Both the best and worst title in the trilogy, the highs in this one are the highest in the series but the lows are also lower. This sticks super hard to the 3D metroidvania genre with it's structure and level design. This is the weakest in terms of overall narrative but there are some of the strongest individual moments in the whole trilogy, particularly the most famous scene in the game (the third scarecrow scene, you know the one).

Some of the character designs are pretty weak, even batman himself, but there's a couple that really stand out, at the very least for some little details.
There are some small weaknesses like no enemy respawns leading to some lame post-gameplay, but the biggest weakness has to be the bosses, for the most part they look great visually but they're just not strong segments of gameplay, this is encapsulated best with the final boss, which entirely feels like a lame cop-out.

I expected the gameplay from this one to feel more clunky but honestly it feels pretty good still for the most part, It'll definitely be interesting to see how I feel about the gameplay in the sequels, having remembered this as being worse than it is.

Coming off the back of this game I feel like I could end up feeling similarly to this as I do Dead Space, the first game has some great art design and some strong stand-out moments but overall feels to derivative for my taste, is still finding it's feet. Dead Space 2 however is a refinement on almost every aspect of the game, with some weaknesses like the increased characterisation of the protaganist, but with better setpieces, more story depth and more interesting lore; we will see, though.

An absolutely flawless game, an improvement on it's already-great predecessors, with a perfect balance of gameplay to story, some of the best writing in any video game, astounding art design, fantastic music, some of the best performances in the industry, combat that feels infinitely replayable, is easy to pick up but hides a lot of depth, an open world that is only as big as it needs to be, crafting and upgrade elements that feel like a perfect next step to the previous games, I could go on and on, but every part of this game hits the nail straight on the head. A must-play for anyone who owns a PS4 or a PS5, and a game that will definitely go down as one of the best games ever made.