Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game review: Fulfill your destiny

The Avatar universe is beautifully translated to a 2D fighter that's rich with tight mechanics and fun characters.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is the latest attempt to adapt the iconic animated series to video game form. This time, it’s a straightforward fighter that’s fairly simple to understand, but with a strategic depth that I’ve only scratched the surface of. With characters from both The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra in the mix, it’s a rewarding experience for fans of the source material, and a competent fighter that should appeal to the wider FGC community.

You can’t knock me down

As a fighter, Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game feels incredibly tight and responsive. There’s a tactile feeling to every hit, dodge, and super as you do the dance of battle with opponents. Match intros are fairly short, and players actually have a brief window where they can move around the stage before the fight actually starts.

As someone who has enjoyed his fair share of fighters over the years but wouldn’t consider myself a novice, I think Avatar Legends is pretty easy to jump into for a casual player. You can button-mash light attacks to execute simple combos, and specials are pretty simple inputs that are easy to get the hang of.

If you’re truly green, Avatar Legends has a pretty helpful tutorial, which not only walks you through the basics, but offers guidance on how to play each character. There’s even a “Breakdown” tutorial mode that slows down time to teach players the proper timing for combos and move inputs. It’s pretty intuitive.

Once I got a good hang of things, the work done by the folks at Paramount and Skydance really started to shine. The gameplay design is deeply rich, with countless ways to combo into and out of specials, get enemies in the air, and sustain hit streaks. It felt like every half hour, I was having a eureka moment where I discovered new ways to play my favorite characters.

The game features a mechanic called Flow that every character can use to dodge incoming attacks and unleash unique moves. Flow has a meter of its own, and knowing when to use it can help turn the tide of a fight, or apply pressure when your enemy is on the ropes. It’s a resource you have to manage, and emptying your meter will be punished by putting you in an unbalanced state, opening you up to stronger hits from your opponent.

The game utilizes rollback netcode, smoothing over some of the roughness that can sometimes plague the experience of playing fighters online. When matching with an opponent, players can set a frame delay in order to compensate for any latency or connection issues that could mess with their timing. After matches, it was quick and easy to jump into a rematch or return to the character select screen.

You gotta deal with it

The moment-to-moment action works so well because each character in Avatar Legends feels so authentically designed. Every character has a host of moves that includes their respective bending style (or non-bending in Sokka’s case), but furthermore, feels specific to who they are in the television shows. Aang, for instance, despite being the Avatar, primarily uses airbending for his attacks, whether it be zipping across the stage on an air scooter or descending onto an enemy on his wing glider. Korra, on the other hand, is a much more versatile Avatar, and deploys water-bending, fire-bending, earth-bending, and air-bending in beautiful tandem.

Katara whips and lashes her opponents with water, while Avatar Kyoshi bends elements with brute force. Defeating Azula in a round will cause her to return as Firelord Azula, the more reckless and deranged version of the character that fans saw in the final season of The Last Airbender.

There’s just such a close attention to detail with every character that it puts a smile on my face. I only wish that there was a bit more. The roster is composed of 12 characters, two of them being alternate versions of existing fighters (Aang and Korra). It feels a bit light, especially considering how many awesome characters didn’t make the cut.

The same can be said about the eight available stages, which are fairly static. I like them, but they grew repetitive after a few play sessions. I’d love some more oddball picks like the Pro-bending arena, the swamp, or the Boiling Rock.

Harmonic Convergence

The story mode in Avatar Legends, conceived by series co-creator Michael Dante DiMartino, envisions an alternate universe where the manipulation of time and space brings characters from The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra together. As the characters seek to understand this phenomenon, they find themselves making unexpected enemies and alliances.

I had a good deal of fun seeing characters from different points in the timeline interact with each other. It’s a fun “what if” spin on the universe that explores new character dynamics and lore in the Avatar universe. It even managed to catch me off guard with a couple of its surprises.

The story is a good way to learn how to play as (and against) everyone featured in the roster, as your perspective is constantly bouncing between characters as the chapters go by. The conversations between characters in between the fighting is mostly voice-acted, but it is a bit silly seeing them all sit there in their idle fighting stances.

Still, Story Mode felt like the right way to experience the game for the first time. Avatar Legends is a gorgeously animated fighter that takes massive inspiration from the original Nickelodeon show, with hand-drawn animation that makes each fight feel like you’re watching a battle unfold on the show.

The soundtrack features multiple songs and effects from the show, truly driving home the idea that this is a meaningful piece of the Avatar universe.

Avatar State

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game is a rock-solid fighter that manages to honor a beloved IP without compromising any of the sensibilities needed to succeed in this genre. The characters are interesting (even if the game could use more), and the skill ceiling feels incredibly high. Like the Avatar, a long journey lies ahead for players eager to master the elements.

This review is based on a Steam code provided by the publisher. Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game releases on July 23, 2026, for PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and PC. 

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Review for
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game
8
Pros

• Excellent character design
• Intricately detailed mechanics
• Intuitive tutorials
• Gorgeous hand-drawn animation
• Story is a cool "What if?" scenario

Cons

• Character roster feels a bit small
• Map variety is lackluster