| Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a 1v1 2D fighting game based on the critically acclaimed series and developed by Gameplay Group international. Read our review to find out what it does right and our overall thoughts on the game.
Overview
What is Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game?
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a 2D fighting game developed by Gameplay Group International and published by PM Studios. Players control one of twelve characters from across the Avatar Legends series, specifically those from the critically acclaimed animated shows Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra, to fight opponents in 1v1 2D fighting game battles. The game features stylish, aerial combos, deeply mechanical fighting systems like the Flow gauge and the Support system, singleplayer modes like Trial Mode and Arcade Mode and a fully canon story mode which ties the narratives of the two Avatar shows together.
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game features:
⚫︎ 1v1 2D fights between Avatar characters
⚫︎ A roster composed of iconic characters from the Avatar franchise
⚫︎ Hand-drawn, 2D art style reminiscent of the shows
⚫︎ A fully canon crossover storyline between The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra cast
⚫︎ Rollback netcode and crossplay
⚫︎ Offline modes like arcade mode and combo trials
⚫︎ In-depth system learning materials
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game’s gameplay and story.
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| $29.99 | |||||
 Switch 2 |
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| Coming Soon | |||||
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game Review | Finally, A Great Avatar Game!
Breaking the Licensed Tie-in Curse
Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA), regardless of its status as a genuinely critically acclaimed television show that has earned its own enduring legacy and prestige, is a kid’s show at the end of the day. This doesn’t diminish its quality at all, but the series has since been hit with a unique issue: a lack of good video game adaptations. Apart from PlatinumGames’ adaptation of The Legend of Korra, a short but sweet beat-em-up that's since been delisted from all digital storefronts, the Avatar series has long struggled to translate its flashy, elemental martial arts action and compellingly mature storytelling into the video game format.
Enter Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game, a 1v1 2D fighting game that strangely, tantalizingly, bends history and gives the series a game adaptation worthy of its legacy. The game sheds the series’ history of maligned, clunky, and unfun licensed tie-in titles to deliver an Avatar experience that not only feels faithful to the source material but burns bright in its love and admiration for it. While not nearly as profound or emotionally resonant as the original series, Avatar Legends shines in its translation of the series’ signature combat in the context of a fighting game.
True to its title and core concept, the game revolves around Avatar’s elemental, martial arts combat, an aspect of the series which can feel relatively underappreciated due to the series’ inescapably fantastic, groundbreaking writing and narrative. This core conceit helps Avatar Legends do many wonderful things at once. Most importantly, as a 2D fighting game (especially with its impressive art style), it's quite possibly the perfect medium to shine a spotlight on Avatar’s deeply intricate martial arts and bending systems.
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is not only the best Avatar spinoff game, but one of the best fighting games of the year thanks to many things; its beautiful hand drawn art style, its entertaining and surprisingly poignant story mode, and the bevy of options it offers newcomers and veterans alike in learning its many mechanics. At the center of this, though, is an infectious love and passion for both Avatar and fighting games as a whole, and regardless of your engagement with either, that emotional core shines throughout the experience.
Anyone Can Bend, Few Can Be the Avatar
As the title suggests, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game places great focus on its highly intricate fighting mechanics. It is similar to other anime fighting games, most notably tag fighters like Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Dragonball Fighter Z, and the recently released 2XKO in terms of combo structure and general gameplan. However, unlike those titles, fights in Avatar Legends are strictly 1v1. While the game has assists, these are simply selectable passives for fighters that greatly alter certain attributes and playstyles.
What makes Avatar Legends’ specific fighting style so fun and captivating is that it offers newcomers a multitude of fun, engaging ways to learn how the game works while refusing to compromise on skill expression and mechanical depth. For the former, combos generally follow the same "magic series" structure popularized by Marvel vs. Capcom. Players have three attack buttons, Light, Medium, and Heavy, and all of these buttons chain into each other without much need for precise timing. Motion inputs have also been mostly simplified, only usingthe quarter circle forward (QCF) and quarter circle back (QCB) motion across the roster.
The game also features multiple educational resources in-game, from system and character specific tutorials to combo trials meant to teach certain mechanics, from basic combo structure to EX juggles and character-specific re-jump combos. The combo trial mode, in particular, features a ridiculously cool learning tool called the "breakdown mode." Players must perform the inputs as they appear to an active demonstration of the combo, functioning more like a chart in a rhythm game than a list of inputs to do in a typical fighting game trial. It teaches players how to incorporate movement and special cancelling in combos through deliberate pacing and gradual repetition, and it’s one of the most innovative learning features in a fighting game I’ve ever seen.
Don’t let these concessions to learning and execution fool you, though, as Avatar Legends still remains a mechanically demanding game depending on how you want to approach it. Combo trials can still be quite difficult, while the roster varies in technical depth and encourages players to fulfill certain playstyles to optimize damage. The best example for how Avatar Legends mechanically encourages unique playstyles is through the "Flow" system.
Flow, a consumable meter that governs move evasion and empowered "EX special moves" across the roster, is one of Avatar Legends’ most crucial mechanics. Much like Street Fighter 6’s Drive Gauge, it's a universal resource that extends combos and improves move properties, but unlike it Flow instead implements direction-specific movement for each character. It's a system that rewards aggression, mobility, and creativity thanks to how Flow can be incorporated in the neutral and in combos, but it also greatly punishes reckless use since Flow will always be beaten by throws and being in "Unbalanced"e; state makes moves and combos deal significantly more damage.
Ultimately, Avatar Legends strikes a nuanced balance between system accessibility and mechanical depth that makes it both a great entryway into fighting games and a familiar yet challenging battle for veterans. It provides enough resources for players to learn the game at their own pace while rewarding those who stick around with incredibly fun, dynamic, and skill-expressive fighting game combat. It helps that the game just feels fantastic to play, both offline and online with its inclusion of rollback netcode.
Multiple Elements, Balanced in Perfect Harmony
Avatar Legends’ roster of fighters is one of the most fully-realized in recent memory, and it is the strongest part of the whole experience. Every character on the roster has a moveset which reflects their personalities, backgrounds, and fighting styles, and it leads to every fighter feeling distinct and crucially in-depth.
For instance, Aang’s moveset and playstyle sees him gliding across the screen to use his ranged staff and Airbending, perfectly encapsulating not only his Airbender fighting style but his personality as a playful, nimble monk who prefers to fight by controlling distance. Similarly, Sokka, as the comic relief non-bender who relies on weapons to fight, relies on managing his trusty boomerang (which always returns!) and tricking his opponent through unpredictable movement.
In general, characters reflect their bending styles quite well in their general gameplan. Earthbenders like Toph play close to the ground with precise, well-timed strikes and great defensive utility, Waterbenders like Katara have versatile toolkits that emphasize great range and potent mix-ups, while Firebenders have a focus on aggression. Avatars, unsurprisingly, are jack-of-all-trades that can be masters of one particular area, with Korra and Kyoshi excelling at aggression and range, respectively.
There are finer details within those broad strokes, though. For instance, Zuko, known for pushing away the people he cares about, is a more keepaway-centric Firebender who uses fireballs and long ranged divekicks to dictate the pace of the match. Azula, the Machiavellian perfectionist who also also happens to be my main, is a more aggressive Firebender who relies on precise, just-frame attacks and fast movement for damage, but instantly shifts into a more unhinged "Firelord" stance upon losing a round for massive damage.
At the risk of sounding biased, Azula might be my favorite example of how Avatar Legends translates character personalities into mechanically complex and unique fighting game movesets. This design choice is consistent across the entire roster, and even specific matchups are dependent on certain character traits such as Sokka being unable to blind Toph with pocket sand. From Zaheer calling upon the Red Lotus during his special attacks to Ozai having an imposing focus on brutal, Geese Howard style parries and strikes, Avatar Legends shines a spotlight on how these characters are more than just interesting and compelling people in a story.
Avatar Legends posits the series-long idea that these characters’ combat styles are a reflection of their personalities and, by themselves, tell a story, and this game has been the best way to express this. The fact that each character is fun to play and offers a unique gameplay experience only strengthens this idea, and much like in the original shows, there’s bound to be a character for every player, regardless of background, to connect to.
Helter Skelter Across the Avatar Universe
Avatar Legends’ story mode takes players across the different Avatar series, from the original Last Airbender series to The Legend of Korra and even some nods to the spinoff novels. The narrative sees significant characters across the series’ overarching cast, like Aang, Korra, Kyoshi, Zuko, and Zaheer, running into each other after a collapsed timeline leads everything into disarray. Suddenly, strange occurrences such as Toph being a ruthless conqueror, Azula being friends with Korra, and a wizened Sokka with golden aura are accepted as commonplace in the new, chaotic timeline.
In this new reality, Aang is one of the only characters to retain their memories of their original timelines, and it falls upon him to gather the three Avatars and any remaining allies to find out the cause of the timeline split. The story mode, then, sees the playable characters on Avatar Legends’ roster duking it out for a multitude of reasons, whether it's to overcome specific internal struggles, defeat certain antagonistic forces, or establish a connection and history that's been forgotten due to the timeline split.
One of the many benefits that Avatar Legends has by virtue of being a fighting game is that its core concept leaves it relatively free from the pressures of having to present a story that matches the depth and resonance of its predecessors. This is especially important for ATLA, given that most of its gaming adaptations instead choose to regurgitate the original series’ story with massive omissions and compromises.
By comparison, Avatar Legends’ story shines by being a love letter to the series instead. It, admittedly, does not have the gripping stakes, beautiful profundity, or even the high budget presentation of its predecessors. The story is primarily told through text boxes and character animations as they appear in combat, which is undoubtedly a step down from the beautiful visuals and animations of the original series.
Thankfully, Avatar Legends isn’t trying to be like the original series, and what it does in its stead still works quite well. The writing is punchy, funny, and contains so many easter eggs and references to the original show (and even jabs at that dreadful Shyamalan movie) that fans will inevitably crack a smile at them, while the voice actors do great impressions of their characters. Furthermore, the game’s animations are still fantastic even when limited to fighting game rendering, conveying a lot of personality in scenes with relatively limited movement.
That said, a lot of these positives (particularly the references and in-jokes) are best appreciated by fans of the series, and newcomers will definitely be lost trying to parse it all. As an even further nitpick, the narrative so far is largely The Last Airbender–centric, as characters from The Legend of Korra are largely diminished in role. With further storylines being planned, though, it remains to be seen if Avatar Legends does these characters justice.
There is, ultimately, a surprising emotional core to Avatar Legends’ narrative which ties into its focus on the series’ martial arts combat. The story does a subtle job of highlighting how the series’ fighting and element bending serves not just as a weapon to wield towards victory, but as a way of self-expression and building camaraderie and connection. It elevates the combat into something deeper than just flashy action, and given the series' roots in martial arts films and concerted efforts for well choreographed fight scenes, it's surprisingly meaningful.
This isn’t new to the series, but as a fighting game Avatar Legends brings this beautiful view on combat to the forefront. It's especially resonant given that fighting games, both as a genre and as a basis for community, lives and dies by combat as a means towards human connection, fulfillment, and self-expression.
Hand-Drawn Excellence With Minor Caveats
Aesthetically, Avatar Legends not only faithfully recreates the 2D hand-drawn art style of the original shows but uses it to elevate the gameplay and overall experience. Characters are animated with such precision to their fighting styles and real-world martial arts inspirations that even just watching them move reveals so much personality. The fact that every character incorporates overt references to iconic moments in the shows makes that attention to detail that much more impressive and fun.
This is especially wonderful in the context of a fighting game, which will often leave players meticulously looking through frame data and move animations to signal when to block or input another move. For instance, as an Azula main one of my most important special moves is a just frame (a precise input made within a 60th of a second) to use in basic combos. There were just enough visual cues from the animation alone that I was able to get it consistently, which saved me from the trouble of giving myself carpal tunnel just to find it out for myself.
On that note, the UI for both regular combat as well as training mode and general learning is easy to understand and doesn’t get in the way of the gameplay experience. Lifebars and meters such as the Flow and Chakra gauge are visually distinct at a glance and don’t take up too much screen space, while special moves never result in any visual clutter. In fact, Super and Ultimate moves retain a lot of the cinematic qualities of the show, which rewards players who manage their resources well with both massive damage and some of the best animations in the game.
Outside of its mechanical uses, though, the visual direction of Avatar Legends still remains wonderful. Characters clearly convey their fighting styles through their movement, with Zuko being a particular favorite thanks to his very clear homages to Capoeira, while stages remain distinct and gorgeous thanks to wonderfully drawn backgrounds and beautifully rendered lighting effects. The fact that the game’s stages take players everywhere from Ba Sing Se to the Spirit Realm only makes the feeling of playing throughout the Avatar universe that much more realized.
In terms of the sound design though, Avatar Legends similarly draws from the show’s distinct aesthetic direction. While the results are slightly less breathtaking than the visuals, the game’s soundtrack and sound design are still great for what they set out to do. The music, and specifically character themes, are a blend of traditional Asian folk music and orchestral music, but unlike the show these have been given much more upbeat tempos and instrumentations to fit a fighting game.
The songs in Avatar Legends are usually grand and epic, and for some of the better ones like Korra’s they tend to elevate the stakes of a match quite a bit. I do find that, across the board, they tend to fade into the background thanks to the complexity of their arrangements being coupled with the intensity of regular combat. Still great songs, but when paired with frantic combat the focus gets lost quite easily. Nonetheless, impactful sound cues and solid voice acting round out what’s already a strong aesthetic presentation, with the former also helping out tremendously with the gameplay experience.
Is Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game Worth It?
Absolutely, It's The Quenchiest Fighting Game Out There!
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a labor of love that consistently beckons players to master the elements of its combat and depth, and while it can be daunting it still remains fun, rewarding, and exciting. It is a top tier fighting game release for over half the triple A price, and whether you’re a casual Avatar fan or a diehard fighting game veteran you’re bound to enjoy something about the game as a whole. With significant quality-of-life additions like rollback netcode, in-depth tutorials and practice modes, and a balance between accessibility and complexity, Avatar Legends becomes somewhat of a genre unicorn: a fighting game for all to enjoy on their own terms. Much like the Avatars themselves, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a worthy successor to a lineage of fighters that have mastered the elements that make the genre so enduring and captivating.
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