Gotham Knights Review

The fundamental error is grafting a role-playing loot economy onto a combat system that had already been perfected without one. Enemies now have health bars and levels, so a batarang to the head of a street thug does chip damage, and the freeflow rhythm that made the Arkham games feel like being Batman is replaced by waiting out invulnerability frames. Removing the counter prompt in favour of a dodge is defensible in theory; in practice the animation tells are unclear and encounters devolve into circling.

The open world is large, dark and almost entirely inert, with crimes that respawn on a timer and no set-piece density to justify the traversal. The Court of Owls material is the strongest writing here and is resolved too early. Co-op is the intended framing and the difficulty scaling barely acknowledges it. Performance at launch capped at thirty frames on consoles built for more, which did the combat no favours at all.