Indivisible
Indivisible’s ‘unique fighting game meets JRPG battle system’ is its thrilling centrepiece.
If you can stomach the cheesy dialogue long enough, Indivisible’s battle system is excellent. It blends the turn-based party structure of a JRPG with the moveset and combo memorisation of a fighting game, requiring enough skill, quick-thinking and observation to make me feel badass when, for instance, I figure out that a one-eyed tree monster is vulnerable to air launches and juggle it to death, but not so much that I need a pro’s frame-perfect timing.
In the way you’d expect of a turnbased JRPG, each fight pits my party of four (which I can change as I recruit new companions) against a few enemies on the opposite side of the screen. But rather than taking clearly defined turns, I can spend a character’s energy as soon as it’s available. Some of my characters regenerate more quickly than others, allowing me to throw out several attacks before an enemy responds.
I can even attack with all my characters simultaneously if I’m dextrous enough: each controller button launches one of the four characters’ attacks, which can be modified with the analog stick to perform different moves. But when an enemy launches a move, the floor is theirs and the button I normally use for each character’s attack becomes their guard button.
Although it builds in real time, each character’s consistent energy regeneration speed means that most fights do settle into a rhythm that feels like I’m swapping turns. The difference is that I can’t mull over moves endlessly: I’m constantly planning my next set of attacks, or preparing to block. I never fail anything less than a boss fight, but the dexterity and active decisionmaking the fights ask of me, along with the sleek 2D animations, make each beat-down feel like a fun fxlxexx on my enemies.
The boss fights tend to be lengthy encounters with screen-filling health bars that only slightly outlast my patience for proving my mastery of their requirements. They’re cumulative exams, testing the abilities and knowledge I’ve gained in the area leading up to them. Some enemies are healed by elemental damage instead of damaged by it. Others need to have their defence broken before they take any proper damage. Others require careful management of my Iddhi bar, which is spent to execute powerful special moves.
Some bosses feature interludes which require clever use of my out-of-combat skills, though others fall back on platforming sections mid-battle that, if failed, will mean restarting a lengthy fight from the very beginning. While Lab Zero has created a fighting system that’s worth learning, Indivisible’s platforming and storytelling aren’t as successful.
WALL OVER
Outside of the numerous combat encounters, protagonist Ajna navigates a metroidvania-style cross section of the world with the help of a few tools, such as an axe that allows her to grab a wall and gain a second upward jump. With a slight input delay, the platforming sections are less about precise execution and more about matching the proper peg (my axe or spear or bow) with the correct hole (high walls or far targets).
Although Indivisible may not be my flavour of story or platforming, its combat is a successful experiment conducted by a studio that’s mastered combo-based combat. Its sleek 2D animations, easily chained attacks, and versatile cast of characters all make me feel like a powerhouse, even though I’d fare much worse in the competitive fighting games the system was derived from.