Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – From the Ashes Review – A Satisfying Capstone

We have come a long way from a time when games released to tie in with movies used to be seen as little more than low-quality cash grabs. Over the last fifteen years, games that are essentially adaptations of popular IPs—from Batman and Harry Potter to and even Guardians of the Galaxy, have often been surprisingly well-received. Back in 2023, we saw another excellent adaptation of a movie franchise, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which gave us the opportunity to experience the world of James Cameron’s Avatar series in a completely new way.

While Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has already seen strong post-launch support with major story packs, and From the Ashes, launching alongside Avatar: Fire and Ash, feels like a much meatier add-on thanks to its new campaign built around its protagonist, and its focus on the newly added third-person camera option.

While largely revolving around the same war that the protagonists have been fighting against the RDA, From the Ashes puts players in the shoes of a new protagonist, So’lek, who is waging his own war against the RDA while also managing to assist the other forces. Along the way, however, So’lek also has to face off against a hostile clan: the ruthless Ash people known as the Mangkwan clan that has decided to form a coalition with the RDA.

"From the Ashes puts players in the shoes of a new protagonist, So’lek, who is waging his own war against the RDA."

From the Ashes is set after the base game, opening with a transmission that points to escalating chaos in the region, an assault on the Aranahe and wildfires spreading through a ravaged stretch of the Kinglor Forest, the aftermath of the coalition between the RDA and the Mangkwan.

With previous DLCs having largely acted as additions to the base game, From the Ashes feels like more of a self contained campaign than it does a typical story pack. The developer itself has noted that the expansion offers roughly 20 hours of new gameplay, but this largely comes down to how much of the side-missions you want to take on. During my time with it, I was able to finish the main story of From the Ashes in around 15 hours, and came away quite satisfied with it. The story is paced excellently, and there isn’t really much down time that would otherwise feel like player time that is being wasted through unnecessary padding.

The main campaign of From the Ashes also features quite a few epic set pieces, which will often have you seamlessly weaving in and out between battles taking place in the air as well as on the ground. Along with this, major story beats are often punctuated with fun boss fights that, while not quite as complex as one might expect, offer interesting shake-ups to the general gameplay. Some of these fights will have you figure out the boss’s attack patterns and wait for openings before striking, while others will offer interesting puzzles that open up their weak spots.

"The main campaign of From the Ashes also features quite a few epic set pieces."

There is also plenty of variety present in these boss fights, from aerial battles against other Banshee riders and helidromes, to fights that feel like they were straight out of a Metal Gear game, like an entire level that revolves around sneaking up on a sniper.

So’lek works well as our eyes and ears here, and right off the bat, he feels more defined than the base game’s Sarentu lead. Instead of starting as a cryo-sleep blank slate, So’lek is a veteran of the conflict, and From the Ashes leans into that, balancing his simmering anger with quieter moments, like the horror of having to fight one of your own. So’lek is also compelling because he’s willing to turn the RDA’s tools against them—and the game sells how well-versed he is with that kit, whether it’s a metal breastplate, an assault rifle, or the ruthless efficiency of a knife.

Fundamentally, the gameplay loop is familiar, but the additions are meaningful. Third-person makes stealth easier to read and takedowns more satisfying, while going loud feels better suited to So’lek’s kit. His new skill tree enables flashier, action-movie moments, slowing time to line up shots, revealing weak points, and chaining new takedowns (including aerial finishers off your banshee). Speaking of which, the banshee also feels far more intuitive to control in From the Ashes thanks to its more refined controls, especially on keyboard and mouse.

"So’lek is also compelling because he’s willing to turn the RDA’s tools against them."

Some of the changes to the gameplay also involve So’lek getting new progression systems in the form of brand new crafting recipes that help him get stronger, as well as his own unique skill tree. It is worth noting that From the Ashes acts as a standalone campaign largely separate from the base game’s story, which means that you won’t get to bring the gear you might have picked up as Sarentu into So’lek’s adventure.

Generally speaking, From the Ashes presents some of the most fun and interesting combat encounters that the game has ever seen. Enemy placement, for example, feels a lot more deliberate this time around, allowing for deeper and more engaging stealth gameplay. At the same time, the encounters also feel like they have been well-balanced with the idea of tackling them head on in mind. The only real downside to this fine balance in various aspects of game design like enemy placement is the fact that it likely influenced the decision to cut out co-op gameplay in From the Ashes, unlike the rest of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora which allows for two-player co-op through its entire campaign.

Being able to start From the Ashes straight from the menu is a big plus for anyone who doesn’t want to replay a lengthy open world first, though you still need to own the base game. A notable early issue was a progression block in the A Blessing mission: if you entered that section without explosive grenades equipped, you could get stuck. Aside from that, the expansion has been relatively stable, benefiting from the years of post-launch support the base game has received.

"Being able to start From the Ashes straight from the menu is a big plus for anyone who doesn’t want to replay a lengthy open world first."

These visuals have been buoyed by strong performance, and during my time with From the Ashes, I was able to get a steady frame rate of over 100 frames per second at a resolution of 2560 x 1440. The title expansion was reviewed on a PC running on an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPU, an AMD Radeon RX 7800XT GPU, and 32 GB of DDR5-6000 RAM. Along with this, the load times were also impressively fast thanks to the game being installed on a high-speed NVMe SSD. While we weren’t able to test out how well it might run on a lower-end system, the fact that it features improved support for a smoother 40 FPS mode can only be a good thing for platforms like the Steam Deck.

Visually, it picks up right where the base game left off. Where the original contrasted Pandora’s beauty with the RDA’s uglier industrial footprint, From the Ashes leans hard into devastation—much of it set in a ravaged Kinglor Forest that makes the scale of this war feel more personal and more brutal.

From the Ashes feels like a strong capstone chapter for Frontiers of Pandora’s post-launch story: a darker slice of the conflict, a more defined protagonist in So’lek, and combat that feels punchier thanks to the new skills and third-person flow. Even if you bounced off the base game, its separate start makes it one of the easiest ways to sample what Frontiers does best, stealth, combat, and open-world exploration.

This game was reviewed on PC.