Avatar The Last Airbender – Quest for Balance is quite the mouthful, so I’ll discuss Quest for Balance for the remainder of this review. I like Avatar and have seen the series, both the original as Korra and read most of the comics by now – so when the new Avatar game was announced, I was hyped. Sadly, it’s 2023, so most fans will probably be disappointed by the style of the Quest for Balance. Why? Let’s dive in.
Story
So, Quest for Balance divides the show’s three-season story into 18 chapters, each roughly retelling an episode or part of the cartoon. However, the term “loosely” is used to describe the adaptation since the events of each chapter often focus on mundane aspects of the story, skipping over exciting parts in text transitions or 2D animatics that separate levels.
For instance, the first level has Katara and Aang exploring an unattractive wreckage of a Fire Nation ship where nothing significant occurs until a text box at the end of the stage explains that they set off a trap, saw the Fire Nation attacking Katara’s home, and had to hurry back. This is followed by a bland Temple Run knockoff where you collect coins while sliding on an otter penguin. It’s acceptable for an adaptation to modify its source material to fit its new medium. Still, how it’s been done in Quest for Balance renders the story incomprehensible for new viewers and unsatisfactory for long-time fans. The game reduces significant sections of the show to half-hearted, “and then this happened” exposition sessions. At the same time, players are asked to complete unexciting missions like delivering fruit tarts or punching faceless bandits for a meager reward.
Some of the show’s highlights are even told incorrectly or out of order, and they are frequently warped into strangely anticlimactic versions of themselves. For instance, almost identical fights against Prince Zuko are the boss encounters for three of the first four chapters, while the fight against the fierce panda spirit Hei Bai is merely a sliding block puzzle. Yes, another one.
Gameplay & Combat
Quest for Balance, a gaming title featuring Avatar as its theme, heavily relies on repeating mediocre activities throughout the game. The game is replete with multiple Temple Run-style sections devoid of any fun, recycled enemies and fights, and an abundance of block puzzles that, although decent, do not fit the game’s theme. The game mechanics seem to have been borrowed and then retrofitted with an Avatar theme, as it features a disproportionate amount of puzzles based on the simple premise that nobody, not even the Avatar, can jump while holding a torch.
The combat system in Quest for Balance fails to use the flashy bending powers that the game boasts of. Instead, it is a clumsy and unresponsive button-mashing experience. The game is either too easy to spam through or challenging to navigate due to the sheer number of enemies and their inaccurate hitboxes, which cause the player to get locked into constant knockdown animations. The game’s inaccuracy is best demonstrated by the fact that Sokka, a non-bender character, is the most potent fighter throughout the game. He can spam similarly strong attacks faster than any bender and has an ability in his skill tree that makes him immune to knockdowns. Although the player occasionally has to be strategic with their dodge or focus on enemies that put shields on others, the fights are generally repetitive and lack subtlety. Any potential nuance is lost in the jumble of the game’s one-dimensional combat mechanics.
Although Avatar: Legends of the Arena has flaws, the skill trees for each of the nine playable characters are a small bright spot. You can use Pai Sho pieces collected from quests to improve stats and abilities. While some of these improvements are only minor statistical bumps, others have a more noticeable impact on gameplay, such as Sokka’s ability. The progression system is nicely tuned, making me consider which character to spend my limited resources on as I progressed through the game. However, none of these improvements mattered much in actual combat, where the key to success was swinging wildly and occasionally using a healing item.
What could have been?
What’s particularly disappointing is how easy it is to see the bones of what this game could have been underneath. Quest for Balance, a video game, had some strong points but failed to deliver its promise. While the 2D animatic cutscenes were cute, the 3D animations were subpar throughout. The story was framed interestingly, with members of the White Lotus recounting the Avatar’s tales and providing details as they went along. Although some of the voices sounded alike, the few moments where conversations were voiced were surprisingly decent.
Regrettably, the game’s side activities were dull and repetitive fetch quests. Switching between teammates offered little variety in gameplay, as each team member had different flavors of the same button-mashing mechanics. The game’s retelling of the legendary story failed to respect the source material and instead shoehorned in overused, loosely related minigames. It’s not hard to imagine that Quest for Balance could have been a much better game with more development time. The game feels like the bare minimum required to justify its release and trick well-meaning parents into buying it.
“It feels like a 90s Action Adventure game, and that’s not directly a bad thing – just not in the 2023 standard”
The game offers a lot of content, consisting of 18 chapters that took me around 10-11 hours to complete. It also allows you to replay the game with all your characters and upgrades for 100% completion after finishing it, and there are even 19 bonus trials to complete. However, despite the abundance of content, the game fails to deliver an enjoyable experience due to its low-quality content and lack of creativity.
Conclusion
After playing Avatar: The Last Airbender – Quest for Balance, one can’t help but feel that we have been waiting for a game that lives up to the show’s potential. Unfortunately, this game falls short of expectations. While it shows what an Avatar game could be, the game’s choice of scenes to highlight is baffling, the camera and combat are clunky, and there are balance issues, block puzzles, and boring fetch quests. Surprisingly, Quest for Balance has arrived at this point as both an unsatisfying entry point for newcomers and a poor way to revisit it for dedicated fans. With more Avatar shows and movies on the way, it’s essential to have a game that does justice to the show, not something that feels like it was (and should have been) released in the nineties.
