95% adorable, but every once in a while slips into a register that reminds me she also played one of my favorite tactical RPG villains. And the entire game is fully voice-acted, which is extremely impressive. [*]Shockingly, the romance. I started out this game kind of hating one of the main characters, Jazz, which led to an oddly fulfilling relationship where I played them as a little toxic, constantly poking at each other, but ultimately turning to each other for comfort. The relationship dynamics actually feel like they matter to the story, giving it a visual novel-type energy that I really enjoyed alongside the combat. [/list] Cons [list] [*]The game's humor is a lot. I think this definitely is going to depend on the player, but it wasn't really to my taste. Basically, if the trailers are making you cringe, the game is going to keep that feeling ALIVE. [*]While I really like the "no saves" aspect of the combat, I really wish you could save outside of it. This is because the story is so deep and reminiscent of a visual novel. If you want to explore other paths, you're going to have to start from the beginning, which I honestly can't see myself doing any time soon. [*]For this last point, forgive the soapbox. At least at the point I'm at now, basically all of the female characters are polyamorous and most of the male characters are monogamous. This worked out for me, because my Rayna is collecting girlfriends like Pokémon, but I do think the optics are a little weird. It seems like all the queer options (and one freaky dude) are interested in a non-traditional relationship, but the rest of the men are not, even when there are in-universe other potential romances for them. [/list]

closest we have to a baldur's gate 4 rn (please don't take this too seriously) loving the dialogue and voice acting so far

I tried NOT to leave a negative review. But after so much struggle, I basically have no choice. First, about good stuff. Art direction and writing are great. Voice over is absolutely awesome. Game is fun at its core. We need more games like this. The main problem is combination of time management system and puzzle battles with side objectives. Puzzle battles are fine on its own, but this approach usually means you have to do A LOT of reties in order to figure out all gimmicks and non-obvious mechanics. But you do not have unlimited retries in this game. And you cannot change equipment or character builds once you start a battle. There is no way to rollback to previoush checkpoint. So... the only way to actually finish the game on harder difficulty (1) without prior knowledge, (2) while avoiding death spiral and (3) actually having time to chat with party members IS ... save backups / manual save editing. Really?? --- How things could be improved: 1) Unlimited retries for initial battle and replay battle. 2) Allow to re-equip & re-skill after starting battle. 3) Changing equipment should not be part of time management. Time management should be purely for stress relief and chats. Maybe some time could be used for "training" / combat stat upgrades.

This game is so fun and tantalizing. The comedy had me laughing out loud, i found the additional challenges on the levels really interesting, and the character writing is fantastic, including all the smut and smut-lite parts! Hoping this team gets to do more games like this, and i look forward to playing through this game again with my girlfriend next to me.

I want to like this game so very much, the cast is delightful, for 90% of its runtime the writing is a delight as every character regardless of how offputting they may start as worms their way into your heart. The combat mechanics are simple and feel really good to be good at, and with the addition of removing the timecrunch mechanic the social interactions feel far better and less limited. But that's where my praise ends, you might say that writing as much as I did should still warrant a positive review, and I would agree were it not for a few things. SPOILER WARNING. From here on out I will be discussing spoilers, especially for the final act of the game as most of my gripes become most apparent in the end of it, though some spawn intermittently. The complete and utter lack of a save mechanic bar the game autosaving effectively anytime you press anything is wildly aggrivating, especially for the few moments that center around only getting to choose one or a few companions for an activity, doing an entire new run or duping a save and reinserting it manually should not be requirements for a Dating Sim Visual Novel, they thrive on players getting to choose every option whenever they can, not necessitating an entire new run to get to seen a dozen lines of dialogue. Polyamory is an option in game, which I rather enjoy, it allows the player to experience most of the romance options in a single run, however, bar a singular scene in the third act when the player is likely to have maxed out relationships, the game effectively treats you as having a "Primary Partner" that appears with you for major moments and in the ending they are given more dialogue than any other Poly option, most getting relegated to singular lines. This makes the effect of the relationship feel like I'm just playing as a monogamous character that's allowed to cheat, not like I get to have complex relationships with multiple partners. I think my biggest gripe comes down to developer intent, I have read other reviews that developers have responded to and seeing the thesis of the game being a sticking point of arguing against changing options that make the game less enjoyable is a problem. The game is quite obviously satirical in nature, but to ask the player to get invested in the world and understand the character, then if they listen to the person that both the character and the longest running companion claim to idolize, you get locked into an ending that retroactively changes your character's mind, despite mentioning time and again how much you enjoy being a Hero, if you win the court case, you get locked out of that option, which doesn't feel like a congruent consequence, especially when they openly show your character noticing the grieving families, that should be a breaking point for you to quit at seeing the suffering you inflict everyday live in person. This also ignores the fact that the game's tagline, and therefore the developers themselves are saying to Deny an Insurance Claim, and they make a game of the court case, and unfortunately for most people, the human brain feels bad when it loses at games, so locking the more satisfying ending behind choosing to play the video game as it seemingly wants you to feels really bad. I'm also choosing not to take issue with how little foreshadowing goes into the Shareholder outcome if you win the court case, if the game is telling me I've bonded with someone, I don't exactly expect them to immediately turn around and reneg on that when its convenient because it fits the satire despite it making a really unsatisfying ending, which I suppose is the point, no matter what you do, the ending will make you feel bad in one way or another, either by not interacting with the characters you came to enjoy in a conclusive fashion, or by ending a relationship with zero foreshadowing, or by playing off the human desire to win. Ledgerbound will make you feel delightful for 85% of its runtime, but it completely eats it on the finale, You will feel bad, or you won't have played the game at all.

In this era of AI slop, this is a shining beacon of the arts. Top notch voice acting, beautiful art, great music and fun gameplay. Huge congrats to the whole team for creating something truly wonderful!

If I had a nickle for everytime i played a game where you can have sex with ben star id have 5 nickles but god id want more

[H3]I want to love this game but it has some serious issues when it comes to the gameplay itself.[/H3] The writing, characters and the voice acting are all top notch. There is some really neat theming as well and I always love a narrative where the "Heroes" are not the heroic type. The more morally gray the better! For context I have played the majority of the game on the middle difficulty setting and with time management turned off. I am writting this review right after the second "arc" (around 12 missions in). The issue is that the gameplay mechanics are too unforgiving if you are looking to see every event during your "Restiludes" and way too forgiving if you turn off the time management aspects of the game. That and seeing a map for the first time blind and being expected to get every side objective done for the best possible outcome on the first attempt can be infuriating. The Itemization system is cool in theory but the items itself is just a Gatcha mechanic that bogs down the gameplay loop and menuing items inbetween battles is an absolute pain. The Liability mechanic is pretty interesting as well but it makes you way too strong when you have time management turned off as you will constantly be getting solid upgrades during your interludes. It also seems to be the main way to get additional abilities on your characters but most of them so far have been lack luster movement tools or buffs that end your turn. Leveling in the game is strictly tied to campaign progression (which makes sense) and everyone seems to level at the same rate unless you are making huge mistakes. There is a promotion system but so far it has been lackluster stat upgrades with a potential differing playstyle (I have only promoted the main character so far at 6 hours in). It just feels like there is a ton of potential here but they have missed their mark on the execution. Forcing all players to play in an "iron man" mode is bound to have issues when you also want to plan out your time and stress levels which leads to some people (like myself) to use the no time management setting. The setting once used will permanently make all of the balance in this game to be lopsided and unfun. New missions just feel like a slog and feel stressful when balancing side objectives not because they are a challenge but because a minor mistake will force you to replay the level (via the ledger during restidudes or by cheating in the menu) in order to see all of the story content it has to offer. [b]TL;DR A charming game that has too many bloated mechanics stacked on top of eachother which either makes the gameplay an absolute masochistic mess or a completely boring slog. Feels like an excellent story tacked on to a overcomplicated Fire Emblem clone.[/b]

Basically fire emblem but horny. Also gay and polyamorous. So better than fire emblem.