Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Review

14 years after its first Avatar game, Ubisoft finally returned to the Avatar franchise in 2023 with Frontiers of Pandora. It was the AAA action-adventure game that Avatar fans always wanted, except for the fact that it was first-person, and online conversation around the game quickly turned sour after it was labelled a Far Cry clone set on Pandora. The game eventually received a 72 on Metacritic at launch, which didn’t help its waning critique.

2023 was a stacked year with heavy hitters like Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil 4 Remake, and Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which is why many people, including me, chose to skip Frontiers of Pandora at launch. I finally decided to play the game in 2026, largely because of the inclusion of a third-person mode that launched with the Fire and Ash expansion(which scored higher than the main game), and the game proving to get consistent discounts.

For the introduction, the game starts well with emotional cutscenes; You play as a Na’vi orphan from the Sarentu clan who was raised in the RDA’s The Ambassador Program (TAP) and trained as a soldier. The Ambassador Program is supposed to be the RDA’s solution to Na’vi clans not trusting humans and treating them as invaders. The Na’vi kids being trained in TAP are meant to serve as ambassadors for the humans, to help reach out to different Na’vi clans.

Exploring Pandora

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is set in a completely different region of Pandora, the Western Frontier. While you will not be exploring the exact locations shown in the movies, the game’s regions come pretty close. The game captures Pandora’s beauty perfectly, and it looks amazing on the PS5 Pro. There are three main regions you can explore: Kinglor Forest, Upper Plains, and the Clouded Forest. Kinglor Forest is the starting region of the game and is made up of a lush forest and floating mountains.

It’s very gratifying to explore, not because of any bonus or missable content you may stumble on, which is sorely missing from the game, but actually because of the allure of the forest itself. You know you won’t be finding anything new or hidden by walking around the forest, but there is a certain pull that the surroundings contribute to, which will make you entranced as you go deeper.

While you’ll be spending most of the time using your Ikran to traverse (which is really cool btw), there will be segments of the game that will have you exploring on foot. Areas are designed to let you traverse by moving on fallen trees that have certain flowers on them, which accelerate your speed. It felt like they had a good sandbox for some Na’vi-style parkour, but environmental objects don’t really link together to allow one to do so. I felt this multiple times while bunny hopping awkwardly between branches. Perhaps the game would have benefited from taking inspiration from Assassin’s Creed’s parkour design philosophies, as simple stuff like branch swinging and contextual vaulting would vastly improve the experience. Although the world design is able to charm you in with its beauty, it does quickly fall apart when you try some interactions with it.

Being a Na’vi

You play as a nameless Na’vi you can fully customise. You may change their body type, voice, facial features, eyes, and hair. Also, you can change all of these later in the game, so you are not locked into any one option. Aside from body customisation, by utilising the implemented transmog system, you can dress up your Na’vi however you want without having to worry about armor stats.

While customization of this level is obviously welcome, it only makes the game’s struggle of trying to be an action-adventure game and a full-on RPG at the same time more apparent. You have all of these customization options, but you wouldn’t have even seen them until the developers added a third-person mode to the game two years later. The game’s starting cutscenes have you involved in them, but all that is lost later into the game. It feels like your character is a third-party watching what is happening and letting others do the talking for them. I do wonder if the decision to go the RPG route or a simple action-adventure game was made late in development, which led to this hodgepodge of a mess.

Flying an Ikran also lends to the Na’vi fantasy, and I did enjoy flying mine, although I wish it did more by helping in combat like the expansion. Being a Na’vi also includes hunting and crafting, which is obviously present in the game. Materials can be of different qualities, and the higher the quality, the better the stats will be of the equipment you craft. You find these materials by hunting animals, gathering from trees, or they may be growing near rivers.

Doing side quests to help out the different clans is useful in the long run, as you can earn Clan Favor by doing so. Clan Favor can be used to redeem materials, equipment, or crafting kits to craft specific gear. The crafting mechanics are there for you to utilize, but if you don’t like crafting, you can ignore it for the most part. Completing quests gives many rewards, and they climb in rarity depending on their level, so they make sure you are outfitted with the right gear.

Taking on the RDA

The combat in Frontiers of Pandora is fine but never really gets great; it hits well when you are taking out big RDA suits with one arrow shot by targeting their weak spot. Melee combat is useless, but your arsenal of ranged weapons is big enough. For Na’vi weapons, you get three different types of bows and a spear thrower (which became my personal go-to in the ending missions). Aside from that, you can also use RDA shotguns and assault rifles, which I personally avoided during my playthrough as I felt it did not fit my character. There is not much else to do in combat, and it never really evolves. Even though you can set up traps, they are frankly pretty useless, especially when fighting against big, high-level bases.

My biggest disappointment is that it never really felt like the game was properly utilizing the inherent strength that Na’vi have shown in the films. You could put the same kit on one of the many human allies we have, and you won’t notice anything weird if playing as them. It surprises me that they completely avoided having any melee system in place. You cannot walk up to RDA goons and take them down in stealth. If you want to go the stealth route, you have to keep your distance and use your arrows to take down everyone one by one.

The whole plot of the game is basically you trying to take down the RDA so they leave the Western Frontier. John Mercer, who headed up TAP, is the main villain of the game, and he does not bring much to the table. He is absent for most of the game as you take down RDA outposts and interact with new clans, until finally returning in the third half of the game. It felt like Ubisoft was trying to emulate Miles Quaritch, but they did not come close to it. There isn’t much to talk about regarding the story, because frankly, there isn’t much of it present in the game. The Avatar films did not nail their storytelling, too, but the character work was amazing in the movies. However, there aren’t any meaningful characters or character arcs present in the game to help hide the massive gap in storytelling.

I know this article reads like a very negative outlook for Frontiers of Pandora, but that is because I have seen what the main game could have been after playing the From the Ashes expansions. You play as So’lek, who was my favorite side character in the main game, and it genuinely improves almost everything. The combat is much better because it has a good melee system, and So’lek is also able to do takedowns when enemies are staggered. Getting enough kills lets you activate Warrior Senses, which is like a rage mode, and it works well for So’lek’s character. It definitely makes you feel like a real threat when fighting humans and gives the feeling of you hunting them. I wish we had something like this in the base game, as this is what the power imbalance should have been in certain situations.

The story is also much improved by focusing on a real character, and it presents So’lek’s emotional struggles well, which was sorely missing from the main game. Sadly, many gamers will not be playing it, but they are not to blame. All of this should have been present in the main game of Frontiers of Pandora, so Ubisoft does have its share of blame for their chosen direction.