Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game review

Before we dive into this review, I need to tell you a bit about me. I love fighting games, and absolutely suck at them. Part of the fun for me is getting good at them. With that said, Dead or Alive, Mortal Kombat, and Tekken are among my favorite fighting game series. I enjoyed Injustice 1 and 2 so much I own them on everything I can. 

With that introduction out of the way, the core mechanics of Avatar Legends are a lot of fun. Characters (mostly) feel like they came right out of the show. The game itself is gorgeous, and I love the animations. The actual elements also carry a lot of weight and were done very well. The foundation of this game is so solid that I am shocked and saddened that it released in the state it did.

You’ll also notice that I don’t really cover the story mode in extensive detail in this review. I played a few missions and couldn’t get down with the “humor” at all. Though I tried to put up with it because the story is apparently canon, it wasn’t for me.

Roster and Combat

I adore the way that combat feels in this game. Korra specifically feels like one of the best fighting game characters I have ever played with. Keeping in mind that she is supposed to be the introductory character, they nailed it with her whole moveset. 

Beyond Korra, the roster is pretty diverse. Aang is who you start as and, frankly, my least favorite character in the game. Nothing about his moveset feels natural to me, but I will say that the animation team killed it with how gorgeous his combos look when you pop them off properly. Likewise, I found Zaheer to be irritating to play, mostly because his combos didn’t resonate with me. 

The rest of the roster has been extremely fun to play with. Toph is a blast; not only does her moveset capture her character from the show to a T, but because the team made bending feel like it has some weight to it, her combos are some of the most satisfying in the game to pull off. 

The roster consists of: Aang, Korra, Katara, Sokka, Zuko, Toph, Azula, Zaheer, Kyoshi, Ozai, Avatar State Aang, and Avatar State Korra. I have a sneaking suspicion that this game was rushed out by Paramount, but putting that aside, the roster needs more characters from Korra’s show. I honestly could’ve gone without the two Avatar State characters entirely, so we could've had more characters from Korra. Regardless, the animations are gorgeous for most of the characters, the exceptions being the Avatar State characters and Ozai. Every attack in this game feels like it has some weight to it. You can especially feel that when playing Korra. The bending feels extremely solid too; play Toph and hit people with some rocks and you’ll know exactly what I mean. 

Looking ahead and why this is a problem 

I strongly believe that releasing without features showcased in the trailer should be a much bigger deal than it’s being treated as. I want to dive into this roadmap really quickly because it illustrates my issues perfectly.

Let’s start with the obvious. Nightmare Korra, Ozai, and Avatar Aang have incomplete sprite work. We’re told that the team is working on this and that these characters will be updated. They’ll also be getting more animation detail. Bluntly, none of these characters should’ve launched with the game. They would’ve worked perfectly as a free update or something. Anything but putting three incomplete characters into the full release. 

Next, the game is launched without a Ranked Mode present, which was advertised in the trailer. Which is frankly ridiculous, and I don’t even touch Ranked Modes in fighting games. It’s also frankly sad that people weren’t given more of a heads-up about a whole missing mode. I assume everything in that box has to do with mode updates or additions that come with the Ranked Mode, so I’ll let them be. 

The roadmap we see here is typically something that I would expect with an early access title. I don’t care that the game is $29.99; the player base should not be waiting on basic features that were advertised in the trailer. The launch roster should be complete, and trust me, it’s not lost on me that this title was likely rushed out the door because this year is a big year for Avatar in general.  I’ll add a note here that the game did get an update and now allows you to rebind your keys properly. 

Final Thoughts 

In general, I had a lot of fun with Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game, mostly because the characters that were complete were done really well. Korra, my favorite character in the whole Avatar series, feels like she popped out of the show to join the game. Which is something that I felt a lot while I was playing. 

I really enjoy the sound design of this game, especially for elemental attacks. Whoever was responsible for the sound design in general should pat themselves on the back because I think that it was nailed. And although I love all of the music in the Avatar series, the Korra music takes the cake for being among the best in the game. 

The other game modes really took a hit, though. The combo practice needs a complete overhaul. For example, when you’re doing Aang’s trials, they forgot to plug in one of the combos. Leaving many players, including myself, extremely confused. I would’ve loved to see more of the development time spent in the game modes that prepare players for the game outside of the story mode.