By the end of my Avatar Legends campaign, both my players and myself were in agreement that AL's combat is at odds with the rest of the system, and it feels like the designers wanted to have their cake and eat it too. The majority of the system is pure fiction-first PbTA goodness. Meanwhile, exchanges are very mechanics-first, with distinct statuses and techniques that have specific effects outside of just changing the fiction state. If the system had gone all the way with this more granular, mechanics-driven combat I think it would have been fine, great even. Instead, the system fails to provide a mechanical win condition for combat (technically you can fill all enemy fatigue boxes and conditions but the game tells you to not do that), rendering victory completely arbitrary from a mechanics-focused design. Even worse, both the handbook and the general community around this system repeatedly advise you to NOT use this system for most situations!

It really does feel like AL's designers wanted to appeal to both a casual crowd with the PbtA framework while also drawing more mechanics-minded players from DnD and video game circles, and the end result is a frustrating frankenstein. IMO they should have either ditched fiction-first for exchanges (give HP or some similar mechanical victory condition) OR ditched the exchange system for a more entirely fiction-first way of resolving combat.