As popular as they are within their dedicated genre circle, fighting games have never managed to get back to the same degree of mainstream appeal as they had a few generations ago. That isn’t to say that the established franchises aren’t still kicking around successfully, or even that there haven’t been some new contenders, whether indie or not, that have been a good time. Just in an average year, especially once you remove retro releases of some kind, you won’t typically see more than a handful of even reasonably-good titles in the genre make it to the Switch. Given that Avatar Legends is one such new combatant in the virtual ring, and based on characters from the popular animated series, there’s no question it’s got some core elements that at least help to draw some attention.

At a glance, this is actually a pretty amazing package, with terrific hand-drawn characters and backgrounds, some outstanding attack animations, and an overall style that’s simply all its own. It boasts a roster of 12 playable characters (two of which must be unlocked), quite a few of which have overall styles that feel distinctive, and what in the end is a control scheme that offers up some simplified short cuts like an auto combo that can be useful early on. There are greater systems and things at play as well, like your flow and spirit, but while there’s something nice about them being their own thing to help differentiate the game, the fact that they’re somewhat difficult to get aid in wrapping your head around could make this tough even for genre veterans to fully grasp, let alone just someone looking for a cool-looking Avatar fighter.

The first problem lies with the Tutorials that absolutely do put in an attempt to help get people onboarded, but at the same time seem more focused on pretty low-level general techniques, while doing a poor job of digging meaningfully into the game’s unique systems. I think one part of this problem lies with the game’s alternative terminology that doesn’t always clearly articulate what the player should be doing, but another is by using in-game button descriptions for many sections by default, not just sticking with the actual controller buttons people will use. What may be the most aggravating aspect of trying to get up to speed on your own though is that fighting the CPU feels far more ridiculous than normal. Put plainly, I’ve never played a game like this against the CPU and felt so consistently discouraged in trying to learn how to play with any technique. Yes, if you focus on cheap hits and chip damage, you can beat the CPU opponents consistently with cheese, but if you’re hoping to test out new combos and techniques you’re likely to just get thrashed. Most games would allow you to correct for this with a setting to adjust the CPU skill level, but there’s no such option here, just trying to learn a very fast-moving fighter against a CPU who’s more than happy to break out the can of whoop ass unless you’re simply being cheap. If you’re willing to dig in, and hopefully mostly playing against real people, this could be a refreshing change of pace and a good time, but otherwise I’d absolutely pass on this one until it gets some patching to improve its accessibility.