Posted on March 7, 2018 6:17 pm

 

Since we released the Backer Preview late last year, we’ve been working to further refine and expand Indivisible’s battle system.

First, a brief video showing everything we’re about to describe!

Now, let’s break down the new things we’ve added.

Character Move Reordering

While you can’t see it here, we’ve reordered many characters’ moves.

The primary reason we did this is to highlight the importance of launching enemies and to make it a bit more intuitive.

From now on, any attack that launches the targeted enemy will always be mapped to a character’s Up Attack.

Enemy Blocking

Certain enemies will now block incoming attacks.

We originally experimented with making this random on most enemies, but it made battles too slow and unpredictable. So now only certain enemy variants will block.

There are four ways to get around enemy blocking: Guard Crushing, Technical Breaks, magic attacks, and Iddhi powers.

Guard Crush

The primary way of breaking an enemy’s guard is with a new move, called Guard Crush.

To crush an enemy’s guard, simply hold a character’s attack button. They’ll initiate a special attack that will crush the enemy’s guard. Not only will you gain a significant amount of Iddhi for crushing an enemy’s guard, they won’t be able to guard for a significant amount of time.

While the attack uses a single action, the recharge time will be significantly long than that of a normal attack.

Not every character can use a Guard Crush, notably characters with magic attacks.

Technical Break

Any guard can be broken quickly by hitting a blocking enemy with an Up and Down attack from two different characters in succession.

This is a bit more advanced, but because there is no recharge penalty, there isn’t as much of an Iddhi bonus and the enemy will be able to block sooner than after a Guard Crush.

Iddhi and Magic Attacks

Iddhi attacks and Magic attacks cannot be blocked. This makes characters that attack with magic, such as Razmi, strategically important as they effectively give you a free combo against blocking enemies.

However, to keep these these characters from becoming overpowered, they’ll now recharge their actions more slowly.

For the purposes of guarding, Iddhi attacks function identically to magic attacks – they’re unblockable, and don’t prevent the enemy from guarding afterward.

Furthermore, unblockable attacks don’t count as guard breaks, thus the enemy will be able to immediately block afterwards.

Launch / Juggle Bonuses

Launching an enemy now has a special hitspark, and will now cause them to hang in the air for a short period of time, allowing you to juggle them.

Not only will this let you dish out more damage, you’ll also generate more Iddhi – notice the little particles floating up to the Iddhi bar!

In the final game, Ajna will eventually be able to store up to 7 bars of Iddhi, and this technique will play an important part in filling them!

Enemies Attacking Multiple Targets

Currently enemies focus their attacks on a single target, making it relatively easy to block all of them.

In order to make the defense phase a bit more active, groups of enemies will no longer focus on a single target and will vary them up instead. To make this a bit more manageable, a short pause has been added between each enemy’s attack.

Focus Selection

In tests, we’ve found that many people find changing targets in battle somewhat confusing. Likewise, people somewhat frequently accidentally select another target when they didn’t mean to.

In order to solve both, we’re changing the way you select targets. Now during a player turn you’ll need to hold L1 to change targets. This will cause Ajna to Focus, which will stop battle time letting you freely select targets.

To help you identify enemies that can block, while Ajna is Focusing any enemies that can block will assume their block pose.

Additionally, Focusing while attacking will slow time and allow you to change targets on the fly during the player turn.

In the future, we’ll display enemy names while selecting enemies.

Terrain Handling Improvements

In addition to new battle mechanics, we’ve been working on improving the pathing code in battle to prevent characters getting stuck.

When engaging the enemy, Ajna and her crew will be able to deploy despite changes in terrain height.

Likewise, when fighting near a wall, enemies will position themselves so Ajna and Co. have room to fight!

All-Block Improvements

When using L1 to make everyone block during the defense phase, the entire party will now block as long as any character is in blockstun, preventing situations where releasing the button too soon might leave some of your characters vulnerable.

 

Backer Preview Update

These battle changes and more will be patched into the Backer Preview in the coming months so we can get your feedback on them!

We don’t have a specific time frame yet, but keep an eye on our social channels for more information!

Follow us on Twitter (@IndivisibleRPG) or on Facebook for the latest news!

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If you need help with your Indiegogo or BackerKit orders, we ask that you not leave comments on Indiegogo and instead contact us directly at indiegogo (at) labzerogames (dot) com.