Ledgerbound Review

We should have been looting bodies Ray-Ray. That’s my B.

After playing the demo for Ledgerbound you best believe I was excited. I stayed busy, of course, but I was always keeping my eye on the release date and when it came closer and closer I was counting down the days. And then, anxiety hit and I kind of procrastinated on starting it. You know, the classic ”I know I would love this game but what if I don’t love it” worries. Well, after having a boss battle within myself, finally pressing the play button, and finishing the game; how was Ledgerbound? Well, let’s dive right on into my review!

Ledgerbound takes place on a planet named Eldarra where it turns out that humans bear more resemblance to elves, there are many different races that ended up migrating there, and there are three moons that seem to also grant those born their elemental affinities and powers. Eldarra also seems to be under a Queendom and have…very interesting laws, but the most important thing is that being a hero is actually a job here. And this is where our lovely protagonist comes in. Is she a hero herself? Well, I guess you could say she is in a way…and only to certain people. Our protagonist, Rayna Ashvale, lives in Korador, one of the major cities on Eldarra, where she works at Heroes United Life Group (or HULG). She works as an insurance adjuster and, well, she is a bit of a workaholic. Okay, a lot of a workaholic. She may be super enthusiastic about her job, able to deny any and every claim she gets her hands on, and is Adjuster of the Month for 35 months in a row; but her best friend is literally a hat rack that she talks to (and pretends is talking back to her by voicing it outloud), does the job of 10 adjusters on the pay of 1 adjuster (which according to HR doesn’t get paid much), and barely socializes since she spends all of her time at the office (and I swear if she was allowed to she would sleep there).

However, little did Rayna know that her quiet days at HULG was about to change. A lot of heroes get insurance through HULG and Rayna does her job at replaying fights and finding a way to deny insurance claims like she does every day. Except…something big has happened. Something that no one in Eldarra would have even predicted. The best heroes of Eldarra, The Regulators, die at the start of the game. And you know what’s even worse? They had HULG insurance. I’m not even done with the bad news as not only did The Regulators all had Cosmic Coverage, which is the best tier HULG offers, and will cause the company to go under if they receive a payout. Luckily, Rayna was there to receive the claim on her day off, but that isn’t even going to save the company as the claim is, by all intent and purposes, an open and shut case in favor of The Regulators. Yeah, the bad news keeps on coming as you also learn that what killed the Regulators is an ancient race known as the Vacari that was able to portal in from the Weft due to the reckless actions of The Regulators. No matter how many simulations Rayna does all employing different strategies they could have done, she can’t find a path that doesn’t end in The Regulators dying. Oh no, this is bad. It’s also bad that Eldarra is also fated to fall to the Vacari now, but hey Rayna is an insurance adjuster not a hero.

Well, thank goodness that Jazz, HULG’s HR representative and lowkey Rayna’s friend, comes in with a solution. Go to the scene of the crime. Getting to see the scene for herself doesn’t exactly give her more information than the report did, though she does get to see and touch The Regulator’s equipment that managed to survive, but she does find something. She finds the Elderstone from the report which ends up absorbing into Rayna after she grabs it. Giving her its magic…and also giving her the ire of Prince Avarice, 33rd in line for the throne. Avarice was intending to absorb the magic from the Elderstone as he knows about an ancient prophecy. You see, once the Vacari sets foot on a planet they destroy it and the only race that was able to defeat them were the Elders. Well, I guess technically not considering they all died and the Vacari technically can’t die, but they were able to keep Vacari out of Eldarra until now. Anyway, there’s a prophecy where if you gather all three Ancient Artificer’s Astral Artifacts and bring them to Elderhold, you can summon an Elder Artificer. The Elderstone was to get into Elderhold as there is a theory that the gates would open if you have Elder Magic. Rayna ruined Avarice’s plan, oops.

This does give Rayna’s boss an excellent idea, though. Rayna should go fulfill the prophecy! Rayna doesn’t exactly want to go, but if it means it would allow them to successfully deny The Regulators’ insurance claim then she suppose she’ll go on the Quest. She doesn’t exactly have confidence in herself or the Quest, but she’ll do her best and step up. She luckily isn’t starting it by herself as Avarice and Hobknob join the team as heroes, along with Avarice’s butler Grigsby as support (in terms of tending to Avarice and carrying everything they need) and Jazz being their HR rep filling out any needed paperwork, being HR, and doing any other backend stuff. So, Rayna and her already ragtag team set off to fulfil the prophecy. It may seem really dire and near impossible, but if Rayna manages to pull it off she’ll be able to deny that claim, save her company (and thus her job), save Eldarra, and be known as Eldarra’s new greatest heroes. And maybe, just maybe, Rayna will also make some friends along the way and maybe even find love.

Classic win-win-win-win-win-win scenario. Well, what are ya waiting for? Get out there and save the world!

Ledgerbound is very much a character driven story and I absolutely loved it. First off, I really enjoyed the story. I think the story progression is handled pretty well here, the threat of the Vacari and ahem anything else like the team doing something stupid and causing a misunderstanding was a big enough threat to stress over, and I honestly had a lot of fun reading through the adventure and learning more about Eldarra. I do wish there was a spot where you can look up the keywords as it can be a bit confusing and just to refresh yourself if needed, but it was quite interesting learning about the planet and even more so since Rayna learned new things as well. Ledgerbound also set expectations pretty well. The reveals that happen at the end of the Quest ended up not being that surprising in a sense that you can kind of see it coming. One of them is in the “yeah, that checks out actually” category and another reveal could have really disappointing but the lead up to it makes it not feel like that. More like a “of course, what else” kind of thing if that makes sense. Though, I thought I was picking up hints from Hobknob, but it was more hinting towards the lore of this universe rather than the reveal I thought was going to happen in a “I wouldn’t be surprised if this crazy homeless man is actually very important” kind of way. Anyway, yeah, the game does a great job with the way the story is laid out.

Talking about characters, I absolutely loved all of the characters here. So much so that I don’t even know who is my favorite out of the main cast. The characters here are all so very well written and I honestly don’t think this would have worked as well as it did without the amazing writing here and these characters being on the same team. Ledgerbound is definitely the poster child of having characters that should be really unlikeable, but actually end up being really likeable and endearing. So much so that I was really sad when the game ended since I won’t be able to read/listen to more of their conversations. They all bounce off each other so well and it makes this game so much better and funnier for it. They all have negative traits that do make them unlikeable or annoying (how much depends on you, of course), but they all have positive traits and they go through character growth as you progress through the game that really endears them to you. Plus, it really helps that everyone bounces off each other, which makes sure that none of them can get away with saying stuff and gives us some comedy gold. Can they still be annoying sometimes? Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t like them. I really loved the character growth that everyone goes through throughout the story and seeing the relationships between everyone develop and change. I loved all of the banter, the bickering, seeing everyone slowly get along with each other, and getting to know all of the characters on a personal level. These characters may seem one dimensional when you first meet them, but that turns out to just be the surface as you dive into their bonds.

Also, you best believe I romanced Cazian aka the handsome Vacari. I don’t know, he was kind of my type and it does end up with giving you a pretty funny scene towards the end of the game. Yep, you can romance anyone on your team and it is pretty hard to choose. Technically most of them are polyamorous and thus you can date all of them at the same time, but there are two that are monogamous.

As for the writing style, I don’t think it’s surprising that I really enjoyed it here. I loved the writing style here. The writing flows well and is perfect for a visual novel style this game went for. It also managed to give all of the characters their own unique voices, both figuratively in text and literally which I’ll get into when I talk about the voice acting. Everyone has their own way that they talk, which gives the characters more characterization and adds into the humor. Like, the way that Jazz talks is my absolute favorite (and if you read my demo impressions she was one of the main reasons I was sold on this game) as I really liked the way that she talks in a pretty punchy way with her own slang. Jazz gives off a mean girl-esque vibe without really being one as she mainly just messes with others. I also quite liked the humor here. Ledgerbound is so funny and like I already implied, a lot of the comedy here is from the character dynamics. I laughed a lot during my playthrough and most of it was through the banter or bickering that the characters did, with the other laughs coming from moments that I was not expecting. I was also pleasantly surprised that this game doesn’t have a fourth wall joke (well technically it’s two jokes but I’m counting it as one since it’s a continuation of the joke) until the very end and the character that tells it makes sense. This doesn’t mean the game is all laughs and smiles as the game does have moments where it gets sad, shocking, sweet, or even heartwarming and the game knows and makes sure the tone isn’t ruined.

And, oh my gosh, I almost forgot that I really loved how even the written stuff has the character’s voices as well. Like the various paperwork you see, like the onboarding paperwork or the post combat report, are written in a way that Jazz would write them. I definitely recommend reading the paperwork that pops up on screen as Jazz is really funny even on official government paperwork. The Quest Log is also written by Avarice and man it is so obvious when you read it I love it. You can also read newspapers, which give you a look at what’s happening outside of your little ragtag team, which is pretty interesting.

I will say, though, that this won’t be for everyone. Ledgerbound can be pretty horny at times, to the point where it will outright reference sex or sex toys. It thankfully isn’t the whole time as it really is just the beginning and the end where it’s a lot. Trust me, the game has way more jokes up its sleeve. As for intimate acts, it only goes as far as being really suggestive. Like, I’m not too ashamed to say I had to fan myself a few times suggestive. It can be a bit annoying that the game does lean more towards Rayna getting into a romantic relationship with the characters, but by the end I thought it was fine and I did like the platonic routes. The humor can also not be for everyone so I do recommend checking out a video to see if the writing and humor is something you’d like.

Oh, yeah, there are a lot of dialogue choices you’ll be making here. These actually do end up having quite an effect on the dialogue that happens afterwards as, while the broad strokes will stay the same, the section that changes will a lot of the time give you different information. That or both choices are paths that are different enough, which makes choosing which choice to pick hard. Most of the choices you can just pick, but there are some that do require you to have a certain Bond level with the character you’re talking to to choose. The platonic and romantic versions of the Bonds are also pretty different. I did take quick peaks at what the romantic path was like for one of the characters I went down the platonic path for and it seems you learn information on the platonic path that you won’t know on the romantic path. There is also a good amount of situational dialogue, like the few moments where you choose one person from the whole roster or quick conversations during combat that is unique depending on which character does the first hit or last hit. So, I guess long yap short is that there is a surprising amount of dialogue that you won’t see and I do think it really elevates the game as it does take into account the different choices and outcomes.

My only complaint is that the characters do seem to have conversations off screen, which isn’t much of a problem most of the time as it does make sense that information is shared so it doesn’t get repeated for us, but I do have a problem with one specific instance where Rayna’s words are replayed back to her like a recording. Words that you don’t hear her say.

Now, let’s get into the gameplay! Ledgerbound has a three phase gameplay loop where you cycle between the story-driven sections, turn-based tactical battles, and character-driven sections in the form of Resturludes. First up, we have visual novel style cutscenes which is where the overarching story progresses like traveling to their destination (which we get to see on Eldarra’s map as they talk) and conversations that drive the story forward. You won’t reach the destination in one go, no no, but Rayna’s team will need to stop in which a battle will ensue. Of course, there is a conversation leading up to the battle so you have context for it. I’m not diving too deeply into this, but rest assured the game does a great job with its writing as I already gushed about.

Well, once the story progresses and you run into the enemies you’ll be fighting (and get context as to why), you’ll be thrown into a battle! Well, not exactly as you do get to choose which spots your teammates start on at the starting point. If you’ve played tactical games before you’ll already know what to do, but if not it is pretty easy to get the hang of. Once you officially start the battle after setting up your team’s starting spots, the battle will start and you go first. Each battle takes place in a unique location built up of grid squares that you and the enemy can walk on and spots that you can’t due to being taken up by the environment. Each character has a certain amount of spaces they can travel. If you’re close enough to attack an enemy, you can and after getting a little overview where you see how much damage your teammate will do and receive, you’ll zoom into that exchange (the one attacking going first with the one being attacked counterattacking if they can) once you confirm that decision. Though, that can change as you and the enemy has a chance to dodge or do a critical attack. Each teammate also has abilities that you can use which can be guaranteed damage and/or cause certain effects. You do also eventually get teammates that can heal and all you have to do is be close enough to the teammate that’s low on health (well, hopefully they’ll be close enough). Once you did everything you want to or use up everyone’s turn, you can then end your turn and see what the enemy does. All you have to do is complete the main objective while keeping mostly everyone alive.

However, this isn’t exactly all. Each battle will have Rifts on certain spaces corresponding with the various elements present on Eldarra. I didn’t mention this in the previous paragraph as I felt it fit more here, but everyone has an elemental affinity. In terms of gameplay, this serves as a rock paper scissors system of weaknesses and strengths. Best case scenario, you fight and defend when you have the advantage, both have the same element, or you attack at a disadvantage when the enemy is low enough health that you can kill them first before they counterattack. Worst case scenario, your enemy attacks with advantage and deals massive damage to one of your teammates. Anyway, Rifts, each Rift is associated with an element and it does have an effect if someone is standing on top of it. For those that share the same element, they’ll go into Waxing which gives them a buff. If it’s an element they’re weak to they’ll go into Waning giving them a debuff. I wouldn’t worry about this too much as these barely come into play. Other than that you will encounter enemies that have some passive abilities that do come into play and some battles will have hazards or gimmicks.

There are also side objectives alongside the main objective. The first two are basically the classic “finish the battle in so many turns” and “finish the battle with everyone alive”, but the last one? Well that’s Jazz’s Super Fuckin’ Special Bonus Star! This varies depending on the battle, but if you’re able to complete it you’ll get a star. Oh, and mostly every action that your teammates can do or have happen to them will give them EXP (basically if it goes into that battle screen) and leveling up will upgrade most of their stats. It is pretty easy to keep everyone leveled up. Once you successfully win the battle, you’ll get to read the Post Combat Field Report, which you’ll see how Jazz described the battle, who participated in the battle, and how well you did on your side objectives. Each side objective you successfully complete gives you a star and a ticket. If you complete all three side objectives at the same time in the same battle you’ll get a certificate and raise Shareholder Value.

Finally, Resturludes! Given the name by Hobknob after he combined the words “Rest” and “Interlude”, this is where Rayna and her team, well, rests, chat, and do any pre-battle preparations. There is a lot to do here and there is a time management aspect here as you only have 60 minutes (I’m pretty sure each point is a minute here) and most actions you’ll be doing does take up time. In addition, you have the Burnout meter which is where you can see how burnt out Rayna is (yeah self explanatory haha) and what level of Burnout she’s at. You don’t want this to raise as each level gives Rayna different debuffs and if it’s completely full she has a complete breakdown (which I can only assume takes up a whole Resturlude). Don’t worry, as there are a lot of ways to lower this…as well as other ways to slightly increase it. First, and most important action in my opinion, is Chatting and Bonding with your teammates. You do only start out with just a few, but your team will fill up in no time. Every resting location will have teammates willing to talk to Rayna. This does take up a lot of time, but it does lower her Burnout and Rayna’s relationship with that character will increase by one heart. This feeds into their relationship level as, once you talk to them enough to have all the hearts filled up, they’ll get to the next level of their relationship status and you’ll be able to have a Bonding event. Bonding, which thankfully takes no time and decreases Burnout, allows you to get to know the character more and helping them with their problems and maybe a little flirting. After you reach a certain relationship level, you can then decide whether you want to go down the platonic or relationship path. Most of Rayna’s teammates are polyamorous, but there are some that are monogamous. I personally went for one of the monogamous ones, so I’m not sure if this happens for the others, but maxing out a character’s relationship level that you’re romancing will ask you if you want to officially date. While the amount of burnout isn’t a lot in the beginning, over time it does increase to quite a lot and increasing Rayna’s relationships with them also grants you perks that definitely helps you.

Wow, that was a lot. Well, that’s not even all. Of course, you can talk to Hat Rack but the relationship is a bit different as talking to Hat Rack maintains it and not will slowly lower her relationship with Hat Rack. This will make a lot of sense later down the line. Avarice’s crow also brings in a newspaper every so often and you can spend some time reading it which lowers Burnout. The newspaper is actually quite interesting and is a good way to find out what’s happening outside of Rayna’s party. Once Merp joins your team (which is pretty early on), you can also play with him to lower Burnout. You can actually play with Merp as much as you want, but the time it spends increases each time and he of course has some Bonds. Chatting with others isn’t the only thing you can do during Resturludes as this is where you’ll be doing some prep work. First up, Mandatory Trainings which is basically HR Training as Jazz will walk you through some things that both tie into mechanics or are just classic HR training modules. These of course cost time, but they are pretty funny and give you a nice reward like decreasing time cost.

The tickets you get through battles can be used to exchange for Swag which is this game’s version of equipment. There are five or six levels of Swag you can pull from and as you get more tickets, you’ll rise in the ranks. However, you can only get Swag from the level you’re on, not from the level under it. This leads us to the Companion Ledger where you can look at all relevant stats of everyone, but is where you can equip Swag and Liabilities (which takes time and raises Burnout). Swag, like I said before, is basically equipment and there are four different types: lanyards, trading cards, badges/flairs, and keychains. All Swag will raise or lower certain stats and most have conditional requirements for a stat increase like being beside certain teammate(s). Liabilities are basically items you can give Rayna and her teammates that will give them active or passive abilities on top of their innate abilities. There are a lot of different Liabilities you can get throughout the game, but they all share a quality: a Liability Cost. You see, each teammate is only covered for so much gold (or whatever currency this world has as I don’t think it ever becomes relevant) and each Liability costs so much to be insured. As long as that team member has enough Liability coverage, you can equip it (and don’t worry this does raise as you bond with them and progress through the game). Swag and Liabilities do have a lot of situational aspects to them, but they can be pretty helpful. Admittedly though, you may not end up using the Active Liabilities all that much.

Oh, and if any new characters join your team this is where they’ll get their onboarding, if a teammate fainted during battle you have to take some time to write a report, and if a teammate levels up to the max level of their class you’ll be able to give them a Promotion which gives you two choices. Depending on which class you choose, different stats will be upgraded, they’ll get a new passive ability, and it is possible that the way they attack or heal changes. You can also replay battles so you can get any stars/tickets you didn’t get on your first go around (of course costing time and Burnout).

You can also look at the Quest Log which is written by Avarice. It isn’t totally accurate due to that, but it does help refresh where you’re at in the Quest. If you still have a few things you want to do, you can Procrasinate, giving you a couple minutes in exchange for some Burnout. Once you’re ready to continue or just run out of time, you can end the Resturlude and continue on the Quest. Which brings us back to the start of the gameplay loop here.

I really liked the gameplay here. As I was reflecting on my time with the game, I noticed that this game lowkey does tonal consonance. The start of the game is rocky because Rayna, Hobknob, and Avarice aren’t heroes. They’re regular people at the start of the game. However, the more you progress, and thus the further they get into the Quest, the better they get. I also do like how the characters that get added to the team later on do have different levels of experience which also adds into how good they are when they’re first added to your team. Like, Sylvie isn’t a hero but she is a flamecaster with experience in the form of her schooling. The battles here are also a bit tiring to do due to the amount of stress your under to do well (due to the consequences for failing or a teammate passing out and the autosaving system) but that does also get better once you’re further in and the characters have more of a foothold. This even plays into the Resturlude where Rayna subtly gets growth. You can talk to Hat Rack just like she does at the office and at the start of the game you probably will. After all, the roster is small and you can use any help you can get to lessen burnout. However, as the cast gets bigger, Rayna gets closer to them, and you come to love the characters, it gets harder to find time to talk to Hat Rack until you just…don’t. Not only are you encouraged by the wonderful cast to move on, but having a falling out with Hat Rack gives you perks and bonding with your teammates give you perks as well. Which also goes into how it can be a bit hard to lessen burnout at the start to it not even being a problem. This is pretty subtle and while you can put the game on the easiest difficulty and now disable time management, I do think that doing so will cause the narrative to take a hit. Though, just between you and me, I did switch to the easiest difficulty for battle replays that had a tricky side objective.

Talking about difficulty, I played on Lunar Coverage which is this game’s normal difficulty. I thought normal difficulty here was perfectly balanced. Were there times where I was screwed over due to chance? Yeah. Was battling a bit tiring and stressful trying to not get anyone to faint or trying to do the side objective? Yeah. But was it pretty fun and the perfect challenge for me? Yeah. I really liked the tactical combat here and it really comes into its own once you level up your teammates and promote them. The areas can be a bit tight, but I really liked strategizing on where to place my teammates, trying to adapt when things happen during the battle like new enemies coming in, and trying to complete Jazz’s Super Fuckin’ Special Bonus Star side objective. It felt great when they happened to do a Critical Hit and, once you get to the latter half of the game where your teammates get promoted into a new class, it gets better. This is also where tonal consonance comes in too as this is where completing the Quest becomes possible as your teammates are now more experienced and now are closer to being Heroes than being regular (or regular in the context to them) citizens. Oh, and talking about Promotions, I did find it hard to pick which one I wanted to pick. Both Promotion choices that you’ll get are pretty good and they do change the way that you use that character as well as other characters.

Lastly, I really did like the gameplay loop as a whole. As a visual novel enjoyer, it shouldn’t be surprising that I love that Ledgerbound is basically half VN and there are so many choices that you’ll be picking throughout your playthrough. I also had a hard time picking regular choices as they both do often seem good and like I mentioned before I really liked the writing here. I also did like how bonding with your teammates is tied with some of the choices. I already talked about how I liked the battles, but I also really liked the Resturludes and how a lot of systems are tied together. I really liked talking to all of the characters and getting to know them anyway (as well as reading the newspaper), but the fact that they do lessen Burnout was a nice bonus and could serve as a way to encourage other players to talk to the characters that might not have endeared themselves to them yet. I also really liked how the Chats are based on location which gives each conversation a unique flair to them.

While I’m on Burnout, I will also say this didn’t end up being a problem (in fact I had to replay the game to get the achievement for winning a battle with a Burnout debuff). As long as you’re competent enough and talk to the characters during Resturludes (which you should be doing anyway) you’ll be fine. I also really like how you do get rewards for Chatting and Bonding with your teammates, and thus raising her relationships with everyone. Specific conversations give you Liabilities that directly come from what was happening and what Rayna and her teammate were talking about. Bonds also gives you Perks through the form of upgrading that teammate’s innate ability or giving them another slot for Liabilities and raising the max Liability coverage. While Rayna can’t exactly raise her relationship with herself to gain Perks herself, she still does through the form of doing the HR Trainings with Jazz, some are from raising relationships with your teammates, and just simply progressing through the game. The Perks Rayna gets are pretty helpful and does lessen the weight the time management has on you here. Talking about time management, I do have a bit of a gripe with it but I do think it is a good inclusion here. Oh, yeah, I also liked the Swag and Liabilities. Some do have some situational requirements that might never happen (like the one that does massive damage to Doug), but they are pretty helpful. Also, I really liked the little description blurbs that all of them have. Oh, and I really like how for Battle Replays, Rayna gives her own spin on the conversation that happened just like she did when she was in her office going over battles to see if she could deny the insurance claim.

So, yeah, I really enjoyed the gameplay and gameplay loop here. I thought Lunar Coverage perfectly balanced its difficulty, I really liked Resturludes, and I really liked how all of the systems ended up being tied together.

There are some negatives that I had while playing. While the game did get an update that added in the option to turn off the time management, I honestly wished there was just a bit more leeway. I liked the time management and it ends up playing more of a part in the narrative then you’d expect, but the problem is that a lot of the time you won’t have time to talk to everyone or equip Liabilities and Swag or redo battles. It doesn’t help that I did have a few moments where I misclicked, due to the hitboxes not being as accurate, clicking to talk to Hat Rack instead of the teammate that was right beside it. Or when I didn’t notice the cursor was on the Liability/Swag spot that had something already on it and swapping items instead of adding it to the empty slot. This game also does have a built in death spiral. If you run out of Swag on the level you’re at, you’ll get duplicates which basically just wastes the ticket since duplicates are trashed. So, yeah, don’t save up tickets for later levels as you’ll be blocked from getting the Swag you missed from previous levels. I did feel the choice of whether you’ll go down the romantic or platonic path with Jazz came too early. Ledgerbound also has an aggressive autosaving system, with no manual save option. This does play into the narrative that Rayna is out here hero-ing and she can’t just redo actions like she can in her office doing battle simulation, but there are some moments that do feel a bit unfair due to bad luck and I did have some misclicks. I wished that abilities had some way to tell you that you can only use them once per battle. I also found a lot of the text too small.

I specifically did wait until after release to play this game, but I did still spot lines that were missing voice lines, played the wrong voice line, or the text and voice were mismatched. There are also some bugs the developers still need to iron out, and there was one Swag/Liability that still had a placeholder image, but I am pretty confident that the developers will fix them. As I was playing and after I completed my playthrough the developers have added in new features and patched bugs. Like, at the time of writing this they just added a text log, patched up some bugs, and listed out known bugs they’ll be tackling next.

To tie this all up in a nice bow, I have to say that the sound and visuals here were amazing. The soundtrack here was pretty nice and great, every track fit the situation it came in and it does feel like you’re going on a proper adventure. The main theme gives you that feeling of playing a game where you’re a classic hero, the Resturlude song is pretty perfect as it does give off the feel of hanging out (and each location gives its own slightly different twist to it), and everyone’s themes suit them perfectly; just to name a few. The tracks also happen to be in that perfect medium where you don’t notice it, giving the voice acting the room it deserves, but also still being there to enhance scenes or have a nice battle theme to listen to while in battle. The sound effects were also quite nice. The voice acting was absolutely superb here. The demo already set my expectations high and the full game did not disappoint. Everyone here does an amazing job in bringing their characters to life and I am so happy that the game is fully voiced. I honestly don’t think this game would have been as great or funny without it being fully voiced as a lot of the humor comes from how the voice actors are delivering their lines. The voice actors even give the characters more characterization like giving some filler words and giving characters their own unique laughs and quirks. Like, Sylvie is a prime example as I absolutely loved her squees and laughs and just the hyperactive way she speaks. Jazz is also a great example as the way her voice actor delivers her lines makes her lines comedy gold. The voice actors here are all amazing and did an amazing job and I honestly can’t point to my favorite performance.

I loved the visuals here too. I love how everything is themed around paperwork, the backgrounds are all beautiful, and I loved the art style and character designs here. Despite there being so many different races living on Eldarra, the art style that the game went with managed to make it feel like everyone came from the same universe. None of them look out of place. I also like the various poses that characters have (though I wish expressions and poses could be mixed matched for more variation) and I like the small animations they have. They mostly have the idle animation to simulate them breathing or their hair being slightly blown in the wind, but there are some poses that have an animated element like Jazz writing on her clipboard. The character designs were also so well done here and even give you a look into the characters themselves a little bit. Like, you can just look at Jazz and Rayna. They both wear the same HULG uniform, but the way they wear them give you different vibes telling you that Jazz is much more laid back while Rayna is very much a rule follower. Jazz also gives you a peak into the lore of Ledgerbound before it gets revealed through the way her wings look. I also really liked the style used for when your in battles. I do think the game could have done a better job at telling you which grid squares you can go on, but I liked the chibi-esque style it went for for both the environment you’re fighting on, your team’s character models, and the enemies’ models. I also quite liked all of the various Promotion outfits.

Verdict

To no one surprise, I absolutely loved Ledgerbound. While I did have some gripes with the game, Ledgerbound does so many things right that it just makes this game into a must play for those that like visual novels and tactical RPG games. Heck, I’d say it’s worth it just for the story alone (if you don’t like tactical games the easiest difficulty is basically story mode). I loved how the whole game is themed around insurance and paperwork. I loved the writing, absolutely loved the characters and their voice actors (and I’m including the Narrator), loved the humor that this game had, and loved the visuals. I also really enjoyed the gameplay as, even though it is hard in the beginning, it does have a reason why and it does get easier as you progress (without, you know, getting easier difficulty wise if that makes sense).

Ledgerbound might not be for everyone, but if it is you’ll have a really hilarious and wild ride in store as you help Rayna and her ragtag team of non-Heroes save Heroes United Li- I mean save Eldarra!