Indivisible Review

Indivisible is a game that is fantastic, but god damn it, it needed more time and budget.

If you’re thinking of playing indivisible, I would highly recommend either playing the prototype demo and doing a test run first.

Here's the rub, if you really dig the art style, animation, music, and the combat system. indivisible is worth the buy 100%.
if you’re not in love with those things, its honestly hard to recommend this game until lab zero come out with DLC or patches.

the game strengths are so strong that in my opinion they are worth the purchase alone, but not everyone will feel that way
and the actual problems with the game are noticeable, but they don't ruin the experience.

What are the games strengths?

- The aesthetics of the game (Music, Art, Animation) are fucking gorgeous and stylish. they legit could make figures or indivisible merch and I would buy it from the character designs alone. They are that good. The soundtrack is amazing, and the animation is fluid and gorgeous and makes the combat and movement feel impactful and rewarding. Highest compliments to those who provided these things.
- The combat. the combat system in indivisible is par to none, each character you recruit acts less like a unit from something like XCOM or fire emblem and more like a new weapon from a stylish action game like Bayonetta or Devil May Cry. The game rewards you to actively experiment with different characters and they’re just a ton of variety, in both what you use and what you use against. Learning to combo really rewards you and just, again, feels impactful and rewarding.
learning how to best utilize these characters, who they pair well with, and how to gain and use super makes the actual just standard enemy encounters still really fun after I’ve 100% completed the game. How to best utilize all their supers and how to best combo, juggle, and learning to parry actually scratches that part of your brain that makes you feel genuinely good at video games.
- Platforming Challenges, I’m a bit specific here, but when you’re actually challenged in indivisible to use your movement abilities this game can surprisingly make for really good platformer.
Now that list is short, but they really warrant the actual purchase of this game, lab zero and 505 games did an incredible job and you can feel their blood, sweat, and tears in this game.
Okay but what’s wrong with this game? well...
This is my list of criticisms for the game

- Story, the game is an ARPG, with more emphasis on the Action than the RPG, some of the character dialogue and personal conversations is really charming and nice, but most of the games story is not good, not terrible, but not good. if you’re the kind of person who wants a game for the story, then I can’t recommend you this title.
I don't hate indivisible’s story, but its lackluster and has major tonal and pacing issues. I can't really say much more, I’m not a literature major or anything, and writing is difficult but this game’s story I would consider to be its worst aspect.

- Exploration/Movement - Now I said earlier I was specific with how this game handles platforming; the game has Metroid-Vania style level design and movement mechanics. My most frustrating experience with the game was how long and tedious backtracking through the levels were, when going through them the first time, they play really well, again, if this game was a pure platformer with the combat mechanics it would be the bee’s knee’s. But when you just need to visit one part of the map for a side quest and then spend what feels like ages running back to a fast travel point, that did not feel good or make me excited to keep playing or complete the game. there were parts that I had to go take a break because of just how long it would take to move through levels, and until you get late game movement options you have to be so careful moving around, its tedious and felt like the game was padding out my playtime. I would highly, HIGHLY recommend letting the player teleport between save points in the future, there are too many now, you could honestly reduce them and the game would be perfectly fine, I desperately wanted some way to get in and out of tight nit spaces, without having to walk through them all over again. this would be my personal number priority to actually fix. Anja could move a lot faster with her movement abilities and the game would play just fine. The levels are too big and the actual fast travel mechanic in the game is less a fast travel mechanic and more a way to separate levels. One saves point per area in a level would’ve been fine and made them feel better than saving constantly anytime I finished a platforming challenge.

- Tutorials - I'm one of those people that doesn't mind having to experiment to learn how a game properly works, or even learning more by looking up guides, but seriously this game needed more tutorials and the practice mode should've been available at the start of the game. With a move/combo list for each character. while characters get their major mechanics and gimmicks explained, they aren't explained really well, only given a sentence or two, and they could have been clearer. Certain abilities as well could've been explained better, ex: (slight spoilers) you get two projectile abilities mapped to the same button, but in order to use the other, you have to hold the button down and have super. the move needing super was explained but not the holding down the button. as well there are quite a few mechanics in the game that could've used explaining or better teaching of the player (one boss fight comes to mind immediately).

- Difficulty - if you really liked the combat of indivisible (its biggest strength) then you would obviously want to increase your abilities and combos and resources to be able to do more things in the combat. the problem is if you steadily go for upgrades (I did try to go out of my way to explore and grab upgrade points but didn't freak out if a missed a couple), then by mid-game enemies and bosses become kind of a joke. Now there is good enemy variety that keeps combat fresh and allows you experiment, but honestly, once you learn to parry (which isn't that hard) and get a few offensive combat upgrades you rarely ever are in danger. that is except for around late game where enemies just start one shotting you. for no real reason? it was for maybe two areas but after that I never really got one shot until around the end. now I think it’s pretty obvious but giving enemies a ton of HP and making them one shot you isn't real difficulty, it’s just making the combat more tedious, but by that time I was deal so much damage that it wasn't the biggest issue
My last criticisms are spoilers so if your curious you can look, but this is your warning.
- Post-Game: the game has none, the best issue to have with a game is to want more, but because of the games lacking difficulty towards the end, it just made me actually want a challenge that I could sink all my upgrades and characters into. but I didn't have that. I would've really apricated a super boss, or a new game plus. I don't think players should have to restrict themselves to make the game harder, that should be a function of a game with proper difficulty scaling.

- Playtime: I got 100% completion with very little outside assistance (I did look up a few things around the end, when I was already at the final boss), and I got 100% completion in 20-22 hours, now I’m okay with the price tag of 40 dollars for this game, but I know there will be ALOT of people who will not be okay with that. I played the game a lot mind you, but even if you’re only playing maybe 2-3 hours a day, if you’re not going for completion like I did around the end, then you can finish the game in a week. a weekend if you got literally nothing else to do.

Indivisible is a game that I think is worth buying and playing, but the game has too many flaws to ignore.