Buy Indivisible

Perhaps my favorite game of all time is Valkyrie Profile, a semi-obscure Tri-Ace RPG from the PlayStation era. While it was a niche title at its launch, it ended up being fairly influential, and you can point to a number of RPGs inspired by it. Alas, games like Exist Archive never quite captured what made Valkyrie Profile fun. Indivisible from Skullgirls creator LabZero is shamelessly inspired by Valkyrie Profile, but it's also the best attempt at replicating the formula to date. Ultimately, its own flaws drag it down and leave it feeling weaker.

Indivisible follows the story of Ajna, a young girl descended from heroes who sealed away a dark force 16 years ago. Her daily life in a small village is suddenly shattered when an evil army attacks and destroys the village. Ajna's life is spared when she somehow absorbs one of the attackers, transforming him into an ally who is forced to fight at her side. Using her newfound power, Ajna sets out to gather friends and allies and avenge her home.

The story is generic on paper but extremely well executed. Heavily inspired by Indian mythology, it has an extremely distinctive style and feel, touching on subjects like enlightenment and reincarnation. The game is silly and lighthearted most of the time but can hit emotional beats surprisingly well. There are times when it's a bit too irreverent for its own good during serious moments, but for the most part, it hits the plot beats that it's aiming for. I enjoyed the cast and story, and while it isn't going to redefine any genres, it's a solid and enjoyable RPG.

Like its inspiration, Indivisible is part 2D platformer and part JRPG combat. Unlike Valkyrie Profile, Indivisible leans hard into the Metroidvania format. Ajna starts off with only the ability to jump and slide, but as the game progresses, she unlocks new abilities, ranging from the ability to use an ax to pull herself up a wall to the power to teleport to enemies and create barriers on spiked walls. There are a huge number of these upgrades, and you'll continue to unlock new skills until the final boss.

I adored the platforming and gradual pace of upgrades in Indivisible. It starts off slowly, but as you get more powers, you feel more flexible. It almost feels like overkill beyond a certain point, but it provides an excellent sense of progression. With clever use of the skills, I was able to get access to secrets that were clearly intended for later powers.

The combat system in Indivisible also borrows heavily from Valkyrie Profile. When you enter combat, you're thrown into a 2D screen. You have a party of four, each bound to one of the controller face buttons. Hitting that button causes the character to attack. Each character can only attack once to begin with, but as you progress, they unlock up to five attacks in a row each. Once a character has attacked, they have a cooldown period, which is determined by the character's speed and which attack they last used. Enemies follow the same rules, but while they are attacking, you get the chance to block in a timed defense mechanic similar to Mario RPG and its ilk. Time it correctly, and you take reduced or nullified damage. You also have a shared party super bar, which can be spent to perform super moves for massive damage.

Your goal is to chain your attacks for maximum benefit. The more hits you land on an enemy, the more damage they take. Knocking enemies into the air and then juggling them increases the amount of super bar that fills up, allowing for more uses of super moves. For maximum damage, you want to be performing lengthy unbroken combos on enemies. Some enemies also require you to do things such a break their guard or knock them into the air before you can fully damage them. You also can hit multiple enemies with one attack, which allows for even greater damage.

The cool thing about Indivisible is that you have a huge selection of characters — upward of 20 if you find all of the secret recruits. Each character plays differently. Ajna is straightforward with basic combos and can't leave your party. Dhar, her first recruit, hits hard and wide and can charge himself up to amplify attacks. As you progress, the recruits grow more esoteric. There's a water mage who leaves puddles on the battlefield, and she can charge them up to heal allies — and damage enemies — who walk over the water. There's a metal-armed thief whose attacks grow more powerful as she builds up her gauge, and there's even a big fluffy dog that powers up by taking a nap while you pet him.

Not every character is equally balanced. Some are amazing and others are less so, but there's enough charm in the various characters that it's easy to enjoy them. The characters gain power based on Anja's level and how often you use them in combat, but it's difficult to tell how significant the latter bonus is. I never had any trouble swapping between characters when I wanted. Every character felt equally powerful or close enough, so it didn't matter if I wanted to experiment a bit.

That is one thing that Indivisible does which is rather interesting. The game has no equipment or money, so combat is only for gaining experience points. You can avoid enemies via platforming and get the ability to freeze them in place. You can also damage them before the fight starts with your various platforming actions, but this is usually more tedious than just fighting them. Power-ups come from finding red crystals hidden around the environment. Find enough, and you can trade them in for further attacks or better defense. This means you're not obligated to fight every enemy you face, and avoiding them is just as reasonable as fighting them.

The biggest problem with the combat system — and the game — is that once you reach the second half, it rapidly becomes vestigial. Every fight, including boss fights, devolved into spamming attacks as quickly as possible, and no enemy lasted long enough to attack. By the time I reached the final boss, I hadn't actually participated in a fight that lasted a meaningful amount of time for several hours. As the Metroidvania aspects were played up more, the Valkyrie Profile-style combat system became sidelined.

This is disappointing for a variety of reasons. One of the big appeals of the game is the large cast of recruitable characters with distinct play styles, but once you get powerful enough, it really doesn't matter. I ended up picking two characters with strong AoE attacks and spammed them at the beginning of every fight. Even if I wanted to be challenged, I didn't see a way, since my damage output was absurdly high. I dropped healing characters entirely by the end of the game since it felt meaningless to have one.

The other disappointing part is that the boss fights, which were first half's strongest feature, are weakened significantly by this. In the first half, the boss fights are engaging and exciting affairs where you shift rapidly from combat to platforming and back again. In the second half, I couldn't tell you about their mechanics. One boss, a giant slime monster, gave me an upgrade shortly into the fight that let me do strongest damage outside of the combat system. I proceeded to stun it into a corner afterward. The other bosses were beaten so quickly that I never saw their attack animations.

The worst of all is the final boss, which is a great final boss on paper but soured by the execution. Rather than being the final test of your team, you fight it as Anja, and it ends up built entirely around a mechanic that I hadn't needed to touch since the earliest part of the game. It is thematically and visually awesome, but mechanically, it feels like something from an earlier draft that was accidentally left in the game. You barely engage with the combat system to fight it, instead relying on platforming mechanics.

The unfortunate truth is that Indivisible ends on a weak note. Up until the midway point of the game, I was prepared to call it one of my favorite indie titles ever. By the time I reached the actual ending, I was disappointed that everything I loved in the first half seemed less polished and complete in the second half. You revisit areas too often, the challenge is substantially diminished, and backtracking to find gems just results in you winning harder.

The platforming is fun and engaging, and when the combat system is on, it's really enjoyable. The game feels like it runs out of steam, and that's disappointing because the early segments are so great. If you go into it expecting that, then you'll probably still enjoy what it does well. Indivisible would've probably been better as a pure Metroidvania title rather than the half-and-half style it ended up with.

One thing that remains true throughout the game is that it is gorgeous. The sprite animation that LabZero showed off with Skullgirls is here in full force. The backgrounds, characters, and pretty much everything looks fantastic. There's a ton of effort put into the background NPCs, almost all of whom have unique looks. The only real disappointment about the visuals is that there's a staggering lack of monster variety. Even taking into account palette swaps, I'd be surprised if there are two dozen enemies in the entire game.

The soundtrack is excellent, full of catchy and memorable tunes that do a fantastic job of setting the atmosphere of the area. The voice acting is also largely solid, with full voice acting for just about every major character. There are a few weak links in the acting, but by and large, it manages to do a great job considering the large cast.

Indivisible was incredibly close to being the best indie RPG I've ever played. The first half of the game is exciting, engaging and does a fantastic job of meshing together fighting games, Metroidvanias, platformers and RPGs. Unfortunately, the second half only manages to nail the Metroidvania and platformer aspects. The strong presentation and likeable characters help carry it through the weaker second half, and it's still absolutely worth a shot if you're looking for a stylish RPG. Maybe some patches and rebalancing can help the weaker second half, but for the moment, Indivisible starts off strong and finishes weak.

Score: 8.0/10