Fight! and Fight. and Fight… and fightFight! Fight. Fight… fight
Although the DS was not the first console that I’ve played this game for, I received it as a gift and within the next two weeks ended up finishing this one before I finished my PS2 version.
I return to this game to provide relevant analysis, especially for those of you hooked on the current series Legend of Korra and for those of you who loved the original Last Airbender.
As this is one of my longer explorations, I’ve added both positive and negatives at the end of each section for your benefit. Feel free to peruse the sections that are most relevant to you.
Released in 2006,
Avatar: The Last Airbender for DS gives you the same feel as the animated series with the same characters, enemies, and eastern themes. The protagonists feature Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Haru.
While the heavy influence on fights does get tiring, the game has a lot of redeeming aspects.
So without further ado, let’s jump in!
Graphics: 8 / 10
With clear detail, the graphics are impressive. It’s easy differentiate characters and they look very similar to the cartoons from the original show. The quality of the characters allow for narrative scenes to take place within the game instead of alternate, clearer graphics. The text for narrative scenes take place in text bubbles within the game and they have decent clarity for reading.
On the other hand, the viewpoint makes for very limited range of sight. While you do get to change the viewpoint, you can only rotate it, which does not change range. Luckily, a mini-map is included and can be optionally kept running on the lower screen. However, it isn’t optional. Without the mini-map, you’re moving blindly through the game not knowing which way to go.
When I first started playing, I forgot about the mini-map, since it’s not automatically on, so I would only progress by randomly taking pathways. Somehow, I managed to find where to go for the first few scenes, but it was always a pain.
The rotation of the screen is necessary, too. If you’re not actively rotating, there are several places where the pathway is hidden behind walls. If you’re walking behind these, there’s no transparency; You’ll just not be able to see the character you’re controlling.
Special effects are decent. While not realistic, they aren’t cartoon-like either. Effects like fire do use detail and luminescence. Others, such as when airbending, only look nice from their effects on enemies.
A balance of simplicity and complexity of graphics helps the game. During combat, The HUD is very simple with few words. On the top screen, it simply comprises of two bars, one for your character and one for the enemy you face. On the bottom screen, you see the pictures of the different characters you can control: Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Haru (mostly less). Below that is your level and health bar, repeated. Besides, that the screen is empty, making distractions virtually non-existent during battle scenes. On the other hand, the bottom screen is full of detailed graphics during progression of the story, showing complexity.
With clear and precise details, the viewpoint and special effects only bring the score down to 8 / 10.
Positives:
- clear detail, characters look familiar and recognizable
- proper balance of simple and complex graphics
Negatives:
- bad viewpoint
- decent, but not impressive, special effects
Sound / Music: 6 / 10
While you won’t recognize the songs from the animated series, they do sound nice. They play on the fact that Aang is an airbender and often include drums and flute music. One downside to several of the sound-tracks is their happy atmosphere during dangerous battle scenes. On the other hand, the ones that are more serious are repetitive and get annoying when fighting a difficult boss that takes half an hour.
The sound effects only play during actions and aren’t excessive or annoying. They play softer than the music. Their quality is unmistakable and they do add to the gameplay.
However, the strength of the repetitive music tracks does distract and disconnect you emotionally from the actions of the game. Optimally they would have been softer and more relevant to the battles that comprise the game.
While the music sounds nice at first, they do drown out the sound effects and get annoying.
6 / 10.
Positives:
- sound nice
- stay with the “air-bender” buddhist theme
Negatives:
- get annoyingly repetitive during fights
- don’t necessarily match up with the fighting scenes throughout the game
Addictiveness: 4 / 10
While difficult fights prolong the game, the actual story is very short. This provides two problems for addictiveness.
One, the difficulty of the fights will tire you out. Boss battles are annoying. With a combination of control issues and very few hits for a boss to kill you, you’ll easily repeat boss battles a dozen or so times before finding the right strategy and implementing it. For me, it took several dozen times, initially, but still way too many as the game moved on. Because you’ll get stuck at so many places, you won’t get addicted.
Two, the short story makes it the game beatable in a matter of hours disregarding boss battles. Since most of the game is fighting, the seven levels story-line can get tedious and you’ll find yourself continuously battling for playing through the story-line, nothing more as the fun gets lost. While you might find leveling up fun, it’s only a matter of the number, since the actual process is irritating.
Side missions and money do add to the game, but I never found any addictive value in either.
Without an option for multiplayer, you don’t have any other option to relieve your boredom from single player. Anything on multiplayer, including more battles, would have helped with the addictiveness.
When you’ve done the side missions and trained, you’ll find little replay value to the levels. The fighting is tedious and one playthrough will be enough.
While you’ll find the storyline fun and like some of the collaborative fights, the single-player never does get addicting. 4 / 10.
Positives:
- interesting story-line
Negatives:
- lack of multiplayer
- short story with little replay value
- hard fights
Story: 7 / 10
You play in the same world in which the Avatar animated series is based. You initially start as Aang, an air-bender, but you get the opportunity to play as Sokka and Katara, water benders, and Haru, an earth bender. You improve upon the abilities of all four benders as you progress, evading capture and jumping from one area to the next including Omashu, an Air Temple, and finally, Lain’s fortress.
Side missions add to the story and prolong it, albeit a little; they take fifteen to twenty minutes.
While I didn’t feel that the story held true to the series, the types of adventures did. My only complaint would be the lack of length for the story.
On the other hand, the story is one of the main reasons I kept playing on difficult boss parts.
With a few problems, the story still rates an impressive 7 / 10.
Positives:
- gives you a reason to keep playing through difficult parts
- has depth
Negatives:
- doesn’t hold true to the animated series
- short
Depth: 8 / 10
With minigames, items, currency, side missions, and the battles for normal story mode, the levels do have decent depth considering the shorter length.
While several of these are linked, such as minigames, side missions and currency, you’ll still feel like there’s a lot to do in each level. While there are a few items in each level, some do take quite a lot of work to get.
On the other hand, the continuous fighting when progressing through the story sometimes makes the game feel shallow. However, the different characters you can choose and the difference attacks and defenses keeps it from detracting from the depth.
The splitting up of characters improves the depth. Moving through the story in the level often will have you participate in two different areas at once as groups of the characters split up. First you’ll fight on one side with one group and once you’ve won, your screen will switch to the other group Particular boss battles, such as at the end of the Air Temple and the Fire Navy Attack levels will require you to face your opponents alone as Aang as the rest of the benders are elsewhere.
Optimally, there would have been more depth in boss battles. Rather than finding a particular strategy to use over and over, I would have liked the difficulty to be toned down and more innovative scenes that make the fighting less repetitive and broken down into parts.
With clear depth, there is very little to complain about. 8 / 10.
Positives:
- hard to find items provide depth
- mini-games and side missions in levels
- normal fights have depth
Negatives:
- boss battles don’t have depth
- little replay value after completion
Difficulty: 9 / 10
There is both legitimate and illegitimate difficulty in this game that combine to make it very difficult.
Of the legitimate difficulty, the memorable ones are boss battles and item searches. Boss battles can be painstakingly tedious when you’re killed time and time again with just a few hits by a hard boss. When you continue, you start within the fight, but your health isn’t complete, so you’ll have to use items. Even with items, a few hits by a boss will be lethal. As one who hates grinding up levels beforehand, I did not go into the boss battles fully prepared and had to legitimately search for tactics to complement my items.
For completionists, item searches can be a headache. There are only a handful, but they’re well spread out. I have memories of tedious searches for herbs throughout the levels, but you’ll also find currency, strength and hp source, as well as weapons if you keep looking.
The illegitimate difficulty appears from in-fight errors and viewpoint. In TLA, you can’t run past fire benders. Just by running towards you, they will cause you to get put into the battle sequence. While fighting, your attacks won’t always recognize. Often slight misalignments with your opponent will show you as performing the action with no effect.
To make matters worse, the collisions in the game are not precise. Some bosses have attacks that throw you back. The attacks will be right beside you, but you’ll still get thrown back as if the metal claw or other mechanism hit you. This take away from your precious health bar and waste your items.
With both illegitimate and legitimate difficulties, this category scores high. 9 / 10.
Positives:
- You can’t get everything in a level easily
Negatives:
- gameplay gets tedious universally
- collisions are not precise
- you have to perfectly face an opponent to get a proper attack (and you don’t have the time)
Overall: 6.6 / 10
Graphics : 8 * 10% = 0.8
Sound / Music : 6 * 10% = 0.6
Addictiveness : 4 * 25% = 1
Story : 7 * 25% = 1.75
Depth : 8 * 25% = 2
Difficulty : 9 * 5% = 0.45
Sum = Overall Score = 6.6 / 10
This mathematical comparison of important categories leads to a respectable overall score of 6.6 / 10.
While the game had serious weaknesses, it had impressive strengths. I loved the graphics and depth, but could have done with less difficulty and more addictiveness. Since the last two are tied together, improving one would have helped the other. You do need patience to play TLA, so I don’t recommend it for everyone.
I do recommend it for you if you:
1. loved the animated series and want to see the characters encapsulated in a game
2. have the patience to level up and search for items before boss battles and the patience to work through numerous defeats during them
3. thrive on challenging, difficult levels
In these three cases, you might want to check this game out. If you aren’t of these three, I don’t recommend it since you’ll quit within an hour of playing.
If you’ve had experiences with it, please share! As someone who has played this game on several consoles, I’d love to hear your take on it!
Thank you for reading!
Graphics
8 Sound
6 Addictive
4 Depth
8 Story
7 Difficulty
9
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