I'm playing the recently released Switch physical version; the digital version has been available for some time, along pretty much every active format at the time; Indivisible is available on Steam and is compatible with Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Indivisible is the result of an IndieGoGo campaign that barely made its goal, and it kinda shows. The game's graphics are lush, with wonderful animations and good environments. There are a few animations here and there, but most cutscenes are just a series of static images with some kind of music theme underscoring the events shown. Music doesn't quite live up to the graphics, but the voice acting is quite good...although you must really like Americans trying to make accents.
Indivisible takes inspiration from Valkyrie Profile, with Ajna, the main character, moving around dungeons and cities via some light platforming. And I dislike the platforming in Indivisible. Movement in general feels a bit stiff, so is jumping around. There's no ledge grab, instead you have to rely on Ajna's axe to attach yourself to a ledge and jump up. Even after a few hours of play, I still forget there's no ledge grab and have Ajna fall to her doom.
Well, not really doom, as there's no falling damage and very few areas have spikes or other hazards. In general, platforming and exploration feels like it was done for people not that experienced in platformers, and that makes it not so good for people that are. It must also be noted that the developers, Lab Zero Games, only produced one title prior to Indivisible, Skull Girls, so it might also be due to inexperience. And yes, Lab Zero no longer exists. I'll save the various shenanigans sorrounding Indivisible, its IndieGoGo, and Lab Zero in general.
The most developed aspect of Indivisible is the combat. Combat is in real time, with no turns, and with the four face buttons controlling directly the four active characters. After attacking you need to wait for a while until the cooldown is over, and this is usually when enemies attack; you defend by pressing either L (group defence) or the face button corresponding to the character being attacked.
Character attacks are modified by pressing one of the directions on the d-pad, and combinations are used to destroy enemy shield and the like. There's a good number of possible party members that specialize in various roles (healers, tanks, DPS, all-rounders, debuffers) and each have their own gimmick, but having someone in the frontline doesn't mean they'll get attacked more often, and so I've found no real reason why not filling your party with just DPS. Debuffers and healers are fine in theory, but Ajna has the ability to heal the whole party with a full meter and once you understand how the battle system works, it's easy to keep all your characters healthy without a character that doesn't really do much against enemies.
All boss battles I've fought so far have also been multi-staged, and when bosses switch phase, your characters are healed anyway. Compared to recent Valkyrie Profile-alikes like Exist Archive and Fallen Legion, there isn't much strategy in composing your party in Indivisible, which is a bit of a letdown, considering that the battle system itself is heavily reminiscent of a fighting game, with parries, throw escapes, and correct timing to continuously juggle enemies launched in the air.
Battles against mobs take a bit too long for my tastes, but there aren't that many in any given dungeon. This should be good for exploration, but labyrinths aren't particularly complex and some of them require a lot of backtracking without respawining enemies, maing the whole experience rather dull.
On my journey I've encountered only two minor bugs: the first, which seems not to happen anymore, was a series of black lines rotating around sprites during battle; at first I thought it was some error in the sprite's transparency or bad scaling, but I've never encountered it after the starting area.
Second, doors and switches that need to be activated to proceed visually reset to their "off" state, but are still activated. Nothing major, but a bit annoying.
And last, for Switch users only: the in-game timer continues to tick down even on stand-by if you don't quit the game, and so my savefile already has 80 hours logged in when I actively played the game for 6 or 7.
A good effort so far despite the shortcomings.
Indivisible is the result of an IndieGoGo campaign that barely made its goal, and it kinda shows. The game's graphics are lush, with wonderful animations and good environments. There are a few animations here and there, but most cutscenes are just a series of static images with some kind of music theme underscoring the events shown. Music doesn't quite live up to the graphics, but the voice acting is quite good...although you must really like Americans trying to make accents.
Indivisible takes inspiration from Valkyrie Profile, with Ajna, the main character, moving around dungeons and cities via some light platforming. And I dislike the platforming in Indivisible. Movement in general feels a bit stiff, so is jumping around. There's no ledge grab, instead you have to rely on Ajna's axe to attach yourself to a ledge and jump up. Even after a few hours of play, I still forget there's no ledge grab and have Ajna fall to her doom.
Well, not really doom, as there's no falling damage and very few areas have spikes or other hazards. In general, platforming and exploration feels like it was done for people not that experienced in platformers, and that makes it not so good for people that are. It must also be noted that the developers, Lab Zero Games, only produced one title prior to Indivisible, Skull Girls, so it might also be due to inexperience. And yes, Lab Zero no longer exists. I'll save the various shenanigans sorrounding Indivisible, its IndieGoGo, and Lab Zero in general.
The most developed aspect of Indivisible is the combat. Combat is in real time, with no turns, and with the four face buttons controlling directly the four active characters. After attacking you need to wait for a while until the cooldown is over, and this is usually when enemies attack; you defend by pressing either L (group defence) or the face button corresponding to the character being attacked.
Character attacks are modified by pressing one of the directions on the d-pad, and combinations are used to destroy enemy shield and the like. There's a good number of possible party members that specialize in various roles (healers, tanks, DPS, all-rounders, debuffers) and each have their own gimmick, but having someone in the frontline doesn't mean they'll get attacked more often, and so I've found no real reason why not filling your party with just DPS. Debuffers and healers are fine in theory, but Ajna has the ability to heal the whole party with a full meter and once you understand how the battle system works, it's easy to keep all your characters healthy without a character that doesn't really do much against enemies.
All boss battles I've fought so far have also been multi-staged, and when bosses switch phase, your characters are healed anyway. Compared to recent Valkyrie Profile-alikes like Exist Archive and Fallen Legion, there isn't much strategy in composing your party in Indivisible, which is a bit of a letdown, considering that the battle system itself is heavily reminiscent of a fighting game, with parries, throw escapes, and correct timing to continuously juggle enemies launched in the air.
Battles against mobs take a bit too long for my tastes, but there aren't that many in any given dungeon. This should be good for exploration, but labyrinths aren't particularly complex and some of them require a lot of backtracking without respawining enemies, maing the whole experience rather dull.
On my journey I've encountered only two minor bugs: the first, which seems not to happen anymore, was a series of black lines rotating around sprites during battle; at first I thought it was some error in the sprite's transparency or bad scaling, but I've never encountered it after the starting area.
Second, doors and switches that need to be activated to proceed visually reset to their "off" state, but are still activated. Nothing major, but a bit annoying.
And last, for Switch users only: the in-game timer continues to tick down even on stand-by if you don't quit the game, and so my savefile already has 80 hours logged in when I actively played the game for 6 or 7.
A good effort so far despite the shortcomings.
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