Ledgerbound

I wrote this review after finishing my first playthrough. I found this game after it was randomly advertised to me on Steam and decided to buy it. It was a good decision. TLDR: Ledgerbound is a good example of what it advertises itself to be. If you watched a few of its trailers and you think you would enjoy playing the kind of game it says it is, buy it. If not, don't. THINGS THAT I LIKED ABOUT THE GAME - Writing - Part of why I bought this game was that it's lead writer was also a lead writer for Helldivers 2, which I believe is a very well written game, and I wasn't disappointed. The characters are sympathetic and grow with time. The setting is sometimes silly but still gains a sense of verisimilitude by how its characters interact with it, and it is quite creative. In general I often wanted to continue the story because I wanted to know what happened to the characters. The game is also genuinely funny at times. To me, the writing is the best part of this game. - Combat - The core progression mechanic of the game is as a tactical RPG. I thought the combat was generally well-rounded: it gives a modest amount of customization; it rewards you if you use your team well, but you could still do poorly if you make bad decisions; different characters have different tactical specializations, which forces you to consider how to utilize everyone fully; there is no grind, but it does reward you for actually doing things in combat. - The time-management mechanic is used meaningfully. In general you manage your time between the tactical RPG battles to either do things that upgrade your party or build relationships with them. Since much of the enjoyment of the game is in building these relationships and seeing how they play out, you need to make meaningful decisions managing your time for these relationships to play out fully. It is an engaging mechanic. CRITICISMS OF THE GAME THAT I READ BEFORE BUYING IT, WHICH ARE NOT ACTUALLY VALID CRITICISMS - "The game is smut": This is kind-of true. You could avoid most of the romance options, but if do this then you will miss out on a lot of its most interesting dialogue. The game gives you the option to romance every NPC in your party, only two of which demand monogamy. (Of course, being a heterosexual man playing a female protagonist, I created an exclusively F-F harem.) The dialogue for these encounters never gets more than PG-13, but you can tell that the author must be a fan of trashy female-centric romance novels by the way that these relationships play out. One of the NPCs in the ending directly refers to the romantic encounters of the game as "smut", so you can tell the writers understood what they were doing. - "The HR lady isn't professional": This is true. Actually this comes up numerous times in the dialogue of the game, so the writers were aware of what they were doing. I think it is a bit of a meta joke. - "The game doesn't tell you what everything does": This is kind-of true, but it isn't necessarily bad. Sometimes the deliberately doesn't tell you thinks because it thinks it would be more fun if you found them out on your own (such as one item whose effects are described as "unpredictable"). You don't need to use items like that if you don't want to (I didn't). Other times you just need to use your brain. One example of this is the requirement of some items that they only do something if a party member or enemy "pays taxes": the game doesn't directly tell you which enemies pay taxes, but if you read your own party members' profile sheets you will notice that everyone in this world pays taxes, unless they are some sort of zombie/alien invader/anarchist/person lost in time/royalty. Based on the clues in the game you can tell which enemies the item is going to work on. - "The game is a roguelike but isn't 100% a roguelike, so it wasn't designed well." No, the game is a roguelike. You can get extra dialogue trees or items by achieving more mission objectives during the tactical RPG battles, and if you don't get a perfect score during the canon battles you can replay them. This is still a roguelike element because replaying these battles costs time, which decreases your ability to build relationships or do other things to improve your party, so you need to decide if replaying the battles is worth it. The game does give different dialogue during these battles to reward you for replaying them, which makes this process more interesting. ONLY REAL CRITICISM - My only real criticism of the game is that some of its dialogue recordings (less than 1%) are either missing, or the actor stood too far from the mic to be understood well. This doesn't lower the quality of the game in a significant way since you can still tell what the dialogue is by reading the accompanying text, but it is something that I hope the producers correct, since it makes the game seem unfinished. If you read this far and are still interested in this game, you should probably buy it.

Way more fun than it should have been. Way funnier than it should have been. And way more emotionally engaging than it should have been. The game lets you be completionist, thirsty or prudish, it lets the story become yours. And at the end of the game, I realize it was not just talented Voice actors toting agency, - although it was. It was about letting the player react. Painting themselves into the canvas. It isn't just an oddball R rated dialogue and soothing narration about a girl and her hatrack. This is your story. It's my story. It became personal. It resonates however you want to ask it to. It was honest. It liked being cheeky, It was rude. It was hilarious. And it has something to say. And the entire time it knew exectly what it is. Ledgerbound was an artistic experience. Bravo.

Charming and unique game

This game is hilarious to play and has a good blend of visual novel and tactical combat. As someone who works in HR, Jazz makes me laugh much! The people complaining, leaving negative reviews, or upset in the discussion boards don't seem to be enjoying the game to it's potential and using currently in place mechanics. If at first you don't succeed, try again with trial and error. If I was unable to 100 a mission the first time, I get to see Rayna's reenactment and enjoy it again while trying a new strategy to do so! Great game, great voice cast, and loving it!

This game is hilarious. 12/10 voice acting top tier.

I hope there is either some DLC or a sequel. Had a good time.

A very great game now that there is an option to get (almost) unlimited time during RP moments. But beware : there is spicy stuff in this game. It's unavoidablle. And it runs deep. Like, it's part of the core way of presenting things, people, the world and to be honest, I would have prefered if it was slightly more to the side :/ ... I had 20h of fun so i'm not down voting this, far from it, but i hated some late game choices regarding the spicyness... to the point that it did bitter my taste for the world that was cleverly crafted so far. Nontheless, for such a small indie game, it deserve it's high ranking among the Fire-Emblem-like. It's a good story-tactical-romance-rpg.