Fantastic combat, Great storytelling, Dynamic crime system is highly replayable, Beautiful art direction, Expansive suite of accessibility features
Clunky menus, drawn out ending, Mr. Freeze storyline disappoints
Release Date
October 21
Developed By
WB Montreal
Available On
PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PC
Reviewed On
Xbox Series S
Disclaimer: Copy was provided by the developer for review purposes.
Batman is dead. After a final duel gone tragically wrong, it’s up to Bruce Wayne’s four proteges (that most consumers are aware of - sorry Cassandra Cain and Spoiler fans) to save Gotham from a shadowy conspiracy. It’s a coming of age story not just for Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, and Red Hood, but developer Warner Bros. Montreal. After Arkham Origins, the studio has been silent for years, apart from several Arkham-related canceled spin-offs. With a fresh start, can Gotham and WB Montreal find hope for a better tomorrow?
Surprisingly… yes,Gotham Knightsactually sticks the landing. While by no means perfect, WB Montreal has managed to hone a fantastic open-world co-op brawler with heart. While stealth is still an option here, it’s very much deemphasized in favor of other facets of being heir to the world’s greatest detective. That’s Gotham Knights in a nutshell: it’s not a retread, nor is it beholden to what’s come before, but it clearly addresses complaints levied at Rocksteady’s series.
For instance, crime scene investigation is more involved than ever. Puzzles can require more observation in general, even if they do remain on the easy side. There’s a distinct emphasis on rewarding the player for being clever rather than brute-forcing their way through things. You’ll even come face to face with a few death trap mazes straight out of Saw.
That same emphasis on analysis carries over to Knight’s tactful combat. Enemies are much more distinct in roles and can counter you if you ignore their specialties. If you aren’t careful, it’s possible to be ambushed on multiple fronts, yet you can just as easily turn the tables. Once you understand how to harness your momentum abilities that charge up from simpler attacks and dodges, even the toughest enemies will bend to your fisticuffs. What’s important is that you don’t instantly achieve that.
It’s astounding how much effort has been put into Gotham Knights’ narrative design and storytelling. Your progression arc feels like a genuine ascension into becoming a superhero because your knowledge grows in tandem with your arsenal of in-game skills. The sheer difference in how I played in the first hour as opposed to the thirtieth was immense.
Instead of drowning you in every aspect of gameplay, from loot stats to challenge tracks, like Avengers or Destiny, Gotham Knights only gives you what you can handle; rolling out the depth of its gameplay over time. That can make for a slow start, but it’s worth it.
The pacing is liquid smooth, never pushing any aspect too much. Any time you might be tired of brawling, sleuthing, sneaking, exploring, or cracking through linear missions - Knights throws something refreshing at you. In addition to the main plot, you have three sidequest storylines you may tackle in any order. Other than modest player level thresholds for the final encounters, you’re truly free to tackle each threat at your preference.
For instance, I stopped Mr. Freeze’s weather machine and Harley Quinn’s crazy TEDxTalk well before taking on the Court of Owls, and it transitioned organically. This is on top of most cutscenes having unique dialogue depending on your chosen hero. That’s not an easy feat, especially with mocap and facial animations this good. Letting players have that much control is immensely refreshing. The firm hand on your shoulder that so many AAA games insist on these days is finally unclenched.
Gotham Knights soars where it easily could’ve blundered. Its gameplay is simple yet deeper than Arkham’s, with a less despairing world that draws you in.
Well, except for the fourth act. The finale goes on for about three boss phases longer than it needed to, and follows on from a final sidequest against arguably the least polished enemy in the game. None of this dampened my appreciation for Gotham Knights, but it’s undeniable that the conclusion could’ve been about an hour shorter.
Fortunately, the overall story makes it worth it. While a few scenes here and there had “Hello, Fellow Kids” energy, the majority are heartfelt. Each hero has personal quests to pursue in addition to the main plot, fleshing out their inner conflict along the way. you may swap between them at any point, though as you can tell, I favored Batgirl in my time playing.
This is a different Gotham than we’ve seen over the last few decades - it’s one filled with hope striving against nigh-impossible odds. People are trying to do the right thing after enduring years of horrible trials. We see our quartet of heroes standing against police and government corruption as much as organized crime. I’m sure certain Reddit threads will get a kick out of nitpicking the politics at play here, but there’s little helping that.
Oh, and speaking of - the framerate felt fine to me. I had zero frame dips on my Series S, only a handful of moments of detail pop-in, and a single crash out of my entire playthrough. There’s scarcely any loading screens either. The untethered co-op truly works, letting you run around freely outside of story missions. Plus, if one player engages in brawls while the other hides, you can still sneak around while your partner picks a fight!
It’s taken eight years since Arkham Knight for a co-op dynamic duo game to finally exist, but hot damn does it work well. That said, I played the majority of the game solo, and it was a blast all the same. A few factions are certainly tougher to fight solo, but that’s where the skillful play comes in again.
Even after I was done reviewing Gotham Knights, I’ve kept playing it. I’m resisting the urge to play it now to get this review done.
There’s a welcome suite of accessibility options available from the start. Subtitle options, color-blindness accommodations, text to speech, tap/hold customization, HUD scaling, adjustable visual notifications, and even the ability to auto-dismiss loading screens.
There are also graphical settings beyond brightness - and in this case, I highly endorse turning the color saturation all the way up. Every screenshot you’re seeing is the saturation at maximum. Gotham at night is gorgeous with visuals popping off the screen. It sells the visual design perfectly, pairing well with the energetic, electronica-imbued orchestral soundtrack.
That open world is just as pleasant to navigate. While nowhere near as tall as the skyscrapers of Arkham Knight, Gotham Knights’ twist on the iconic city is far more varied. It’s easily at least twice as large without being overstuffed with things to do. Instead of a map full of icons, there are a handful of collectibles hidden in clever locations. Granted, scanning drones to unlock fast travel was a bother, but it only took like ten minutes to clear each fast travel point once I got started.
Rather than hundreds of watchtowers, you have dynamically generated crimes, which when foiled give you clues for your next patrol, revealing higher priority premeditated crimes. There are dozens of different crimes you’ll come up against, from organ trafficking and assaulting witnesses to car chases and mob deals. These missions tend to reward stealth play more than the story missions, and are highly variable. You sometimes can even fail at the initial objective but get a new alternate goal, like stopping an escaped convict before he gets out of sight. It’s incredibly clever design that blows Marvel’s Spider-Man copy-paste dynamic crime system out of the water.
All well and good, but Gotham Knights isn’t perfect. Beyond that protracted epilogue I mentioned, let’s start with Mr. Freeze’s missions, which pale in comparison to everyone else’s. It’s as though they’re from an older version of the game that was more linear and styled after the Arkham games, which is unfortunate because he’s one of the longer secondary storylines you may pursue. I’d have much preferred more time with Harley or the startlingly compelling stuff with Clayface.
The menus are also not all equally navigable. It doesn’t help that you can’t organize your loot - which you craft from blueprints - by level. It instead defaults to organizing them by power, which can be artificially inflated by putting modchips into your current armor piece. That’s how I went almost seven whole levels wondering why I wasn’t getting better blueprints, only to realize I had underleveled gear because of a misleading power rating.
Your new equipment upgrades are always worthwhile and drop regularly - it’s exceptionally easy to even get a legendary set of gear before you’ve hit the level cap. That’s not a fault of the progression system so much as the menus. At least you can transmog any suit into the visual style you prefer, so you’re not stuck dressed like a pirate or something just for stat bonuses. The same can also be said of the abilities tree, which is super clunky and requires you use diagonal D-Pad inputs instead of just letting you bounce between them all easily. It’s weird that this is an issue, but a lack of a mouse pointer input means you’re far more restricted when navigating certain menus like this.
The voice acting is also inconsistent. There are some great performances - particularly Jason Todd, The Penguin, and Harley Quinn - yet others can vary from scene to scene. Barbara Gordon can sound great one moment, then way too high-pitched in the next. The most peculiar is Alfred Pennyworth, who alternates from great to far too understated and then back again - sometimes mid-conversation. There’s also a weird reliance on reusing actors who’ve barely changed their voice to fill in the roles of extras in a handful of scenes. It’s not common, but it really sticks out whenever it happens.
What’s more egregious than anything though is a handful of enemy types that just aren’t fun to fight. Most of them are unfortunately spoilers, and thankfully fairly rare in the overall game, but I can say that the Godmothers are an absolute pain to fight until you get an elemental ranged weapon to break their frustrating defenses. In fact, elemental weapons are so crucial in the late game that it feels like a disadvantage whenever you have to swap to one without an elemental attack. I love that the elemental attacks have value, but it’s disappointing when you’re relying on them rather than simply using them as another tool.
Still, all things considered, Gotham Knights soars where it easily could’ve blundered. Its gameplay is simple yet deeper than Arkham’s, with a less despairing world that draws you in. The co-op is fun, but playing solo is an excellent time as well. Everything tying directly into the narrative design is superb, firmly demonstrating that WB Montreal has crafted a game worth the wait. This world is primed for future content updates, which I hope it’ll receive, with a special 4-player co-op mode planned for November.
There’s no clearer sign that WB Montreal nailed it than this: even after I was done reviewing Gotham Knights, I’ve kept playing it. I’m resisting the urge to play it now to get this review done. That’s the best kind of feeling, and I hope it’s only the start of something even greater to come.
