Inkbound Review

Inkbound Review -  Ink Bound is a Rog likee Deck Builder that embraces a 3D role playing approach with Turnbas combat. It has different classes, each with fun play Styles and abilities to upgrade and send in multiple different ways, as well as a story that progresses between runs and when completing objectives.

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After defeating a Guardian of the Void, you are brought to the Athenium, a massive Junction of books and stories that you can Venture into. There are several questions to answer, like why the collected ink doesn't seem enough, and what is causing the blight.

Upon entering the Void, you could choose from three books, each with a different world, characters, enemies and bosses to interact with. The graphics are aesthetically pleasing.

Depending on the routes taken, you may encounter more challenging enemy encounters that provide more rewards. You can opt to tone down the challenges if your health is low.

When combat starts, you can spend will to activate different abilities, and you can move around in a limited space on your turn to dodge enemy attacks or reduce damage from those that hit the entire Arena.

Encounters start simply enough, but as the enemies get more varied, you have to change up your tactics, which further plays into the different aspect roles.

The aspects themselves are well designed and facilitate different kinds of builds and play Styles. You can upgrade bindings with different augments over a run to specialize further in different play Styles.

You can acquire other bindings for each aspect like blink for teleporting or after image for stacking status effects to further aid in burst damage with shurikens.

Vestages grant passive abilities and bonuses like gaining additional will under certain circumstances, reducing the cool down on your bindings when picking up orbs, and more. They can even Avail additional effects like Spike damage, inflicting pin cushion, and causing enemies to take 10% more damage till the turn ends.

Progressing through the story unlocks relics that can be equipped before runs. These relics provide different benefits like permanently increasing magic damage for every little bit of physical damage dealt and vice versa.

After completing a run, you can attempt higher difficulties, which add more modifiers and challenges. These rewards provide a slight Edge rather than neutralizing negative modifiers.

While difficulty 1 and 2 felt pretty good, difficulty 3 felt slightly overtuned with the penultimate boss. Multiplayer brings a new dimension to combat and makes you wonder how things will fare at higher difficulties.

The only downside is that environments are all fundamentally the same in terms of structure and layout, and the overall flow of Garden's Edge and Silent Prominade is pretty much the same, despite their wildly different atmosphere and settings.

Ink Bound has a unique premise, gorgeous visuals, and plenty to keep you busy despite some quibbles.