Hands-on With Unleash Avatar Falls Flat as BW2026 Build Feels Too Rough

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At Bilibili World 2026, Indian studio Aeos Games brought an offline demo of its soulslike action game Unleash The Avatar. The reaction from players has been much harsher than the “significantly improved” verdict some media outlets gave it back in June. The verdict this time is blunt: the demo feels rough, light on content, and closer to a half-finished build than a proper public demo.

There is one thing in its favor. Several players said the combat at least has some impact, with hits landing harder than the weightless feel many action demos suffer from. But outside the boss fight, there is reportedly almost nothing here to keep people playing. And even within that slice, the problems stack up fast: awkward camera placement, a UI that looks hastily assembled, flat visual effects, uneven character models and animation transitions, and no execution animation after depleting the boss health bar. Taken together, it is hard to see this as a proper show-floor build rather than something still being rushed into shape.

The biggest frustrations are balance and controls. Players say the boss’s hitbox is absurdly large and its damage is so high it can kill you in about two hits. In phase two, the boss flies into the air, summons crows, and follows up with moves many players found hard to answer, including a near-instant aerial slam and full-screen smoke. Lock-on also reportedly drops too easily, and once the camera slips, players end up fighting the controls as much as the boss.

The control scheme does not help either. Dodge is mapped to Ctrl + WASD instead of the far more familiar Space or Shift, forcing players to relearn the input on the fly. Some also singled out the game’s signature dodge move, jokingly called the “head-touch dodge,” as awkward and hard to trigger during the test. The skill button layout was also said to differ from other games in the genre, adding another layer of friction at first touch.

That is why the gap between the June media impressions and the BW2026 hands-on reaction is so stark. Players are now much more willing to describe the demo as “very rough” or simply a “half-finished product.” A soulslike can absolutely be hard; that is not the problem. The issue is whether the difficulty feels legible. A boss can be oppressive, but when the camera, lock-on, controls, responsiveness, and stability all start falling apart at once, repeated deaths stop teaching anything and start feeling arbitrary.

Technical complaints were plentiful too. Players reported frequent errors, black screens, freezes, and general PC stuttering during the demo. In a limited offline test, that kind of instability matters even more, because every restart, reload, and recovery screen eats into the little time players get with the game.

A few players did offer one point in the boss fight’s favor: it does not seem to rely on delayed or tempo-shifting attacks designed to bait reactions. That at least makes it a little less mean-spirited than some genre peers. But that small mercy is nowhere near enough to offset the broader negative experience. At its current stage, Unleash The Avatar does not look like a game worth rushing to at launch. The sensible move is to wait and see whether a more complete version eventually shows up.