Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has been a highly anticipated 2023 game since it was revealed in 2017. Not only because the Avatar franchise is well-known for its films but also because the word surfaced that Massive Entertainment, the company responsible for developing The Division series, is collaborating with James Cameron's Avatar production team to create this game. Despite expectations that the game would center on events from the two films, Pandora, rather than the RDA, Jake Sully, Neytiri, or any other familiar faces, emerges as the game's central character in Frontiers of Pandora.

Whether in the middle of the night in the forest or out on the vast plains of the terrible horse lands, Pandora is amazing. The world within Pandora is teeming with unique and exciting plants, animals, and items to gather, uncover, and create. Despite seven years of development and a mountain of promise, however, Frontiers of Pandora falls short in delivering engaging combat, an appealing progression circle, and a compelling narrative standpoint to keep players engaged.

The storyline of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is, without a doubt, the weakest I've come across in a video game. You are a Sarentu clan member and will play as Na'vi, one of the kidnapped children. Humans have arrived and eradicated your tribe, leaving just a handful of children incarcerated in re-education institutions, a program they're dubbing The Ambassador Program. In essence, they are attempting to create a new generation of superweapons by indoctrinating them with human values, education, and experience.

These children will supposedly be hidden among the Na'vi to bring down the Na'vi from within. But after that, everything starts to fall apart. Because the humans have decided to murder the Na'vi, and you have to escape. Unfortunately, events led to your cryogenic suspension; upon resurfacing fifteen years later, the Na'vi have located you and are pleading with you to assist them in their fight against the sky people. Despite the story's evident direction toward a standard one-man army scenario, it fails to captivate from the beginning. Having many cutscenes where characters describe the Fauna and Na'vi's link to Nature fails to help you understand what's really happening.

The customization possibilities are few, but you can choose one of three voices that will accompany your character as they play. You can always go back and alter your mind if you get something you don't like. After an hour of gameplay, you reach the hideout, which serves as the base of operations. Your mission now is to rally the other Na'vi tribes in this area of Pandora against the RDA and their threat of extinction.

One of the best parts of the game is getting to know the various clans for the first time. Each one has its own distinct way of life, issues that you may assist with, and approaches the fight against the RDA in its own way. Unfortunately, we only got to spend a brief time with each clan's few significant characters because they are all well-developed. Suddenly, you're told to switch clans and won't have any further meaningful interactions with the characters you've become devoted to.

Unfortunately, even though there's a ton of content to discover and the game is immense, there aren't any romantic possibilities or other side missions to help you get to know the characters further. However, the most significant issue I encountered was the game's depressing sense of isolation, which seemed out of place in a narrative about clans coming together to face a formidable enemy.

Chatting with specific NPCs at various camps will lead you to side objectives, some of which are far more involved than I had imagined. All of them have entertaining backstories that you may uncover on your own. Further details about the Na'vi culture will be revealed. You will engage in objectives in ways not seen in main missions, and you will have the opportunity to gain some rewards occasionally.

The gameplay cycle in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora grows increasingly repetitious very soon and stays the same throughout the game. Simply said, you're engaging in repetitive actions, namely, visiting and neutralizing bases. There are two ways to achieve each mission: stealthily or aggressively. You can concentrate on mastering conventional Na'vi weaponry, such as a grenade launcher, which is more similar to a slingshot or a typical bow and arrow.

Alternatively, you might concentrate more on perfecting your skills with shotguns and machine guns, which are more typical of human training. The only catch is that you have to repeat this process for every single task. Everything in the game boils down to landing on the spot, checking it out, pulling a few levers, and hacking a few panels. After that, additional collectibles and side missions will be unlocked.

Since each major mission comes with a prescribed level, this is also where the role-playing aspects enter the picture. For example, you can skip the side material and focus on the primary tasks. However, you'll find that the gameplay becomes even more difficult because you won't be scaled up for certain objectives at lower levels or with weapons that deal less damage, as if you're entirely mishitting the RDA.

Their health bars will stubbornly refuse to decrease on occasion after a shot. In most cases, you're forced to stay out of harm's way as much as possible; otherwise, you won't last long. Unfortunately, improving your weapon and increasing your gear score isn't as easy as it seems. Randomness and rarity characterize loot drops. Also, you'll need a stroke of luck if you come across a new piece of equipment or weapon—which happens very infrequently—and it's an improvement over what you're using now.

Going into battle unprepared and concentrating on leveling up your character is a surefire way to fail at the difficult, high-stakes combat. Unlike previous role-playing games from Ubisoft, you can accomplish all objectives using only the gears you begin the game. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora forces you to put money into the game, and you may do it through a talent tree that includes many useful abilities.

It is not groundbreaking, but now you can collect arrows after shooting them or earn more from gathering them. Additionally, you can unlock powerful Apex skills by collecting all the skills in the tree. The same holds true for cooking and crafting. Following the plot requires you to interact with these systems infrequently, and the cooking is where you'll find the most benefit.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is integral to several gameplay features, including the foraging mechanics. The gameplay relies heavily on the food and cooking mechanics. Cooking particular ingredients can, in essence, provide temporary active or passive benefits. For example, you can increase your speed by crafting a specific meal and then cooking and eating it.

Alternatively, you can improve your stealth abilities for 10 minutes via food crafting and eating it. In a style reminiscent of Tears of the Kingdom, you must travel the planet, hunt animals, and gather ingredients to make the recipe. Like Far Cry, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora would have benefited from focusing solely on the benefits. The gameplay gets even more complex without such a grind for gear scores and rare loot frequency.

A pleasant change of pace from other Ubisoft games, where you usually wind up fighting, these missions don't include any combat whatsoever, making them easy to finish and providing a welcome diversion. Depending on the situation, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora may need you to hunt innocuous animals, break into abandoned RDA facilities, gather specific commodities, or discover lore through environmental interaction.

Additionally, some tasks and objectives center around platforming. The controls work nicely in this game. You have much more leeway to explore an outpost at your own pace, and certain strategies can even lead you to previously unexplored areas. Any Avatar fan should appreciate this, although they won't experience these moments as frequently due to being confined at an RDA base.

The primary emphasis on various clans you will encounter for the first time, together with a center of operations where influential personalities can be reconnected, brought to mind the organizational structure of Horizon: Forbidden West. You get a stronger sense of connection and shared purpose in that game when you fight with your friends or clan members. However, this isn't the case in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The fact that other Na'vi have never fought beside me and the game constantly seems to revolve around the optimum moment for them to do so leads me to believe there is no sidekick AI in this game.

A Na'vi is waiting for you in this side quest; the RDA are nearby and have stolen some things. The Na'vi is prepared to fight back. Another common occurrence in primary missions is being told to scout ahead and that the others would come later. Another mission involves being trapped in an RDA base during a major fight, which you can only hear about on the radio because you can't see it.

To make matters worse, the resistance base NPCs often annoy you, mentioning if they were with you, which adds to the frustration of facing the world alone. You'll watch your Na'vi allies perform impressive moves and defeat the RDA in certain cutscenes. However, as soon as the scene ends, you'll find yourself back on your own.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is, hands down, the most challenging open-world game from Ubisoft that I have ever played. It only takes a matter of seconds for an enemy, even an ordinary soldier, to kill you. In other words, you'll probably die the second you're discovered, forcing you to either start the base over from the beginning or return to a prior checkpoint to restart the mission, which is great and terrible, depending on your perspective.

I didn't mind this, though, because I never had to put as much thought into capturing an outpost in a Ubisoft game. There is always a limited amount of ammo for most of the weapons in the game. Utilizing the hacking device whenever feasible is a brilliant strategy, but it isn't foolproof; not all RDA suits are vulnerable to melee attacks.

That being said, you'll need to figure out some alternate methods. You need to be creative and use every tactic at your disposal. Stay as covert as possible to keep enemies from calling reinforcements. Some helicopters and turrets will make things much more difficult for you. On top of that, I gave hard mode a go, and it was even more punishing—a single misstep could result in the game ending on the screen. Once again, we all enjoy a good challenge, but I don't think the vast majority of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's audience—which likely includes casual gamers—will appreciate these sudden increases in difficulty. These battle encounters are incredibly challenging compared to the rest of the game's content.

The bright side is that, despite its unimpressive looks, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora plays out like a genuine next-gen open-world game. As you dash through the forest, every branch, leaf, blade of grass, animal, and more engages with you somehow. There are many little ways this might happen, including the player's brush against it, plants reacting to their movement, or even just being close enough for it to change color slightly as it senses your presence.

It gave the impression that navigating a forest was significantly more laborious than it actually was. Seeing that you weren't only traveling across a map and delving into a world teeming with life was beautiful. So far, I haven't noticed any frame drops while playing on PlayStation 5, and the console has both a quality and performance setting. Some cutscenes don't even have a black screen before the dialogue begins, making them appear more natural.

Avatar fans will find it hard to resist the apparent attention that went into this game. Even though the Avatar directors at Disney took extreme care to ensure accuracy in every detail, this game will not win over fans of the Avatar franchise. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora's lesser aspects, such as its dull narratives, lackluster antagonists, and uninspired RDA designs, are detrimental to the game's overall quality. It's frustrating because the core objectives in the game involve dull, uninspiring facilities and repetitive battles against the same enemies.

Nonetheless, eliminating these outposts is gratifying, as proper methods are essential. However, those who aren't quite as passionate may be blown away by the game's substantial difficulty. The game still offers a fresh take on the Avatar universe, but there isn't much to be lost if you skip it. Perhaps the only positive I'd take from this game is its amazing visuals. It's a fantastic open-world game by Ubisoft that Avatar fans will adore. However, if you're unfamiliar with the franchise, I recommend waiting for a big sale and ignoring it.
 

Azfar Rayan (@AzfarRayan)
Senior Editor, NoobFeed