What shirt should I wear? What flavor of ice cream? What character do I play in [latest] fighting game? These are constant doubts plaguing the minds of our everyday lives. Jokes aside, while I can’t help with fashion and culinary, I can help you choose a character that fits your style in Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game. This guide will go over the main playstyle for each character and general recommendations for beginners.

There is one important thing to keep in mind before that. The best requirement to play a character in any fighting game is simply liking them. Design, voice lines, animation, or their backstory from the original material. If you’re just a big Toph fan, you can just skip to her section directly for some tips and stick to learning her kit fully. While there are cases where a character is indeed much more complicated than average (like C. Viper from SF or Angel from KoF), it is important to keep in mind that you make the character work, not the other way around. On the other hand, if you’re just waiting for Iroh (like me) or you’re ambivalent about the roster we have now, I hope this guide can help you find a character that fits your style.

Aang

The titular character of the first show in the franchise. Aang is pretty much the face of the Avatar universe. Protagonists in fighting games are usually all-rounder characters since most people would gravitate towards what they feel is the game’s representative. Lately, fighting games have also been making the leading characters very strong to give a little boost to the game’s perception. Aang is definitely strong, but he’s no all-rounder, and he’s actually very tricky to play. His playstyle is honestly a perfect fit for the character; Aang almost toys with his opponents more than he fights them. You have a plethora of movement options, and you can mix them in combos or attack sequences to become truly unpredictable.

I wouldn’t recommend Aang for beginners who want to thoroughly understand how the game works. To effectively use Aang, you must either have a decent experience with anime fighters or embody his mentality of taking things lightly. If you can find joy in simply pressing Flow+Direction at random and dealing with things as they come up, he can be a very effective character. If you want to learn combos, proper offensive structure, and how to react to what your opponent is doing, then maybe it’s better to try other characters first.

The bottom line for playing Aang is that you either need to be fully in control of what’s happening or become fully content with not being in control. Unpredictability and flexibility are his strongest characteristics, and you can only master that with a lot of experience or a “devil may care” mentality. A good character to screw with the people you’re facing, but not the easiest road to learning Avatar Legends or fighting games in general.

Avatar Aang

A fighting game classic! Alternate versions of the same character. If Aang is this game’s Ryu, then Avatar Aang is Evil Ryu. Theoretically the same character, but with very different win conditions and game plans. Avatar Aang (AA for short, not to be confused with “anti-air”) still retains a lot of Aang’s focus on mobility, but he’s not as limber. Whereas regular Aang can flow from one type of movement option to another, AA needs to be more deliberate in his choices.

The biggest change, however, is in the overall game plan. AA fits the archetype fighting games classify as “zoners”. Characters who focus on controlling the entire battle, preventing their opponents from closing in and applying their win condition. While AA doesn’t normally fill the screen with projectiles like your average character from this archetype, he can attack at unique angles while not exposing himself as much. A powerful character, no doubt, but a hard one to master.

I wouldn’t recommend AA for a beginner; he may potentially be the hardest character in the launch roster. While you can learn the bare minimum and still be able to keep opponents at bay, as soon as you run into someone patient enough to close in the distance, you’ll quickly feel helpless. Zoners are meant to never lose control in a match, but what makes a zoner player stand out is the composure to recover the advantageous position after losing it. You need a good understanding of both offense and defense to truly make use of AA’s strengths.

Azula

Azula is one of the characters you’re likely to see recommended for beginners often. Indeed, she’s actually quite forgiving and effective, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her share of weaknesses or complexities. The most important aspect of this character is that she has two distinct stances that drastically change the properties of her moves and even the intended game plan. These stances are called Focused and Firelord Madness, and they’re governed by your assist choice rather than mid-match commands.

In other words, when you hear people referring to “Firelord Azula,” they mean the specific combination of picking Azula AND Ursa assist. This forces Azula to stay in Firelord Madness for the entire match, and that stance is considerably easier to use. While in Firelord, she has access to easier combos, moves have simplified properties, and there is just an overall effectiveness in her offensive structure. All of this sounds like it’s a no-brainer to always use Ursa Assist, but keep in mind that, true to the show, Firelord Azula is defeated not by being overpowered but rather outmaneuvered.

Likewise, Focused Azula is harder to use but also harder to counter. She doesn’t have the raw firepower the Firelord stance offers, but she has more options at her disposal and fire traps to control the match in her favor. Regardless of your experience with fighting games, no one learns two characters at the same time. For starters, you would either use solely Focused or solely Firelord. Even if you plan to learn both, you need to start with one, and only expand once you’re comfortable with your first choice.

Katara

As the deuteragonist of The Last Airbender, Katara offers a decent foil to Aang’s hyperactive playstyle. Katara’s game plan centers on water moves that attack the opponent at a distance. She offers a very reactive game plan that is the opposite of “rushdown” characters that need to constantly enforce their offense. A good character for patient players, although one that’s not without her share of complexities. Mashing buttons is a sure-fire way to not get anything done with her.

Katara’s core characteristic lies in her Water Whip stance. It locks her in place, but only for regular movement options. One of the game’s signature mechanics, the Flow Movement, interacts deeply with Water Whip stance. While you would normally be locked in place and broadcast your intention of using a follow-up at a predetermined range, you can spend Flow gauge to move her forwards or backwards while further enhancing the properties of her moves while skating around the stage.

Overall, Katara is a very defensive character. When playing her, you’re meant to react to what your opponent is doing and prevent whatever they want to do with the best of your abilities. Her biggest Achilles heel is the distinct lack of aerial movement options. While her lateral movement can be scary with the threat of enhanced whip attacks, she can’t take the fight to the skies as easily as other characters. You’ll need a better sense of distance than usual, but she offers unique strengths if you do.

Korra

Korra plays like a certain type of character that fighting game players call “gorillas”. The kind of character that is good at forcing interactions at their own pace with little effort. Think of Sol Badguy if you’ve played Guilty Gear, or Mai if you’ve played Street Fighter 6. She has good mobility, good range, good damage, and no patience. If you like to mash buttons, there’s no better choice than Korra because anything you press with her is guaranteed to cause problems.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this doesn’t mean she’s not a complex character to master. The point is that you don’t need to tap into said complexity to be a threat at a casual level. She’s a character that just feels good to pilot, responsive and intuitive at all skill levels. The downside of having such a fluid playstyle is that there’s no real trump card to win as Korra. All you need is to keep unbridled aggression up at all times to get the job done as quickly as possible. She has an “avatar state” technique that further boosts her offense, but you only need to tap into that at the higher skill levels.

Overall she’s a good pick for beginners, although even better for people who are willing to slowly understand every property of her moves. Her base power is high, but the heights she can reach with proper planning are just as impressive. There’s no situation where Korra is at a disadvantage so long as you’re willing to learn her different tools and your opponents’ habits. Overall, she’s one of the most satisfying characters to play as in Avatar Legends. Despite having plenty to learn to master her kit, she’s intuitive enough to just pick up and do stuff that looks great.

Kyoshi

Kyoshi serves as Avatar Legends’ “big body” resident. The slow-moving character that towers over the rest of the cast and broadcasts “BIG DAMAGE” through her visage alone. There’s not much that can be said about Avatar Kyoshi; her playstyle is as straightforward as it gets. If she hits you, it will hurt. Kyoshi has an impressive range, but she’s also uniquely vulnerable for being tall. That is doubly true in a game with so many common air options at the disposal of everyone. Funnily enough, including Kyoshi herself, who can dash diagonally from the ground or air dash to approach.

Avatar Legends breaks a little from the mold because usually characters like her would have severely limited movement. However, she still has a fully fledged Flow system, complete with sprints and floats. Granted, it’s slower than average, but the fact that she even has it at all already makes her threatening. Her archetype usually revolves around waiting for your opponent to make a mistake and then cashing out when they do, but Kyoshi is deceptively good at forcing her opponents to open their guard.

In theory, she wouldn’t be a good pick for beginners because you’d need to deal with slow movement options and a weakness to air attacks. In practice, she excels at punishing people for bad decisions, and at our casual level we make a LOT of bad decisions. This results in a feast-or-famine character that will give you very easy victories and crushing defeats. She offers an exponential learning curve. You have smooth progression for a while, then hit a hard roadblock and need to start learning the genre’s mechanics at a deeper level. This was the kind of archetype that first taught me how to play fighting games, but it can be overwhelming when you hit that plateau.

Nightmare Korra

Same with Avatar Aang, Nightmare Korra offers an “evil” version of another character. Similar appearances, but plenty of gameplay differences. With Nightmare Korra (NK for short), she loses all of the intuitive movement and attack strings of her alter ego. True to her puppet-like animations, controlling NK feels incredibly stiff, but she gains an absurd amount of utility with these moves. Her dashes have short periods of invulnerability, and she can pass through opponents to break through their defense.

If Aang’s game plan is centered around being unpredictable, NK is about being unpredictable but scarier. To make use of her strengths, you’d need to understand the basics of defensive techniques so that you can thwart them. She’s a complicated character to learn the basics with, but high damage specials and unconventional movement options can surprise a lot of opponents. Unlike Avatar Aang, who is a completely different archetype from regular Aang, NK can actually become easier to learn if you’ve played Korra for long enough. Both of them fill the rushdown role, characters meant to close the distance and never relent on offense.

She’s among the worst characters to just mash buttons with and hope for the best, quite the opposite of Korra herself. From the very start, you need to get used to her specials and buttons, while only ever pressing them with explicit intent. You need to visualize your actions before you even commit to them, but you gain quite a lot of firepower for doing so. Despite having a much higher skill floor than Korra (in other words, harder to pick up and play), she actually has a much easier kit to manage once you master her. You’d be shifting part of the latter half of mastering the character to the first half, so to speak.

Ozai

Firelord Ozai is a funny character. He’s technically a “big body” archetype, but not because he’s particularly tall, just because he’s an adult facing children. This does have gameplay implications, a lot of which apply to Kyoshi as well. Vulnerability to air approaches and being slower by design The possibility of having certain combos work exclusively on them, and so on. He’s also one of the hardest characters to pilot because he outright breaks a lot of the rules that govern movement and attacks normally. Ozai is something like an even more restrictive version of Nightmare Korra; he stands among the kind of characters that you can’t mash your way out of trouble with.

He’s also one of the few characters whose assist choices can drastically alter your game plan. Certain moves are outright locked depending on your assist, and that makes him even weirder to play as if you’ve spent any amount of time trying out other characters. In fighting games, there’s a concept called “knowledge check” characters. This is used to describe characters with moves that are difficult to deal with unless you know the specific counterplay it requires. Ozai is not a knowledge check character; playing him is a knowledge check in of itself. In other words, he’s clunky to use at a casual level and very threatening the more you learn.

I wouldn’t say he’s a good character for beginners, but there is a particular case where he might be the perfect choice. Players who like rhythm games or methodical combos will feel extremely happy once they start learning how to play him effectively. It won’t be a particularly smooth learning curve, but it’s undeniable that what he offers is unique. If you can deal with the requirement of a premeditated execution and clear the hurdle of learning all of his mechanics and moves in advance, you’ll have a clear advantage over a lot of the cast. You’ll also have some of the most satisfying combos to pull off.

Sokka

In The Last Airbender original show, Sokka largely serves as comedic relief. He’s a fully fledged character by the end of the story, but in a world with elemental magic, he really is just “a guy with a boomerang” after all. This is his identity in gameplay as well; you will need to work harder than average to get things done. This doesn’t mean that Sokka is a joke character or weaker than most, only that his strengths are not very intuitive for beginners and not particularly easy to execute even once you do.

Sokka does have access to quite a lot of “knowledge check” moves. Those are powerful moves that have a critical weakness that shuts them down entirely. Anyone who refuses to learn what Sokka can do will easily fall to gimmicks that aren’t very hard to execute. Past that initial layer, Sokka’s execution will require quite a bit of training to pull off. You will also need to learn certain fundamentals of fighting games to fully utilize his kit. Things like the ideal time to attack opponents as they’re getting up, perfect spacing on your moves, and the overall defensive habits people have.

All in all, Sokka isn’t an easy character to play. You can get some things done by spamming some of his hard-to-deal moves, but once you run into players that can avoid them, you’ll need to step up your game. The good thing is that he’s pretty thorough in teaching everything you’d need to be proficient in fighting games as a whole. Learning Sokka will make learning every other character significantly easier, even oddballs like Avatar Aang or Ozai. Although you will need to embody the same perseverance as just a guy with a boomerang versus a cast of elemental wizards

Toph

Toph shares Korra’s class of “gorilla” for this game. A fighting game term that describes characters who impose their offense with ease and can’t be bested in a slugfest. True to her character in the show, Toph has a belligerent playstyle that can be overwhelming if you’re not patient. Most of her moves include some form of armor property that shrugs off hits and puts her opponents on their back foot. She can be a complex character with tricky offensive set-ups, but she can also just troll people by spamming special moves that are hard to deal with.

Overall, Toph is a good beginner’s pick, but not without caveats. You can pelt opponents with damaging moves and make them respect your offense. However, you also have to be careful against anyone patient enough to wait for you to overextend yourself. Finding the balance between learning when to go ham and when to watch and react to your opponent is paramount to having any degree of success with her. Toph’s combos can be very executionally demanding, but you also don’t need combos to win if you’re good enough at annoying your opponents.

She’s a character with a rather irregular learning curve. Some of her moves are rather easy to understand and very effective at casual play. On the other hand, some of the more advanced techniques you’ll need to beat opponents who can deal with her surface level can be hard to grasp. One of the most balanced choices in the game that can offer both “I just want to mash buttons and do cool stuff” and “I want tricky setups to outsmart people and make them feel helpless”. Truly a perfect adaptation of the character in spirit.

Zaheer

Zaheer is the kind of person who brings a gun to a knife fight. Or in this case, brings active tag assists to a 1v1 fighting game. While “assists” in Avatar Legends usually just mean a set of buffs for each character, Zaheer has the classic definition of characters he can summon to help in the fight. These tag assists are very useful both for combos and to create airtight offensive strings, but they’re held back by a noticeable cooldown between uses. They can also be hit out of their attacks, which further increases the time taken before Zaheer can call them again.

Since these tag assists take the slot of a regular special move, Zaheer theoretically has fewer special moves than most to manage. His own fighting style is fairly well-rounded, offering a good balance between range, damage, and versatility. While he may not excel in any given area, he has ways to deal with pretty much any gimmick the rest of the cast can throw his way. His movement abilities allow for fast and omnidirectional movement. Some of his attacks are perfect at hitting people out of the air. He can hit odd angles to catch people unaware and easily convert any stray hits into more damage or an advantageous position.

In a way, he’s almost like a simplified version of Aang. Zaheer can also employ his airbending to fly around the screen and overwhelm his opponents with speed, but his attacks are easier and safer to use overall. While he may not have an explosive power like some other characters in the cast, he’s a very good pick to learn the game. Tag assists usually add several layers of complexity, but since their use is limited, you need to rely more on your own attacks rather than center your playstyle around these assists. Maybe a bit of a boring pick, but a very effective one.

Zuko

Zuko is the closest Avatar Legends has to a “traditional” fighting game character. All of his attacks average well at utility, versatility, and combo ability. This results in a character that’s fairly intuitive and easy to use, but Zuko has one slightly advanced mechanic. Something fighting game lingo usually refers to as “momentum” resources. Whenever Zuko performs certain actions, he gains “redemption” points and gets a level after every 10 points. The higher his redemption level, the more options he has at his disposal.

He’s very similar to Korra in the sense that both are very intuitive to use but mechanic-heavy behind the curtains. They are characters that are easy to pick up and hard to master. What differentiates them is that Zuko relies harder on his power-up mechanic to become a menace, and his game plan is far more versatile than Korra’s. You can play aggressively with him, but you’ll also have to learn how to play defensively whenever he’s facing someone with higher firepower.

Despite having quite a lot of special moves and intricate mechanics, Zuko is the ultimate all-rounder for this game. He has multiple tools to choose from, and mastering them gives you a character that can deal with anything thrown his way. However, it’s a long road to reach that level of mastery. You’ll also need to manage his specific “redemption” resource to guarantee you have access to all of this versatility. The bottom line is that Zuko is a character that should resonate with ambitious players who are also slow learners. He’s very manageable for beginners, but you shouldn’t expect to be fully competent with him in the near future.