Avatar Legends may be the first great Avatar: The Last Airbender game

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game got a new trailer at the Evo Awards on Saturday, confirming a July 2 release date. It already looks like a lot of fun, so there’s a very good chance that Avatar Legends quickly becomes the best game based on Avatar: The Last Airbender or The Legend of Korra yet, as the franchise has a troubled history with video games.

The release date trailer shows that Avatar Legends is a 2D fighting game with pretty much everything you’d expect from a game in this genre. There are single-player story, arcade, and training modes where players can hone their skills before going into ranked or casual online lobbies to fight other players. When played online, Avatar Legends will use rollback netcode for lower latency and have crossplay support so the community isn’t fragmented.

While five more fighters are on the way post-launch, it’ll release with a roster featuring these twelve characters:

1. Aang
2. Avatar State Aang
3. Azula
4. Katara
5. Kyoshi
6. Ozai
7. Sokka
8. Toph
9. Zuko
10. Korra
11. Avatar State Korra
12. Zaheer

By being a competent fighting game that respects the beloved property it’s based on, Avatar Legends could become the best Avatar game yet. As recently as 2023, the licensed games based on Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra have been budget titles that lacked polish and didn’t make the most of the amazing universe created for those animated series. Even PlatinumGames couldn’t make one of its trademark action games based on The Legend of Korra great in 2014. Hopefully, Avatar Legends can break this bad-game curse.

In general, we’re in a bit of a golden age for licensed games, especially in the fighting game space. Invincible VS is out next month, with its developer revealing fighters Conquest, Universa, and Immortal at the Evo Awards. Then, in August, Marvel Tokon: Fighting Souls will give us our first new Marvel Comics fighting game in nearly a decade. While Avatar Legends‘ launch roster is not as big as those tag-team fighting games, hopefully, it can stand proudly among its peers when it comes out.

Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game launches on July 2 on Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.