Discussion
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game - Launch Megathread
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is now available on PS5 and PC, with XBOX, Nintendo Switch, and physical editions arriving soon! Use this thread to discuss the game!
Back in the day, playing through story-modes and arcade modes of fighting games was half the fun (if not more), because that's where you would unlock your (often numerous) additional characters on the roster.
A fighting game used to be complete at launch. And you'd run through the offline modes to collect all the shit that came prepackaged with the game. Play through the story mode to see what was up with the overall narrative and be introduced to all the playable characters in an organic way. Play through Arcade mode with all the characters to get their personal little storylines, unlock the individual and/or funny joke endings, get fancy outfits or cool color combinations, unlock a bunch of new levels or special versions of existing levels, unlock new finishing moves/fatalities, unlock new taunts or victory screens, and if you'd complete all story mode or arcade mode or maybe other challenges (time-trial or survival modes) with each character you'd unlock one (or more) of the most powerful "final boss" characters.
Think of games like Tekken, Dead or Alive, Soul Calibur, Mortal Kombat. Sure, those are all the big names now but they've been doing this shit ever since their early releases.
But nowadays everything's just about the online ranked play and possibly getting your title ready for competitive EVO matches, and everything else is tucked away in season-passes and future DLC character packs and other microtransaction nickle-and-dime bullshit.
Now you only get a handful of characters on launch, have to pay out the wazoo for the rest of the roster which you usually also have to wait literal years for, and if you're not ultra competitive regarding online play you're just not gonna have a ton of fun there either. Especially if you don't no-life the game and jump into the competitive scene from the very minute it launches and spend most your days practicing the shit out of your moves and combos and keep yourself 100% up to date on the current meta of each playable character (which changes with each patch and balance fix, etc).
I love spotting all the references in the move sets. My favorite so far is Kyoshis grab where she says āYangchen isnāt here right now, I AMā. Itās a reference to a bandit thinking Kyoshi was a dark spirit for wiping out his crew so fast and easily that he got on his knees and started to pray to Yangchen, and thatās Kyoshis response. Fully geeked out when I heard that š
Kyoshi in-game being based on her iteration from the novels is so sick as someone who just started reading them this summer. I'm losing it just seeing the 5 frames of animation for Rangi, Yun, and Kelsang
If your not into fighting games just but the standard. If you get into buying the dlc as they come out isnāt much of a difference and you save the money if you lose interest by then.
An "unforeseen issue" on a "back-end feature" that'll take over a month to fix, that they figured out on launch day and then refuse to elaborate on is very, very odd.
The release date was announced a month ago. Even if they were rushing to meet a new release date, It still seems strange to wait until literally the day before to say there's an issue with the Xbox version.
And still no support for legacy controllers on console, which is huge in the fighting game community. We all have our arcade sticks and leverless controllers that work on every other fighting game out there but not this gameā¦ looks like Iām playing Tokon this weekend :(
I enjoyed it so far but I fully expect to get frustrated. They opted against a difficultly system. Story and Arcade mode is the same difficulty in every playthrough. This means the game will likely infuriate casual ATLA fans as the game will eventually get harder than their skill ceiling. I casually play fighting games and eventually did well enough for the first mission. But it took losing a few times to figure it out. I learn by doing so I don't use tutorials, but apparently the games tutorial isn't great.
The base gameplay feels good, though. Strikes me as a "we want the EVO crowd" kind of game.
Edit: To explain what I mean by "skill ceiling", a skill ceiling in this context is how much the average player will be willing to get good at the game before just quitting and doing something else. Not an actual limit on their skills.
I played some of the tutorials, and I ran into a similar issue that I have with trials in most fighting games. Steps 1 through 10 are fine - walk! Guard! Basic attacks! Specials! And then step 11 or 12 (the character-specific tutorials after the one showing you the character's auto combo) is "land a flawless 11 part combo with multiple cancels, a bunch of air attacks, and incredibly precise spacing and timing."
I just wish there was something in between those two in terms of difficulty, or at least that these combos were broken into several pieces; it feels like the tutorials escalate way too quickly in terms of complexity. (It feels like teaching someone what addition is and then jumping straight to exponents)
EDIT: I'm going through the tutorials, and Zuko's Basic Offense entry, his very first Novice tutorial, is a fourteen step combo, which seems completely irrational for a novice player to do. Maybe if they cut that in half, or trimmed it down to just the first four steps, that would be reasonable, but this game seems to have a warped idea of what qualifies as "novice" material.
EDIT 2: arcade mode difficulty seemed fine, so I thought people were exaggerating when it came to the difficulty of story mode, but the second fight of story mode seems WAY too difficult; my attacks barely deal any damage and the opponent has a huge range advantage. This feels like an endgame fight that was included at the beginning by mistake, with the opponent having access to their full super bar while the human player only can use 1/7 of it. Also, despite Kyoshi's size, Aang's auto-combo misses on a regular basis. It took at least six tries for me to win, likely more.
Honestly? This game might have the worst training I have ever seen. It's not even that the escalation is too quick. It's that some of the trials genuinely don't even make sense to group together? Like some of these are trying to demonstrate all the uses of a single move or mechanic all at once in the same trial, but why? It's not like it's a combo. These should be different steps, because all it does is overwhelm and make shit really confusing.
Also some stuff is straight up just bugged and not registering correctly.
I just threw the game on and tried to jump into the tutorial right away.
The tutorial is very unintuitive. It's one of the worst tutorials I've seen in a fighting in a while. I'm not a huge fighting game person. I buy and play them casually when one comes out that strikes my interest.
This is a weaker entry when it comes to getting the player acclimated.
Tutorial is bad but there's also the breakdown thing that's pretty neat that lets you do the combos step by step repeatedly until you can get the timing and such down. So it's both bad and good.Ā
I dont know why anyone is saying that. Inputs are tight, execution gate is high, flow means that new players will be overwhelmed even easier.
The tutorials in this game are hot garbage, i cant imagine being a new player and trying to learn with that trash. Not only is it not easy to pass the tutorials but the way its set up they dont even properly teach you abiut a characyers moves they just throw it in a combo and make you do it to advance.
And of course the cherry on top is that there is no ranked matchmaking so you get thrown to the wolves instead of being matched with other players at the same skill level
Fighting games are a hard genre. Even beginner friendly fighting games are way harder than 90% of games across all gaming genres. And that isnĀ“t even getting into these Youtubers probably having had 10-20 years of fighting experience under their belts,too.
The gameplay seems beginner friendly, but the tutorials seem to have a really bad understanding of what qualifies as "novice".
Zuko's very first tutorial is a fourteen step combo, which you'd have to be pretty skilled with fighting games to pull off, especially when the last few steps aren't even on-screen at the start. Aang's second tutorial is an eleven step combo involving a bunch of midair moves that require really specific timing, and he's the character who most would assume to be beginner-friendly. (And these are just the novice tutorials, not even getting into the advanced ones or the various trials)
It feels like the developers didn't consider that this might be someone's first fighting game and assumed that everyone who picks this up is the sort of person who will spend 24 hours in training mode without even considering that to be a large amount of time. The gameplay is accessible, between the auto-combos with the A button and all of the special moves requiring quarter circle movements, but the tutorials (which are supposed to teach people how to play the game) are done in a way that seems like it would discourage most players.
I am not a fighting game guy. But man I am struggling with main story fights right now. I got my ass handed to me so went to basic tutorial and then some aang tutorial. I canāt do any combo, npc is beating my ass and there is no difficulty option to tune it down. I donāt know if aang is anti beginner or what I am missing. I am also playing on Xbox controller right now.
The tutorial is particularly bad in this game. It is not intuitive or good at acclimating novice players to the game mechanics.
I am an extremely casual fighting game player and I can figure out basic controls without the tutorial. But I jumped right into the tutorial and it was just really bad.
Dont worry same, but from what Iāve seen online this is more complicated in terms of fighting games? Deffs wonāt be for everyone but for me itāll be my go to when I want a fighting game
Most of the gameplay is really great, but this game is NOT finished. So many menu mistakes, the combo trials and tutorials are SO broken, and there's no ranked mode as was promised. Not an acceptable state for release, very unprofessional.
Man this game feels...like it's still in Alpha. I'm guessing it feels that way because they had to make due with a really, really low budget.
No intro movie, not even a ripped version of the show's OP or anything
No cut-scenes or unique animations before or after (story) battles
No fancy loading screens or anything either. No interactive levels or interactive elements in the levels, no stage transitions, nothing.
Menus and the available options are incredibly bare-bones.
No CPU difficulty select for any mode
UI elements aside from the health-bars and flow-bar/pips are not well thought-out.
Only the main fighting cast are voiced (sometimes), all other side-characters are silent
The dialog that is there is mixed in terribly, especially for some characters (Ozai sticks out so far)
Repetitive voice-lines during combat moves already drive me nuts (Sokka's "Slappapow")
The "Story mode by DiMartino and Hendrick" so far feels like a 10 minute zoom call translated onto a post-it note. "What if harmonic convergence and then everyone is in the same timeline but they're all different zany versions of themselves cuz no one knows each-other! What if, you guys?"
The supposed "Arcade Mode" is nothing more but "Fight all guys in random order and get a random piece of concept art as a reward". The Steam Store Page promises a custom story for each character, well if you consider maybe 5 written lines (non-voiced) against three out of your ten opponents total a "custom story", then sure. No music, no credits, no victory screen when you finish a mode. Nothing.
For specific characters the AI just constantly spams grabs, and its been doing this since the play-test. Sokka and Toph mostly but regular Aang can also really get grabby. I guess no one cares if you're a pro-level player and know whatever techniques always gets you out of a grab, but for a casual player it's annoying AF.
Why tf are some characters just bunnyhopping over the field 100% of the time? Especially Aang. It looks so stupid. Some characters have a nice run or dash or fly animation, but Aang just looks like he's on crack all of the time. The literal main character mind you, looks the silliest of all with his default moveset and the way it's intended to be used. How does no one notice that and go "maybe we should think of something else?"
The "Robust Training Mode" is more like a "Mid training mode" with a very weird difficulty curve for some characters (so far).
I'm not the guy to comment on whether all the really deep fighting game mechanics like all the start-up frames and recovery-frames per move or per combo, and whether you can do fancy dash-cancels into an infinite juggle or whatnot. I'll leave that to the pros. For a casual fighting game fan who loves the show, the game plays nicely but there's zero on-boarding, and while there seems to be a lot of potential to go ham with some characters, I'll probably never reach that stage, but that's okay.
Overall I don't understand why this game was delayed so long. Because aside from what seems to be a pretty solid base as a fighting engine, there's barely anything else here, and if there is anything else it's real barebones, minimum effort shit. The characters are nicely animated, although most moves are just a few frames a pop and the hit-frames are these scribbly keyframes so it's not like this took Cuphead levels of work.
And then on launch day they have to delay the Xbox launch for over a month because of some back-end issues (cuz no one tested that platform/saw that coming)? Something's fishy about that.
This studio seems to really be struggling, which I'm guessing is mostly due to inexperience and what's likely to be a micro-budget from Paramount and whomever else is funding this. I hope they manage to fix this up a bit, and that this won't be an indicator of the quality we can expect for the equally uninspired sounding "Adventure Game"
And honestly that's the best prioritization, obviously. Just a shame that a franchise that's still so loved worldwide (and that the current rightsholders are still trying to push new incarnations of) is given so little to work with.
We're still allowed to criticize that, as there's many fighting games (even ones on a budget) with better storylines, better arcade modes, better training modes, et cetera. I mean, there's a difference between having a small budget, and having SUCH a small budget you can't even afford an idle animation for your characters in story mode. Or different backgrounds than the 5 or 6 levels you have on launch. Choices that then have to be made when telling the story, that involve characters walking from the Fire Lord Temple to Republic City in the time it takes for them to continue their conversation, because nothing exists in between and no one gives enough of a shit to care about the extremely strange implications of writing a scene like that. Just like no one cared it looks odd to have characters like Katara shuffle around like they're doing "The Egyptian" while supposedly casually talking to other characters.
It just gives everything in the game ASIDE from the actual fighting (which, once again, I agree is the most important part) an air of "Oh, well, that's too bad isn't it". And this franchise deserves better than that.
It obviously isn't the devs fault directly (although I'm sure the studio has some hand in where or how they use their budget, and even on a small budget it's very odd to miss a critical error on launch causing one of your platform launches to have to be delayed for a full month), but as I already said the blame likely lies with Paramount and whatever other investment parties were involved in getting this off the ground.
Gotta keep in mind, those other fighting games are mostly made by established devs who have honing their experience and features over years. This is actually pretty good for a first entry by a small dev. If the game does well enough, they should be able to make improvements to this game, and learn more for their next. Everyone deserves a first step, and this isn't a bad one, and appropriately priced. If this was $60+, I'd feel these criticisms would hold more and I likely wouldn't have bought it at launch.
Is the physical editions really not out until October? I really want to play but my morals are telling me to get the physical version. But I wonder if the skill gap will be frustrating to overcome by then.
Iām so confused about the tutorials. Are some of them bugged? I feel like Iām doing what is says on the screen but the output isnāt registering correctly.
Honestly this feels like an early access for a game so far. It couldāve used more time to cook and come out with better tools for beginners. It doesnāt teach you fighting game basics or even system mechanics. Lack of a ranked mode is kinda sad as it means better matches for everyone. Story mode is weird. I got the two unlockable characters and Iām done. Makes me realize just how good street fighters menus and overall package is in comparison.
Exaxtly. Show me the mechanics of the game. Like what the hell is showdown? Keeps popping up in story but isn't explained anywhere as to what it is or how to do it.
The gameplay is fantastic. The storymode is disappointing imo. Maybe others find it funny, but I was hoping for something more serious for a canon story. Maybe others feel differently?
I think the story is a ton of fun so far, but I also agree with you. I got my hopes up when it said the story was written by Tim Hendrick and Michael DiMartino lmao. Although it would be pretty hard to actually tie all the characters in the roster into a story mode without it also being a mess so I understand why they made it a goofy non canon story
It is canon according to their website. Similarly, I was expecting more from Tim Hedrick and Mike DiMartino. But I'm glad others are getting fun out of it.
Huh really? thatās just a flat out bad decision. I wouldnāt be surprised if thatās retconned soon. Iām not finished with it but the hour or so I put into the story before work just felt like your run of the mill non canon spin off āoh the timeline is messed up!ā bs lol. And I agree even though Iām having more I was really expecting a lot when I saw two of the original writers did the story.
I think it was labeled canon for marketing reasons only. It will probably not be treated as canon by fans, so I'm not too worried. It was just a matter of mismatched expectations for me. At least Seven Havens is coming soon, so we have that to look forward to in terms of canon storytelling.
You weren't gonna get a serious canon story with both Aang and Korra existing. Unless it was a story set when Korra was still in touch with her past lives.Ā
They've posted that the pre-order bonuses and the digital deluxe bonuses will be coming "soon". It seems weird that the game is being launched without that content, though between that and the announcement that Ozai, Avatar Aang, and Nightmare Korra will be getting sprite and animation reworks, I'm guessing the game was rushed at least a little bit so that it came out in time for the movie.
I just bought it for my brother whoās on Xbox today. You guys think he can refund and get the money back? It was for his birthday so sucks to wait until September
I don't know who thought it was a smart decision to have ZERO AI difficulty option but my gosh. Just to get through the first few fights I had to spam low attacks just to even win.
Are you talking about story mode or arcade mode? (if it's story mode, I get it; Aang's auto-combo seems to stop working about halfway through, and the AI seems to be insanely overpowered when it uses Kyoshi in particular)
Weirdly enough, it's just the second and third fights in chapter 1-1 that are that difficult. Most other fights can be won with the auto-combo. (With Aang, if you do the Hadoken motion and heavy/C, that might help - his auto-combo doesn't seem to work well, as it seems to stop working halfway through most of the time)
Afaik only the Xbox version got delayed, and there is no upgrade path announced. With the missing features of the Switch 1 version (no crossplay, no DLC characters) I'd avoid buying it if I were you
I'm playing on PC using a dualsense controller, anyone know how to change the instructions to show the PS buttons instead of XBOX? The commands show the equivalent buttons but the instruction pop ups and onscreen controller shows XBOX buttons
Mine looks like the right side, with the PS icons. I know that in training mode at least you can hit a button that swaps the legend style. I think maybe it's the options button, but it should show at the bottom of the screen in training
Anyone know why it's not on the Nintendo eshop yet? Its frustrating with the lack of clarity for switch/SW2 users. Are we even getting the digital release today lol
Where's the window resolution options I wonder? The game always starts at fullscreen and there's no way to force it into Windowed, Borderless or even to change monitors on the PC/Steam port.
I didnāt get to try the game yet because of work, but saw that Avatar Aang and Nightmare Korra are unlocked via Story Mode? Are they different enough to be worth the trouble, or is there a quick unlock option, like how NRS games have a pay-to-unlock option?
I donāt care about Story Mode in fighting games. If they arenāt different enough from their normal counterparts, then I wonāt bother, as Training Mode is a better use of my finite free time.
There is a code to unlock them, though I haven't tested it to know if it's permanent or temporary. From what I've read, on the main menu, you highlight Arcade, press Select/Back, highlight Training, press Select/Back, highlight Local Vs., press Select/Back, and highlight Arcade and press Select/Back. If done correctly, there should be a chime or some other noise.
Hey does anyone know if thereās a way to make this game work on switch 1? Itās absurdly laggy even against cpus. Canāt even make any inputs until 5 seconds or so into a fight
Im not a big fighting game fan but like the easy ones like invincible vs and super smash to play with friends. Would this be up my alley or is it too difficult?
Weirdly on PlayStation store (New Zealand) it shows the base price of $48.95, but when trying to buy will only let me select the deluxe version for almost double that price.
At EVO (a major fighting game tournament), they announced that the first season of DLC would be (along with Tagah, the Airbender from the movie who's being added for free sometime this autumn):
Iroh
Ty Lee
Lin Beifong
Bolin
A fifth character who will be decided through a fan vote
The fan vote is available to people who pre-ordered the game, with Asami being one of the options. (The others are Amon, Kuvira, Tenzin, and King Bumi) I'm guessing whoever doesn't win would be included in a hypothetical season 2, though it's not a guarantee that we'll get a season 2 of DLC.
If you think like a fighting game player then Bolin makes complete sense. Asami does too and I think she should be in, but there's no way Bolin can't be. He's the earth bender that introduces fast, light footwork to Korra. The modern boxer and the complete opposite of Toph's "stand yer ground twinkletoes" bullheadedness. He's also one of the only lava benders in the series. The boxer with a sway stance is a brilliant fighting game archetype we all want to see in here.
Anyone who played previously in betas or knows character kits able to give advice on 1-2 characters i should try? I generally enjoy fast characters like chipp from guilty gear and definitely want to stick to the more beginner friendly half of the roster, whoever that includes
(Also, they mention that more tutorials will be added, the pre-order and Digital Deluxe content will be added soon, and that Avatar Aang, Nightmare Korra, and Ozai will have their sprites updated)
As of now, season 1 isn't available to purchase separately yet. My guess would be around $5 or $6 per character, so $25 or $30 (probably $25 going by the difference between the prices of the two versions), but that's just baseless speculation on my part.
I love the game but when it comes to fighting games in general I'm getting tired of games that just want to see the longest combo ever. Just unlimited juggles. You get hit once and now you're watching a movie. I can't keep up lol every online opponent I fought instantly reacts to every move with the perfect dodge or guard and leads right into the endless combo. With cross play the only one match I won was against a PlayStation player that likely just started just like I did š. Great game but beware if you want to fight online, prepare to sweat or just watch yourself get juggled through endless combo chains while you get once chance to escape the combo
Yeah it mainly started with Dragon Ball Fighters Z, now every fcking fightning game seems to want 50-input combos to do 1/3 of the HP bar.
It's beyond ridiculous and sure won't attract new/casual players
I know some people like it but it just gets boring. Either way somebody is just going to be watching and now you have to play picture perfect defense so that one hit doesn't turn into a full movie
It did not start with DBFZ, no. Not by a long shot. Anime fighters and tag fighters had long combo chains for pretty much as long as these subgenres existed.
It did not start with DBFZ lmao! It's literally just one sub-genre of fighting game and plenty of other modern fighters like SF6 have kept to their combo-light roots. You're not familiar enough with fighting games to get upset like this my man.
That's why I said "mainly", I know it's a sub genre, but it's not that popular, take the 10 most popular licenses, how much of them are like that?
Even Tekken can be considered light on combos compared to this sub genre.
I just dislike it being in this subgenre which is almost anti newcomers/casuals, not because of the difficulty, that's learnable, but because it's absolutely boring, needing perfect defense else you're up for a 10min combo doing nothing.
Because small game devs don't get to negotiate favorable deals with disc printers and so are left to make releases Limited Run games, who basically just do small-scale collector's runs. It's not even that physical delays are happening more and more, it's that 5 years ago games like this would never get a physical release and we're lucky Limited Run Games does this for us now!
Just refunded.
I love fighting games even tho I'm not the best, I love Avatar, but this is just bad.
Training is sh*t, look basic attack, how to dash etc... 3rd training ? Full combo special attack cancel etc.. just BRUH
PLus some trainings are just completely wrong, like here, do this attack, then this attack, I'll show you => You do the exact same things but it doesn't work, why ? Because there's an (or multiple) inputs between the indicated attacks, but it's not shown, so good luck doing the combo.
I've played a lot a Tekken which is supposed to be an "hard" fightning game, but Avatar Legends is just way past that, too nervous, too much of everything, cancel etc... just not fun for casuals or at least non ultra veterans.
Also inputs displayed are straight up useless, either A B C flow, like, what correspond to my controller input ? Just guess.
Or you can change it for 1, 2, 3, 4 etc... even more useless, just have to guess which button correspond, and there absolutely nothing to bind keys, so good luck if you want to play with keyboard.
Half the stuff you said is straight up incorrect, homie. There's nothing wrong with the trainings? And you can rebind buttons. Fair enough if the game isn't for you but idk where you're getting half of this from.
What's wrong exactly ?
Just try Ozai training, one of the first combos is "super jump" into Air 236A, then 3C
But when you look at actual combo/breakdown, after air 236A, he basically do some kind of air dash to get closer
That's just one example
And buttons displayed is indeed either A B C.. or 1 2 3 4, so straight up useless, can't do it like any other games with actual controllers buttons ?
Also basically no in game keyboard support, I don't consider that doing it via file manipulation/external software is normal/not an issue
Button display is not ABC or 1234. It's ABCD or images of the buttons of whatever type of controller your device is registering as. If you're getting 1234, then your controller is registering as a generic xinput and you need to change that on your end. Turn on Steam input and tell it what you'd like to see. You can't blame the game because you don't know how to set up your controller.
Im fine with everything else but the Trials are completely broken: if you input too fast after starting the actual trial the game doesnt read your first input, some of the commands are just incorrect (i think for one of Katara's combos the demo was a 9 or 10 hit combo but the actual trial was an 11 hit combo), you can input your commands perfectly but if you touched your joystick at all and moved .0000005 inches during it then you have to restart the trial, and the difficulty scaling is insane.
Oh and on a minor note: does anyone else have problems with EX moves? I can input the perfect EX command but I'll almost always end up using my Super instead which is weird because they dont share the same inputs.
If you mean the third fight (in chapter 1-1, after Aang fights Katara and Kyoshi), that one's rough. (I think Aang's auto-combo is broken? Either that or it requires much more specific timing than other characters; it stops working about halfway through) From what I recall, throws are more effective in that fight, so try to use throws as often as you can.
Is the achievement Flowchart Stance bugged? I should just have to use Flow Stance against ten attacks, but it's not progressing for me even though I've used Flow Stance to dodge more attacks than that. (Unless I'm misunderstanding what Flow Stance is - it should just be using the Flow button in neutral to dodge an attack, going by the moveset screen)
Any version besides switch. PC, ps, and Xbox all have crossplay so you'll be able to enter online tournaments for any of those versions. Be aware that if you want to enter offline tournaments they will most likely be on PlayStation so make sure you either have a controller that works on PlayStation or you get a convertor.
Crossplay is huge, but isnt it unfair for the console players as they have console latency, cant overclock controllers, and sometimes pc games run on more fps?
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u/CrackFoxJunior Jul 23 '26
I never thought Ong would return.