Indivisible (2019)

On the one hand, the game has a solid story, a quirky cast of characters, amazing animation, and a unique real-time-turn-based combat system that I'm sure someone other than me would probably be really into (I mostly just used the characters that did the most damage with the least amount of fuss).

On the other hand, the platforming sucks.

And I get it, at some point if I complain about games having bad platforming enough it starts to seem like maybe the problem is I suck at platforming. But I really don't think that's the problem here. I have liked platforming games in the past, after all. I really liked Celeste, and while part of why I liked it was because of the Assist Mode feature I only used it a handful of times. And I play my favorite platforming game, Big Tower Tiny Square, once or twice a year.

What those games have in common is simplicity. Celeste has basic side-to-side movement, a jump, a dash, and wall-climbing. Big Tower Tiny Square is even more barebones, just movement and a jump (and I guess wall-jump if you want to count that as a separate thing). This simplicity in the controls lets you concentrate more fully on navigating the increasingly complex environments.

Indivisible, meanwhile, has decided to pair its platforming with metroidvania-style skill acquisition. What this means is you'll spend the first half of the game collecting abilities that make platforming not easier but more complicated, as each of these skills is bound to only one of the main buttons, with control-stick direction acting as the modifier. At a purely physical level, this increases the odds that in any given moment you'll accidentally use the wrong ability (with potentially disastrous results). Maybe more important, though, is the cognitive load. In some of the more difficult platforming sections, where you're having to execute a wide variety of moves in quick succession, my brain would just short-circuit as it tried to remember what all the moves were, let alone execute them correctly.

None of this is helped by an incredibly floaty and imprecise physics engine that makes it nearly impossible to replicate moves from one attempt to the next, meaning you can't get useful feedback about what you did wrong because you could do exactly the same things next time and get a completely different result. They also make the inexplicable choice of completely killing your momentum when you land on a platform, which makes the simple act of jumping up a series of platforms feel unexpectedly clunky and challenging.

So I don't think this is a situation where I just need to git gud or shut up. I think there is a fundamental flaw in the design philosophy here that, when combined with less-than-stellar execution, led to a nearly unplayable experience, particularly in the game's final area (that is to say, all three times you tackle the games final stage). And it sucks because I really like everything the game is doing on an aesthetic and narrative level—but not enough to recommend putting up with its mechanical failures. (Still couldn't bring myself to give it 2 stars though.)

p.s. Two really smart choices they make with the story (with very big spoilers): As Ajna is going around trying to save the world she leaves a trail of destruction in her wake, and her friends keep trying to get her to change her approach but to no avail. Finally, when you get to what is supposed be the final boss fight, Ajna loses control and is about to basically destroy the world when of her friends sacrifices himself to stop her. Smart choice #1 is that Ajna then revisits the three main areas of the game where she'd previously intervened so recklessly and actually works with some of the people there to help fix things. Smart choice #2 is that her friend (who also wasn't exactly her friend, given that he murdered her dad, but still) who sacrificed himself, who to be clear is a playable character and was actually a mainstay of my party right up until that point, stays dead. It's a really well-handled character death: earned by the story, fits the character arc, isn't an arbitrarily shocking twist, doesn't rely on arbitrarily removing the player's agency, has actual important consequences for the story and the main character, and is not undermined by a miraculous resurrection an hour later.

p.p.s. There were several locations in the game that you can only get to right at the end, and you have to go through some really long and difficult platforming sections to get to, and then you get there and there's just nothing there. Like literally nothing. Just an empty room. Most of them were big rooms that felt set up for a boss fight, but there's no boss, though one of them was on top of a mountain so at least there was a view. I don't know if these were part of some sidequest(s) that I just completely missed or if they were intended to contain something that just never got implemented, but they were really annoying.

p.p.p.s. The map is also a little janky, occasionally implying that there's a passageway where in reality there's just a wall. It also doesn't distinguish between the down smash green barriers and the upsmash green barriers, so it will show a barrier as being passable when it in fact is not.

p.p.p.p.s. Also the fact that the combat takes place in the real environment has some unpredictable consequences, such as melee characters just falling off a ledge and leaving combat. I don't know if that's necessarily a good or a bad thing but it's notable.

Okay I've been eyeing this game for a very long time, especially because of the art-style and the little tit-bits of mythology but damnnnnn the game got me disappointed so fast.

The progression system and UI is my biggest problem. There is no clear instruction of what represents what. The game starts off easy but then feels like the cement is beginning to solidify which ruins the progression completely. You have to literally chip away at each enemy after a point which makes me shudder to think how boss fights probably would get worse over time.

Loved the way it started off, hated it what it started to become.

I really enjoyed this game. Some balancing is definitely needed, but might be handled in further patches since they've been rolling them out periodically since release. I think this affects the first half of the game the most, since the gameplay is really more of the focus in those areas, but the challenge seems to plateau pretty quickly once people understand the basic mechanics. Right now the game doesn't punish inefficient strategies as much as it could, so you can get pretty far just by mashing, but that will result in slower fights, and a number of characters seemingly less useful if you don't know how to combine their abilities well. It's a satisfying gameplay loop at the core, but the current difficulty doesn't push you to learn it too deeply unless you want to.

The second half of the game I found really enjoyable in the narrative, and there were some satisfying platform challenges. Overall, it brought me back to the feeling I got from a lot of PS1 games, except a bit more polished in many aspects. I feel like people from that era might appreciate where the game is coming from a little better. Once a harder difficulty option is added, I think it will fill in most of the gaps for me.

On paper Indivisible should be my jam. It's a game billed as a successor to the Valkyrie Profile series. At first glance, it does play like Valkyrie Profile with more nuanced fighting game mechanics such as juggling and perfect blocking.

Unfortunately the game's story is too ridiculous to take seriously. The dialog is a mash of random quips and references and feels like I'm watching a really bad cheesy Saturday morning cartoon.

Even if you're only playing for the combat, I found that after breaking an opponent's guard I could button mash my way through most encounters. Characters are gained at a such a rapid pace that you never get enough time to fully learn their combat styles before meeting new characters to try out.

I really wanted to like Indivisible, but I quit after spending 10 hours on this game. I just didn't find it all that fun or challenging.