Frontiers of Pandora review — more than Far Cry in space?
The first thing you notice is that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora looks amazing. The game has really taken advantage of the colors and strangeness of its Pandoran setting and everything is vibrant and alive. This isn’t just in the daytime, either. The bioluminescence of Pandora’s plants results in some spectacular scenery, and where in other games you might sleep or pass time to speed up the night and see things at their best during the day, in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, you don’t want to miss anything.
The flora and fauna are eye-catching, ranging from beautiful to bizarre. Even caves, for instance, are interesting. Where in other games they are often visually boring compared to all the interesting stuff going on outside, in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora they’re filled with glowing, almost neon fungi, weird plants, and interesting Na’vi materials or equipment to find. I’ve been playing on Xbox Series X and switching between Performance and Quality modes, and so far this beautiful world has only occasionally been marred with with flickering and stuttering.
One of the most standout moments of our Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora preview was bonding with and flying an ikran, and it’s great to see that this holds up in the full game. The huge map means that you’ll welcome any help with traversal, and while the Direhorses are cool, they can’t quite compete — who doesn’t want to soar over Pandora on a giant flying dinosaur? That map is so big that even an ikran will take a while to get anywhere, but dropping into dives for extra speed before using that boost to soar upwards does not get old. Ikran skills, such as the one that lets your mount catch fish if you fly over deep water, also helps add more layers of immersion to the journey.
However, while ikran exploration feels great, the same can’t be said about aerial combat. There are some cool ikran skills including a screech ability to stagger opponents and another skill which lets you perform aerial takedowns on staggered enemies, and I was looking forward to combining these for some awesome takedowns like we see in the movies. However, so far this just doesn’t seem to work. My poor ikran has been screeching away nonstop at enemies with no other result than leaving itself open to continuous attacks. It seems like the window for enemies to be staggered is very short, or else you have to be at a very particular angle to open yourself up for a takedown. Either way, it doesn’t feel as fluid as you might hope. Soaring in from afar and firing arrows or guns will still do the trick, but for now it looks like using a dino ikran to take down enemies or engage in close combat isn’t really doable.
I initially found the combat a bit frustrating. I usually prefer the stealth approach, and that just seemed impossible here. Yes, I get that the ten-foot tall bright blue Na’vi are pretty hard to miss, but that’s only when they’re up close — from the movies we know they’re capable of stealthy approaches and silent kills. There are a variety of RDA encounters you can have: huge outposts, smaller bases, encounters in the wild (such as when they’ve trapped a creature), or else taking the fight to the skies. Stealth really did seem impossible for most of these. As soon as you’ve killed someone and everyone’s come crowding in to have a look at the body, it’s not long before they’re all out after you as a mob and you get overwhelmed. The mechs in particular do a lot of damage. But the further you get through the game, the more skills and weapons you unlock, and the better things get.
Maybe it’s because I’m coming to Avatar off the back of Assassin’s Creed Mirage, but it was annoying at first that there was no way to silently clear camps. But once you start getting to grips with the capabilities of the SID (Systems Interrogation Device) you get more options. At the outset it’s mostly used for repairs, but you can start using it to hack and sabotage enemies and turrets too, allowing for more options for dealing with foes.
Then there are the weapons. It is interesting when a game manages to convince you to use a range of weapons rather than relying on a few favorites, and the human weapons are just as useful as Na’vi tools. You can unlock a skill for an extra weapon slot for quick access, and then you’re off: bows for hunting, for instance, shotguns for mechs, and the staff sling for laying out traps. That’s along with special ammo types for various weapons, such as poison or storm arrows. You also have some pretty fun Na’vi skills and abilities, such as the option to yank an RDA soldier out of their mech suit if they’ve been staggered.
The Na’vi themselves, meanwhile, are obviously key to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The game sees our character traveling from clan to clan to gain their trust and recruit them to the resistance, learning about Na’vi culture and their own clan as they go.
Each clan can be found in its own distinct biome and has its own major base, camps, and so on. It’s a big deal when you get far enough to travel far away to a new clan’s home, especially as you get to explore another aspect of Pandora’s diverse scenery. Each clan is known for something in particular — the Aranahe are weavers, for instance — but there’s a level of detail and difference to each which is fascinating to see. The side content you find from individual Na’vi explores their way of life still further, giving a glimpse of some of the lore behind this world.
Unfortunately, that variety doesn’t always hold up when it comes to individual Na’vi dialogue. Sure, this isn’t exactly a social sim, and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora goes big in other areas, but it’s disappointing when you run into repeating dialogue so quickly. What’s more, it takes away from some of the excitement of discovering new camps when you can’t really talk to anyone (except if they have quests) and instead hear the same lines of ambient dialogue repeated over and over again.
On the plus side, you get to interact with the clans a little via clan favor. Offering contributions to the clan or taking down enemies, for instance, gains you clan favor, which you can use for crafting materials and gear. Hunting and crafting also have a heavy Na’vi bias. It’s the Na’vi way of life to hunt sparingly and cleanly, and you’re rewarded for kills which don’t leave the animal to suffer. Pandoran ingredients go towards Na’vi recipes which give you helpful buffs, while crafting materials will mostly be used for Na’vi designs.
On a side note: I also have to apologize for my character for spending ages on getting great crafting ingredients and making (what I thought was) great gear for my character, only to have the Na’vi take turns lining up to insult my clothing choices. Very loudly. Ouch.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a standalone story, and you don’t really need to have watched any of the movies, but it could really benefit with a Na’vi dictionary of some kind (if there is one, they must have hidden it well). There’s a lot of terminology which my hazy memory of the movies won’t help to decipher. On the other hand, there is a really handy Hunter’s Guide which has a huge amount of info on everything from animals and plants to enemies. It tells you where they can be found, what they can be used for, what weak points to look out for, and even, in the case of some creatures, what they look like at each stage of their life. You can also learn a lot of background lore too. On top of being useful in locating materials or pinning items, this Hunter’s Guide really helps make sense of an alien world.
There’s obviously a lot to dive into when it comes to lore here, and it’s hard for a game like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora to strike a balance with this. On the one hand, the Na’vi way of life seems to involve taking the time to be in harmony with nature. On the other hand, this is an action-adventure game which is always encouraging you to move onto the next thing. This can result in an odd overlap. One quest, for instance, made a bit of a fuss about how I’d been taught to hunt by one clan’s most skilled hunter. Can it be called teaching when, after hearing me say I’d never been taught to hunt before, he pointed me to a stationary target, watched me shoot one arrow, and then told me to run along?
Alongside the main quest, there’s a whole lot more to do on Pandora. There are general exploration activities like finding Sarentu totems to reconnect with your character’s heritage, as well as exploration activities which are specific to an area, such as tuning wind flutes in the Upper Plains. Then there are side quests from the Na’vi and Resistance members, missions to take down RDA bases, making contributions to clan stashes, general objectives to undo pollution, and more. It all means you can take your foot off the pedal when it comes to the main story to enjoy what else there is to offer.
That’s in addition to going off on your own and finding interesting places to explore, some of which usually have rewards in the form of gear for yourself or your ikran. Speaking of stuff to find…
Would this be a Ubisoft game without collectibles? Pandora’s littered with things to find or collect: Bellsprigs, Tarsyu Saplings, Tarsyu Flowers (which are not the same thing), audio logs, notes, Windswept Kites, Sarentu Totems, Memory Paintings, and a whole lot more.
When you first start the game, the map looks overwhelming with endless collectibles and numerous beams of colorful light. It’s enjoyable at the moment to always have so much to discover, and it also helps to break up a long ikran flight when you’re constantly getting distracted by alerts of some unknown thing waiting to be found. It also bridges the gap a bit for your character’s dual backgrounds: you’ve got activities which reinforce their Sarentu heritage, as well as activities which can be completed because of their knowledge of humans and the RDA.
Whether you target collectibles or just power through quests will factor here, but either way we’ll be achievement hunting in Pandora for a good while. I’m around 29 hours in and have only unlocked nine so far (out of 31), but I did lose a fair bit of time to just standing around gawping at the lovely scenery.
Summary
Despite its occasional shortcomings, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is still a lot of fun to play. Flying an ikran does its fair share of wish fulfillment, but Pandora has a lot to offer elsewhere too. There’s a wealth of things to look for, and despite some alarmingly vast distances, exploration mostly remains entertaining thanks to the stunning scenery.
We all wondered how much Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora would prove to be a colorful Far Cry reskin — while there are a lot of recognisable elements here, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does more than enough to stand on its own Na’vi feet as its own very enjoyable game.
* Heidi spent over 30 hours attempting to survive Pandora, earning nine achievements as she went. A review copy was provided by the publisher and played on an Xbox Series X.
