I remember as a kid getting very excited each week for the new episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender and during my recent rewatch of the series as an adult, I found it still worthy of all the excitement. With dynamic characters thrown into a world full of fun, danger, and loss, there is much to love when revisiting the series. So when I heard there was going to be an official mobile game, I knew I would at least have to check it out.
Avatar Generations is a turn-based RPG from developer Navigator Games and Publisher CDE Entertainment that launched today on iOS and Android. Players get to relive the journey of the Gaang and Zuko as they travel around the world exploring and learning. I was fortunate to get early access to the game and have spent the last few days playing it when I could. It has some very fun qualities, and, while I definitely enjoyed my first few hours with the game, there are a lot of faults that make me hesitant to recommend it to everyone.
The main adventure of the game takes place at the same time as the series, it even begins with Katara and Sokka finding Aang in the iceberg. However, being a simple turn-based RPG, Avatar Generation’s story is very surface-level and rushed to try and get you from one battle to the next. The characters feel like one-dimensional versions of themselves, taking their most notable trait and making it their entire personality (Zuko = Angry, Sokka = dumb funny). I am still only on the first section of the story, something I’ll discuss more later, so maybe the characters will evolve as you play more, but in the first few story beats they felt like mere cardboard cutouts of the original characters.
Speaking of characters, you get to build your own team filled with characters that you can unlock by progressing the story or summon using different stones and tickets. I was quite excited to summon Toph (one of my favorites from the show) early on and I am currently hoping I can summon Suki soon but we’ll see if I get lucky before the time runs out in her special event. When summoning, you have the chance to unlock new heroes or get new artifacts that you can equip to your characters to boost their stats. You can assemble your team in almost any way you’d like, aside from some restrictions. Certain areas have required elements like in the south pole you cannot use anyone from the Fire Nation and if you wish to visit the Southern Air Temple, you must include Aang in your party.
There are also variants of characters in the game such as a base Zuko and an Agni Kai Zuko. Each version of the character has different attacks and once I discovered that there were multiples I looked forward to creating a team of all one character only to discover you can’t use multiples of the same character more than once, even if it is a separate variation. I understand that it would go against the story elements a bit if I just walked around with four Aangs, but honestly, I wouldn’t be mad at that. It was interesting to create odd pairings when I was able to. My most unlikely team so far consisted of Aang, General Zhao, Season 1 Zuko, and Toph with an Owl Wolf as Support to buff the Offensive Type heroes’ Crit Rate by 5%.
Outside of the main story, there are also activities where you can battle bad guys and bosses to unlock more items. There are several stages of difficulties for each training arena, getting more difficult as it goes, but the gameplay is all relatively similar. You pick four heroes and you fight using each hero’s two abilities and an occasional combo with your squadmates when you built up your focus enough. Much like any turn-based RPG, the gameplay is fun, tasking you with clearing waves of baddies. This could not be a big issue if you’re someone who uses Auto-Battle but if you like to command your team every step of the way, it can get repetitive. Perhaps that’s why Avatar Generations has quite a few timed waits placed around once you finish the first few areas.
After finishing said few areas, you must begin to collect Adventure Points to unlock the next area. To collect Adventure Points you need to explore previous locations, travel between spots there, and complete timed events or battles to re-explore the area and unlock more Adventure Points. After taking over an hour to get 100 Adventure Points to unlock the Southern Air Temple, I then blazed through the temple with the Gaang, who I had buffed up with training activities while waiting for timed events and traveling to finish while collecting my points, only to find that the next area required 600 Adventure Points to get to. I have still yet to acquire enough, hence why I haven’t progressed as far into the story as I would’ve liked to.
The visuals of the game vary depending on what you are doing. The icons, cutscenes, and promos for unlockable characters is reminiscent of the show. The actual battles have 3D renders of the characters and the travel screen has chibi versions of the characters that walk between markers. The story is delivered through the visual novel-like dialogue sequences with a few cut-scene moments that do have voice acting. The characters also have catchphrases they say during battle and humorous one-liners in the hero menu that match the show versions of themselves quite well. Avatar Generations also features Asian-inspired music that fits each area nicely.
Before I get to the next section, I do want to mention that my thoughts on the game are based on the early access build with the smallest bit of the day-one release version (not for lack of trying). Therefore, any issues I discuss may get corrected with future updates, But as of now, I have had issues all day today getting into the game. Currently, my account is logged out and all the progress I was able to make this morning, which included summoning 2 more characters, leveling up, and gaining quite a few Adventure Points, appears to have been lost. I’m hoping once I can log back in that it will be there, but I will have to wait and see. During my early access playtime, I also had an issue with very long wait times for travel between markers within an area (specifically the Wolf Cave in the South Pole) and with timed events once I got there. It would take ten minutes to walk to the next marker only for it to have five lines of dialogue before a thirty-minute wait while your character looked for resources (or something similar), and then repeat. This was a big reason for my lack of progress as it took a long time before I could reach the next marker and gain more adventure points, however, that could simply be based on area as my small time revisiting the Patola Mountain Range to get Adventure Points has had shorter wait times overall so far.
If you are a big fan of turn-based RPGs and the show and are looking for a game to play in short bursts throughout the day, then check out Avatar Generations. Outside of that, the game is repetitive and it simultaneously rushes through the story while taking too long to progress. All that is to say, it would not puncture the hull of an empire-class Fire Nation battleship, leaving thousands to drown at sea. Because it’s not so sharp. However, the game is free-to-play so, if you have the time, it is available now to download and play on both iOS and Android devices. Early access to the game was provided by the publisher for review.
