Liam Triforce

Recommending – Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game

You’ve probably seen clips of this game all over social media, especially if you’re at all tuned into the FGC, and that discussion is well-earned. As a complete package, Avatar Legends might lack key features right now (most likely due to Paramount rushing the game to coincide with the film), but I’m pleased to tell you that I think very few of those missing features matter to me. In fact, I haven’t even touched the story mode yet. At its core, Avatar Legends is a wonderful game, offers a considerable amount of depth, and stands proudly as an answer to the more aggressive gameplay of many fighting games in circulation right now.

What do I mean by this? In case you’re unaware, multiple fighting games that currently dominate the space feature mechanics aimed to push the player forward. Let’s start small and work our way up. Street Fighter 6, for example, features the Drive gauge, with multiple techniques that encourage players to consistently apply pressure to their opponents and fight back, provided that they do not use it carelessly. The Drive Rush essentially transforms everyone into a Rushdown character as they pursue their opponent for a combo, a Drive Reversal can armour through their opponent’s attacks, and then of course there’s the Drive Parry, Drive Impact, and the fact that your supers are dictated by this gauge as well. It’s a well-balanced system and fun to take advantage of, but it unquestionably tips 6’s gameplay in favour of aggression.

There are a couple of other examples of aggression in fighting games I could use: Guilty Gear: Strive, for example, punishes the player for playing too defensively with a Negative Penalty, though you can still use spend meter to use Faultless Defense and avoid chip damage. However, I feel the worst offender when it comes to aggression is Tekken 8. With the inclusion of Heat, the game leans so heavily into managing a resource that the game is fundamentally a completely different beast from its predecessors – making Tekken 8 quite the controversial game.

Despite what I’ve said, all of these games are still great; the Drive mechanics in Street Fighter 6 in particular feel like a natural extension of the back-and-forth that makes Street Fighter such a compelling fighting game to begin with. Also, the games were designed like this with the purpose of making them more accessible to new players, which I don’t necessarily think is a bad thing, so long as it is handled well. That being said, I feel like this focus on aggression has led to these games feeling similar to one another in terms of design philosophy, and that’s where Avatar Legends is able to step in as a welcome alternative.

Avatar Legends has the advantage of not having to incorporate a new system into an established game series; instead, it is designed around a primarily defensive, but ultimately quite versatile mechanic – Flow.

Avatar has only four primary buttons: A, B, C and Flow. While holding Flow in neutral, you will drain your Flow meter, but if an opponent is attacking you while you are holding this button, you will avoid any and all damage and you won’t spend any of your meter. This, inherently, encourages players to anticipate their opponent’s attacks. Additionally, you can spend Flow to dash forward (like a Drive Rush), you can use it to jump far away from your opponent by performing a Flow Escape once you are able to tech out of a combo, and because it is a universal mechanic – characters can utilize it in their own unique ways. Zaheer, for example, can fly when Flow is pressed in the air, Toph can hit down and Flow to go into a special stance and perform armoured moves in a pinch, and Sokka can dash and dash-cancel with Flow to zoom around the arena like a bat out of hell, which is something that he can do faster and without penalty when you perform his Level 4, or as some have affectionately called it: The Girlfriend Install.

While Flow’s wide applications are primarily defensive, they can be used in a variety of ways, and it makes for a fighting game unlike any that we’ve received in recent memory. Of course, you can be grabbed out of Flow stance, so you can’t rely on it too heavily, and if you spend all of your Flow – you become Unbalanced, wherein every hit leads to a guaranteed Hard Knockdown, and you are practically defenseless. In essence, Avatar Legends is, naturally, about balance – a marriage between offense and defense that lay at the foundation of all fighting games.

Even disregarding my discussion about Flow, Avatar Legends is both intensely pick-up and play, and aggresively rewarding to improve at. With only three attack buttons, a quick auto-combo, Flow as a means of both closing the gap, tipping the scales, and protecting oneself – anyone can pick up a character in this game and have fun. With that said, each character’s kit is intelligently designed, creatively adapting the characters from their appearances in the show in the context of a 1v1 2D fighter. Toph can use earthbending to fight at any range, bring opponents toward her, and create earth pillars for free combo extensions. Zaheer’s unique, aggressive airbending is complimented by assist moves from other members of the Red Lotus, allowing for combo extenders as if Zaheer is playing Marvel vs. Capcom. Korra’s MMA-inspired martial arts are weaved together with her control over all four elements for generous control over the mid-fight, as well as a multitude of follow-up moves – something that Zuko is also designed around. Azula can create carpets of fire to control the field in addition to being a viable rushdown character in a game full of defensive options.

One of the most beautiful things about Avatar Legends is how it feels like there is always an answer to anything your opponent is doing, and a lot of this variety comes from just how diverse and well thought out the game’s small roster is. If Azula is too controlling over the mid-fight, you can use Zaheer‘s flight or Aang’s air scooters to fly over those carpets or chase her down, respectively. Conversely, if Toph is tracking you from across the stage with her seismic sense, you can rush her down and ensure she has no control. It always feels like there is a solution, not just thanks to Flow, but also thanks to the careful consideration placed in this game’s characters.

Part of the reason I haven’t been bothered by the lack of a Ranked mode at launch is because it has created the unique opportunity for players to just experiment without fear in casual matches. Even if another player is well above their skill level, they can still rematch as many times as they want and learn, which I value far more than an arbitrary ranking. This kind of thing allows the core design of Avatar Legends to shine brightest, and I can only hope this game’s future is as bright as the one I see for it.

There’s more to say regarding this game, but I’d honestly be writing this for ages. Little things like full-powered supers only being usable if you’ve lost a round, and the numerous references to show laden throughout both each character’s animations, achievements, victory sequences, and voice lines, like when Sokka walks off-screen after saying “Water Tribe…” I mean, for fuck’s sake – Zaheer says “Say hello to the Earth Queen for me” whilst bending the air out of his opponent’s lungs in his Level 7 Super!

For its faithfulness to the look and feel of both Avatar and The Legend of Korra, its intuitiveness, depth, and its committment to balance in every sense – I have absolutely no problems recommending this game to anyone. I do not care about the game’s missing features or the quality of its story mode; if you and your friends have even a cursory interest in this game, and you like fighting games – hop into local or online VS and play around for a bit. You’ll understand what I’m talking about.