wewe all know me. I upendo me some Skullgirls. I upendo me some 2nd and 3rd Encore. I upendo those animations and combos and characters, and I was always happy to see what Lab Zero would do next. And low and behold, after another fundraiser, we get news of another indie game kwa them, another visually impressive game known as Indivisible. Everything got me excited. The character design, the music, the intro that was animated kwa Titmouse and Studio Trigger. The entire game looked beautiful and got me excited. I waited for a full mwaka for the game to get ready, and I paid the full forty dollar price tag, and was ready to be blown away kwa a zaidi expansive game kwa Lab Zero…. So what happened?



Indivisible takes place in the country of Not-India where wewe play as Ajna, daughter of Inir, Chief of Ashwat Village (Yeah, get used to hearing that), as she is forced into an adventure after her village is burned to the ground and her father is killed. Along the way, she runs into all sorts of colorful party members, consisting of goth girl (Best girl), Matthew Mercer, plant child, a character that cosmic_fusion clearly made, a giant chicken, a dog, a vegetable, a lesbian pirate, royalty free Kamen Rider, and much, much, much, much, MUCH more. Indivisible’s story isn’t exactly the kind of game to blow wewe away. Hell, we’ve had purging the Heroes village in almost every JRPG ever. I will say, I did like the games first curveball, where your first party member is Dhar, the very man that killed Ajna’s father. There are no punches pulled au some dumb twist that goes, “Oh, he didn’t kill him. He was innocent all along”. No, he’s forever a dad killer, and I really do like that. Dhar may be a dad killer, but he is still the best boy. So anyway, let’s discuss the gameplay.
Indivisible is a game that I like to call a jack of all trades and a master of none. It is a metroidvania, turn based role playing, fighting game with platforming. Outside of combat, wewe travel around open levels from a wide open forest, a tall mountain that wewe go to again and again and again, a giant iron kingdom, an aztec village and a neon city, my personal favorite. The backgrounds look nice, I will say. Each one has such a neat style to them. In these open worlds, wewe use your platforming skills to traverse the land, and just like party members, wewe get a lot of power ups. Higher jumps, ukuta climbs, ceiling climbs, pogo jumping, air dashing, and that’s just the few. kwa the end of it, Ajna gets so much unnecessary power ups, she may as well be Sonic…. I refuse to apologize for that. The platforming is fine on it’s own, but it’s not got a lot with exploration. Aside from power up stones and maybe one hidden party member, exploring doesn’t really reward wewe with much aside from an NPC from a famous Internet celebrity wewe may know, like PlagueofGripes, Super Best Friends, Super Eyepatch Wolf, au the best one of the bunch, Zone-Tan. Even then, once wewe reach the port town, the background characters start to dip in quality and look really… I don’t want to be rude and call them ugly, because I’m sure the artists did the best they could under the time limit, but… they look rushed. And speaking of the stones, I forgot their names, wewe collect those to upgrade your defense and how many attacks wewe get in battle. These stones can fuck off, because there is a point where wewe won’t be able to get enough for all upgrades. If wewe want a fully decked out set, wewe gotta accept that wewe need to make a separate save file and decide which is fully upgraded and which is forever a Level 4.
But what about the combat? Well, this is where the game thrives and where the game falters the most is in the combat. The combat itself is fun. Everything surrounding the combat? I legit hate everything about it. The combat is turn based RPG as you’d expect, but with the addition of combos in a fighting game. wewe start off with a single hit, but can soon upgrade to up to five strikes. With that, wewe can build up combos from your parties attack. That is the strategy to winning fights, using combos and juggles to launch enemies into the air and beat them up. Some characters will be better than others, but once wewe get the right team, wewe can really blow through the game… for the first half. Yeah, this is where the combat falters, because once wewe reach the Port town where the game opens up to wewe and wewe can explore, it becomes less fun and zaidi of a chore. Here, wewe run into soldiers that can tank your hits. These fights can go on for five to eight minutes. I thought I was under-leveled for this area and needed to go grind, that is until I reached the “boss” of this area, a tank, that went down in very few hits. In fact, the tank was less of a tank than the basic soldiers I fought beforehand. And from there, that is what all fights are like. Every enemy, from massive tanks to tiny frogs in the jungle to fragile drug abusers (Yes, really) can tank your strong attacks. When a frog is able to survive a cosmic anime blast with still 60% health, that’s a problem. And I thought it was fine to explore older areas, but no. The enemies were still able to tank my hits there. When wewe explore an old area in an RPG later in the game, wewe feel like a badass kwa powering through enemies in a few hits, enemies that once gave wewe some trouble. But not in this game. I don’t get that feeling of accomplishment when I use a level 3 super songesha and enemies I fought in the tutorial are still able to survive the attack. kwa this point, I was avoiding fights entirely. I would just attack them out of battle to kill them because that was less dull than fighting them for real. Fights became a chore kwa the sekunde act, and that sucks, because the combat itself is good, but they ruin it kwa making wewe always feel like a little orphan with no arms au legs and with progeria. (And that is my Hazbin Hotel reference for the siku checked off the list).
But the real unbearable part of the game, the reason why I didn’t want to go back to it was the protagonist herself, Ajna. I do not like this main character, and I hate to say that. From the start of the game, I had this itching feeling in my side about how I felt about her. How she was always brash and never listened to people and did her own thing. I couldn’t feel bad for her father, not only because he died ten dakika into the game, but because I couldn’t understand Ajna suddenly lashing out at him seven dakika into the game. But this feeling came into full bloom around the 2nd act (It’s like every awful thing happened in the sekunde act). Here, wewe can go to three areas, the aztec jungles of Kahnuul, the neon city of Tai Krung, au the military empire, The Iron Kingdom (Also, because I apparently upendo to bitch, wewe can’t even complete these areas unless wewe go back and forth between them and pick up abilities, forcing wewe to come back to each area later, and it is a giant pain in the ass), and here, Ajna causes zaidi harm than good. Now let me explain something right now. I upendo main characters who are in the wrong, I upendo it when they do zaidi wrong than good and flip things on their head. I may not be a big shabiki of the original NieR’s gameplay, but I upendo the story so much. Those monsters wewe fight aren’t monsters, they are just other people trying to live their life. That robot wewe see crashing into the ceiling, that’s not an attack. That is the robot trying to get out of the building because it made a promise to it’s friend to see the outside world. That giant pig monster wewe killed, that was just a mother protecting its children while a group of soldiers cheered at their demise. And wewe want all sides to stop fighting and wewe want NieR to understand, but wewe know he can’t, simply because they can’t understand each other. It’s a tragic yet beautiful way to turn things on their head…. However, the way Ajna goes about it is fucking childish and stupid. She refuses to hear out the Queen of Kahnuul about why she is locking her people underground because she doesn’t care. She refuses to stop the spread of sticky goo in the Iron Kingdom that she causes because she has other things to do. She refuses to let Water Mom Thorani stay in Tai Krung and help the people, the highly dangerous and drug addicted people that is getting worse and worse kwa the day, simply because Ajna’s quest is zaidi dire. wewe have like fucking twenty other party members! wewe can’t spare one to help the city?! Yeah, I get it’s all part of the big twist near the end of the game as to why she’s doing it and she does make up for it later, but wewe gotta have a better reason than just being a fucking stuborn brat and refusing to listen. Every time she left a city was the literal equivalent of that one Spongebob scene where she pats herself on the back as the city burns to the ground



So, with all that alisema and done, is there anything I like about this game? Anything at all… Well… I think some of the jokes are pretty well written. I do like Dhar being the voice of reason, even if people get on his case all the time. Yeah, I get he’s a dad killer, but it gets pretty obnoxious when everyone hates him. Ajna gets a pass, but soon, everyone just hates him because he’s not a member of the Ajna shabiki Club (Goddammit, I’m trying to praise the game and still find myself bitching). Back on topic, I upendo Razmi’s sarcastic attitude and willing to burn things down just for fun. I really like Thorani’s motherly nature towards the group and I like the multitude of side characters wewe can get like the giant warrior mother Phoebe au the gun for hire Latigo. There are so many fun party members in this game, and each one of them has a side quest wewe can do. I really wanted to do those sidequests and help out the party members. There’s not one single party member I dislike (Except Ajna). All of them are great characters, even the ones that don’t get fleshed out that much. But the part of the game I really enjoy is the third act, after one of your party members (Won’t say who) is killed kwa the villain and Ajna, finally waking up to who she is, goes and fixes all the problems she caused before she faces the villain, and the ending doesn’t tie it all together with a big happy ending. No, there were stakes in this, there was a massive sacrifice that needed to be made. The game doesn’t pull any punches and it manages to finish it’s story nicely. Honestly, if not for the chore that was the sekunde half, this game could’ve been better than Skullgirls… Emphasis on could have been.
Indivisible is not a terrible game. I… enjoyed it enough, and maybe enjoy is a bit much. But I liked the game enough to collect all the stones, do all the party member side quests, and even platinum the game. Indivisible is a game that is really hard to recommend to anyone. It does many things right, but it also does so many things wrong. But this doesn’t change the fact that Lab Zero is still a talented studio. I mean, come on, everyone makes mistakes. I can see Indivisible getting a few patches that fix some of the issues in the game. Make the fights less of a grind, fix the lag on some of the jumps, maybe work on the character art a bit, and add a few zaidi stones for the players to fully upgrade their set. Indivisible has potential to be something zaidi than what it is. What that is, that is for time to decide.