Indivisible is an action RPG / platformer featuring stunning hand drawn art and animation combined with unique real-time combat mechanics. Immerse yourself in a fantastical world with dozens of playable characters, a rich storytelling experience, gameplay that’s easy to learn but difficult to master, and the trademark razor-sharp quality that Lab Zero Games is known for!
Our story revolves around Ajna, a fearless girl with a rebellious streak. Raised by her father on the outskirts of their rural town, her life is thrown into chaos when her home is attacked, and a mysterious power awakens within her.
Throughout Ajna’s quest she’ll encounter many “Incarnations”: people whom she can absorb and manifest to fight alongside her. By uniting people from faraway lands, Ajna will learn about herself, the world she inhabits, and most importantly, how to save it.
Steam User 70
TL;DR: 20 odd hours of play time is worth it for the visuals alone. If it was longer the cons would have overstayed their welcome. Get it during a sale.
Pros:
1) Fantastic visuals
2) good voice acting
3) great character design
4) at the start of the game you have interesting combat.
Cons:
1) At the mid point of the game, right when you really get the hang of the combat it becomes trivial. Not mind you because you've mastered the combat, but because even button mashing can destroy a group of baddies in one round. "Harder" baddies are just HP sponges.
2) The end game is all just backtracking trough the very large platforming levels, at this point I expected to get some sort of 'teleport between save points' quality of life upgrade ability... but no.
3) Ability bloat, too many over world abilities, some which get used only a few times and then you get a new one that does what the old one did, but better... except for the few times you need to still use the old version. Should have flat out upgraded/replaced them.
4) The story is... I know what it was trying to do, but it does it poorly. The worst part is with some polish it could have hit what it wanted to do without too much trouble. And it shows.
Its greatest sin is that I can SEE the good game here, its just under this tarnished unpolished surface.
Steam User 57
Indivisible is a game that actually played out way better than I thought. It had some rough moments in terms of the story starting off with bad pacing and no tutorial for a few of the combat mechanics (combos and breaking enemy guard) but the art style, platform/over world mechanics and the unique battle system was more than enough to make up for me.
Story
As I mentioned, the story does start off with some bad pacing. Stuff that is important at that moment, feels like it becomes an after thought usually within minutes. A lot gets thrown at you that you question if it's going to be important and then some stuff you can't even bother with until later in the game. The middle and ending of the game is where it picks up and quickly goes into a very bittersweet story that keeps the pace going. The characters are the true driving force for the overall story, Ajna being one of the biggest turn arounds for character development in a game that I have personally seen -- and that's a good thing. She starts off being bi-polar, bratty, childish and temper tantrums, then has revenge on her mind for her father who was killed, then turns very egotistical when it comes to learning she needs to save the world, to the point she starts becoming selfish at others request for help if it's not aligned with her own goals, screwing things up and causing way more harm than good. Something happens (don't want to spoil what it is) that causes her to doubt in her actions and her previous mindset, and actually has her do a complete 180 in her personality where she listens and tries to help, instead of just beating up everything and worrying about it after. All the characters have a very diverse personality that is there from recruiting them or meeting them, that really amplifies at the ending. Going back to the characters, when you first start the game, if you look at your party, you assume there's only going to be about 6-7 playable characters, of which you get most of those slots filled in within the first hour or two, but actually there is over 20 you can unlock, with DLC coming down the road adding in new characters, like Shovel Knight and Shantae. The story length is on the shorter side, you can probably knock the game out in about 20 hours. There's not a lot of side quests, most of them are for optional characters or different colour palettes for characters, but other than that, the story shouldn't take a person too long to finish.
Graphics
The graphics are phenomenal, reminded me a lot of Shantae Half Genie Hero and I believe that was the main reason I bought it when it originally came out. Very vibrant environments, even places like caves and town areas look gorgeous in their background detail. The in-game art for cutscenes and the few fully animated cutscenes in here are very well done, you can tell a good budget went into those, which gives a nice crisp and beautiful art style for the whole game.
Soundtrack
Soundtrack was a little 60/40 for me. There was plenty of music within the game that I liked, but there also were a few that become background/white noise, either because I was way more interested in the combat that was happening or because I happen to just tone out noises when I get into reading.
Gameplay
Boom here we go, gameplay, man, fantastic. So, as I mentioned, art style reminds me of Shantae, gameplay originally reminded me of that too. It looks like a Metroidvania where you just go and kill enemies by hitting them a few times in the overworld; HOWEVER, the combat is actually that of an RPG/JRPG. Attacking an enemy will initiate a battle that becomes move based, where there are 3 combos per character, Up and their attack button, Down and their attack button and then just their attack button. That is then managed by a move gauge per character that refills when no moves from your party are active, so it's entirely possible to kill an enemy before they can even attack you if you manage that gauge as certain moves will refill the gauge quicker than other moves. You can kill them in the overworld if you're able to combo them, easiest way is an arrow, followed by chains of down attacks and up attacks, which you can chain them in for kills without starting a battle (not sure if this gives any EXP or not.) This combat is a unique aspect that I personally have not seen before in a Metroidvania and it worked out so well, thrown in with the visuals, wonderful. Sadly there is no sequence breaking at this current state, but there is going to be a New Game+ patch coming out soon, where you keep your abilities you've gained from the main story, so I'm 100% sure that is going to allow sequence breaking. The overworld is pretty linear. The last 3 areas of the game are where they actually become somewhat puzzles as you'll have to utilise all the abilities you've learned to get by and messing it up is not forgiving at all in some parts. I didn't mind the more linear overworld as not everything has to be too complex, but I did appreciate the difficulty spike in maneuvering around the map during the last few areas.
Cons
- Combat controls. So, you get a tutorial on how to block, parry and how to use your attacks. However, I can not recall being told how to break an enemy guarding or even that every character has 3 types of attacks. If you don't break an enemy's guard, you will do 1 damage which will drag out fights or downright make them impossible. To break guard, just mix up attacks, if you do an up attack, follow up with a down attack. Breaks guard on second hit.
- Story starts off a little weak due to bad pacing at the start. Literally Ajna's father dies within minutes, her killer is first party member, Ajna seems more annoyed with him than anything and a few minutes later, you recruit someone else and her father's death and his killer become like an after thought as Ajna is joking around with the new character. They also kind of drop the ball on a major plot point near the end, basically seems like the main changing pace from the middle to the end, was basically forgotten about.
- No true fast travel, this is somewhat tedious as if you're trying to finish up the character side missions, you're going to be doing a lot of running around as the fast travel locations only drop you off to a certain area, there are no multiple fast travels in any area.
Summary
- Gorgeous visuals, seriously, the art in general for the game is easily in the top percent for games I have played of this caliber.
- Unique and fluid combat system that was different, but something I feel fit the pace way better instead of just overworld attacking and moving on.
- A short story of 20-ish hours with a not too difficult world to navigate, something you can just kick back, relax and enjoy a game.
- Very strong character development for the main character that is a quick pace after certain events and the cast of characters all have their little interesting stories about them, that is further showed during the ending sequence of the game when speaking with Ajna.
Conclusion
Indivisible is a game that first caught my attention due to the art of it but getting to play it, I stayed due to the unique combat system with exploration that I haven't seen paired together like this for a Metroidvania game. The story is a little weak and rough at the start, if you've played around with a lot of RPG games, the story isn't that hard to guess where it's going, there's no real big twists to it (maybe one -- the turning point,) but I don't think that's what they were aiming to do and I didn't expect anything of the sort. Instead, the story shines more with the characters in it and the main development of Ajna from how she was at the start to the end of the game. If you've played games like Shantae, Ori, and maybe Hollow Knight and Bloodstained Ritual of the Night -- no doubt you'll enjoy this game.
I'll give the rating a 8/10!
Steam User 41
I personally highly recommend the game and think it's amazing
I'll break down all the good and bad things about it below so you can get a better idea of what you're getting into so skip to whichever parts you're curious on:
Story
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1. I've seen some negative reviews bashing the story and I will say that the start up of the story is a little ham-fisted (like the tutorial part of the story is REALLY clumsy) but once it gets out of that initial jank of getting the cast together, the story becomes a really beautiful coming of age tale about a young girl discovering who she is. If you start it up with gripes about the story, just keep going, trust me. Don't let that initial opening color your opinion of the rest of the game. Like seriously, I had several moments giving Ajna shit for something only to have the game call her out for it immediately in the next chapter. If you can make it past that initial opening, I promise you the story will get so much better.
2. Every cast member you get gives you a fun little intro into who they are and you come to love your little band of misfits as you collect them all. Every character gets a "loyalty quest" near the end of the game and they help bring closure to whatever odd little turmoil that character signed up with you to resolve. The game DOES run into a common issue with rpgs of this kind in that the "optional" characters that you have to go find do seem a little underdeveloped in terms of story versus the others. Characters like Tungar, Latigo, Phoebe and Leilani are beautiful characters but their story feels over way too soon. Even with their optional quests, I found myself going "wait, that's it?" for a lot of them and it saddened me because there was a really cool character there that we didn't get to deeply explore. But again, this is an issue with a lot of rpgs that have a big roster of optional characters like this, so it's not an issue exclusive to indivisble. Even so, every character is very unique and interesting and I personally think the wide range of characters that you gather up is one of the most entertaining points of this game.
Visuals
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1.Visually it's absolutely beautiful and I can sometimes just get lost in all the beauty and the world. They went out of there way to make every zone look very distinct and they captured all the different aesthetics perfectly in their level design.
2.The cities all have little characters running around in the background making the zones feel more lively and it's a really nice touch! On occasion, you'll see a similar character model copy pasted in two or three places in the background, but it's never so frequent as to break the immersion.
3. I've seen some people griping about all the random OC characters that are there to fill the town hubs and give you more strangers to have idle chat with but keep in mind 90% of those are kickstarter backer's who were added into the game as a stretch goal so don't hate on them too much, they're the reason we got this game. Personally I love talking to all of the random characters, and you can always get a kick out of seeing a famous internet personality's character and going "hey wait, I know that one!"
Gameplay
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1. A crazy beautiful blend of beat-em-up and platformer that i've never seen combined in such a way before. It's a very timing-based combat system that has a bit of a learning curve but once you figure it out it'll just CLICK for you and start to flow really well.
2. There is the occasional jank such as if you accidentally knock an enemy too close to a ledge and you start a fight there, characters can get knocked off said ledge during the encounter and immediately end the combat with you or the enemy falling down, Or when you unlock some of the more complex platforming tools they can sometimes be a bit confusing to understand, but those aside the gameplay itself is incredibly solid in spite of those few outliers both in the combat and the platforming aspect.
3. The game has little red collectibles called "ringsels" that you pick up to boost your stats in increments as you collect them and it can be a fun little treasure hunt to spot one and wrack your brain over how you get to it. Thankfully, if you're not too good at finding hidden objects, the game gets INCREDIBLY generous in the final area. There are at least 5-10 extra ringsels just scattered around that last zone to make absolutely sure you've maxed out your attack and defense before the final showdown.
Sound
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1. The soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and every area has such a beautiful musical score to it. Every zone's theme just feels so "right" and everything from the emotional interludes to the excitable combat music all just fit the mood so perfectly.
2. The combat sounds all just feel perfectly in tune with the intended feeling (sound effects indicating reduced damage, increased damage, blocked damage, etc). The sounds of punching and breaking into things is so satisfying
3. The voice acting is on point, with such big names as Matt Mercer, Christina Vee and Sam Riegel, every character's voice just sounds so right and everyone feels so alive when they speak. No idea why a few reviewers hated on the VAs, they did great.
No complaints in this category, audio is on point
Quality of Life
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1.Game gives you more and more tools to get around the world the longer you go on and the more you get, the more you feel like you can go anywhere you want to. It can be really fun to just backtrack when you get new tools and see how they blend together with other ones. Most locations requiring different powers and tools are color-coordinated too, so once you get a power to break down a green or an orange thing, you can find yourself going "aha!" and knowing where it is you can go now
2. The several methods of fast travel in the game ARE a tad limited so there can be a lot of tedious backtracking if you want to collect all the characters and ringsels (collectibles that boost your stats) there are to find in the game, but thankfully it never feels like you have to travel TOO far to get from point A to point B.
3. The checkpoint system seems a little flawed. Sometimes you'll get to the end of a jump puzzle and collect a ringsel, but die on the platforming back, and then the game will just, take your ringsel and put it back, making you do the puzzle all over again. But then sometimes it DOESN'T do that so i'm stuck wondering if that feature was intended or not...
4. The mapping in this game is a little frustrating too. As every little space on the map is a tile that your character's body has to move into to reveal. This would be fine except that it results in parts of the ceiling or corners of the room left unrevealed, leaving you confused as to which areas are rooms locked behind powers you don't have and which are just small corners of the map you didn't move all the way into, which can get really frustrating when you finally have all the tools to collect all the ringsels.
5. All characters will unlock a special side-quest for stat boosts and a new color palette at the last leg of the game, but despite the game CLEARLY having a map marker for quest locations, many of these side quests don't show up on the map. Between these and the several characters like Ren, Tungar, Latigo and such that you can COMPLETELY miss if you just never take a certain turn, I would highly recommend looking up some guides when doing these things.
ALL of that being said, I personally never found any of my issues to be enough to push me away from absolutely adoring this game and between the wonderfully diverse cast, the unique and fun gameplay, the funny and ridiculous story and the absolutely beautiful audio and visuals, I personally recommend this game wholeheartedly.
If the flaws this game has that I listed don't sound like deal breakers to you, I highly recommend you try it out!
Steam User 32
I didn't have the greatest expectations for this game, since I wasn't much into Skullgirls or any 2D fighter. So I only knew about the developer's "sprite porn", which is fair to say given the effort required for 2D sprites of this quality.
Gorgeous spritework aside, I really liked the whole Valkyrie Profile-esque combat. The platforming seems satisfying enough to please the secret-loving types while keeping it simple for newcomers, especially the no-direction-required wall jumping.
It is a shame that, due to certain internal conflicts among the developers, the game could not see it's 100% glory. It's really sad to see a couple of characters in the beautifully animated opening cutscene not show up at all in the game.
Yet, incomplete as it may seem, as I put down my controller and I gaze upon the ending sequence and the credits I just felt...complete. It was such a wholesome experience that only a select few games have given me so far. Sure, it may not be perfect. I don't think any game is, really. But It almost felt...familiar. Nostalgic, perhaps.
Wholesome. Perhaps that's the best term to be used here. No edgy plot elements, no mindless romance subplots, no government disputes between countries, no need for a cyberpunk setting or a crime-filled society. Just a wholesome fantasy coming-of-age story.
Nothing outlandish or extraordinary. But, maybe, that's exactly what I had been looking for when I bought it.
Steam User 30
A Wandering RPG Adventure Review
Pros:
+ Insane amount of characters
+ A beautiful set of soundtracks
+ Almost fully voiced.
+ Almost no loading screens.
Cons:
- The interest of the story decreases with time.
- Some stages are unnecessarily large.
Indivisible is a crowd-funded Metroidvania game with Turn-Based combat elements born from the ideas of the creators of Skullgirls and published by 505 games (at this point, you should know about both games and the publisher). As soon as I saw the cover of the game it reminded me of Bastion, a slightly better-known game from another company.
Gameplay
The game encourages backtracking and the exploring the environment. There are also a lot of platform sections where the character has to use different skills to move forward. In combat mode, every character will have an assigned key or controller button. When pressed, you activate an action by that character. Since it is a turn-based RPG, you can even block during enemy attacks, a very important part of the battle since the enemies won't hesitate to take half of any character's HP at once if left defenseless. In fact, if the characters block an attack with perfect timing, the enemy will do zero damage (even healing 1HP to the character!). However, enemies can also block your incoming attacks. In order to prevent this, you'll need to combo your character attacks to break their defense. Last but not least, attacking and blocking successively generates "Iddhi" (I prefer calling it "chi"). This chi can be used by every single character in order to make devastating attacks that can affect multiple enemies at once, or heal all allies. In time, this chi accumulate and split into three, or even five more parts, and depending on how many you've accumulated for each character, they gain access to higher ranks of their abilities.
Soundtracks
The developers made very good work with the musical pieces, perfectly selected to fit with each environment and situation. However, this game has an insane amount of background tracks, which makes it impossible to enjoy the entire soundtrack at once in the game, so I ended searching for it on the internet. The result? More than SEVENTY tracks in the game! I recommend taking your time to listen to the title theme "Eulogia," and all the emotions it conveys.
What about the difficulty?
The difficulty increases as the game progresses, more than I would like. You better take notes of where to go and what to do because getting lost in this game is a fact! (Gosh, I quit a few times because of this). On the other hand, there is no difficulty level to choose from (no easy, medium, hard selection)--only the possibility to level up, and find collectibles that will increase your defense and attack stats. Want an extra challenge? Try to find the secret bosses that will put your skills to the test.
Characters, there are too many!
How many playable characters can you play with? The answer is TWENTY-FIVE. Twenty-five fully-animated playable characters! This number became extremely painful when I realised that I only ended using up to seven of them (with a limit of 4 per battle). All the characters are very well designed, and you can change their skin whenever you want. Yes, there are more than 100 skins available. Sadly, I see this is an ABSOLUTE WASTE OF TIME since the game doesn’t force you to play with all the characters. You'll probably end up always using the same ones that suit you best. It's almost like being a Pokemon master all over again.
No in-game currency, no shops
I really miss buying items and skills, or in other words, merchandise that helps to develop your characters. I would definitely prefer this over being able to change character skins. It might be plot related because the main character, Ajna, has a real hate against money throughout the game. Another important thing to mention is that it's hard to farm experience. There are very few places where enemies will respawn, and most of the time you have to change from one location to another just to trigger those respawns.
Extra content?
Most of the additional content of this game was based on the kickstarter goals back in development. This includes the secret bosses, rooms, extra characters… Something that I really miss is a new game+ function here. It would have been great to have all unlocked items at the very beginning of a game for a replay. Now, there are plenty of optional quests and collectibles (hard ones) to find... these collectibles can be used to improve the stats of your adventurers. But this is complicated by a menu that isn't very detailed, or at least was hard for me to figure out where to go. The game also has a few achievements, mostly related to the story (automatically unlocked), with a few exceptions for the side quests and collectibles mentioned earlier.
Conclusion
The first hours of indivisible are the best of the game, so the first impressions felt great. The difficulty starts to increase, though with the platform stages considerably. Having to constantly break enemy defense formations manually becomes a little bit tedious, especially in the beginning when trying to learn the ropes. Something that bothers me a bit is that there are no weapons or items to use in battles (and there are many battles). Also, there are simply too many characters, to the point that it doesn't matter if you don't try them all. And finally, it's easy to become lost in its quests because of a lack of clear direction. At one point in the game, you need to find a gadget and can visit three cities. I lost a lot of time backtracking only to find out that I went everywhere but the correct place from the start.
For these reasons, even if you're a big RPG and Metroidvania fan, I'd recommend this title at a 20% discount (the original backer’s price). But don't get me wrong, it is certainly an experience worth paying for.
This review was commissioned by the PCGame!t Curator, updated daily!
Steam User 16
Pros:
1) Unique battle system.
2) Good overall story, though pretty cliche.
3) Most characters are great and voice acting is excellent.
Cons:
1) Like any metroidvania, it has quite a bit of backtracking
2) Due to the unique battle system, overworld "phases in" with the battle screen, meaning that sometimes characters will fall of cliffs and reset (if your party) or be removed from combat (if enemies)
3) Spoilers: The aftermath of Dhar's death was the only black spot in the writing. "Oh, yea, he's dead" and "I didn't like him but he was Ok, I guess". And not even an aftercredit slide of his sword tombstone
Steam User 10
came for the cool looking combat, stayed for the awesome platforming, good story and characters.
it's not perfect but it was fun to see it through to the end. i would say the first half really had me going but the 2nd half was a bit weaker with too much backtracking and felt a bit rushed. overall, it was a great game and its shortcomings didn't take too much away from the experience