Introduction
I think the discourse around this game is still so interesting 9 years later, theres just so much to chew on. Its contentious, brilliant, awful and generally quite confusing in so many ways. For a game that got such outstanding critical reaction when it first released (excluding the PC port) to me its interesting that a lot of what's wrong with this game was completely ignored. Make no mistake I do really enjoy playing this game, its addictive as hell and can be really immersive, its just as an overall package with the context of this being the big final entry in the series, its kind of disappointing, like there is a lot wrong with this game that's not talked about enough and I genuinely think as an overall package its probably the worst one in the series, it has elements that are far and away the best in the series but then it fumbles in places where the other games nailed it.
The opening
So lets start actually justifying some of these bold statements I'm putting forward. I think a good place to start is the opening, it perfectly personifies what is great about the game and generally what's its problems are.
Burning the jokers corpse to "ive got you under my skin." is just so perfect man, perfect way to set the tone and remind us of the great ending from the last game, the hidden detail in new game plus here is really cool too, trademark Rocksteady. We then cut to a first person segment where we play as a cop during a scarecrow fear toxin attack, again I think this part is really immersive, sets up the threat of scarecrow well, isn't too monotonous on replay and this is where you start noticing the level of detail in the environment's, little easter eggs and references litter this whole diner and this doesn't stop throughout the entire game, there was just clearly so much love poured into every environment in this game. theres even an optional conversation you can overhear later on in the game depending on if you shot anyone when you were playing as officer Blake, again its a level of detail that's unnecessary but its adds so much man. Then we get a lil monologue from Gordon about the city and we get this amazing seamless camera pan of batman transitioning straight into gameplay, that last line from Gordon : " and tonight we're relying on 1 man to save us all." still gets me hyped to play the game, really strong stuff. Also sidenote I prefer the starting costume over the advanced suit they give you later. It makes sense for the story that batman would want an armoured asf suit but idc i prefer less bulk for my batsuits.
The city and roaming
But this is the first point we are allowed to roam the city so this is a good place to mention that this game still looks (and runs.) better than I would say 80% of the games coming out today. 1 console generation later and its still one of the most detailed, pleasant looking games I've played. Im nowhere close to an expert on this sort of stuff but I think its the rain and the way it interacts with batman's character model and the way it reacts with his cape while he's gliding n stuff. Just looks really stunning.
The movement and traversal is also greatly approved, its alot faster to glide around and using the grapnel accelerator thing, especially when its fully upgraded is really fun.
Freeflow
Then we get our first free flow brawling segment and its kind of my least favourite thing to discuss when it comes to the game, its great and they make some welcome improvements to it in this game but that's about all I can say on it, its great, its addicting just like it always has been, theres afew new enemy types to spice this up, the medic is a good addition if a bit annoying just for when they charge up another enemy with an electric shield. Its easy enough to counter with the quick fire batclaw but its those moments when ur about to hit an enemy and at the last minute they get charged up so you hit them and lose ur combo, like that's kind of bullshit and feels a bit cheap and i say that as someone who considers themselves to be quite good at the combat in this game, like I've gone into the iceberg lounge challenge map and got to the 500 combo to get the killer croc boss fight thing. Somtimes i think they are overcompensating a bit with the amount of enemy's with relatively similar gimmicks you have to get round but tbf they do limit this with giving you multiple ways to get past various weapons and stuff, like for the shock stick guys for example, you can vault over them to hit them in the back, you can shock them with rec gun, disarm them, take them down straight up or just grapple it straight out their hands, theres usually more than one way to beat every enemy which is appreciated and shows good design.
The batmobile
We then get our first bat mobile segment which is probabley the one thing that everyone agrees is like kinda overdone and not executed in the best way it could have been. That being said, its introduction here is cool, the chase segments throughout the game are generally fun and fit well in the game, the environmental destruction and the way the car interacts with the city is really, really cool, i have no idea how the got the destruction and stuff to look as good as it does without completely blowing up last gen consoles. To me its seriously an underappreciated part of the game that goes a little under the radar. The problems with the car are the drone tank fights, how it can trivialise combat sections and the tank puzzle sections. The drone tank fights are easily the worst combat related thing you do in the game, theres issues with it gameplay wise but also i don't know how well these translate narratively. Lets start with the gameplay wise critiques first, ide like to first just say if there was like 3 tank combat sections in the game i genuinely think it would be a non problem but its how they insist it upon us as now a core element of the gameplay, it takes up so much of the runtime and it feels like you spend more time tank fighting than fist fighting, they banked so heavily on it being really fun and strong enough to carry large portions of the game but its just not compelling, its just very simple and easy, theres very little depth to it and it just feels very arcadey, it just needs something more and i genuinley do not know what that is, they clearly spent alot of time trying to make it work but I cant help but think the game would be better off without any of it. And this isnt even mentioning the god awful tank stealth they get you doing at later points in the game, theres so many issues with this, its actually crazy, they are overly simple, boring and feel so so dumb, i groan at every point i am forced to do them. Then we have the narrative questions that the tank combat brings up, firstly like i just cant shrug off the feeling that what im playing just doesnt quite fit with batman, the fact that i can bulldoze into criminals on the street with it feels slightly out of character. Its also like where tf did the arkham knight get these drones from and if he knows batman so well then why doesnt he just use manned vehicles? So then Batman cant just blow them up? I literally had this thought the very first time I played the game, just feels like such a poorly thought out addition. Theres also the puzzles man holy lawd, these are not fun, its like they decided it would be cool to do literally everything you did from the last few games but just in the tank, you follow round trails on the floor and do detective work in a tank? Its just such a chore man like did anyone even playtest some of this cuz it could so easily be removed from the game and the experience would be better for it.
Predator gameplay and how it has regressed.
Skipping ahead a little bit, i do also want to talk about the predator sections in this game, this might be the most divisive thing i say about this game but i feel like the predator sections are also kind of a downgrade from the last 2 games. To help understand where im coming from, let me explain what made the predator sections great in origins and city. To me the best preadtor maps are the intrinsically designed tight areas where the enemies are using all the tools at their disposal to limit what you can do. The more challenging these sections are, the better in my view. Like the final predator section in arkham city at the top of wonder tower is brilliantly designed because it forces you think outside the box and use whatever tools you have at your disposal, you cant rely on the gargoyles or floor grates all the time for safety, it forces you to be a bit more creative. The reason i dont like alot of knights predator maps is because i find alot of them to be too big, majority of them are seemingly outside and also as cool as they are, i think the fear multi takedowns actually hurt the experience. To explain, With alot of the sections being so large and outdoors, alot of the thought that went into the design of the areas can be largely ignored because if u make a mistake, escaping is often as simple as just grappling away from the area and then coming back, theres not much of a reason to engage and learn the space when you can so easily leave it and thats exactly it, alot of the predator maps in this game just arent memorable like they were in city or even origins. And just to add to this, fear multi takedowns can often absolutely trivialise these maps, you can upgrade it to the point where you can take down 5 enemies at once and all it costs is a single silent takedown? Dont get me wrong you should feel empowered as Batman but this is a little too much for me because it is so easily recoverable and enemies have virtually no response to it. It would work well if the means to acquire the ability were harder like maybe you could have been able to do certain things in the environment or being more theatrical would have started to build up your "fear meter." and once Ur foes were sufficiently terrified, you could use the ability and then if you were spotted or if ur enemies landed a hit on you the meter could go down or be reset. This is literally off the top of my head and doesn't it sound so much cooler, who knows maybe they did think of something like this and it just didn't work or they didn't have time, i dont know.
Boss fights (or lack of.)
Not to continue being negative but we also have to talk about boss fights, theres basically like 2 or 3 in the game. This is probably the most shocking thing about this game, the studio that went from creating one of the best boss fights in gaming in Mr freeze to these sorry excuses for bosses, genuinely infuriating. Just to list them, you have the arkham knights helicopter, arkham knights underground vehicle thing, arkham knights stealth tank fight, then the arkham knight predator section. Not one of these is fun, 3 of them require you to be in the tank and just to rub it in ur face a bit more, 1 of them is repeated just with deathstroke in the tank (we will speak about him more in a bit.) The bosses are just so so bad man, they are indefensible, like i cant even think of anything to say about them, they are just bad lol, asylum has better bosses. They dont even give you a fun scarecrow boss in this game, in fact there is no final boss, you just do the final joker first person section (which I like btw.) and watch a cutscene and then the game ends. This HAS to be a result of them just not having enough time to create these bosses, i refuse to believe a development team this talented looked at these bosses and thought yeah these are good. Its one of the many reasons that when i go back to play one of these games, i gravitate to city or origins over this game even tho it arguably has the gameplay at its peak. They even tease you with the thought of a good boss fight with death stroke again and then throw it away immediately by just having you watch a cutscene of batman 1 shotting him after a shitty tank fight.
The actual narrative :0
ITS SO BAD YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP IT SUCKSSS SO MUCH, WHY DID THEY LET PAUL DINI GOOOO?!
The Arkham Knight
Creating an entirely new character for the series was actually a really cool concept and genuinely showed alot of potential, his costume was actually pretty cool and there was alot of buildup over who the arkham knight was under the mask and then the game came out and it turns out he actually wasnt a new character and was generally just a reskin of the red hood, who would have been cooler. Oh and hes also just generally dumb and non threatening, WHAT WAS THE POINT? If you were gonna just do red hood reskin atleast do it properly, the entire appeal of red hood is that hes a direct answer to batman's ideals, hes one of the only characters in the verse that can go up to batman, challenge him idealistically and be justified in his position. But no the arkham knight is just kinda mad that batman couldnt find him so he joins up with scarecrow... ??? Feels a little out of character but ok then he also leads and entire army of military trained individuals that he got from... uh... well.. the game actually never explains this. Theres just so many question marks that arise from asking the simplest of questions and this theme carries onto the joker plot.
The Jonkler
The idea of batman having joker show up in his mind throughout the game is genuinely, again, a cool concept. Having him randomly pop up in the open world for a bit of dialogue is actually awesome, its just the reasoning behind it that really makes you raise an eyebrow, so jokers blood actually made it to some patients and somehow this makes them start turning into joker? @ROCKSTEADY you guys do know that joker is just a regular human and that suggesting he can be cloned through the use of blood transfer is not only ridiculous but it also slightly ruins his character cuz then it kind of implies that he isnt special at all, its just the toxins that he fell into that made him crazy? The execution of this whole idea is just messy as fucckk, like you can still have the jokers subplot at panessa studios without this awful explanation, just have them as some joker fanboys that want to continue his legacy, i wouldnt have questioned that and then for batman i can generally buy into the fact that he would be mentally damaged by the jokers death and then his mental illness is only exacerbated by the fear toxin that scarecrow keeps giving him throughout the night. Like you dont need the dumb "oh no the jokers blood is making me turn into him." Like such an easy fix and makes way more sense. Like we know Batman is mentally unwell. Paul dini please why have you done this to me. There was rumours that his version of knight was gonna have hush as the main villain with court of owls playing a big role and like i just think that sounds so much more interesting. This game is just a victim of key developers leaving and a rushed development, this could and should have been the greatest Superhero game ever made and i cant help but shake the feeling that they bottled it man. Im patiently waiting for the day when a developer goes back to this sort of formula and tries again with a Batman game, wether its in the same universe, a follow up to origins or a completely new thing.
I just also want to take a moment to speak on the voice acting, not just in this game but the whole series, its truly magnificent. The decision to get the animated series voice cast back way back in asylum was just such a great move and one that feels like it was truly made by fans of the character. Mark Hamils Joker and Kevin Conroys Batman are perfect renditions of the characters, these are the voices i hear when i read the comic books, They will always be a massive part of my childhood and its deeply saddening that we will never hear Conroy reprise the role again. May he rest in peace, he will always be My Batman.