Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game

Very innovative and old school. In a world where every new fighting game tries to be as modern and sauceless as possible Avatar feels like breath of fresh air. Characters are not just a couple of standart types specials and a super, they have so much tools and mechanics. The game screams personality. Every character is different, moves differently, plays neutral differently. Amazing.

Cons : Please fix the bug where in arcade mode/TRAINING mode (but not everywhere, only for certain characters and in certain parts), if space is set as jump/up, in the menus and character select, going up also selects. This results in not being able to go up at all without immediately selecting as well. So navigating and playing training mode, for example, is a huge hassle. I also just hate the business model of "you're gonna have to buy DLC", even when you buy the "Deluxe Edition" (which only contains whatever characters they release for the next year). Pros : This should be a NORM, but thankfully (and for now), the game has no microtransactions (outside the DLCs...). Please keep it that way. The animations are GORGEOUS. From what I understand, they're hand drawn. One thing I absolutely love are the smear frames, which you rarely see in games nowadays. You'll often see them in game over slowdowns at the end of matches, when someone hits you. I personally hate the art directions in games such as SF6, and this is a breath of fresh air. This game is perfect for people who think they're not into fighting games. I've tried playing SF6. I've tried a bunch of others. But certain things always bothered me in fighting games. One thing I absolutely love in particular is how much the game helps you in understanding what's happening, and the tools put in place in getting new players up to speed. I love Smash Ultimate, but one thing I didn't like is certain info about the game weren't communicated. Super armor for example. What does it do ? When is it active ? For how long ? During what moves, on what characters ? In AL, when you gain super armor, your character glows green. This is SUCH a simple thing but it makes such a difference. It allows me to quickly understand what I can and cannot do with a character. Or when I should and shouldn't use a move. There's also the fact that, since I can see that Toth has a lot of moves with super armor, she feels even more grounded to me, and even more like an earth bender. It makes me feel in sync with the game. What is prehaps my favorite feature is the "Breakdown" feature. In the tutorials, when you enable it, it allows you to practice sequences of event button-press by button-press. Did you not press a key in time ? Not only does the action pop up on screen first, but if you forgot which key is linked with that action, the key pops up next. All the while, the game is paused until you press it. What this results in is a mode where you can practice clumsily and slowly pressing buttons until you can do it in real time. Oh yeah, because this is just one of 3 modes that you have access to for any given tutorial : Demo, breakdown, or normal. I genuinely think that if Breakdown mode wasn't in the game, I might have refunded it. This is also a 4 button fighter. So it's simple to understand (for a beginner like me), while also going very deep. Also the controls are still very bugged for now, you can bind combinations of button presses to different keys, allowing you to use more buttons if you controller/keyboard/fingers allow it. The hardest sequences you'll have to do are also quarter circles, which, if you know anything about fighting games, is a blessing. They're very easy to do, and that's coming from someone who absolutely HATES having to do sequences like have circles, followed with precise button presses. The combos are also easy to grasp and remember, and are similar from character to character (meaning you'll press the same buttons). However, the characters feel VERY different. I'll stop here for now. Basically, if you don't know if you like fighting games, but this looks interesting, buy this. Try it out ! You're probably like me, and you might enjoy this a lot. Lastly, I'd like to point out that I'm a big ATLA fan. However, a franchise I like being used in a video game is never enough for me. I was prepared to be extremely harsh with this game, but it genuinely surprised me. Great job team !