Indivisible

Indivisible is a mix of RPG and Metroidvania that boasts great art direction, building a colorful and vibrant fantasy world, but is also marred by some questionable design choices that take the fun out of exploration.

The story follows Ajna’s quest to avenge her father, who was murdered in front of her by a soldier named Dhar. The problem is that, when Ajna – who is just 16 years old – tries to fight Dhar, she ends up absorbing him instead – and now she has to deal with her father’s killer talking inside her head. With the help of some friends – who she absorbs as well – Ajna travels to Mount Sumeru to fight the vile warlord Ravannavar, who intends to destroy the world because that’s in his job description.

Even though the villains are bland and one-dimensionally evil, destroying everything because of a shallow nihilistic worldview, Indivisible’s story succeeds due to its critical approach to its protagonist’s personality. Ajna is the type of person that punches first and asks questions later: she is usually happy to resolve things with violence and is quick to help people if that means she’ll have the chance to kick some butts. At first, the game frames this behavior in a comical way: we are supposed to laugh at the comments that show her willingness to resort to violence, especially because her companions keep trying to calm her down unsuccessfully – including Dhar, who she understandably ignores.

Ajna keeps doing her own thing, going to places and punching the hell out of whoever is causing problems there, without ever trying to understand the nuances of these problems or sorting things out with dialogue. It doesn’t take long, then, for her companions to realize that Ajna is helping people and trying to save the world for egoistical reasons: she’s doing it to appease her anger at first, and then to appease her guilt. And the fact that Ajna is doing it all for her and not for others means that she doesn’t really care about the places she visits and the people she helps – which can lead to disastrous consequences. In one telling scene, she refuses to let one of her companions leave the party to assist a town only because she would miss them: Ajna’s top priority is not to save the world, but to feel good about herself.

The problems regarding her behavior are at the heart of the story, which unfortunately doesn’t have many other discussions or themes. It’s a bit ironic that a narrative that criticizes the protagonist’s self-centered personality makes the whole world revolve around the same protagonist: Ajna is the savior, the chosen one, and a central part of the blight that affects the world.

This is a pity because she has more than twenty companions, but most of them have one-note personalities, without any semblance of a character arc – although is great to see, for a change, that at one time Ajna had more than fifteen party members and only one was a white man, who coincidently, of course, was a righteous douchebag.

You have Razmi, for example, who will keep making the same sort of jokes about her “I like to watch things burn” personality until the very end. You have Kushi, who is fond of animals and works as a character only in opposition to the aforementioned douchebag, as she has the same job as him but is not insufferable.

The only two side characters that display any sort of personality are Dhar and a healer named Thorani. Dhar’s journey is initially an obvious one: by being forced to travel with Ajna he has to face how his binary worldview – as is the case of most binary worldviews – is a lie used to manipulate him into doing horrible things. He’s often treated as a pariah by the protagonist, but manages to grow as a character by revealing to be more sensitive to the plight of others than Ajna herself. Meanwhile, Thorani is a bit eccentric – she heals people by splurting them with water that comes out of her hair – but get some prominence as her protective nature transforms her into a mother figure to Ajna, and her gentle nature is often juxtaposed with the protagonist’s violent predisposition.

Some well-written sidequests would have gone a long way towards fleshing out Indivisible’s colorful cast of characters. Some quests indeed appear, but far too late in the game to have a real impact on the narrative – and they also require a lot of back and forth between places with no fast travel options, while offering little to no narrative pay off.

The lack of fast travel is a recurrent nuisance in the game, especially since you are going to be traveling from one town to another a lot, which requires you to backtrack to a town’s port, go to your ship, travel to the other town’s port and then proceed to wherever you wanted or needed to go – and then backtrack to the port and repeat the whole process again. This wouldn’t be so bad if the level design tended to fold on itself, revealing a lot of shortcuts to make traversing the maps a less time-consuming experience. These shortcuts, however, are too few and far between, discouraging the player from trying the newly acquired ability.

Another problem regarding exploration is that the rewards are all the same and – to make matters a lot worse – are pretty useless as well. Indivisible is structured like your typical 2D Metroidvania, with new abilities being regularly acquired to serve as “keys” to access rooms or areas that were until that moment out of your reach. In a Metroid game, these abilities come in the form of new equipment that you find hidden in the world, while the rewards are small expansions to your arsenal or to your health.  In Indivisible, the abilities are taught to Ajna by her companions and the rewards are all the same red crystals that increase her defense or attack – but only after gathering a lot of them.

First, there’s a problem in having her companions teaching her the abilities. The player may become pretty frustrated after coming across some inaccessible rooms only to find out later that the companion that teaches Ajna the required ability was already in her party all along, but simply didn’t bother teaching it until a scripted event. This can get nonsensical when progress in the main story is blocked in the same way: you reach a point in a neon-soaked Chinatown-inspired city, for example, where you can’t proceed because of some electrified platforms. So Thorani tells Ajna to go somewhere else for the time being. When you get to another town and explore it for a bit, Thorani herself teaches Ajna the ability that nullifies those platforms – which is pretty ridiculous.

The second issue is that the rewards being the same red crystals means that the player knows what awaits at the end of each blocked room or platform challenge: there’s no mystery or surprise involved in exploration. And since a single red crystal doesn’t do anything at all by itself – you require 25 of them to increase your attack for the second time, for example – getting one doesn’t give you a tangible reward for the trouble you went through. Even getting ten doesn’t give you a tangible reward. And to add insult to injury, when you finally get all twenty-five, the increase in your attack power is not that great. In other words, exploration is highly discouraged in Indivisible, which also treats these red crystals as busywork: you will never find a whole new area to explore on your own with a newly acquired ability. There are only the gates barring story progression, which are clearly signposted by the game, and the random red crystal tucked away in a room that has zero appeal to the player.

Platforming is also very important in Indivisible, but there are also some problems with it. One of the most useful abilities in the game is using Ajna’s axe to stick to a wall, allowing for an additional jump. Theoretically, you only need to jump and press the attack button to activate it. However, sometimes – I believe it comes down to how hard you press the attack button – Ajna will use her spear instead of the axe, making you miss the platform and usually fall to your death or to several platforms below – the level design in the game favors verticality, which often means that missing a jump will make you have to get past some old obstacles again to get back to where you were. Since the axe is such an important ability, the choice to have another type of attack tied to the same button is mindboggling.

Moreover, some hazards straight up kill Ajna while others just do some damage to her – and there’s no way to know which one is which beforehand. And the checkpoint system is everything but reliable: sometimes, dying will get you back to the last time you saved in a shrine – losing all your progress –, but sometimes it will get you back to the beginning of the room where you died. Sometimes, it will also get you back to the last time it autosaved your progress, ignoring the fact that you manually saved in a shrine afterward – which is hilarious or infuriating, depending on your mood. In other words, when you die, anything can happen and you have to just roll with it.

Since the level design gives a lot of emphasis on platforming – Mount Sumeru is a platforming gauntlet that you have to go through several times – the unreliable mechanics and checkpoint system can really hurt the experience.

The art direction in Indivisible, on the other hand, is excellent. The game nails its hand-drawn art, with bright colors and vibrant backgrounds. Cities, meanwhile, are a sight to behold, brimming with all sorts of exotic people that would have been playable characters or important NPCs in any other game due to the quality of their designs.

And some of them even have funny lines, too: “When painting, striving for perfection just tires you out. Next thing you know you’re in a slump. I make myself stop and relax, and eventually, I know I’ll get the will to paint again. Afterall ain’t no right way to make art, only options. Er, I mean… um… Woof?” a dog says to Ajna. The writing is great when it comes to some of the more comical bits of the story – the “and now… I’m gone” from a specific NPC, for example, never gets old and is even subverted at the end. If only the writers had tried to make these characters more fascinating, going beyond their comical traits.

Finally, we have the turn-based combat, which is fairly good, if still with some issues. Meeting an enemy takes Ajna to another screen, where three other members of her ever-increasing party appear to battle alongside her. Each of them is tied to a button and have up to four rechargeable attacks to use, which can change when coupled with an “up” or “down” input. The point is to make them all attack at once, building a combo meter to make some attacks stronger.

Characters are very different from each other: Dhar, for example, can charge his attacks, while Thorani heals the party with the puddles of water that come out of her hair, and Razmi inflicts slow on enemies and deals magic damage. They all have different speeds as well, with Razmi taking a good while to recharge her attacks, while Dhar is quickly back into action.

The problem with the combat is with the enemy design. With the exception of armored enemies, which require one party member to use a down attack followed by an up attack to break their armor, they all basically the same in practice: just hitting them with the most powerful attacks does the trick. There are some rare ones that are immune to magic damage, but none that are immune to physical damage. All this means that players won’t have to think much during battles, even boss battles.

Another problem is the difficulty spike. Indivisible is fairly easy when you are following the designated path. But if you try to go to that Chinatown city first instead of last, for example, you will meet enemies that will one-shot your whole party – and it’s a city where you can’t backtrack to the port easily after going in, making things frustrating.

Indivisible certainly nails its presentation, with a charming look and a catchy soundtrack composed by Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana). Its narrative could have done more with its impressive cast of characters, however, and some design decisions make its Metroidvania aspect a real chore. In the end, Indivisible is not a bad game, but it had the potential to be much more than that.

February 05, 2021.