[h1]Quick Sum-Up[/h1]
[h3]In-depth analysis further down.[/h3]
[b]No AI was used to write this review.[/b]
[hr]🟩 [b]Pros[/b] 🟩
• Excellent visuals, paired with superb art direction. Between spectacular alien landscapes and quirky retrofuturistic-style tech, this journey feels immersive from start to end.
• High quality writing of dialogues, characters and documents. The Invincible’s lore is interesting to delve into, while the mysteries surrounding your mission keep you hooked to the plot.
• Good gameplay variety for a narrative adventure: plenty of tasks not only feel plausible given the setting, but also give a much-needed break from the main gameplay loop.
[hr]🟥 [b]Cons[/b] 🟥
• Most of the choices you’ll make during the journey, such as exploring optional areas to gain more information or picking sides, won’t influence the various endings in any meaningful way.
• The save system is extremely unclear, and doesn’t have a manual option. You might lose progress because it only saves at fixed points, without telling you when it does.
• Underwhelming endings, that brutally cut off the story without a proper epilogue, as if there wasn’t enough time to write one.
[hr]🟨 [b]Bugs / Issues[/b] 🟨
• Dialogues may occasionally overlap if you listen to a recording, or interact with specific items while a conversation is ongoing.
• Rarely, you might get stuck if you reach certain areas without following the game logic’s exact steps. Reload the last save to fix.
[hr][h3]Content & Replay Value:[/h3]
It took me around 11 hours to complete The Invincible, taking extra time to explore all optional areas thoroughly. If you want to replay the final chapter to see every ending, add one more hour to the counter. Except for the various endings and very few specific choices, the content is largely linear, and there’s no reason to replay the whole game.
[h3]Is it worth buying?[/h3]
Yes, but on sale. It’s good, but it’s not worth 30€ for only a dozen hours of content and no replay value. If you like narrative adventures, space mysteries, and hard sci-fi with a retrofuturistic quirk, then you’ll have a good time.
[h3]Verdict: Good[/h3]
The Invincible is a competently written, intriguing sci-fi adventure with a distinct identity. It feels original, keeps you hooked to its story, and has an excellent visual style to match.
[url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2548409603]Rating Chart[/url]
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[h1]In-Depth Analysis[/h1]
[h3]Writing & Worldbuilding[/h3]
The Invincible follows the story of Yasna, a Coalition cosmonaut sent, alongside a full team, on a scientific mission to Regis III; a far-away, extrasolar planet. What initially seemed like an uneventful research mission on a dead planet, soon turns into a space opera mystery; Yasna gets stranded after a yet-unclear series of events, while her teammates are nowhere to be found. The way back to her ship, the Dragonfly, will prove much harder than expected.
As far as the main plot goes, it’s more than anything else a tale of survival against desperate odds, that only becomes more dramatic and high-stakes as the story progresses. Yasna and her commander, Novik, often in radio contact with her, are both well-written and plausible characters that act as it would be expected by seasoned cosmonauts in a situation of this type. The dialogue is mostly serious, objective-oriented, and pragmatic in nature, as it should be in such a situation; while exceptions may occur, they’re completely justified by the human need to alleviate tension in prolonged life threatening scenarios.
The mysteries surrounding your crew’s status and the planet as a whole only deepen as you progress, making Yasna question not only her mission’s true nature, but also the very foundations of her scientific knowledge. It’s a slow-burning crescendo, that has almost perfect narrative pacing, and cleverly places lore elements, exposure and crucial information at the right moment, while leaving room for players to make their own theories as they advance. The bulk of found lore, be it written, audio or environmental, acts as small pieces of a bigger picture to put together, many of which are entirely optional, but crucial to gain a deeper understanding of what’s going on on Regis III.
The worldbuilding surrounding these events depicts a space-age humanity divided into at least two main factions, competing to gain the upper hand in scientific knowledge and territorial domination. Several information and facts about the current society, scientific advancements, politics and so forth can be gained from the lore pieces you’ll find; it feels interesting to discover what humanity has become, and what it has discovered, in a setting so different than our current timeline; it could be defined ‘Space Cold War’, alas with technology far superior to ours, and yet looking clunky and retro in its aesthetics and functioning.
[h3]Exploration & Secrets[/h3]
You’ll explore Regis III mostly on foot, and at times using drivable rovers to cover larger distances in the semi-open world map segments. Your map will highlight your location, and a rough sketch of the terrain you’ve discovered, while also noting any information gained from documents, such as the positions of outposts, noteworthy landmarks and infrastructure.
There won’t be any quest markers to guide you: in fact, you’ll have to rely on the map and your current objective to figure out where to go next, which isn’t particularly hard given that there’s usually one main path, and several secondary areas you might want to explore. Doing that will reward you with plenty of additional information, lore, and also is tied to unlocking certain achievements or extra dialogue options in specific dialogues; unfortunately, this doesn’t alter the ending or the major events of the main plot.
There’s plenty of secrets to discover, usually in the form of lore pieces such as probe slides, recordings, written documents, or locations where unusual events have unfolded with no particular explanation. I found exploration to be interesting: it balances its pacing well, and the lore you’ll find will add pieces to a mystery that feels captivating to investigate.
[h3]Dialogue System & Choices[/h3]
Despite being stranded on an alien planet, Yasna will keep in contact with Novik, his commander, for most of the playthrough. The dialogue between the two uses a timed reply system, that you can use to have Yasna stay silent if so you wish, or choose between various options to give a reply, that in some cases can change based on your discoveries. The plot is mostly linear, but there are some choices at key points, such as taking one path instead of another, or a more risky approach given the circumstances, as opposed to a safer one.
These will change dialogues and some paths you’ll take, however they never influence events in any major way, nor will they lead you to an early grave; there aren’t wrong or right choices. For narrative adventures to give the ‘illusion of choice’ is a given cliché, but after having seen masterpieces such as Detroit: Become Human, to name one, or the older The Walking Dead from Telltale, we all know this doesn’t have to be a standard. Linear stories are fine, but giving players the illusion their actions matter when, in the end, they don’t, is always a bad design choice. Sure, we can’t expect the same variety and scope of choices of AAA games from an Indie production such as this, but the matter stays the same: choices are possible, and restricting them to just the ending sequence to have any impact feels, if anything, an outdated standard for narrative adventures in this day and age.
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