A Beautiful Animated Journey – Indivisible Review

505 Games and Lab Zero Games come together and make a truly impressive RPG. From our preview, at Pax West, we were teased at what Indivisible was all about. Here is our full Indivisible review.

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Indivisible is an action RPG that follows the rebellious Ajna, who is raised by her father on the outskirts of town. The town Ajna lives in is attacked, and afterward, a mysterious power is awakened inside her. This power sets Ajna on a path to find out what it is and save the world along the way.

Assemble Your Party

With over 20 characters to choose from, some always get left behind, and, yes, you can pet the dog.

Indivisible is chock-full of characters you come across that join your party for one reason or another. These characters have unique fighting styles and can be switched out while you’re exploring the world. I was surprised at how quickly my party assembled in Indivisible as most RPGs don’t introduce a lot of characters in the first 30 minutes.

Lab Zero Games does an excellent job of having a variety of characters, but a lot of them sit on the bench occupying space. One character was a staple to my party, besides Ajna being locked in, and I felt they were made like that on purpose.

Combat and Blocking

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Indivisible has a unique real-time combat system and allows you to trigger a battle when you want. Conflict is triggered when you run into an enemy by attacking it, and this enables you to gain an advantage. Being able to trigger combat on your own is a welcome change to RPGs as it lets you control when you want to fight.

Each player is assigned a button on the D-Pad, and depending on how strong you are at the time, this dictates how many times you can attack with that character. You can also block when the enemy attacks with a well-timed press of a button that comes in handy. You can even combo attacks and use a super once you gain enough power.

Blocking during battle can mean life or death, especially when facing stronger enemies. Being able to block to take less damage and later gain health was an interesting choice to put in. This was the first time I encountered a feature like this in an RPG and appreciated it. Combat in Indivisible is genuinely a great experience.

Your Two Worst Enemies

While Indivisible is a beautiful game, the map is an entirely different story.

While Indivisible has a lot going for it with its character choices and combat, I found two things that can be quite annoying. The camera in Indivisible is a fixed camera and becomes an issue when you’re traversing the world around you.

I found myself having to guess where platforms were, and if I was falling to a safe place or not. In some areas, the camera was too zoomed in, and without being able to zoom the camera out, knowing where you were going was a mystery. This also was the case when the camera was zoomed out too much as you were given a much broader view. This wouldn’t be so bad if the map were also better.

The in-game map for Indivisible feels like it was just thrown together, and not much thought was put into it at all. The map looks like graph paper with colored squares where the playable area is. The only icons on the map are bells where you can save your progress and crystals that can be collected. Just like the camera, the map is in a fixed position and only shows what section you’re currently in. A detailed map can be beneficial in RPGs, and this map isn’t one of them. Just being able to move the map would improve it significantly.

Beautifully Animated

While the map isn’t the prettiest thing in Indivisible, the hand-drawn animation is top-notch. I am a big fan of anime, and I was drawn into the world of Indivisible because of this. 505 Games and Lab Zero even made an animated intro and included more animated scenes throughout the game.

With great animation comes excellent voice acting and storytelling. I truly feel that Indivisible could be a full-fledged animated series if Lab Zero wanted to pursue it. Indivisible is easily one of the best-animated RPGs I’ve ever played.

Despite the camera and map issues, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ajna and her friends. Indivisible certainly has plenty of replayability and character combinations to keep you wanting to come back for more.

Indivisible is available to play on the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch starting on October 8, 2019.