Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Review (Throkgaar)
*Edit*: okay these negative reviews about performance are insane, why are you installing a game like this on an HDD? It's a big fancy game for your expensive gaming PC. You know what this is and if you can run it. You obviously CANNOT run it on a mechanical hard drive. Read the requirements and don't leave a negative review because you didn't bother to check. Skxawng.
I did not think I would be leaving a positive review of a Ubisoft game in 2025 but here we are. This game has issues and frankly you already know what they are. It's a big budget AAAA licensed title published by Ubisoft. It has some technical issues, requires a pretty beefy rig to run smoothly without being on Ultra Performance (and you don't want to crunch the graphics in this game), there was this texture loading bug that I would get pretty regularly and would have to restart or the game would crash in under 10 minutes. For some reason menu keybinds just don't really work so I pressed J for everything. With the launch of the DLC some quests were bugged and got locked out of, but I was able to play through the main story without any issues. NPCs are pretty stiff and often times repeat dialog back to back. Gearing is weird and sometimes weapons that are clearly doing more damage will result in an overall decrease in your power level. So with all these issues why am I giving this a positive review?
Because it's amazing. Straight up outstanding.
Not only did this game pull me out of a cynical malaise but it also turned me into an Avatar radical and now I'm hoping for more DLCs and sequels and movies and I'm even playing the terrible 09 Avatar game and even tried the DS one. What this game does well is perfectly capture the magic and awe that we all felt when seeing the original movie in 3D in 2009. Pandora is absolutely exquisite and the scope of this game is absolutely massive. The game does an outstanding job of regularly reinventing itself in surprising ways and puts twists on the core mechanics that kept me wanting to see what was going to happen next. Yes, the skeleton of this game LOOKS like the Far Cry crap we've been playing for over a decade now but all the details are different. Everything has been given thought and care to how it will service the narrative and the result is that you, as the player, actually learn the flora and fauna of Pandora; what it does, how it works, and how to use it. There are mechanics in this game that are one system away from being completely annoying but instead it all just works.
The world map here is actually extremely well designed and feels completely hand crafted. Given the size of this thing, that is actually insane. For this purpose I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND using the Exploration mode instead of Guided. You can just outright turn off all the typical Modern Ubisoft quest marker crap in service of actual map exploration. No seriously, instead of being told where to go, you're told diagetic things like "It is on an island North of the Weeping River below the floating mountains". This system does sometimes not convey so well but it worked for me about 90% of the time. In fact I was shocked at how well the map navigation flowed with completely ingame signposting. The absolute best moment of this was probably on the Upper Plains, and I actually don't want to spoil a single thing about it. Sound design is also excellently utilized as hearing RDA gunfire is an immediate cue that something worth checking out is nearby. Honestly this game felt like playing Skyrim for the first time, you just effortlessly stumble across something interesting every 90 seconds.
Also want to shoutout the movement tech in this game, which had me just running around Pandora for hours on end not doing anything in particular but parkouring off trees, freeclimbing mountains, bouncing off leaves, sliding down hills into plants that give off spores that make you run faster, avoiding exploding pods, etc. Moving in this game feels completely amazing and at all times the forest around you feels like a skatepark.
Look, I know I'm gushing. But I haven't even talked about my favorite part yet: the story. No I'm serious. The people saying the story in this game sucks are smoking crack. The thematic consistency with this game is nearly unparalleled. This is a game about real life historical events and moving past that trauma. This game is, not allegorically, but literally, about having grown up in a Residential School. If you don't know what that is, look it up. In America they were open til at least 2007 and were used to terrorize and kill Native American children. It is completely horrific and tragic and the game does not shy away from the emotional trauma caused by these real life events. There were parts of the narrative here that had me nearly sobbing. The way the gameplay directly ties into the theme of rediscovering the culture that colonists tried to beat out of you is completely incredible. Every flap of my Ikran's wings felt like a defiant statement of intent, a declaration of freedom.
Now I need to point out that the WAY this narrative is presented is nothing special. It's the usual cutscenes, voiceovers from datapads, and radio calls. The presentation is frankly very boring and does the story a disservice, but the strength of of the story is in how thoroughly it dives into its topics. How can someone move past such an abusive past? Can you possibly make a life out of the ashes of such evil? Can colonists ever be redeemed? This game gives no easy answers for any of it's characters. Their pain and struggle to process their past kept reminding me of Disco Elysium. It's not nearly as well written, but the ambition here is of a way higher caliber than I'm used to seeing in a game like this. The game is worth playing and focusing on main story quests for this reason alone.
There are definitely NPCs in this game with Borderlands syndrome, Priya Chen in particular is completely obnoxious and has way too much of the dialog, but my Na'vi bros? Are you kidding? Teylan is my bro and I would die for him. So'lek is a total pimp. The story actually starts off incredibly strong and is handled with surprising care throughout the base game and the DLC. Ultimately, this is a game that is at least twice the sum of its parts. Don't let some of the unfortunate Ubisoft elements drag this beautiful piece down. It's one of the biggest surprises in modern gaming for me and I could not be happier that I took a chance on this one.