It's honestly pretty good, but I feel like every single time someone with rose-tinted glasses sings this game's high praises they skip over all the monotonous shit this game has in DROVES. You can't go into this building Batman, I set up 3 jammers across this side of the open world map, go track them down, and punch out 3 INDIVIDUAL SCREENS on the machine in a lengthy animation for some reason, you can't go into this door Batman, go track down 10 robots and just hold down one button while looking at them to scan them. The game is full of "now stop and go here/do this" which is just so fucking lame and such a momentum breaker.
But nothing even comes close to when the game switches you over to Catwoman, she does everything Batman can, just fucking worse in every single way. It's not that she offers a different playstyle, or has unique challenges, she's just 100% worse than Batman. She has worse transversal options, much less combat options, fewer gadgets, and 2 out of 3 of them are just worse Batman gadgets.
The story is good, it has some amazing setpieces, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. When you are not doing one of those tedious momentum breakers it goes at a pretty good pace.
The combat and stealth sections are frankly amazing, the options you have, the interactions between your attacks and enemies/the environment felt like I was playing a character action game like DMC. That is when everything works correctly, because sometimes Batman will attack a thug you did not mean to target and you will lose your combo, sometimes he will perch on a railing and eat a shotgun blast to the face, and sometimes your glide kick will end up with you faceplanting into a wall, sometimes Batman doesn't ground pound the dude right under him once again losing you your combo. There's A LOT of small issues that you will feel across this 8-9 hours campaign, and they will add up. If you want to go for additional achievements you will feel them a whole lot more.
Most side content is disappointing garbage. There's 1 mission that's just "knock out this one guy bullying some other guy", do this 20 times for... nothing. No cutscene, no resolution, you just did it, con-fucking-gratulations. 2 missions end with essentially the guy looking at the camera and going "SEE YOU IN BATMAN ARKHAM 3 TRADEMARK PENDING WHERE WE WILL HAVE OUR EPIC BATTLE BATMAN!". There's the Bane mission with the most anti-climatic ending the world has ever seen. The Mad Hatter mission is a brief, visually very cool, combat section. The fucking Zasz telephone fuckery which is SO BORING. And then they have the audacity to put down "go to this building and immediately receive a gadget as a "side quest". Then you have the 400-something riddler trophies which are required to progress his quest... this is... this is... it's a good design decision in my opinion. Not the fact that there are 400 of them, fuck that, but they provide a much-needed break from your usual gameplay loop. You go around the city, notice one of them and you engage with a simple, cool puzzle, that sometimes teaches you additional use of your gadgets. It's brilliant to be honest, and the game felt empty when I went through NG+, because all my Riddler trophy completions carried over. There definitely should have been fewer of them though, some are just so uninspired it hurts. Also, Riddler's Sidequest features very unique dungeons and encounters, it is by far the best side content in the game but the fact that they are locked behind so many trophies means the majority of players will miss out on them.
But nothing even comes close to when the game switches you over to Catwoman, she does everything Batman can, just fucking worse in every single way. It's not that she offers a different playstyle, or has unique challenges, she's just 100% worse than Batman. She has worse transversal options, much less combat options, fewer gadgets, and 2 out of 3 of them are just worse Batman gadgets.
The story is good, it has some amazing setpieces, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. When you are not doing one of those tedious momentum breakers it goes at a pretty good pace.
The combat and stealth sections are frankly amazing, the options you have, the interactions between your attacks and enemies/the environment felt like I was playing a character action game like DMC. That is when everything works correctly, because sometimes Batman will attack a thug you did not mean to target and you will lose your combo, sometimes he will perch on a railing and eat a shotgun blast to the face, and sometimes your glide kick will end up with you faceplanting into a wall, sometimes Batman doesn't ground pound the dude right under him once again losing you your combo. There's A LOT of small issues that you will feel across this 8-9 hours campaign, and they will add up. If you want to go for additional achievements you will feel them a whole lot more.
Most side content is disappointing garbage. There's 1 mission that's just "knock out this one guy bullying some other guy", do this 20 times for... nothing. No cutscene, no resolution, you just did it, con-fucking-gratulations. 2 missions end with essentially the guy looking at the camera and going "SEE YOU IN BATMAN ARKHAM 3 TRADEMARK PENDING WHERE WE WILL HAVE OUR EPIC BATTLE BATMAN!". There's the Bane mission with the most anti-climatic ending the world has ever seen. The Mad Hatter mission is a brief, visually very cool, combat section. The fucking Zasz telephone fuckery which is SO BORING. And then they have the audacity to put down "go to this building and immediately receive a gadget as a "side quest". Then you have the 400-something riddler trophies which are required to progress his quest... this is... this is... it's a good design decision in my opinion. Not the fact that there are 400 of them, fuck that, but they provide a much-needed break from your usual gameplay loop. You go around the city, notice one of them and you engage with a simple, cool puzzle, that sometimes teaches you additional use of your gadgets. It's brilliant to be honest, and the game felt empty when I went through NG+, because all my Riddler trophy completions carried over. There definitely should have been fewer of them though, some are just so uninspired it hurts. Also, Riddler's Sidequest features very unique dungeons and encounters, it is by far the best side content in the game but the fact that they are locked behind so many trophies means the majority of players will miss out on them.