Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game Is a Real Treat for Fans, If You Can Overlook the Rough Edges

[00:02] groundbreaking at the time of release and has inspired a loyal following and its sequel series, The Legend of Kora, [music] was a well-received maturation of the property. However, there have

[00:15] also been many lows, an awful movie adaptation, a divisive live-action Netflix series, and innumerable bad video games. This week, things are finally looking up. The movie [music] Avatar A the Last Airbender appears to

[00:28] be the A gang reunion fans have been waiting [music] for. And it's with that renewed vigor that we're getting Avatar Legends, which may be the first great Avatar game with some major CAVEATS [screaming]

[00:47] way. I am not a fighting game expert. I came up during the era of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. And like every child of that generation, I threw down Fighter 2 console releases with my

[01:00] ascended to the next level of fighting game expertise. To this day, I still dabble in those series and others that catch my eye. But this isn't going to be a technical breakdown of Avatar's fighting finesse because that just isn't

[01:14] my realm. I'm coming to this primarily as a fan of the two cartoon series who hoped this would be a fun way to experience that world. And on that, it succeeds. It's immediately noticeable that all the characters look just like

[01:27] their tune counterparts. In some cases, cleaned up for modern displays. They look and move like they should. And there are fun little touches for fans, like how each [music] character can pallet swap to make their outfit match

[01:40] the four different nations of the Avatar world. The menu of upgradeable support [music] characters is a who's who of beloved minor characters like the boulder, Joe D, and my the writing in the story mode is chalk full of little

[01:53] nods and references to Avatar. This is all clearly a labor of love by people who rever the series. Ang's throw move involves an air benderpowered sneeze.

[02:05] involves an air benderpowered sneeze. >> It's all very playful and that reverence comes in the expression of the fighting game styles as well. When I first hard time wrapping my head around A, who focuses mostly on air juggles and quick

[02:19] movements. That felt right for the character, but wrong for me. When the story transitioned to Kora, it clicked. Due to her show's depiction, Kora is already a master of all four elements, and as a result, she is much more

[02:33] balanced, and it was easy for me to chain moves together from the beginning. Her moves depict a comfortable blend of all the bending forms, so it's not unusual to see a firepowered kick segue neatly into a upward water splash. Tooff

[02:47] appropriately is very grounded, most comfortable when sticking to the floor and controlling the space with powerful earthbending attacks. Again, I'm not a fighting game expert, but as an outsider at least, it feels like there's a lot of

[03:00] depth here for those who want to dig in. What struck me most was the nuanced depiction of the bending forms. The original show made a point to make each nation's signature bending form unique and inspired by realworld martial arts,

[03:15] while Kora implemented more modern MMA style moves to update the setting. As a result, the bending characters feel naturally different. A fire bender is fierce and aggressive, while a water bender is more defensive. But Avatar

[03:29] Legends also finds plenty of room to explore differentiation between multiple users of the same bending forms. Despite both being firebenders, Zuko and his sister Azula feel very different. Zuko's moves focus heavily on fierce forward

[03:44] momentum and projectiles, while Azula has more nuance control than array of lightning enhanced moves. Similarly, Kyoshi is a full-fledged avatar, but focuses primarily on earth pending, but she is also remarkably tall, so her move

[04:00] set feels very different from the grounded tooff. On that note, Avatar Legends also expresses through gameplay an element that was everpresent in the show. This is a story about children finding their way in a world of adults,

[04:13] which introduces a power imbalance by sheer size. The game doesn't shy away from this, making the child characters noticeably smaller than the grown-ups. Lots of fighting games make characters of very differing sizes, but generally

[04:27] they're all teens to adults. Avatar pits 12-year-olds against 40-year-olds, so 12-year-olds against 40-year-olds, so it's important to express that visually.

[04:40] Legends fall short, but fortunately, the most severe ones are fixable. To put it simply, some aspects of this game feel unfinished, at least in my pre-release build. Maybe some or most of these will be addressed in a patch upon the game

[04:53] launch, but I would be surprised if the 1.0 release completely transforms these [music] rough spots. The tutorial section was incomplete. As of my play couldn't really learn the ropes with other characters I liked better. The

[05:08] characters look great, but their idle animations during story cutscenes are too limited and not as smooth as I'd like. And sometimes the story sequences just hit downright bizarre bugs, like a character disappearing for a moment or

[05:21] to floating in midair during a conversation. In many ways, these make it feel like an early access game with polish to come sometime later. Then there are the downsides that aren't likely to be fixed with patches. The

[05:34] story, at least as I've seen so far, is a jumbled mess. Granted, it's difficult for why characters from different time periods can coexist, especially when three of them are reincarnations of the same being, [music] but the

[05:49] rationalization given here that there's some collision of different worlds and destinies [music] is dull. It's clearly a thin excuse to mash up the action figures in different configurations, [music] and there's some

[06:01] fun to be had in seeing a different universe where Tooff is a conqueror or universe where Tooff is a conqueror or SOA is a wise sage. But it's barely worthwhile, mostly as a way to sample different characters and earn currency

[06:13] for their support character upgrades. And naturally, any game with a cast as Airbender and The Legend of Kora is going to have some notable omissions, but some of the ones here are downright baffling. The roster includes most of

[06:28] the biggest names like the core four original heroes, villains like Zuko, Azula, and Ozai, and avatars Kora, and Koshi to round it out. But Zahir is a strange inclusion that feels out of place among the other Alzheimer's, as if

[06:43] they were simply reaching for another Kora era character to include. Even some Kora characters like Aman or Asami would fit into the core cast better. Granted, this seems partly to save some popular characters for an upcoming season pass,

[06:58] but for the time being, it's a strange choice that accentuates the feeling that this is the very beginning of an Avatar game that is just on the verge of true greatness. Avatar Legends is rough and unfinished in spots, and presumably

[07:12] launches into a live fighting game its season pass characters and other updates. Like the kids in the original series, we may be out to undertake a long journey of watching this game grow

[07:26] long journey of watching this game grow up, but in the end, the payoff may be up, but in the end, the payoff may be worth it.