Let's Talk About Indivisible

This generation has seen a lot of great games come out, almost too many. It's been hard to keep track of them all quite frankly. As a result there have been plenty of games that I haven't gotten around to playing yet like, Nier Automata and Persona 5. One I've been meaning to get to was Indivisible, a game that's been on my radar ever since I played the demo for it in 2015. It was finally released in October last year but I wanted to hold off on it until it came out on the Nintendo Switch. It eventually came out on Switch in April but I didn't pick it up until just recently when I got it as a birthday present. I just got distracted by a bunch of other games that were coming out. But I've finally played it so why don't we see what I've been missing out on.

Indivisible is a Metroidvania, RPG, fighting game hybrid developed by Lab Zero Games, the same folks behind Skullgirls. That's certainly an interesting combination. Whether or not it works is another question entirely though. Normally for these reviews I would start with the story but I'm going to save that for last because I have a lot to talk about and it involves spoiling some parts of the game. So I'll do what I did for the Final Fantasy 7 Remake review and save the story discussion for the end.

Instead let's talk about the presentation. Skullgirls was known for it's beautiful hand drawn sprites and the same is true for Indivisible. The game is gorgeous to look at. The animation is top notch, I'm a sucker for hand drawn animation but even disregarding my own personal biases the game still looks great. The environments are all rendered inn 3D and they look great too, I always like 2.5D games like this because it makes the sprite work pop out more. For the most part the character designs are great but there are a few that fall flat. Most of the time it's just because they're kind of boring but the one exception in Yan. Something about this design just didn't work for me. I think it's the legs, they're too long. Ostriches don't have legs that long and when you combine that with the fact that she has no arms, she just looks a little ridiculous.

The game runs pretty well too in both docked and handheld mode on the Switch. Obviously it's better docked but it's perfectly playable in handheld mode too. The game runs at a stable 30 fps though there is an option to uncap it which gets you a higher though less stable frame rate. I always prefer a stable frame rate to I kept it at 30, it is nice to have that option though. Very rare to see on a console game. There's also a few cutscenes that are fully animated done by Titmouse and Studio Yotta that look fantastic. I wish there were more of them, the still image cutscenes don't look bad but they don't compare to full animation.

Sound wise it's pretty good as well. The soundtrack was composed by Hiroki Kikuta who also worked on Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana. I've talked about those games before and liked the music in both of them. The same is true for Indivisible. The music is pretty good and is fairly catchy. Try as I might I can't get some of the music out of my head. This is my preferred style of videogame music, I don't mind more atmospheric soundtracks but I'll take music I can hum along to any day.

Indivisible also has quite a lot of voice acting, way more than I was expecting, and it's a mixed bag. Most of the acting is very good, about on par with a decent anime dub, but some of the voices didn't work for me. The English accents certain characters have are especially bad, they almost come across as parody. When you make Dick Van Dyke's English accent sound authentic you know you've screwed up. Then there's the main character Ajna, voiced by Tania Gunadi. So there are two kinds of bad voice acting, cringy and lifeless. To me lifeless voice acting will always be worse because it sucks any energy out a scene might otherwise have. Cringy voice acting can at least be so bad it's good, look at The House of the Dead series for example. Tania Gunadi's performance falls under the lifeless category, in places. Whenever she has to be hot headed and energetic she sounds perfectly fine but in the quieter, more emotional moments her performance falls flat. It removes any kind of emotional impact those scenes might have.

Normally when I discuss RPG's I go over what I consider the three core pillars of RPG design, exploration, customisation and combat. Indivisible makes this a lot easier because it's gameplay is split between Metroidvania style platforming and a battle system akin to the active time battle system seen in older Final Fantasy games. So it's best we discuss each of them seperately. Let's start with the platforming since it's what you'll be doing for the majority of the game. Now, I'm not a big fan of the Metroidvania genre. I don't hate it or anything but it's not a style of game I usually gravitate towards. There are a few Metroidvania's I do like though, the Shantae series is a good time and I really like the Guacamelee games. So I do have a little understanding of what makes a good Metroidvania game.

Firstly, you need to make exploration consistently rewarding. Because Metroidvania's are based entirely around exploring you need to makes that engaging by rewarding the player for going off the beaten path. Indivisible doesn't do this. It has plenty of side areas to find and side quests to do but the only thing you find are red gems called Ringsels. You don't find any upgrades or additional collectibles, nothing, making exploration feel unrewarding as a result. The only thing you might find are some optional playable characters but there aren't enough of them to make it feel consistently rewarding and most of them aren't that well hidden to begin with.

Secondly, you need to make backtracking as painless as possible. Metroidvania's involve a lot of backtracking so a good Metroidvania makes this process quick and painless by having a good fast-travel system and convenient shortcuts. Again, Indivisible fails at this. While the game has plenty of shortcuts it still involves a lot of running back and forth between areas, especially for the side quests. What makes it worse is that you're required to backtrack to progress in the story. Unlike a lot of other Metroidvania's where most backtracking is optional and only needed to get to new areas or get a collectible you may have missed, here not only is most of the backtracking mandatory for progression but you have to do it for every area you visit. There are only 5 major areas in the game and you have to go through them at least twice, with no new areas to explore.

And you know those side quests I mentioned, they aren't really worth it. All the side quests act as resolution to the characters who join your group but all you get for doing them is maximising their level, which you don't really need but we'll get to that, and a picture showing where they are during the end credits. I wouldn't mind this so much but these side quests can be very tedious. You run back and forth between areas so much it becomes very tiring.

I wouldn't mind all of this if Indivisible had a decent fast travel system. Unfortunately, Indivisible has one of the least convenient fast travel systems I've ever seen in a Metroidvania. Admittedly I haven't played many but my point still stands. First of all, you don't actually unlock fast travel until the final third of the game. Secondly, the fast travel points are in some of the least convenient spots to get to, meaning it's actually faster not using it and just walking to your destination. It's not exactly a good fast travel system when it isn't the fastest way to travel.

The thing is though, the actual platforming is pretty good. You unlock some fun abilities to play around with, the platforming can be a little tricky but there are plenty of checkpoints so it's never too frustrating, when your just going through the game normally and not backtracking or doing the side quests it's fine. I think if the game had been more of a linear platformer with some minor Metroidvania elements I think it would have been great. But as is? It's not bad, but it's not that great either. The exploration isn't rewarding enough and the backtracking is very annoying. It isn't a great Metroidvania.

But that's only part of the experience. Another part is the combat. Whenever you run into an enemy the game transitions to the battle system. Here's how it works, you have a team of four characters each of which is controlled by one of the four face buttons. Each character has 3 moves, a high attack, low attack and a neutral attack that can be chained together to perform long combos similar to a fighting game. The battle system is similar to the active time battles you see in older Final Fantasy games. Characters have attack stocks they gain over time and when you aren't attacking you have to block attacks from enemies by pressing the respective characters button at the right time in a vein similar to the Mario RPG games. Blocking successfully and performing combos builds up you Iddhi meter which can be used to perform a super attack for massive damage. There are three levels of supers you can perform, for the most part but more on that in a bit, with the higher level ones obviously doing more damage.

It's a decent little battle system. Performing combo's is a lot of fun and each character plays differently from one another. Characters like Ginseng and Thorani are good at healing as well as having projectiles that can hit airborne enemies, Razmi is slow but does massive damage with her attacks and Lanshi, who is also a giant dog, has moves that don't do damage but can build up a lot of Iddhi. There's a lot of characters you can find so there's bound to be some that fit your playstyle.

But, while the battle system is fun and enjoyable, it's also rather shallow. Nothing much changes with the battles as the game progresses. You gain more attacks to use in a battle but not any new attacks. What you do at the beginning of the game is what you'll be doing at the end of the game just you'll be doing more of it. This also, rather ironically, means the game gets easier as you progress.

Why? Well because is very easy to break if you apply just the tiniest bit of pressure. Some of the combos you can do later on in the game can get so long and so overpowered that enemies pose little challenge to you. This also means there's very little in the way of strategy. Some enemies do require a tiny bit more thought like airborne enemies that need to be hit by a projectile but you can just combo most of them to death in one turn. Even those that heal from certain attacks or deal damage by attacking them are no problem because of how much damage you do to them. Your simply far to powerful for anything to be a threat. The game does try to counter balance this by having enemies do a lot of damage when you don't block but this was never much of an issue by the end of the game as I was killing most enemies and even certain bosses in a single combo.

Even the character balancing is out of whack. While I wouldn't call any character useless, some are just ridiculously OP. Ginseng's healing can also act like an attack and can heal a ridiculous amount, Nuna can lay traps that can outright cancel out enemy attacks and then there's Kampan who can one shot enemies with a full bar of Iddhi, which is not hard to build up at all. Also some characters don't have super moves for some reason. It's not a huge issue it's just odd since there's no real reason they shouldn't. At least Leilani can use Iddhi to boost her attacks so it makes sense for her not to have one but for the others it's bizarre.

I'll give the game this, the bosses are pretty good. They aren't very challenging but they do shake things up by mixing the platforming in with the battles. I wish there were more of them because they are a highlight of the game. The final boss is especially unique because it just involves dodging attacks. It helps make the final encounter stand out.

But here's the big thing that bothers me about the battle system, and the game in general, the complete lack of any customisation. The only thing you can change are which characters you have in battle and that's about it. Each of the characters do play differently and there is plenty to pick from, so there is some customisation in who you want in your team. Granted once you find a team that works there's little reason to change it but I did try out different combinations to see how they worked. My issue is that while each character does play differently, they only have one way to play them. I get they did this to emphasise the different team combinations but I would have liked some way to customise them, even just some equipment that gives them certain properties would be nice.

This is compounded by the fact that there's no real upgrade system. You do gain levels by battling enemies but all that does is increase your health and attack power. Characters have stats but there's no way to manipulate them. The only other upgrades you can get come from the Ringsels you collect since you can spend them to boost your offence or defence. There's no skill tree, no equipment, just boosts to offence or defence. By the by, don't bother with defence, once you get the offence upgrades you'll plough through anything and everything with ease.

Here's the thing with Indivisible, it's not much of an RPG. Even as an action RPG it's lacking. At least games like Trials of Mana and Kingdom Hearts give you some degree of control in how your character played. I honestly think Indivisible would have been better if it ditched being an RPG and just focused on being a unique action game instead. It probably would have made the difficulty more balanced.

As you can tell, Indivisible has a lot of problems but that doesn't mean it isn't a fun time. For as shallow as the battle system is, it's still a lot of fun. Performing large combo's feels satisfying and the bosses do a good job of shaking up the gameplay. The Metroidvania elements aren't handled well but the core platforming is fine. To me Indivisible tries to do to much. It throws in a bunch of different genres and systems and they don't always work. If it had been a bit more focused and polished it could have been something truly great. As is? It's still a good game, just not as good as it could have been.

We're not done yet though are we? No, I still have to talk about the story. The game follows Ajna, a young woman living in a small forest village who was trained by her father to be a strong warrior. One day her village is destroyed by an invading force and her father is killed by a man named Dhar. Before Ajna can take revenge she somehow absorbs Dhar into her mind and the two are forced to work together to confront Dhar's superior. Along the way the meet a colourful cast of characters before confronting Dhar's boss Ravanavaar who tricks Ajna into releasing a powerful god like being named Kala who threatens to undo and remake the world. Now Ajna must travel the world, meet even more colourful characters and discover the true nature of her powers to save the world.

That's the basic summary of the plot. It's straight forward story and fairly typical for an RPG but that doesn't mean it's bad. I liked the story in Trials of Mana which wasn't that inventive a story for an RPG. And to Indivisible's credit, it does do some interesting things with the story. Making Dhar an ally early on is an interesting concept because usually the villain that ends up joining your team only really does so after they realise they were wrong. Here it's reversed. Dhar is forced to join Ajna and then realises he was wrong, staying with her and aiding her journey as a form of penance. Admittedly it doesn't really amount to much since the entire cast treats him like shit, especially Ajna, but it was nice to see it try to shake things up a bit.

The cast is quite good as well with each of them having their own distinct personality and character arc. I also like how the game is steeped in Hindu and Buddhist mythology. I admittedly don't know much about them and would have been nice if the game went more in depth with it but it's certainly unique. That's where the positives end for me however, because Indivisible's story has some major problems. Let's start with the cast since we're already on it. While the characters do have their own distinct personalities they don't have much in the way of character development. They may have their own character arcs but they don't actually change all that much. Their arcs aren't even resolved in the main story, you have their specific side quest to see any kind of resolution. Most of the time the characters don't do much and get put on the side-lines to focus on Ajna.

Which leads me to my biggest problem I have with the story, Ajna herself. But in order to properly talk about this I need to go into spoiler territory. So spoilers from here on out, when you see Peacock from Skullgirls that's where the spoilers end. So Ajna's entire character arc is cantered around he inability to listen to others. She's a headstrong young woman with a strong sense of what she thinks is right and wrong and will often force it upon others even when it may not be correct.

Ajna actually reminds me of Edea Lee from Bravely Default. Like Ajna, Edea has a very strong sense of what she thinks is right and wrong and will not hear anything to the contrary. Edea is actually my favourite character in Bravely Default because of her development. She starts out with a black and white worldview but slowly begins to see there's more to the world than that. Ajna isn't exactly the same but it's similar, she thinks what she's doing is right and won't hear it any other way. She is right and you are wrong.

So why do I like Edea but not Ajna? Well in Bravely Default, the story is framed in a way that paints Edea as being in the right. The people you fight are portrayed as completely evil which justifies Edea's world view. It's only later on in the game where it's revealed things weren't so simple. The player comes to the realisation the world isn't black and white at the same time that Edea does creating a better connection between the player and the character as a result. In Ajna's case it's obvious she's in the wrong. She means well in what she's doing but it's obvious to anyone that her actions are having a negative effect, so to see her act like she's done no wrong and to shout down dissenting voices is frustrating. It's hard to relate and empathise with a character when you know they are in the wrong and can't do anything about it. Player agency? What's that.

Every time someone calls her out she shoots them down. She's like a blue check marked Twitter account. I get what they were trying to do here. She's supposed to be headstrong and stubborn but become more open and calm as the game progresses. The problem is that, rather than develop slowly throughout the game, she gets most of her significant character development in one scene. I'm not kidding, she turns into a giant demon, kills Dhar, reflects on all she's done and realises that she's wrong. All her character development takes place in one scene. It doesn't help that after that point she goes from annoying to boring. Combine that with the voice acting issues I mentioned earlier and the emotional sequences in the game ultimately fall flat.

That leads me to another problem with the game, the pacing. Certain cutscenes can go on for 40 minutes, that's Kojima levels of cutscene length. To be fair the cutscenes aren't bad but they could have been shortened a bit. Then there's plot points that don't go anywhere. So the game starts with Ajna going after Ravanavaar for destroying her village. The game sets Ravanavaar up as a major threat with several characters going after him, even Dhar after he discovers he was little more than a pawn to him. But after Revanavaar tricks Ajna into awakening Kala he's killed off and barely get's mentioned again. What happened to the empire he was leading? It never shows up again so what the hell happened to it? The same is true for The Iron Kingdom, who are set up as a major invading force but only show up in their own kingdom after kicking them out of the port. Also The Iron Kingdom is such an obvious allegory for the British empire it hurts.

Also can I rap about Thorani for a bit. I get she's supposed to be the motherly character of the group but it's dialled up to such a ridiculous degree that she comes across as someone's own personal waifu insert. It doesn't help that she's the character the lesbian pirate Baozhai has a crush on. Also great job on making the butchest woman in the game the only lesbian in the game Lab Zero, that doesn't play into a stereotype at all.

I realise I'm just riffing at this point so let's wrap things up. Indivisible's story has problems, it has a lot of problems. But I can't bring myself to hate it. I can see a good story here but through a combination of wasted plot points, bad pacing, poorly developed characters and an unlikable main character it can never truly reach it's full potential. The pieces of a good story are there but they don't quite fit together.

And that probably sums up Indivisible best of all. The pieces of a great game are all here, but they don't fit together. The combat is fun but shallow. The platforming is great but exploration is unrewarding. It has great characters but poor development of said characters. Indivisible isn't a bad game. It's a fun game and I enjoyed my time with it, which only makes the frustrating moments all the more egregious. I want to like Indivisible more than I do, but I can't bring myself to do it. Until next time, remember to stay safe and have fun.