Gotham Knights Review
This was played on a PS5 and was a platinum trophy playthrough, it took me over 40 hours to get the platinum trophy.
In the Shadow of a Giant
Both the Knights and the developers have to deal with who came before them. The Knights are compared to Batman like this game is compared to the Arkham series, it is impossible to escape the comparisons. I never thought this game would be better than the Arkham games and so I kept my expectations tempered, this worked out great for me. The story and gameplay were nowhere close to the Arkham games and that's okay. They weren't trying to make another Arkham game, and I think that this was successful for establishing their own mark on the Batman universe. This doesn't make the game perfect but there is a fair amount to like.
The Gotham Blues
Batman is dead! It's up to the Bat family to protect Gotham and take up the mantle of the caped crusader. Nightwing, Redhood, Robin, and Batgirl are the playable characters, each with a unique playstyle. You can play as each character or just one, the story is not impacted by this choice outside of cutscenes and dialogue. With the heavy burden of replacing Batman the Bat family has to deal with a new threat as they follow Batman's last case. The Court of Owls are menacing foes that are integral to Gotham and how it runs. Other familiar foes are present like Harley Quinn and Clayface.
Bam! Kapow!
The combat is a mixed bag. The four playable characters allows for experimentation which can keep things fresh. All of the characters have the same base abilities like dodge, range and heavy attacks, but the special moves and movement changes. Some characters I preferred playing more than others, my two favorites were Nightwing and Redhood. These two offered the most fun playstyles for me, with Nightwing jumping around and slamming into foes from the air, while Redhood can either unload his nonlethal guns or bash enemies with his huge size. The different animations are very helpful with making combat feel refreshing but eventually that wears off and the game does get repetitive. The combat doesn't have the same feel of the Arkham games to where you can fight a giant mob of 100 enemies and not get tired. Combat in Gotham Knights is slower and feels like the moves are more labored instead of fluid. If they happen to make a sequel, I would love to see a combat system that incentivizes long combo chains where the longer the combo the quicker the cooldown on abilities are.
Summary
This game is rather disappointing considering that WB Montreal had developed Arkham Origins, which was a great game even if it was the worst Arkham Game. This game falls for the appeal of a boring gear system that incentivizes repeating activities, rather than the activities being the actual appeal. The characters to impress and there is not much to talk about regarding this game, which is a shame. I wish that the combat was worth playing over and over again but it isn't. I don't have a reason to revisit this game and that honestly sucks.