This review contains spoilers
Great game but my least favorite Arkham game
Arkham Knight was the long-awaited sequel to Arkham City and with the release of the spin off prequel Arkham origins I was very hyped up for what was to come from Knight but ultimately was a bit disappointed with what we got. Don’t get me wrong, Knight is a good game, maybe even a great game but for me personally its my least favorite Arkham game.
Gameplay/ Graphics: Much like the previous games this is a 3rd person, open world action-adventure game with beat em’ up combat, stealth and now as it turns out driving with the new addition of the Batmobile. The Batmobile is a cool feature that drives very smoothly and is of course fun to use but it brings us to my problem #1 with this game, it forces you to way overuse the Batmobile. Playing this game at times feels like you spend 40-50% of the gameplay in the car or have to use the car for missions, side missions, tank battles, puzzles, Riddler challenges, races and man does it get aggravating after a while especially with the Riddler challenges. This should have been the opportunity to make the car into an extra feature you occasionally need but it feels like this is a Batmobile game with occasional batman gameplay and at times as much as I like the Batmobile it gets repetitive fast, especially the tank battles they are honestly pretty easy and just boring after a while. I will say though the Batmobile does have some awesome moments in the story like being able to drive up the sides of buildings and on rooftops for certain missions and when it works it’s very satisfying but when it doesn’t it’s boring as hell. This brings me to the next coolest part about this game is the map, you unfortunately once again don’t get all of Gotham to explore but you do get a vast majority of it and man does it look crisp as hell. There are so many wild and interesting parts of the environment filled with easter eggs and references. This is most definitely the best-looking Arkham game hands down with a solid mix of gothic animated show buildings and modern Dark Knight; it feels like we are seeing a mix of both the Arkham Origins art style and the City /Asylum comic one. Speaking of looks, to me, Batman looks the coolest here with an armor set and look that resembles both the origins and City/ Asylum era and in a way appeals to both sides of the fanbase. The beat ’em up combat has never been better with a new multi take down system and a new fun tag team system with certain missions in the game, like with the Penguin missions you get to help Nightwing fight off Penguin’s henchmen and do fun tag team fights where you seamlessly switch between Nightwing and Batman mid combat. You get to do this with other characters like cat woman on ridders mission line. Certain gameplay moments like this really feel so flawless and fun to play and only makes me want more. Maybe I’m the only one but I would love to see a sequel to origins where Batman gets a co-op Robin where we can really explore this kinda gameplay even farther, but I guess I can only dream. The detective mode and crime solving has only gotten better with this game, allowing you to change filters on dead bodies to look for clues on missions like the murder mystery storyline. The gameplay is all round smooth, but this brings me to problem #2 with this game, most of the boss fights suck. A good example of this is the Deathstroke fight in this game is super lame, Origins hyped up the rematch of the century and after his awesome fight in origins we are left with a lame ass tank battle in this one… yup he hides in a tank. Unfortunately, a lot of the boss’ fights have been reduced to tank battles, fighting henchmen or stealthing the bosses. The big boss of this game, the Arkham knight, has the weakest final fight of the game at the very end and it’s a bit of a letdown. This game has loads of DLC missions that allow you to play as red hood, Robin and Bat girl, Harley Quinn and more but unfortunately most of these missions are crazy short. Especially the Red Hood one. It has a run time of like 23 minutes which is absolutely ridiculous to me. The only worth it DLC is the Batgirl and Robin one clocking in at close to 2 hours but even that is kinda short.
Music and voice acting and glitches: I don’t usually structure my reviews like this, but I did because sound design and glitches seem to go hand and hand in this game which brings me to problem #3, This game is still very glitchy. The musical score and voice acting for this game is probably some of the best in the whole franchise with top notch performances all around, but I ran into so many audio glitches even when I played recently. I have run into so many sound bugs with music disappearing, dialogue disappearing, voices overlapping I found more wacky glitches with the sound or graphical errors like one where Cat woman fell though the floor and her model’s texture slowly covered my screen as batman till, I couldn’t see anymore. Its just crazy to me these glitches are still on the game so many years later.
Story/ Spoilers! (I’m gonna talk big spoilers here you have been warned!): Problem #4 has to do with the story for me and a lot of the big twists that come with it. Some of the story beats in this game are fantastic and work wonderfully but other parts of it completely fall apart like the Identity of “who is the Arkham Knight” long before this games release it was speculated the Arkham Knight could be a past robin like Jason Todd and I remember WB specifically gaslighting fans into thinking this was an entirely new character when in reality its just Jason Todd and the whole reveal is kinda weak. I think the idea of having Red hood be the main villain is a great idea, having him work with scarecrow is a bit weird but still cool but having him come back as Red hood disguised as Arkham Knight is kinda dumb and didn’t really work since it was obviously going to be him anyways. I think it would have been better to have Jason still be Red hood in this game but maybe add another layer to why he’s red hood as the twist or even keep the Arkham Knight but make him an original character? anything would have been better than what we ended up with. Aside from this I think most of the plot works wonderfully and balancing the 3 major storylines of Scarecrow, the Arkham Knight and the Joker virus was handled well but I guess that brings me to another thing a lot of people didn’t like which was the Joker virus. I think joker’s role in this game was fun and works well but on my first playthrough I remember not liking the joker infection thing at all. After my recent playthroughs it kinda grew on me more, All of Jokers interactions with batman, the mental breaking point it brings batman to and the whole end segment makes this plotline worth it but I completely understand those who didn’t care for it, it feels like they are just shoehorning in joker and the titan formula once again for the sake of having him in the game and I mean this is why I would love an origins sequel one where maybe joker is in prison the whole game and it focuses on other plot threads and enemies and I was hoping this game would have been just that but I guess not. Overall it’s a good game but it has its problems much like how Origins had its own making it probably the weakest of the main Arkham trilogy, with that being said I still think all 4 Arkham games are great games for anyone who loves DC, Batman, or open world Beat ‘em up titles. 7/10
Arkham Knight was the long-awaited sequel to Arkham City and with the release of the spin off prequel Arkham origins I was very hyped up for what was to come from Knight but ultimately was a bit disappointed with what we got. Don’t get me wrong, Knight is a good game, maybe even a great game but for me personally its my least favorite Arkham game.
Gameplay/ Graphics: Much like the previous games this is a 3rd person, open world action-adventure game with beat em’ up combat, stealth and now as it turns out driving with the new addition of the Batmobile. The Batmobile is a cool feature that drives very smoothly and is of course fun to use but it brings us to my problem #1 with this game, it forces you to way overuse the Batmobile. Playing this game at times feels like you spend 40-50% of the gameplay in the car or have to use the car for missions, side missions, tank battles, puzzles, Riddler challenges, races and man does it get aggravating after a while especially with the Riddler challenges. This should have been the opportunity to make the car into an extra feature you occasionally need but it feels like this is a Batmobile game with occasional batman gameplay and at times as much as I like the Batmobile it gets repetitive fast, especially the tank battles they are honestly pretty easy and just boring after a while. I will say though the Batmobile does have some awesome moments in the story like being able to drive up the sides of buildings and on rooftops for certain missions and when it works it’s very satisfying but when it doesn’t it’s boring as hell. This brings me to the next coolest part about this game is the map, you unfortunately once again don’t get all of Gotham to explore but you do get a vast majority of it and man does it look crisp as hell. There are so many wild and interesting parts of the environment filled with easter eggs and references. This is most definitely the best-looking Arkham game hands down with a solid mix of gothic animated show buildings and modern Dark Knight; it feels like we are seeing a mix of both the Arkham Origins art style and the City /Asylum comic one. Speaking of looks, to me, Batman looks the coolest here with an armor set and look that resembles both the origins and City/ Asylum era and in a way appeals to both sides of the fanbase. The beat ’em up combat has never been better with a new multi take down system and a new fun tag team system with certain missions in the game, like with the Penguin missions you get to help Nightwing fight off Penguin’s henchmen and do fun tag team fights where you seamlessly switch between Nightwing and Batman mid combat. You get to do this with other characters like cat woman on ridders mission line. Certain gameplay moments like this really feel so flawless and fun to play and only makes me want more. Maybe I’m the only one but I would love to see a sequel to origins where Batman gets a co-op Robin where we can really explore this kinda gameplay even farther, but I guess I can only dream. The detective mode and crime solving has only gotten better with this game, allowing you to change filters on dead bodies to look for clues on missions like the murder mystery storyline. The gameplay is all round smooth, but this brings me to problem #2 with this game, most of the boss fights suck. A good example of this is the Deathstroke fight in this game is super lame, Origins hyped up the rematch of the century and after his awesome fight in origins we are left with a lame ass tank battle in this one… yup he hides in a tank. Unfortunately, a lot of the boss’ fights have been reduced to tank battles, fighting henchmen or stealthing the bosses. The big boss of this game, the Arkham knight, has the weakest final fight of the game at the very end and it’s a bit of a letdown. This game has loads of DLC missions that allow you to play as red hood, Robin and Bat girl, Harley Quinn and more but unfortunately most of these missions are crazy short. Especially the Red Hood one. It has a run time of like 23 minutes which is absolutely ridiculous to me. The only worth it DLC is the Batgirl and Robin one clocking in at close to 2 hours but even that is kinda short.
Music and voice acting and glitches: I don’t usually structure my reviews like this, but I did because sound design and glitches seem to go hand and hand in this game which brings me to problem #3, This game is still very glitchy. The musical score and voice acting for this game is probably some of the best in the whole franchise with top notch performances all around, but I ran into so many audio glitches even when I played recently. I have run into so many sound bugs with music disappearing, dialogue disappearing, voices overlapping I found more wacky glitches with the sound or graphical errors like one where Cat woman fell though the floor and her model’s texture slowly covered my screen as batman till, I couldn’t see anymore. Its just crazy to me these glitches are still on the game so many years later.
Story/ Spoilers! (I’m gonna talk big spoilers here you have been warned!): Problem #4 has to do with the story for me and a lot of the big twists that come with it. Some of the story beats in this game are fantastic and work wonderfully but other parts of it completely fall apart like the Identity of “who is the Arkham Knight” long before this games release it was speculated the Arkham Knight could be a past robin like Jason Todd and I remember WB specifically gaslighting fans into thinking this was an entirely new character when in reality its just Jason Todd and the whole reveal is kinda weak. I think the idea of having Red hood be the main villain is a great idea, having him work with scarecrow is a bit weird but still cool but having him come back as Red hood disguised as Arkham Knight is kinda dumb and didn’t really work since it was obviously going to be him anyways. I think it would have been better to have Jason still be Red hood in this game but maybe add another layer to why he’s red hood as the twist or even keep the Arkham Knight but make him an original character? anything would have been better than what we ended up with. Aside from this I think most of the plot works wonderfully and balancing the 3 major storylines of Scarecrow, the Arkham Knight and the Joker virus was handled well but I guess that brings me to another thing a lot of people didn’t like which was the Joker virus. I think joker’s role in this game was fun and works well but on my first playthrough I remember not liking the joker infection thing at all. After my recent playthroughs it kinda grew on me more, All of Jokers interactions with batman, the mental breaking point it brings batman to and the whole end segment makes this plotline worth it but I completely understand those who didn’t care for it, it feels like they are just shoehorning in joker and the titan formula once again for the sake of having him in the game and I mean this is why I would love an origins sequel one where maybe joker is in prison the whole game and it focuses on other plot threads and enemies and I was hoping this game would have been just that but I guess not. Overall it’s a good game but it has its problems much like how Origins had its own making it probably the weakest of the main Arkham trilogy, with that being said I still think all 4 Arkham games are great games for anyone who loves DC, Batman, or open world Beat ‘em up titles. 7/10