I'll start by saying that this is now my favorite fighting game just for the gameplay alone. It's fun, has interesting mechanics, and it's easy to start out with the auto combos and build on that. It also only costs $30 instead of $60 which is a big win.
The issue is that at the time of writing this review, the game feels..... Incomplete in some ways or just missing some things. I'll list some of them
1. Some of the combo trials are broken which I expected later on as characters changed but not at launch
2. some training mode options don't work as they should
3. no ranked currently
4. no ability to spectate
5. lobbies only allow 2 people(which means no king of the hill or anything like that)
6. no ability to rebind keyboard keys in game if you play on keyboard specifically
7. the macros don't work as they should such as the dash macro since it's just pressing 2 buttons at the same time (I use the dash macro to do ex moves instead and manually dash by double tapping forward/back)
8. No in-game friends list so no adding players from other platforms as friends.
9. The game doesn't explain certain things such as what the colours on the frame meter mean (or at least I couldn't find it)
10. Hard to tell what a move is by looking at the command list because it uses images instead of showing a short clip of video of the move being used
All or most of these things need to be improved for the game to at least feel polished as currently it feels like a beta, hence me describing it as incomplete. The gameplay just happens to make up for it.
Another thing I'll note here is that despite the game having rollback net-code, the connection with the same opponents I play other fighting games with us much worse. For example, playing with those nearby I'd have somewhere between 30-60 ms in Mk 11 and other fighting games to those in my country who have the same ISP as I which is the ideal situation. In this game it's over 100 with visual rollback. I've played games that didn't have rollback net-code like Sparking Zero DBFZ and even Ninja storm 4 that performed better under these circumstances so I can't praise the net-code currently. It works, most of the time thankfully however there variance even when I think there shouldn't be (once again I'm comparing it to other fighting games I play with and without rollback). It works fine with opponents far away however; like I mentioned it's just that those ideal situations I mentioned (lives relatively close, same ISP) feel less than ideal. I wouldn't be surprised it we were playing on relay servers or something as a result of this.
Despite all the issues mentioned above, I do still recommend the game, when you actually get into a fight with an opponent in game or you're just messing around, the gameplay makes you forget about these issues. But I still don't think it's acceptable to launch a game in such a state. If you love fighting the games, you'll love this game, if you love the Avatar franchise, and you're interested in the game, I think you'll still enjoy it if you give it a fair chance as my friend who isn't a fighting game fan really enjoys the game as well with mechanics such a flow feeling incredibly rewarding to use. I might update this review if these issues get fixed.
