About Avatar The Last Airbender:
I like this game. However it has some very irritating issues. Firstly, it is unclear exactly which choices use or will raise specific stats, more bothersome it isn’t clear what each stat does. The most opaque of these is Influence, at this point I’ve played through the game four times and have only managed to raise it above 1 once (I got it to 2 by the end of the game.) Now like I said I’m not entirely sure what this stat does, I seemed to be able to influence people sometimes and not other times, was that because of other stats? Would I have been more successful with higher influence? No clue. Others are pretty cut and dry, Combat makes you fight better, Ritual lets you use magic like effects, Survival and Sensitivity are less clear. Quick thinking I have no idea about. Restraint is an interesting one that has a cool narrative idea behind it but doesn’t seem to do much. Basically it seems like it is almost a currency, built up through actions that you can use to push against the influence of your god if you want or need to. Neat idea, but it only came up once in 4 playthroughs. The problem even with the clear cut ones is, it’s unclear what will improve them and the writing can imply due to its mythic nature that you are quite powerful but then you get a less favourable result, and it’s only through trial and error that you realize that there even was a better result. This means that when you’re going through the game it can be a little obscure what is influencing what, making choices harder. Story wise, the game is really interesting. It combines mythic storytelling with a sort of loss of the old ways rise of the new conflict. This is mostly well explored, but could be further developed. The romances are not a huge part of the story but are present and interesting, like most things in a questing story they are only rest stops on your characters journey. I like the ideas, but partially due to the mythic storytelling and the obscuring of the stats influence it can be difficult to know what your end goal should be or how to get there. Even when you figure that out, you are left feeling like there is something you missed. The setting is interesting if somewhat vague, the characters each have their own voice even if we don’t spend much time with them. I will say that there were some parts that felt really effective and I wish this was a longer more involved game so I could play around with it more. Any time you want to spend more time in a games world is a good thing. Some of the decisions feel a little irrelevant, but this again is mostly because it’s tough to know how influental your stats are when making them. An example was, I was named leader of a group, but when I tried to assert my leadership they just ignored me. I wasn’t sure which stat I was using to manipulate the situation except that it wasn’t Combat. The last issue is a technical one, there was an instance where a choice I made at the end wasn’t reflected. This wasn’t due to the writing as it referenced the possibility of my making the choice but said I didn’t. This can happen when these games first launch but considering these games are entirely hinging on their story having scenes not trigger can be a let down. All in all I like the game but these issues should be ironed out and if the author makes these kinds of games in the future they should include a tooltip or page that explains the stats and what they do. 7/10 an update that addresses these issues would make this game pretty great. I’d also be down for a sequel.
