The Legend of Korra

The Legend of Korra is the perfect example of how a development team cuts corners at a great cost.

At the end of the day, I wish The Legend of Korra was a fully-featured retail release. While Platinum has done a great job in terms of delivering a solid action romp, the jarring cutscenes and open-and-shut story leave little in terms of replay value. Avatar and Korra fans will likely rejoice at the fact that they’re finally getting a decent game.

The Legend of Korra is rife with potential that sadly goes unexplored. While combat is satisfying and the animated series is visually well represented, it lacks the tactical depth to entice hardcore action gamers and the storytelling to truly satisfy fans of the show.

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For years, Avatar fans have been asking for a good game that represents a franchise with so much potential – but does The Legend of Korra live up to these expectations? For those not familiar with the animation of the same name, it's a television series that's the sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender. In this world, some people are able to control or “bend” one of four elements: Water, Earth, Fire, and Air. One person, however, is known as the Avatar, and is able to master all four elements and bring balance to the world.

“They don’t make ‘em like that anymore” isn’t always a compliment. The Legend of Korra is part of a breed of licensed games that we see less of on major consoles and PC these days. Not so long ago, it was common to see budget-minded projects like these duping franchise fans, but many of those efforts in recent years have transitioned to the mobile space. The Legend of Korra harkens back to that dubious tradition, with a game that feels unbalanced, light on content, and tedious. Nods to the excellent source material abound, and the beginnings of a compelling combat system are present, but this ...

The Legend of Korra game simply does not reach the pedigree of its protege. There are some redeeming features to be found, but the game still has a number of issues that keep it from greatness.

The Legend of Korra by all means should have been a much more enjoyable games given the studio behind the title. But the large amount of repetition and lack of level design conflicts with player enjoyability.

The Legend of Korra teases the potential greatness of an Avatar game but quickly turns into a sloppy mess of tedium and lazy design enjoyed only by the most dedicated and tolerant fans of the series.

Spiritual unenlightenment.

While this review of The Legend of Korra reads like a laundry list of problems, there are times when the game is genuinely enjoyable and shows masses of promise. Those times are all too rare however, and you’re less likely to be cracking a smile than you are to be cursing at a game engine that feels cheap, rushed, unpolished, and simply not good enough to compete.

And you’ll want to be replaying it too, since the entire experience could easily be over in five hours. It sounds short, and it really is, but Korra hopes that you’ll return to its higher difficulties to try to rank higher. Weirdly, the ranking system only really emphasises combo counts and time, so it’s possible to get a Platinum medal (theoretically) while still taking damage. We dabbled briefly in the unlockable “Extreme” mode, and it provided a challenge, but it should’ve been unlockable from the start for action game veterans.