I'm not sure of what to think of this game exactly, on many aspects it surpasses Asylum but also isn't necessarily better on others.

The presentation and map are things I'm mixed on, I like the atmosphere of Arkham City but it feels both too big and small at the same time, gliding around the map is cool but still feels like a chore and collectibles are much less natural to connect. The open world design is also something I'm not necessarily a fan of, the more Metroidvania adjacent style of Asylum made me feel more excited, but this is probably subjective and the side missions are nice.

On the good though, the combat has been polished up and feels much snappier, combos are way more satisfying and you fight more enemies on average alongside having a couple of new enemy types that are sadly rare. Your gadgets start off mostly like what they are in Asylum and you get new ones, with the gadgets overall also integrating better into combat and navigation.

The bosses are more varied and while they're not particularly challenging, I prefer them to Asylum's idea of mostly making them big brutes. They also contribute more to the pacing of the missions.

The story has way more going on and a couple of surprisingly amazing moments coupled with a very powerful ending that hit me hard. Sadly, the GOTY Edition takes away from this by integrating Catwoman's missions into the main game, and they feel awkwardly placed disrupting the pace and even taking away from the ending, I think this could have been handled better because it's nice to switch up the gameplay but it feels like an interruption.

Overall the design of the game map and progression has me mixed, I prefer Asylum but this game is still a great sequel and maybe does deserve its place alongside its predecessor. Play both of them. After playing Origins though, I think you really should play that too, it's City but more focused!

skipped to endgame raiding with these new jumpstart servers. game's presumably dying hard, so they're giving new/returning players stuff valued somewhere around $30-50 (having quickly glanced at its ingame store). there's some rly neat raid design here, unfortunately stuck in a game structured to make you not only hate playing it but ur fellow man.. you at least can ignore that (sort of) if you can get some friends together for this one occasion

it's fun to see amazon repeatedly acknowledge how bad the situation is. i feel for them a bit -- fixing it would require reengineering almost the entire game, which is not at all in their control. all they can do is reapply the same few mitigation tactics they have, which are increasingly becoming desperate

This game had me addicted for over a month, then it dropped off hard. Every few months I tried to revisit the game, but due to the game being P2W, and gear honing being inconsistent I hit a hard wall in the progression system. It was too alt grindy, playing 5 alts a day to funnel gold into your main. The game felt less and less fun overtime and more like chore. It felt as if I launching the game was identical to doing homework. I give the game a good rating due to 99% of the time I spent on it, I enjoyed it.