Review: Ledgerbound Is a Romantic Comedy With a Little Strategy, as a Treat

OmniMegaSuperCorp is upfront with potential players when it comes to what the game Ledgerbound is. Yes, it’s a strategy game that will require you to be a little tactical and think to progress. But it first and foremost feels more like a comedic visual novel with dating sim elements, with those fights existing to lend a bit more weight and emphasis to the narrative. 

Ledgerbound follows Rayna Ashvale, who works as an insurance adjuster at Heroes United Life Group and is incredibly dedicated to her job and denying claims. During a typical workday with her coworker Amwing and his daughter, the HR rep Jazz, disaster strikes. The Regulators, HULG’s top clients and strongest heroes with Cosmic coverage, were all wiped out by unknown enemies. Concerned about the Shareholders and how paying out the claim could bankrupt the company, it comes down to Rayna and her allies becoming registered Heroes Guild heroes and going to actually fight the unknown enemy to prove the Regulators group of heroes were liable and just not strong enough so that claim can be denied.

While there is the serious situation involving the enemy forces strong enough to take down the realm’s best heroes, Ledgerbound never takes itself too seriously. We’ve got the workaholic Rayna who’s injecting love into all the scenarios she runs to deny claims, and now is getting the chance to do that in her own life. The cast is filled with comedy relief characters and deadpan snarkers. Lots of people are hitting on each other. You can romance so many folks, though it all tends to be more bawdy and up-front than designed to be the sort of slow-burn and realistic romances you’d find in other types of dating sims. Which means it may or may not be your thing, if you’re not into people being very upfront about what they want. However, regardless if the humor or romance is your thing, it sounds great due to an incredible cast that consists of folks like Heather Gonzalez as Rayna, Matthew Mercer as Prince Avarice, Ben Starr as Lord Cazian, and Cherami Leigh as Sylvie. I also especially loved Jeff Leach in his double role as the Hat Rack that accompanies Rayna and the game’s narrator. Everyone, as a whole, does a wonderful job. 

When battles come up in Ledgerbound, they are fairly standard turn-based affairs on a grid. Each character has a range of movement. When you position them and select an opponent, you can see how much damage they’d be expected to deal, the percentage chance of them hitting, and the odds of a critical hit landing. Characters also have elements tied to them, with fire beating plant, plant beating water, and water being fire. It’s all fairly standard and the challenges aren’t too difficult. There are some side objectives in each fight, like specific characters performing actions, winning within a certain amount of turns, or keeping your entire party alive. But I found those also feel rather manageable. Individual allies also have Personal Abilities and other abilities that can prove useful in fights. For example, some of the earliest examples are how Avarice can use Grigsby to use him as a decoy to avoid damage or Rayna can Deny Claim to deal damage to an enemy based on her strength stat. 

The relationship element comes up outside of these battles and occur between bouts and story beats. During a break, you can exchange your Performance Compensation Package tickets for rewards like random equipment. (The quality goes up when your tier gets higher.) The Employees section lets you check your relationship status with them and see if Action Items are present, while the Manager part lets you chat with a higher-up like Jazz, see if there are any Training To-Dos, and see your Performance Review achievements for certain actions. If the time management element is enabled (you can toggle it on and off thanks to a recent patch), then time passes during each conversation during a break. Chats only use up 15 units of time, for example, while a Bond moment takes more. Conversation sections here act like traditional visual novels, complete with opportunities to select responses.  These periods also let you check stats and adjust equipment.

There are some elements I wish Ledgerbound possessed. For example, the main problem with it as of time of writing is that you can’t manually save. You get a single file and need to rely on auto-saves. It feels bad for so many reasons! What if something goes wrong with it? There’s no back-up. I understand the concept, as it feels designed to make us live with our decisions and choices, but that could also be accomplished with a manual option and only a single save slot. Other issues have been remedied since, such as the lack of a log to see past dialogue and the time toggle. I think I’d feel much more positive about the game if it was at least possible to save on my terms and not rely on a single auto-save.

While the strategic element of Ledgerbound isn’t all that captivating, the humor and dating sim elements should help it find an audience. Especially since the voice acting is so strong. The jokes and even way in which the romantic elements are handled might not be for everyone. I also wish I could actually just… save instead of relying on autosaves. But it’s a novel take on a heroic quest and rather colorful. 

سەرچاوەی فەرمی بە زمانی ئینگلیزی: https://www.siliconera.com/review-ledgerbound-is-a-romantic-comedy-with-a-little-strategy-as-a-treat/