izigame.me

I know this game constantly gets put down, being the (non-canon and chronological) follow up to Arkham Knight. Don't get me wrong, this game is no Arkham Knight, but I do definitely think the game is overhated simply by association with the main series.

The Bad
Let's get the bad over with first. The combat in this definitely feels lacking when you first start playing if you're already familiar with the Arkham series. Hallmarks of the Batman gameplay you know like his toolkit, various stealth approaches, countering in combat are all absent in this entry. The combat is a bit sluggish, I'll admit and is one of the biggest flaws with the game. While there are many cool-looking special moves to utilize, the game constantly feels like a battle against yourself wanting to just go faster.

The movement in this game also leaves something to be desired. The Batcycle, introduced early in the game as this awesome thing feels pretty damn slow for traversal. However, you would probably still need it early in the game because.. dun-dun-dun the game actually needs you to unlock your character's traversal abilities. For example, Batgirl doesn't have her cape glide by default, meaning that until you unlock it, you can either travel on foot or grapple from one ledge to another.

The game was quite clearly set up to be a live service game but was trimmed down to be a single player (with co-op) game instead. It still retains many of its live service-y elements though like leveled loot, damage numbers, simple quest design, basic NPC interactions etc. I also don't know what it is exactly but the game kind of feels weirdly like a ported mobile game.

Lastly, the menus, oh god, the menus. I don't know what psychopath decided every single thing needed its own dedicated menu. Wanna check out some basic information about your enemies? Menu. Upgrade your skills and gear? Menu. Check your collectibles? You're not going to believe this - menu.

The Good
That's all my gripes with the bad (I think), so let's move onto the good stuff. This is the first actual game that focuses on the Bat family with the main four characters being Nightwing, Red Hood, Batgirl and Robin (Tim Drake). I loved seeing all the different interactions between the Bat family and their individual reactions played out in different scenarios. I feel that the creators truly knew what kind of dynamics we wanted to see and they delivered on it.

In addition to this, playing through the story as each character yields its own unique dialogue, which I really appreciated that they took the time to animate and record four different characters per scene. For example, if you play as Red Hood when meeting Talia or Harley Quinn, they make reference to how he had previously died and came back to life.

I've heard yet again that some were disappointed with how the story went with the Court of Owls, but I don't think the story was terrible. In fact, it really felt quite interesting uncovering their plot and how Batman's death is involved with their scheme.

While the live service aspect of the game is pretty glaring, I do think that one boon came out of that - the character customization being tied to the loot/transmog system. As you play throughout the story, you can use any item which presents itself as various skins for your character. Even better, these outfits persists in cutscenes so there's none of that "it's only for the gameplay" stuff.

The TL;DR and Final Verdict
* Don't go into this this game expecting Arkham gameplay, it simply is not it.
* Gameplay loop is not the greatest.
* The game aces it by simply just being a Bat family story.

And hey, if you're not entirely convinced, buy the game on a sale like I did, or you can just go watch the cutscenes on YouTube I guess. Whatever works for you.