Gotham Knights isn't horrible

This game doesn't deserve the poor reviews. In no way is it deserving of a 4 or 5 out of 10. It's not perfect by any means, but it's better than the Avengers came that came out a few years ago despite faring worse critically.

Some quality of life enhancements would go a long way. Knighthood challenges should carry across all characters. An entire skill tree with the most unique abilities as well as essentially movement abilities (cape gliding, etc) are locked behind the completion of specific challenges. 10 challenges a piece for all 4 characters equates to 40 challenges.

Enemies need their hit points adjusted by about half.

Enemy health pools seem to be balanced around co-op play. Some fights, especially those against heavy enemies and bosses just drag.

The game looks quite nice. It's less stylistic than the Arkham games, but Gotham looks like an actual city now instead of a theme park. Looks kind of like Gotham in Batman Forever as opposed to Gotham in Batman Returns if I could give a movie comparison.

I also like how obtaining new gear actually results in changes to your physical appearance.

Stealth is a disappointment. It feels like an afterthought. It's very standard crouchwalk, sneak behind enemies, and knock them out/kill them. Most areas don't really even feel like they are designed for stealth. There's none of the swinging between ledges and sneaking around vents like in the Arkham series.

The open world, while it looks nice, needs more varied activities. There are about 5 different types of activities that you can do: save citizens, stop a deal between two gangs, clear a hideout, prevent enemies from opening a door(?). The locations vary, the gangs vary, but it's virtually the same activities over and over again. I will say though that the way these activities organically pop up around the world is novel. Essentially, just by doing things around the world such as fighting bad guys and stopping crimes, you gather leads that unlock additional open world activities.

The story missions, while well made, still mostly boil down to beating up enemies. In fact, that's pretty much the entire game really. There isn't very much beyond that to break up the monotony of beating up bad guys with your fists.


Overall, comparisons to the Arkham games are inevitable. Gotham Knights is its own thing though. Most everything bad about the game can, in some way, be tied back to the apparent need to support co-op play.

I'd be down for a sequel that irons out the quality of life issues and provides more varied gameplay.