Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance
When an adaptation ends up cramming 3 seasons into one game, you end up with this.
Genre(s): Action-adventure/platformer Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4/5 Xbox Series Xbox One Nintendo Switch Release Date: September 22, 2023 Developer(s): Bamtang Studios Publisher(s): GameMill Entertainment Country: Peru Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender Predecessor: The Legend of Korra (2014)

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Quest for Balance is an action-adventure game developed by Bamtang Studios (of Nickelodeon Kart Racers and Power Rangers Mega Battle fame) and published by GameMill Entertainment, based on the main Avatar: The Last Airbender series. It is the first Nickelodeon game after Big Time Rush: Dance Party to not be a crossover.

Why It Can't Save the World

1. The game tries to cram all three seasons of the original series into one game, and ends up rushing them altogether with 6 chapters for each book. While this practice actually worked for movie-based games like the LEGO Star Wars games, which this game seems to be inspired by, this concept doesn't really translate well for linear story-focused TV shows like Avatar: The Last Airbender because Book 1: Water is 18 episodes plus a double-length episode in the end which totals around 440 minutes (roughly 7 hours excluding credits/intros). Because of this, a lot of major important plot points are left out, changed, or just told in text. This leaves the story unsatisfying for Avatar fans and confusing for non-fans.
   • A lot of important scenes, including Imprisoned from Book 1, the Waterbending Scroll from Book 1, and the majority of Book 3: Fire, especially the first half, were also ignored. These factors combined cause the game's plot to become massively disjointed at best. AirspeedPrime in his review did a breakdown of which episodes were ignored, only shown in cutscenes/text, or actually were featured in-game.
   • One of the most biggest scenes of the finale, Sozin's Comet, where the White Lotus liberates Ba Sing Se, is just a glorified arena-style battle with Iroh and Bumi.
   • Katara does not have her Book 3 hairstyle and costume in this game at all.
2. It relies on the outdated fixed camera system which was common back in 3D PS1 and early PS2 era games. Because of the lack of camera control and how the game is structured around platforming at certain times, it makes some jumps on ledges more difficult than it should be.
   • Heck, even the LEGO games are using this camera when your play on the level, and you can freely your camera that introduced in the LEGO Batman 2, where you can doing the open world in this game.
3. The Nintendo Switch port, which was given out a day early from some retailers, suffers from a poor framerate, hovering at around 20 to 30 frames per second.
4. The graphics are outdated especially on Nintendo Switch, it looks like it came from PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 game.
5. The game alternates between genres and modes way too often. Aside from the combat, there are the following sequences;
   • There's also running sections that look like something off Subway Surfers. The first is through penguin surfing, and another is riding Appa through the Fire Nation fleet.
   • One boss battle, Hei Bai, is just a slider puzzle where you must deliver crates to the goal before attacking him. Prior to the battle, it looks like that there's nothing between the Gaang and the Hei Bai, but after initating the battle via a warning, you are immediately put into a slider puzzle despite nothing in the game implying a slider puzzle would be put into use. This is where the game's continuity becomes messed up.
   • The game is padded out by slider puzzles that do nothing but tank the pacing of the game.
6. Terrible production value. When rocks are removed via Earthbending, they just explode into a few tiny rocks.
7. Game breaking bug: Free Play Mode after completing the game (where you can replay the chapters with any character) does not let you play through previous sections which are required for certain achievements/trophies, therefore requiring you to start the whole game over to get the achievement. In Chapter 10: Lake Laogai, in Free Mode (this game's Free Play), you only spawn at the end of the chapter with no way to back track to get to a hidden chest required for a certain achievement. You also cannot replay the chapters normally in the Story Mode. In fact, the LEGO games, which this game is clearly paying homage to, actually got this right back in the original Star Wars games.
   • Another game-breaking bug is Katara's bending. While directly controlling her, you cannot perform her ability that would allow her to trap enemies with her ice attack because of how the input is unresponsive. However, if she is on the field controlled by AI, the AI seems to have no problem performing the ice attack. This makes Katara the most useless character to main during combat.
8. Artificial difficulty: During combat sequences, the other two AI-controlled party members do not take any damage. This makes many battles like the mecha tank miniboss incredibly frustrating especially with how difficult it is to dodge enemy attacks due to most characters having a weak attack range. On top of that, whenever the character you're controlling dies, its game over, even if the other two characters are still alive. Therefore, it makes switching over to another character required to survive certain battles necessary.
9. Sokka ends up being the most broken playable character because he has an ability that trivializes many fights via rendering him immune to knockdowns. Given how easy it is to get knocked down which is why dodging attacks is incredibly unreliable especially against 3 to 5 enemies at once with ranged attacks, this is why Sokka will be the only good playable character at times when he's available.
10. The lock-on system is unreliable and won't always lock on to every target. In one target practice mission where you have to use ranged attacks against practice dummies, the button for locking onto targets won't always lock-on despite being near it.
11. Many, many visual bugs, including where NPCs do air actions like digging with no shovel in their hands or walking in place. There's also scenes where you can airbend the Fire Nation banners on the walls and they'll end up clipping backwards through the walls.
12. One of the Spirit Trials where you have to defend a villager while playing as the Blue Spirit. However, when you first play through the challenge, you are expected to kill all of the enemies. However, that is not the actual way to complete it as the villager will end up taking unavoidable damage, you're supposed to tank the archers' arrows while waiting for the time to run out
13. The UI of this game is unoriginal and is copied somewhat from Genshin Impact.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The models, while still are rendered bad due to the badly done graphics, they are still faithful to designs from the show.
2. The story are still has some source material, even the story are very disjointed and rushed.

Trivia

• According to early leaked storefront listings, the game was originally supposed to be released October 7, 2022, before Cobra Kai 2: Dojos Rising took its original release date. Smartoys Be, a French retailer site was found to have leaked the information about the game a year before its release.
• It was rumored that the game was going to be an original indie IP, but got picked up and funded by GameMill to become an Avatar: The Last Airbender game.

Reception

The game received a negative reviews for Critics and Users alike. It criticsm for uninterested gameplay, unfinished story, glitches galore, and the graphics are absolutely horrible.

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