Indivisible Impression – PAX East 2019

I got the chance to try a build of Indivisible at PAX East, to see how the RPG from the creators of Skullgirls is shaping up. Of immediate note as soon as the game starts moving is the high quality of the 2D art in the game. Everything looked and animated beautifully, especially the attacks of the various party members while in combat. The game takes clear inspiration from Valkyrie Profile, mapping each character to a different face button in combat, with an emphasis on platforming through dungeons while not fighting. There were some occasional minor glitches, but overall the game was quite fun.

Indivisible stars main character Ajna, a young girl with the power to absorb certain individuals into her being. Though it works as a strange story beat, it serves as the perfect explanation for how gameplay functions. Ajna can summon the other characters in combat, and also to provide her abilities for solving platforming puzzles. It also provides the ability for the party to have lots of conversations without the need for a troupe of characters constantly tagging along through the game’s dungeons. The story, from the small bit I was able to glimpse, seems to be a typical, but interesting tale of a group of plucky rebels standing up to an evil Warlord, though of course in this case the plucky rebels all happen to live in the main character’s body. The game will feature full voice acting, but unfortunately the demo only contained placeholder voices, so it was difficult to get a feel for the characters or the writing as it proved to be quite distracting.

The combat proved to be quite difficult to grasp. Holding a direction on a control stick and pressing one of the attack buttons would activate alternate attacks for characters, and some of these proved to be vital for breaking enemy blocks or starting combos. There is also a power bar that builds as the player attacks, allowing for the use of special abilities such as healing. The combat seemed deep, but without a proper tutorial it was difficult to grasps the ins and outs and led to me failing in spectacular fashion on a few occasions. That’s not to say the combat is bad necessarily, but it was nearly impossible to get a good feeling from it just from this demo.

While not the best display of what the game will look like when it releases, the demo of Indivisible still gave me a good feel for what the game is all about, and it seems like one that RPGamers should keep an eye on.

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