Ledgerbound

7/10 a tactical rpg with romance narrative Had a good time with it but it doesn’t stay consistent. Front half is great then it dipped and dragged off. Characters and VO carried most of it. Combat was okay and fun with so many items and abilities. Try it

as a gamer, the jury is still out on my full review (though i currently find the lack of a chat log a pretty big negative for a game of this kind, i think the characters are vibrant enough to keep my rating ultimately a positive) as a lesbian, oh my god there are so many beautiful women oh my god . jazz oh my god . oh my god jazz.

Never thought I'd get turned on by a hat rack, 10/10 experience

Best game writing I've experienced since Baldur's Gate; funniest game I've played since Portal. Most "comedy" games miss the mark and end up being annoying (e.g. Borderlands), but this one is legitimately clever and funny, with dialogue that made me laugh out loud multiple times. And, it's characters are emotionally deep and well-realized. Its like if Claptrap was actually funny, had a compelling emotional backstory, and was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ as hell. And that's before we even get to the voice acting, which was so, so good. The fire emblem style gameplay is basic but well-executed; its smooth, and has enough going on to be interesting. They do a lot with what they have, giving each level something new or interesting to deal with, and having a fun story purpose so it never feels like you're just filling time. Challenge-wise, I found it pretty easy to win the battles at normal difficulty, about as hard as Fire Emblem normal difficulty if you don't reload to save characters (this game doesn't permadeath characters, but makes you have to recover them using resources, which I think is a good solution). Each level has an extra optional challenge condition, which gives you a bonus if you get it, and getting that felt appropriately challenging; sometimes I got it, sometimes I didn't. The theming of the game is integrated throughout, with every single thing being aligned and integrated with the insurance-company/paperwork theme. Camp is time-restricted, kind of like Fire Emblem 3 houses, but while in FE its so lax that you can do pretty much whatever you want, here it actually makes you think about your choices. I had to decide who I actually wanted to invest time into getting to know, and whether it was worth doing that or upgrading my items or re-doing the battle, or whatever. It added a surprising amount of real decision-making to a game that is pretty light and dialogue-focused in much of its presentation. It felt like real life, and aligned with the game's themes. I found it well-balanced, to where it was interesting but not punishing or suffocating. Honestly, its so rare for any game to be this well-written and legitimately funny. I can count on one hand the game's with writing that actually makes me laugh (Portal, Stanley Parable, Disco Elysium), and finding that in an indie game is a rare treat. Imo it's worth checking out for that reason alone.

Fun game, buy it! The dialogue shouldn't work as well as it does but the VAs absolutely kill it with their performances. The time management is strict and there's no save scumming but I LOVE THAT because it keeps the game moving at a quick pace and doesn't let the user get stuck in the tedious cycle of trying to do every single thing in one playthru. As a long time Fire Emblem enjoyerer, I find Furry Emblem combat scratches the itch well and I adore the art style soooo much. It's all around a shining gem of a game that clearly has a ton of passion poured into it at every step of the way and I can't wait to see where it goes from here.

Ledgerbound looked great on paper, but it's hard to like when actually playing it. The writing actively mocks players for liking tropes, stories, and everything the game is trying to be. It's low-level neg'ing players at all times. the attempts at humor and sarcasm come off as more hostile than funny. The dialog is tedious. It never takes itself seriously enough to engage with, as nearly every line seems to be mocking itself. There might be a good game buried in here, but getting to it though the intentionally bad, self-aware writing is not worth the effort.

Ledgerbound is about ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. There's a quest to save the world and countless counts of homicide, but this hot-hot game is about romancing a bunch of baddies with crippling sex addictions. In all seriousness, Ledgerbound is essentially a fully-voiced visual novel/time management game with a tactical combat component that I enjoyed an above average amount. There is an unbelievable number of unique scenes and dialogues for different characters at different relationship levels at different points in the story. I'm already excited to start a second playthrough, but more on that later. The combat is straightforward but fun. It's scissors, paper, rock with an emphasis on positioning and special abilities/power ups. Most missions will have special bonus objectives to complete and those can be a pain, but you can replay missions later with a rewind mechanic to complete the bonus objective after the fact. Those replays are all uniquely voiced as well, from the perspective of the main character acting it out with hand- made figurines, doing all the voices herself. Insane commitment to the bit. The writing is great. I would say it's not for everyone, but the only people who wouldn't like it are killjoys and/or terminally online X-users. It's funny, it's ridiculous and it's horny as ♥♥♥♥. At the same time it's also genuine and heartfelt where it matters. The characters all start off fairly one-dimensional as sounding boards for jokes, but they eventually become so much more than that. The voice acting is excellent across the board too. So why is it a 4-star game and not a 5-star game, well there are some issues if you can believe it. **Firmly in spoiler territory here as well, you have been warned.** When the game launched there was a much stricter time management system which made it difficult to spend time with all the characters you wanted to. Weird option for a game that has such great writing. I imagine the idea was to encourage multiple playthroughs, but this is not a short game by any means. It also has a very strict save system, there are no manual saves and it auto-saves every time you exit the game. Fortunately, the developers listened to feedback and implemented an option to disable this time management gameplay so you can talk to as many characters as you like. Encouraging replays is all well and good, but with the length of the game being what it is and there being no real way to speed up gameplay as far as I can tell (and no way to boot to an old save if you want to see how a different decision can affect things) it means you're having to commit to an entirely fresh playthrough each time. Most visual novels have a "skip" function which speeds up and, uh, skips dialogue you've seen before; Ledgerbound does not have this feature. You're going to be mashing buttons to advance through dialogue quickly. The end of the game also has some quirks/bugs. It's otherwise technically perfect, but the court room scene at the end feels disjointed and there are multiple references to a "payout figure" which are never actually shown to the player. Which ending you get also appears to be dictated by an unrelated decision about whether or not you choose to throw the court case or win it. It's not really communicated that well, the only consequences I considered for winning/losing the court case was whether I would make the hot as ♥♥♥♥ shareholder happy. Other than those few issues, I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ loved Ledgerbound. It's like someone reached into my small brain and pulled out (ha) exactly my sense of humour and paid a bunch of voice actors to say some truly ♥♥♥♥♥♥ things into a microphone. This game has made me a very happy sex woman, and in only ten minutes too! That smallest tiiiime.