Indivisible Reviews

Overall / TLDR
Indivisible is a fantastic game, I loved every bit of the 25 short hours I spent soaking up everything the game has to offer. It gets just shy of a perfect score for reasons outlined below, though they all revolve around the price point. As it stands, Indivisible is up there with AAA game pricing, for this reason I hadn't picked it up until now. Being on Game Pass its much easier to overlook the minor issues, all of which could be easily patched to make this game something truly outstanding.

Presentation
Pro
Indivisible looks amazing. The art style suits the game perfectly, the characters are well drawn, the stages are huge and each one feels really unique. What brings it all together is the compelling story.

One very small feature that really stands out is when you load the game (assuming you can bring yourself to quit and go to sleep.....) is that it loads straight to your previous save. What could easily be mistaken for your standard menu screen artwork was the game itself where you left off, which highlights just how beautiful it is.

Con
The game has a few graphical glitches that just get annoying. World elements that get stuck in a loop, graphics that turn black and halt game for 5+ seconds, character portraits that don't appear on the save file, falling through the floor into unreachable (and inescapable areas) and noticable slowdowns (particulary in snow/sandstorm areas) that affect the platforming sections. On an Xbox One X there really shouldn't be any slowdowns and I'm sure these glitches could be resolved. Certainly nothing that stops game progression. Icons on the full map do get mixed up a little, showing side quest markers instead of story progression in some places.

Sound
Pro
The music score really stands out. Each area is unique and memorable, and really suits the location. The voice acting is superb, though I can only account for the English language. 

Con
For some reason, they decided to voice only 90% of the lines, which makes it really jarring when you meet someone that doesn't speak. Even worse when you talk to one of your party members who has been speaking for the last 20 hours to complete their personal mission at the end of the game, and all you get is text. For the price they're asking for the game, I don't know why they couldn't have the voice actors read a handful of extra lines. Even give a few voice parts to families of the development team for the unimportant NPCs in the towns.

Also, the sound effect when you build your focus meter in combat is way too loud. It pierces through my house like a screaming baby. I had to turn "effects" volume down to 50% to bring it to a reasonable level next to voice and music.

Playability
Pro
For me, the game is spot-on. The platforming segments blend perfectly with the quasi-turn based combat. The metroidvania elements unlocked through the story open up so many small areas and shortcuts through the stages, which makes back-tracking less of a chore. 

Combat feels unique, almost part fighting game with each character having their own moves and focus abilities. Its remarkable how much depth and flexibility they give each character with just a single button.

Con
For me, the platforming sections were great, but not everyone has Super Meat Boy twitch reflexes. Some of the mid-boss platforming sections are overly punishing for newer gamers. My daughters both love the characters, the story, the music and the graphics but cannot progress due punishing platforming segments in the middle of a boss fight. With no difficulty options to choose from, the game is no longer accessible to them, something I would expect from an AAA-priced title to have tested and accomodated for. A "casual" difficulty that reduces or removes the health penalty in platforming segments is really all it needs to allow gamers to experience the story without frustration.

Once complete, there really is no reason to go back to the game, unless you happen to miss any of the characters that join your party in your first time through. As none of the extra characters have any voiced lines and purely text, nor have any input in the story cutscenes, you're not really missing anything.

While I don't like having my hand held throughout a game, there are certainly some elements that I wish the game had told me about earlier. Being able to use RB+LB outside of combat with a full focus meter replenishes your health outside of combat for one would help in some of the platforming segments. Or when fighting a boss with a unique mechanic, some input from other party members would have been nice especially as they interrupt all the time throughout the story. A short hint from Qadira when fighting in the sand might have saved some frustration, or Nuna in the water temple.

Lastly, the Character Info or "how to play as" screens need to be redone. For so long I assumed Razmi was a simple healer with her focus because of her character info, did not realise just how much damage she could do until later. While I don't expect full combo movelists, these can be figured out, having a bit more info on how their focus abilities work would be nice. Not sure why the decision was to have various party members given no focus ability at all? Would be nice to mention that on the character info sheet as well. Again, a little attention to detail I can gloss over as an indie title, but at the AAA price point, I was expecting more.

Final Disclosure
All of my downsides could be easily fixed with a patch (if Destiny can patch in voice actors, why not?) to make this a truly outstanding game. I didn't pick up the game previously as a result of its price point, but the moment it hit Game Pass I grabbed it and didn't let go for around 25 hours and finished the game (100%). After which, I promptly picked up a physical copy to keep for myself. While I feel the game deserves its asking price, I did expect more, and it was the primary reason I didn't pick it up earlier.

Indivisible is a beautiful game with a cute, unique story unlike anything I've ever played before. It's a Metroidvania Beat-Em-Up Character Ensemble RPG Platformer. Sound weird? It is! And it's glorious.

One of the first things you'll notice is the game's art. It all gorgeous hand-drawn cel-shaded old-school animation. And it works very well in high-def. It really brings the the traversable areas to life and makes running back and forth through them relaxing. The story is also very neat and touching, with each character bringing a unique background and perspective to bear.

The game's core dynamic is that Ajna - the main character - absorbs other characters with high Idhi (inner power) and "stores" them in her mental inner realm. Many absorbed characters give Ajna special abilities (a bow, a spear-vaulting technique, etc) used in the platforming sections and some out-of-battle boss sequences. She brings her friends everywhere, and can then call on them in battle. She can use her own Idhi to swap out comrades (including replacing fallen friends), or perform super moves like an attack or mega group heal.

Each character in the game has their own moveset. This actually complicates the battle mechanic, which my instincts made me play frenetically in the beginning. I mashed buttons, randomly comboing , , , with , , , . This is not the correct way to play, as I discovered embarrassingly late into the game.

The game's core battle mechanic is actually around blocking. Many enemies can set a standing guard against attacks that reduces their damage taken to 1. Compare this to your characters, who must "clean guard" at the moment of impact to absorb damage (healing instead of hurting!). Just holding the block button (whatever button is assigned the character being attacked) will only slightly mitigate damage. This difference between the player characters and enemies is lopsided and very annoying, but so are tons of game mechanics out there.



However, enemies' guards can be broken with "up-down" attack combos (no spoiler here since there's an in-game tutorial that does a bad job of explaining this). That is, any character can perform an "up" attack and any character (including the original) can then perform a "down" attack which will break the guard and allow follow-up attacks from the player group to land and do damage. This works on every enemy that can block (including ALL bosses!). Not every character has both an up and a down attack. However, any Idhi super-attack (which most characters have) will naturally break guards and allow clean follow-up damage, but just requires Idhi.



Once you get that the game is about defense instead of offense, it becomes a crapton easier. However, the first few hours can be very difficult as you try to figure out combos and which group of characters work best together. You'll die a lot until you figure out the best group and how to reliably break guards and build up Idhi.



Fortunately, when the group falls you simply respawn at the last checkpoint which is usually right before the battle you just lost.

Despite being clearly influenced by anime and JRPGs, this game fortunately doesn't suffer the boring idiotic dialog you find in that genre. Frequently in JRPGs, every character in the roster chime in at nearly every major dialog point to either repeat that dialog point or say something useless that doesn't actually promote the story. In Indivisible, characters outside the core discussion will only pipe up to pick on the ones that are central, or to make subtle observations. Extraneous dialog exists, but it's greatly minimized compared to games like Alvastia Chronicles or Tales of Vesperia (where most of the dialog is extraneous boring pointless banter). It's refreshing.

All of this is your ship-of-the-line stuff that sets this game apart from others in its genre(s). However, there are a few serious drawbacks.

First, the in-game tutorials are crap and pop up awkwardly. I suspect that if you're not paying attention and just button-mashing, you might even miss the tutorial and not actually figure out what you did or were supposed to do. I certainly missed info around blocking, which as I stated earlier is a key part of the game's battle system.

Secondly, the platformer bits can get annoying. I found that Ajna just doesn't respond well to input, and will frequently fall from high hard-to-reach places because of the sheer difficulty of moving fluidly from one hand position to another. For me, summiting Sumeru at the end of the game was a white-knuckle test of wills between me and the game that almost went into controller-chucking mode. The weird puzzles got repetitive quick, especially as I too-frequently dropped off-screen and re-spawned several platforms back. Grr.

Third, quests are ruined by both their simplicity and the fact that there's no good fast travel. No quest - even characters' resolution quests - is particularly challenging. However, many quests involve running back and forth through overly repetitive platformer areas (which is already annoying because of the previous point). There are no permanent shortcuts that you can unlock to quickly skip through areas, and chakra gates (the fast-travel sites you unlock about 1/3 of the way through the game) are universally inconveniently placed toward the end of levels that require significant platforming to reach and/or get out of. You'll spend a massive chunk of time in this game just running back and forth and back and forth and back and forth through vast empty levels.

Which brings up the fourth issue: enemies don't respawn with any kind of sense. Some enemies always pop back up (such as the ones in the high outside region of the Iron Kingdom zone). But most disappear once you've dealt with them the first time. Some enemies will respawn in-between game "chapters", and ALL enemies seem to scale with your current level.

Which brings up the fifth issue: experience. The battle rewards make no sense. Some enemies that you can defeat in <5 seconds with a single character's full attack points will grant you 5K experience. Some enemy groups with special boss-like health bars (like the #$%#$%# Iron Kingdom tanks and rifleman guards) that take 3-5 minutes to wear down with constant low-damage attacks will give you ~300 experience. The difficulty-to-experience ratio makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, especially considering how enemies (seem to) scale with your level.

Which ties with issue #4 to make issue #6: grinding levels pretty much impossible and not worthwhile. Ajna was only 55 when I beat the game, whereas most other characters were 65~75 after completing their resolution quests and getting a nice ~20 level bump for the effort. Given how enemy health and damage output seems to scale with Ajna, forcibly leveling her up just doesn't make a lot of sense.

Overall, this game is beautiful and mostly fun to play. However, there's a slight lack of attention to detail and some missing quality-of-life perks that would have made it perfect.

Olá, players! Bem-vindos(as) a minha review do game "Indivisible".

O jogo é um RPG de ação desenvolvido pela Lab Zero Games e publicado pela 505 Games. Foi lançado em outubro de 2019.

HISTÓRIA

A história de "Indivisible" centra-se em Ajna, uma jovem rebelde e corajosa que vive em uma vila pacífica. A vida de Ajna vira de cabeça para baixo quando sua aldeia é atacada por forças do exército do maléfico senhor de guerra, Ravannavar. Durante o ataque, Ajna descobre que possui poderes misteriosos, incluindo a habilidade de absorver certas pessoas dentro de si e manifestá-las para lutar ao seu lado.

Motivada pela destruição de sua vila e pela morte de seu pai, Ajna embarca em uma jornada para enfrentar Ravannavar e descobrir a verdade sobre seus próprios poderes. No caminho, ela encontra uma variedade de personagens, cada um com suas próprias habilidades e histórias, que ela pode absorver e convocar durante as batalhas.

Conforme vai viajando por diferentes regiões e luta contra diversos inimigos, ela descobre mais sobre si mesma e seu passado. Ela aprende que seus poderes estão ligados a uma força maior e mais antiga, e que ela tem um papel crucial a desempenhar no destino do mundo.

Sua jornada leva-a a explorar terras exóticas e a enfrentar inimigos formidáveis, enquanto tenta unir um grupo de guerreiros e impedir uma catástrofe iminente. Durante sua aventura, Ajna também enfrenta desafios internos e luta para controlar seus poderes, que ameaçam consumi-la se não forem dominados.

O enredo de "Indivisible" é uma mistura de crescimento pessoal, amizade e batalhas épicas, com uma forte ênfase na descoberta de si mesmo e na luta contra a opressão. Com um elenco diversificado de personagens e uma narrativa diferente, "Indivisible" oferece uma experiência envolvente e emocional, que para alguns pode ser rasa, mas há uma mensagem forte.

GAMEPLAY

O sistema de combate em "Indivisible" é uma fusão entre RPG e jogo de ação. Ele combina elementos de combate em tempo real com mecânicas de RPG baseadas em turnos. Cada personagem tem ataques e habilidades específicos, e o jogador pode controlar até quatro personagens ao mesmo tempo. As batalhas exigem que os jogadores façam combinações de ataques, bloqueios e estratégias para derrotar os inimigos de forma eficaz. Cada personagem é mapeado para um botão diferente, permitindo uma execução rápida de ataques e combos.

Quando não está em combate, "Indivisible" oferece uma jogabilidade de exploração e plataforma em estilo Metroidvania. Ajna pode correr, pular, escalar e usar habilidades especiais adquiridas ao longo do jogo para acessar novas áreas e resolver quebra-cabeças ambientais. A exploração é um elemento chave, incentivando os jogadores a vasculhar cada canto dos mapas para descobrir segredos, tesouros e novos personagens.

Ajna encontra vários personagens durante sua jornada, e cada um tem habilidades únicas que podem ser utilizadas tanto em combate quanto na exploração. Personagens podem ser "absorvidos" por Ajna e convocados durante as batalhas. Fora do combate, esses personagens podem ajudar Ajna a superar obstáculos no ambiente, como quebras de paredes ou saltos impossíveis.

"Indivisible" apresenta uma arte desenhada à mão e animações fluidas, que dão vida ao mundo do jogo e aos personagens de maneira vibrante. A trilha sonora, composta por Hiroki Kikuta (conhecido por seu trabalho em "Secret of Mana"), complementa a atmosfera do jogo com uma música envolvente e temas memoráveis.

Os jogadores de "Indivisible" podem esperar uma mistura cativante de ação rápida e estratégia cuidadosa. A transição entre combate e exploração mantém a jogabilidade dinâmica e envolvente. A história rica em detalhes e os personagens bem desenvolvidos proporcionam uma experiência emocional e narrativa que motiva os jogadores a continuar avançando.

A mecânica de plataforma e os quebra-cabeças ambientais adicionam variedade e desafio à exploração, enquanto o sistema de combate recompensa reflexos rápidos e pensamento estratégico. A arte e a música de alta qualidade imergem os jogadores no mundo vibrante e diversificado de "Indivisible".

PRÓS & CONTRAS

PRÓS: Combate, quantidade de personagens para formar equipes, diferença entre habilidades dos personagens, visual e arte, trilha sonora.

CONTRA: Repetição de cenários e história rasa de alguns personagens.

CONCLUSÃO

Indivisible é um jogo de RPG e ação que combina turnos, combos e ações em tempo real. Sem sombra de dúvidas, o que é mais atraente em sua gameplay são os combates, que são elaborados e não cansam, por mais que você lute. O visual do game é um bônus, assim como sua trilha sonora, ambos impecáveis. No entanto, o game não é apenas elogios; a repetição de cenários pode ser chata. Por mais que as circunstâncias no jogo sejam diferentes, você acaba passando muito tempo em ambientes já conhecidos.

A quantidade de personagens que você pode escolher para ter em sua equipe é grande, e cada um tem suas qualidades e forma de jogar, o que muda completamente sua forma de atacar, defender e sua estratégia de maneira geral.

É um jogo que recomendo fortemente para RPGistas, mas quem curte ação e quer explorar novos horizontes, esse game pode chamar sua atenção e te prender.

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