Avatar Legends is a game for the sickos, with a Venn diagram that overlaps technical fighting and hardcore Avatar fanatics.
Avatar Legends wants us to feel like we’re a part of the Avatar world, gifted with all of its powers, flawlessly living in its magic and mysticism. We are in it, with our fists and our feet and some magic powers.
And you know what? It delivers on that, wholeheartedly.
The game is very much aimed at a hyper-specific audience, which I’ll get to in a bit. But I was pleasantly surprised at how well the world of the series translates into a fighting game. This isn’t just an IP grab; I hate to sound cliche but this is a full love letter to the license. There are moments when I feel like I’m THE AVATAR, I’m invincible, like I’m performing a dance, with moves that bounce into other moves that look and feel just wonderful.
I think it’s because of two things:
First, the game focuses on combo execution, so not just a series of combos but full on long chains that look scripted, like someone planned it out and we’re just watching a battle on the show. That’s because of the whole Flow mechanic, which is a great unique focal point for the game. It’s based on the values of mobility, and has different things happen for different characters. Some move in unique ways, some have 8-directional movements, some have hops. We combo those with the three attack strength buttons and it becomes a really impressive experience. And then we have special moves tied to their individual bending. Some of the characters have us executing each type of bend before we can enter a power mode, others can switch fighting modes – it’s really tied into the IP well.
And the second is that presentation. It’s fast fast fast and smooth smooth smooth. It has terrific cell-drawn animation, using the frames and effects and the little motions that the characters have to make it really something visually special. I don’t know too much about Avatar. I watched the first season of the original series before I fell off but all of the different characters in this, all of the heroes and villains, are terrific, are true to their nature (I went and read up on each of them a bit to understand their place in the shows), and the game has a solid, multi-chapter (and long) story mode, too, that ties them all together by almost going the multiverse route.
From an actual gameplay standpoint it’s extremely weighted on those combos. I feel like it’s not necessarily how well of a fighting game player that we are, but how well we can execute those combos. If we get locked into one then it could just decimate our health. I’ve fallen into the trap where I can get caught in one of my opponent’s combos and by the time it’s done almost a third of my life is gone. They can be a bit hard to break out of, too, because there is a level of precision needed. We can’t just block, we have to parry correctly, in other words.
I’ve actually found the online fighting to be much more accessible than the game’s story mode, which is brutal. The computer AI is overboard, and almost not that fun in spots whether in the story mode or in the arcade mode. It’s a bit much! At least online we’re all kind of learning this game at the same time. We’re doing shorter combos, or using and trying movesets from other games. And the matchmaking has been great because I don’t feel like I’m way over my head based on who I’m up against.
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game has a lot going for it, from a technical fighting standpoint, but it’s that love of the IP, the Avatar world, that is really an astounding feat.
This review is based on a Steam code provided to SideQuesting by the publisher.
This video first appeared on The SideQuest Live for July 31, 2026.
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