"I consider myself a pretty big sicko. I can name multiple characters from the franchise. I've read some of the comics and played the games. I enjoyed 2009's Avatar when I saw it in a big theater all those years ago. I liked 2022's Way of Water even more! And yet, I walked out of Avatar: Fire and Ash in December 2025 supremely disappointed."
"Okay, the truth is that I didn't just return in the hopes that the game would make me feel good about Avatar again. I was also curious to check out the big free update for the game that Ubisoft released last month that added a third-person mode, alongside a new paid expansion featuring a new area. I've yet to play the new expansion, which stars a character from the main game fighting back against the evil RDA and their Navi allies from the Ash clan."
"The first 10 hours or so of Frontiers of Pandora are bad. You're stuck in one location, the quests are forgettable, and for a good chunk of that time, you don't even have access to your Ikran, a flying dragon-like mount. Bleh! Boo! Bad. But, after pushing through it over the last few weeks, I've discovered there's so much to like about Frontiers of Pandora once you're past that crappy start."
Frontiers of Pandora starts with a weak opening that confines the player to one area, delivers forgettable quests, and delays access to the Ikran mount for roughly the first ten hours. A free update added a third-person mode, and a paid expansion introduces a new area and continues a conflict involving the Ash clan and RDA forces. After the initial slog, exploration, environmental detail, traversal, and emergent encounters create a substantially more engaging open-world experience. Focus on the core game's later content can reveal strengths that outweigh the problematic early section.
Read at Kotaku
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