Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – Secrets of the Spires DLC Review – Fly Free

Much like the previous DLC release for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – The Sky Breaker – Secrets of the Spires once more takes us to a brand-new location. This time around, however, the new zone feels like it was specifically designed to make use of the game’s flying mechanics. Considering the name of the new DLC, it should come as no surprise that massive spires and flying are going to be a key feature here. Sadly, however, Secrets of the Spires doesn’t really do much to alleviate the core issues of the game that have been present since its original release.

The DLC kicks things off on a rather mellow note. Anufi wants to reunite the clans and sends you off into a relatively unexplored area of Pandora, which can only be accessed through flight. On getting to the new zone, you once again get to experience the beauty of moon, but from a new angle; just about everything in the new zone is downright gorgeous, with wide-open canyons and towering mountains that were definitely designed with the idea of players flying through at high speeds.

Aside from flight being the key mechanic for the DLC, there unfortunately isn’t really much new here. Sure, mounted combat gets a big focus, and you also have access to new abilities that make flying around an absolute joy, but you’re still ultimately going to spend most of your time fighting either local wildlife for their crafting materials, or RDA soldiers for the sake of the story. Much like the areas from the base game, the new DLC zone ends up feeling more like it was designed to be a sandbox than with any real design intent other than “flying is cool”.

"Visually the new zone introduced in Secrets of the Spires is just as gorgeous as the base game and Sky Breaker."

This also becomes quite obvious once you make content with the local tribe of the new zone, earn their trust, get some new flying abilities, and kick off the story in earnest. Ultimately, it always just seems to fall back to fighting off RDA forces. On the bright side, while the story itself is more or less just an excuse to get you to do things, the gameplay itself can be a lot of fun.

To call flying the core mechanic of Secrets of the Spires isn’t really an exaggeration. The DLC introduces brand new mechanics that let you pull off impressive stunts like flinging yourself to grapple off some vines under Pandora’s many floating islands, for example. However, the player is expected to be quite familiar with the game’s core mechanics and doesn’t really hold your hand outside of the first few minutes while you find the new tribe.

In fact, the DLC fully expects you to come here after you’ve wrapped most of the core game up, since there’s a gear requirement of level 20, and keeping with Ubisoft game traditions, you’re even given a story skip in case you want to avoid grinding and get to the fun parts. While this does bring up more curious points, like why even have levels of grinding that can be made superfluous at the press of a button to begin with, but that has been a core design issue with Ubisoft’s games for quite a few years now.

"To call flying the core mechanic of Secrets of the Spires isn’t really an exaggeration."

Visually the new zone introduced in Secrets of the Spires is just as gorgeous as the base game and Sky Breaker. The world from James Cameron’s movie series has once again been brought to life in a convincing manner, and depending on your system’s hardware, the game even gets incredibly close to looking just as good, and if you get the right angles, sometimes even better than the movies.

While the DLC doesn’t bring anything new to the table aside from an expanded set of moves for flying, what it does end up doing quite well is bringing in more of the incredibly immersive world that we praised the core game for. The story itself tends to largely stay out of your way once you’ve started unlocking your new abilities, and a lot of the same gameplay loop is present here, tasking you with upgrading your gear, and even buff-providing food by letting you lose in a beautifully rendered new zone.

After having spent some time away from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, returning to it only with the release of its latest DLC, it is worth noting that some aspects of the core gameplay have started feeling a bit clunky. This is especially true for the new DLC zone, which relies a lot more on verticality, and brings with it a whole host of new ways to travel around including bouncing plants. The presence of these new features makes the general movement of the game feel unnecessarily heavy, and jumping especially feels quite off when compared to even some of Ubisoft’s other shooters.

"Ultimately, it always just seems to fall back to fighting off RDA forces."

Combat, on the other hand, remains largely unchanged, aside from some of your new flight-based abilities. The core gunplay is still solid, and while it isn’t going to give you the same level of gory entertainment as something like Doom, it’s fairly competent, and mowing down RDA troops still has its charms. There’s also something special about being able to dive bomb into a group of enemies and quickly taking them out with your arsenal, which now also includes a crossbow designed to be specially used while flying. Unfortunately, this alone doesn’t really do much to shake up the gameplay.

Ultimately, Secrets of the Spires doesn’t really do much too revitalize Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and unless you liked the base game so much that you just want any excuse to spend more time with the title, the DLC is unlikely to offer much in the way of new enticing features to bring you back. Sure, some of the new flying abilities can be fun, but they tend to stop feeling novel relatively quickly, and since the DLC’s main story is more or less just an excuse to have you fighting against RDA yet again, there just doesn’t feel like there’s enough new here in terms of core gameplay to be worth returning to.

On the other hand, fans of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will undoubtedly love the fact that there’s an entirely new zone to explore, as well as a few new abilities that make flying around a more active endeavour than just holding forward on your analogue stick. Secrets of the Spires unfortunately feels like something of a whimper to end the main game’s series of DLCs rather than a bang, with its new features feeling just novel enough to maybe keep a player entertained for an hour or two but ultimately feeling anemic enough to entice most to just move on to other releases.

This game was reviewed on PC.