Indivisible
PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One
The dynamism of Indivisible’s combat system is in direct opposition to the general structure of its world
Developer Lab Zero Games
Publisher 505 Games
Format PC, PS4 (tested), Switch, Xbox One
Release Out now
You shouldn’t be able to tell that a Kickstarter game is a Kickstarter game. Taken on its own, Indivisible’s strategically and visually vibrant combat system certainly doesn’t read Kickstarter. But
Indivisible is, like any other game, meant to be interpreted as a whole – and the rest of its pieces don’t quite sit flush. Perhaps, when the player is footing the bill for development, it’s not enough to just make a great combat game. You have to add platforming sections for variety, and half-hearted puzzles to draw out the runtime. And instead of populating areas with believable NPCs, you have to cram in all the waifu-bait backer concepts you possibly can.
Still, that combat system. Inspired by Valkyrie Profile, designed by fighting-game pro Mike Zaimont and featuring the animation genius of Mariel Kinuko Cartwright, it’s undoubtedly Indivisible’s best asset (little wonder – Lab Zero Games was the studio behind excellent fighting game Skullgirls). Each character in your party of four is mapped to a face button, and you perform offensive or defensive manoeuvres by tapping each one. Attacking inputs are kept simple – every fighter has a ‘neutral’ attack where you press a button without a directional input, as well as different attacks for holding either up or down – and blocking is even easier, as you simply press the targeted character’s button at the right time.
Fights are a curious blend of realtime and turn-based. Enter into battle (by either getting caught unawares by an enemy out in the world, or getting a hit on them first for an advantage) and your characters’ action points will charge: during the attack phase, you can get all of your party members involved in the longest, most damaging combo you can muster. When you’ve used up all your characters’ attacks, or you decide to halt your offence – often it’s worth skipping a turn in order to recover more action points for longer combos – it’s the enemy phase, and you must prepare to block and parry.
Oddly, from the studio that brought us the Skullgirls tutorial, Indivisible does a poor-to-middling job of explaining its combat and Iddhi (read: magic) system. In fairness, it’s satisfying to work things out – the difference in damage-mitigation between a block and a perfect parry, how tapping block drains less Iddhi than holding it – and the visual indicators are usually spot-on in terms of letting us know who’s going to get hit and when. Other times, we’re left baffled. We only realise we have a super attack by hitting a face button accidentally while holding the right bumper for another tutorial. Character movesets are only shown once each. Some characters don’t have supers, while others can stack theirs – none of this is explained. And we’re still unsure what the hearts next to each character’s name mean.
Then again, Indivisible’s world is mysterious stuff. Ajna’s fighting party is all in her head: they are ‘Incarnations’ of people she’s unwittingly absorbed on her journey to avenge her father, and pop out ready to deliver the smackdown when Ajna enters battle. New additions are often too hastily introduced, but the sheer volume of them encourages creative experimentation with the battle system. Kushi’s most powerful attack involves some keen timing: her falcon carries her up into the air off-screen for a time before dive-bombing enemies: once we learn the timing, and that our own characters can also get hit by it, we switch melee warriors out for characters with more long-range attacks so we can safely combo from afar. And Kushi is immune to certain enemies’ ground attacks when being held aloft by her avian friend – meaning we can move the hardhitting but vulnerable Razmi out of top slot and into the back of our formation, where she’s less likely to get clobbered. These sort of strategic nuances, combined with the inventive character design, have us constantly switching up our party formation.
The dynamism of Indivisible’s combat system is in direct opposition to the general structure of its world. Although the background art is gorgeous – the lively metropolis of Tai Krung being a particular standout – there’s not much to really explore, despite certain paths opening up when Ajna finds a new ability. Levels are largely linear corridors, barren of anything to interact with or chase beyond the hidden Ringsels that upgrade attack and defence. But even the game’s main path is littered with finicky platforming sections that make fun abilities such as climbing with an axe or pogoing on a spear torturous – and janky camera transitions don’t help. Puzzles, meanwhile, are simplistic but so poorly signposted that they hold us up longer than necessary.
As Indivisible wears on, the problems mount. Later, a hub allows you the ‘choice’ of travelling to three different places; we end up fighting our way through one, only to discover we don’t yet have the power-up to progress past an electrified wall at the end, and must backtrack all the way to take another guess at the correct route. Then we’re told we need to climb the same mountain three times. The worst offender, however, is the balancing issues in the game’s back half. For reasons unknown, we find ourselves steamrolling enemies in the latter half of the game, which completely takes the bite out of the meaty combat system.
The endgame balance, alongside a multitude of distracting bugs, are things that may even be patched by the time you read this. But there are so many requisite parts of Indivisible of such varying quality that it’s hard to imagine the hodge-podge feeling of this game, enthusiastically cobbled together with plenty of heart, talent and expectant Kickstarter backers, being mitigated by a few updates. As a whole, it just doesn’t hang together as seamlessly as we’d hoped.