Indivisible

Originally posted October 19th, 2019. Edited and re-posted here for archival purposes.

Indivisible is a flawed game with a lot of bizarre decisions, but I did really enjoy my time with it. It was fairly brief, maybe 20-25 hours, but I have no idea what my time actually is given it counts suspend time on PS4 as well so it thinks I have 140 hours. You can really see a lot of the influences from Metroidvanias and Valkyrie Profile, though it seems to just take a little bit of each – or at least it has a flawed understanding of them.

The game has a heavy emphasis on the platforming, unlike VP which uses it as a means to an end (though VP2 does have some fun puzzles.). There’s a balancing act between long platforming sections and fights that I think they pull off pretty well. I’ve seen people have concerns about “3 minute fights”, but that really isn’t the case except for early on in the game where you’re rather weak. I’ve seen mention of enemies taking too long to kill, but I feel that’s because people were brute-forcing/headbutting their way through encounters. Some enemies will guard every attack, but it’s easy enough to break their guard. Others are immune to magic, so simply switching your team up for the next encounter is encourage. The combat and exploration flow together quite well. While they’re certainly tied together, I’ll address them separately.

To start with platforming, they give you a lot of tools slowly rolled out over the course of the game. Mobility is high and your movements are swift. You’ve many tools at your disposal such as wall hangs, ceiling hangs, dashes, vaulting, air dashing, pogo-ing across spikes, breaking through floors, walls, and ceilings, changing deadly terrain into something to be utilized with your tools, warping to enemies, and more. The games platforming is a strong point. Many a time I’d approached an area and stared at it with no real idea how I was supposed to get up to somewhere, only to remember the tools I had.

There are multiple ways to handle traversal across dangerous terrain at times as well, such as either jamming your spear into the ceiling and stabbing your way across or double air dashing or even getting a running start and pole vaulting into a pogo with your spear.The end of the game has you mixing up every single ability you have across a fairly lengthy final set of runs. They introduce obstacles and enemies that you can use to fight or help you get to the next area as well as pepper in some new ideas along the way.

I only found myself frustrated a couple times, but that’s because I was failing my jumps or trying to use a less effective method to cross a ravine full of spikes. While I’m no platformer expert, I do think it was quite solid with a lot of good ideas. It’s never too stressful and when you fail or die you’re just instantly reloaded just before the section. While this is great 99% of the time, it also resets the collectible you were trying to get and died recovering.

As its tied to the platforming, the level design is good (in a game sense) though it makes me want to pull my hair out (in a logic sense). Platformers are the main target of my criticism in regards to verisimilitude. The worlds never feel ‘real’ due to flying platforms, areas that are designed for specific characters, cities put in the middle of platforming challenges, and so on. Am I really supposed to believe that the populace of this city uses a 5-mile long highway with floating island jumps and booster pads? Or this castle really has pits of lava with only a fence to get over? How does anyone even live in this place? Indivisible is no different in some cases.

Some of the cities have floors that are only accessible by doing a platforming puzzle. Seeing characters standing on the top of towers just telling you who their favorite singer is seems a little strange, though I suppose I can chalk it up to me just taking the shortest and straightest route through the city. Normal people would probably use stairs and side streets, but it was still noticeable to me.

However, putting that aside, I felt the level design was good, challenging, memorable, and a bit unique even if it defied general logic (which I probably shouldn’t be trying to apply to a video game full of magic). One exhausting part part though is that you revisit the same areas repeatedly but with new tools. This ties into the Metroidvania aspect but I was still a little bummed out that I was having to do the same platforming sections to get to the next part of the story even if I could air dash over half of the obstacles.

Onto combat – this is where the game caught my attention the most. Everything leading up to release just screamed Valkyrie Profile. This excited me greatly. Upon release (or more accurately, closer to it), I learned it was a bit more of its own thing. Rather than be a turn-based VP-esque game, your attacks have a recharge. You start with one attack for each character who is mapped to a face button and you grow stronger over time — usually through a story beat or an upgrade using a collectible called Ringsels. As you get stronger, you get more attacks. We’ll leave out the main character for a moment because she’s a bit bizarre and lacking explanation.

Every other character though has a particular play style that comes across in their personality. Dhar is a swordsman who uses the earth to power up his attacks, so he has a lot of wide sweeping attacks that he can charge with shards of the earth. In character he’s a knight who fought for the villain but has now joined your side. Razmi is a lethargic and creepy recluse who likes burning things and loves the generally gross (e.g. eating bugs, wanting to live in slime), so she’s quite slow but has a lot of fire-based attacks along with hexing/cursing enemies. Zebei is an archer who is boastful and proud, claiming to never miss his mark. In battle his attacks basically home in on the enemy and do great damage. His boasting is well deserved. I won’t get into all the characters as there are twenty, but I’ll touch on my favorites and my final team after covering the main character Ajna.

This is where some of the tutorialization and on-boarding is just bad. The devs don’t tell you how to play Ajna at all. At. ALL. Every character in the game has a brief ‘how to play’ page, but she gets nothing. They don’t even tell you that you have three types of attacks, Up, Neutral, and Down. Whats worse is that Ajna, unlike the others, is constantly evolving her combat toolset much like her platforming one. You start out with your bare hands, but then you get an axe. Later on you find a bow. Then a spear. Then you boost your attack ability and can do 5-hit combos, but each direction is a different attack depending on the string you use. Yet, unless combat has started otherwise, she will always start with a low upward swing no matter what direction you press. So, if you’re not paying attention, you may wiff your attack.

It’s difficult to get practice with Ajna because when you’re finally comfortable with how to use her, she gets a new tool that throws the whole thing off again. That said, if you keep her as your mid-range/neutral attack who doesn’t attack first, you can use her quite well. Starting with another character to bring airborne enemies down to her is the ideal way to let her shine, because then all of her attacks will hit. Axe swings, spear jabs, arrows, kicks and punches, and arrow detonations.

Ajna’s malleability does add some evolution and progression to a game that otherwise has little. The developers seem to apply fighting game logic of ‘hitting the lab’ to learn new combos, but the game is not as in-depth as an actual fighting game. There are no cancels or techs or charges or anything that you can use to drastically change your playstyle. You simply have different direction strings that you can mix, but nothing in the game really requires you to get that technical.

In combat, you’ve no skills or abilities. You have your attacks and then Iddhi (meter) moves which are usually a super / Soul Crush / Purify Weird Soul / Ougi / whatever. Most characters have multi-level specials, meaning if you burn two bars they do something different. If you burn three, they do something else. Yet this is never really mentioned outside of a “2” in the how to play screen. For example, Razmi’s Level 1 special heals everyone for a generally pathetic amount. Her Level 3 does a high fire damage AoE to all enemies in range. Nothing is mentioned about this. Some characters lack a special completely such as Yan – an armless dancer who focuses on aerial juggles.

On the note of juggles – keeping an enemy airborne increases the damage it takes, so juggling is encouraged. Other characters have no special at all but have a way to use Iddhi in other ways. Leilani, for example, cannot use a special attack but she can spend half of a level of the Iddhi bar to instantly break the enemies guard with her chainsaw sword. This is a fair trade off, but Yan is ultimately useless with no way to burn Iddhi (or meter burn, as they call it given they’re fighting game devs.) Speaking of Yan and Leilani, there are many gimmick characters that seem like they’re too busy to deal with. Latigo is a guy who uses a gunblade and can fire numerous times after his attack, but then he needs to reload. This breaks the flow of combos so I benched him quickly.

My personal team was Ajna who was focusing on mid to low combos, Leilani who was focused on guard crushes and AoE, Kampan who was focused on knocking enemies out of the sky (and doing extremely high damage with her special), and Nuna who was focused on setting up traps on the battlefield. A note – Nuna is the best character in the game. She is so unfairly defensive that she can cancel boss attacks with her mines. She’s also adorable is my favorite character and combatant by far.

As you level you are learning nothing new. I don’t even know what stats increase other than HP because none of that is displayed. You see star ratings on what a character is good at. Example: Razmi has low speed and defense but high attack. Ajna is 3/5 stars in everything. As you get Ringsels, you can boost your number of attacks and your defense capabilities as mentioned before, but this does not change your star ratings. When you gear towards defense, you get an HP boost and your guarding becomes more beneficial. In this game, defense is active ala Ar Tonelico 2, though there is no beat/rhythm bar to let you prepare to defend.

You need to watch the enemy. Guarding requires that Iddhi gauge mentioned before, but if you time it perfectly you get Iddhi back. When you boost your defense, you get Iddhi and HP back with perfect guards. Enemies will target different members at the same time, the entire group, or do AoE attacks that you’ll need to guard against. While you can guard with the face buttons per character, there is a Guard All move (L1) that burns more Iddhi but lets you guard with everyone. You need to keep an eye on the enemies moves and learn the right time to guard, when to get out of a grab, and even how to just avoid their attacks in general (such as Nuna’s mines or Leilani’s dizzy move that leaves her out of the formation).

The defense system is solid and makes combat active at all times, which keeps the flow going. Perfect Guarding giant multi-hit beams or huge attacks is a rewarding feeling, especially when doing so grants you more Iddhi. There were a number of times I’ve nailed Perfect Guards with only one character alive at low health, only to push my Iddhi gauge to max and revive everyone. It felt like I was just scraping by with my own skill and I loved it.

Moving on from combat onto the story – it’s nothing special. It’s inspired by PS1-era JRPGs and platformers, so it’s no surprise that the village burns down within about 3 minutes of the game starting due to a warlord who wants to destroy the world and make a new, perfect one. Seen it before? Of course you have. You’re a Chosen One for Reasons and you have to go fight the bad guy. Thankfully, there is no Darkness or Special Sword MacGuffin. Yet there is a Sealed Ancient Evil. While they use a LOT of tropes that are tiresome, they do gain some points with me with the character interactions.

Ajna is a rebellious girl who is ignorant, blunt, and hot-headed. Some of the cast call her stupid, but she takes zero offense it because she ‘doesn’t care about all that stuff’. She just wants to do what is right and protect people, so she comes across as an idiot in some situations, but her heart is in the right place. She does get a bit too angry and ignores her friends advice, but there are story reasons for that which do get resolved. You do see her grow as a person and they handle her quite well. Even when it comes to facing her fathers killer.

Throughout the game you’re going from area to area, solving problems and meeting new people. There are some sub-stories that are quite good while others seem rather lacking. Some characters weave well into the plot while others just seem along for the ride. Tungar, specifically, was just a dude who found in jail who…only speaks in two scenes. If you’re not using him in combat, it’s easy to forget he even exists. The same can be said for some other characters, especially the gimmick ones. In reality, much like Valkyrie Profile, there is a ‘main’ cast and then a group of secondary support characters. Ajna, Razmi, Thorani, and Dhar tend to be the focus of most scenes and interactions, though occasionally characters like Ginseng will show up. It’s quite unbalanced and in some cases feels rushed.

The soundtrack was good, though it didn’t blow me away. It’s by Kikuta, so fans of his works will recognize his style. I never heard a bad track (though one has a part that sounds too much like Mario) and it all flowed in very well. Nothing in particular really stood out to me aside from the final track, but that may be because I was so focused on everything else. Continuing on with audio, the voice work was impressive. Every character sounds like they look and vice versa. There were a few notable voice actors that I quite enjoy such as Matt Mercer, but the real gem for me was Debra Wilson (from MadTV) playing the Serpent Queen. She has such an iconic voice to me from growing up watching that stupid show (which I did enjoy). It was a nice little surprise to see her still active in the gaming scene.

It was also nice to hear people other than the usual JRPG casts and I do think the voice cast was very inclusive. On the sound front, everything was fine. The audio work is quite good with effects having a nice strength to them. There’s a nice ‘thunk’ to the axe hitting into walls, the impact of hits in combat feels weighty, and the soundtracks do help present a nice sense of atmosphere.

All that said, I do think it’s a solid game that is a little dependent on your expectations going into it. I never backed the kickstarter back when it launched nor did I follow development. I put myself on blackout with only the occasional gif or short clip. It wasn’t until about two weeks prior to launch when I started working on the OT that I got a lot more information. I know that people were waiting upwards of 4 years for it, so that may time into some of the disappointment. It’s hard not to get excited when you see VALKYRIE PROFILE + METROIDVANIA WITH 2D HAND DRAWN ART AND ANIMATION BY THE CREATORS OF SKULLGIRLS, so I can see why some are let down by the game, especially after waiting years and devoting their own time and money to the project.

As a huge VP fan, I was drawn to it immediately. While it’s certainly not the level of VP nor does it have the complexity of tri-Ace games, it does its own things while wearing its influences on its sleeve and tries to form its own identity. Some don’t consider it an RPG due to the lack of meaningful choices or abilities or growth but I’d disagree. Others consider it a turn-based fighting game, but I’d also disagree on that notion given the limited moves you have. At the very least, it’s certainly a hybrid game of platformer, rpg, action, and fighting game that offers up a nice little package for those who want to give it a fair shot at being something other than THAT NEW VP GAME.

With the devs being fighting game developers and with this being their first foray into the world of RPGs, you can really see where their priorities lie and how the budget was used. Some characters seemed rush, some story elements seemed to be hopped over, and some things that made games like VP great are completely absent. Yet it’s ambitious and enjoyable. I’d love to see a sequel and see what they learn. The battle system is great and would certainly shine if they took a few more notes from tri-Ace and the platforming could use a bit of tweaking here and there. I’d really like to see what they do going forward.

To wrap it up, I think its worth playing but I’d suggest maybe waiting for a patch. The game could use some difficulty options, some smoothing out, better tutorials, and there are a number of characters both previously planned (Antoine and another were delayed) as well as DLC chars such as Shovel Knight and Red from Transistor coming. Below are a few simple pros/cons along with stuff that I found to be more ‘neutral’ that didn’t really ruin my experience but should be noted either way.

Positives

• Great characters
• Beautiful art
• Fun platforming
• Solid music
• Engaging and active battle system
• Lots of options to set up your team

Neutral
~ You go through some areas 2-3 times, albeit with new abilities that make it faster.
~ No gear, equipment, or items.

Negatives

• Almost no tutorialization/on-boarding.
• Gimmick characters don’t output the damage to match the effort needed to use them.
• No abilities/customization
• Story is riddled with PS1 JRPG tropes.