Batman Arkham Knight is the final game in the Arkham series. This game improved upon many of the mechanics from the previous games, and even added in new mechanics that help combat and stealth from becoming stale. The game story is also fantastic, though I won’t be covering for spoiler reasons. In addition this game adds in the Batmobile, which has its own litany of challenges, puzzles, and encounters related to it. Let’s start with the good parts of the game, specifically the combat.

The Good

In Arkham Knight there are three main types of combat: active combat, stealth combat, and Batmobile combat. 

There are ten gadgets in the game; however, only seven are useful in active combat. 

• #1 The batarang. You can manually aim a batarang, or quickly throw them to swiftly build up damage or stun an opponent. Additionally, if you throw them at a charging enemy they’ll be instantly downed.
• #2 The next gadget is the batclaw, which is just a grappling hook. You can manually aim, or quickfire to disarm enemies with weapons, or pull yourself to an enemy to do a quick attack.
• #3 The explosive gel is a powerful gadget that allows you to make traps to instantly defeat enemies, or quickfire to do an AOE attack, or area of effect. 
• #4 The smoke bomb allows you to quickly disengage form combat. The disruptor lets you sabotage enemy weapons, so that they explode when they are used.
• #5 The freeze blast lets you freeze one enemy, allowing you to more easily deal with large groups, or open up a takedown if there is only one left.
• #6 The Remote Electrical Charge, which lets you zap small enemies and send larger ones spinning through groups of enemies.
• #7 The disruptor lets you disable enemy technology. From firearms to medics defibrillators you can booby travel almost any tech in game

 The second part of combat is stealth. Most of the gadgets can be used the same during stealth as in active combat, however, the three gadgets that had no use before gain utility.

• #1 The remote hacking device lets you hack enemy turrets and cameras. 

• #2 The voice synthesizer lets you order enemies around by pretending to be their boss.

• #3 The line launcher lets you create pass over gaps above enemies, allowing swift repositioning. Stealth combat has a few ways to take out 

Stealth also has its own form of attacking in takedowns. There are multiple types of takedowns in the game: silent takedowns let you take out enemies quietly, though it takes a few seconds, takedowns, which create noise, but instantly eliminate enemies, inverted takedown,

 which lets you hang someone by their foot from a perch point, and the new addition that Arkham Knight adds to stealth is the Fear Takedown. The Fear takedown lets you drop in on a group of enemies and eliminate up to six enemies in rapid succession.

 In order to fill the Fear meter to perform these special takedowns you need to defeat enemies with stealth takedowns. 

The final part of combat are the Batmobile sections. The Batmobile possesses a large array of armaments for the player to use: the Vulcan cannon sprays targets with rounds, while the 60mm cannon does large damage to a target. Then there are the three meter burn abilities: the rocket swarm which destroys large amounts of enemies, the EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) which disables enemies in its radius, and the drone hack to cause enemy troops to turn coat.

Another major part of the game is the movement, which is superb in Arkham Knight. The game gives you two ways to travel, gliding and the Batmobile. Gliding in Arkham Knight is based on momentum, so if you’re going fast you can swoop up, thus losing momentum and gaining height, the inverse is also true. Possibly the most helpful tool for gliding, however, is the grapnel boost, which allows you to launch past a point, and transition to high speed gliding.

 The grapnel boost can also be upgraded in order to gain a greater speed boost. The Batmobile allows you to quickly travel the streets, however until you unlock all of the bridges its range is limited. The Batmobile also has an afterburner, which greatly increases its speed. The Batmobile can drift. 

The Batmobile also has an ejector seat, which allows you to launch in the air and go straight into gliding. Now for the parts that’d get along with Two-Faces, well face.

The Ugly

One of the major parts of the Arkham series are the various puzzles in the games. Arkham knights has its own litany of puzzles throughout both its main story and the various side quests. The only issue, however, is that the puzzles in the game are repetitive. One side activity had you inspect multiple corpses pinned to walls throughout Gotham City. For each corpse you need to inspect the corpse on three different levels to find clues as to their identity. This process gets repetitive after the fourth or fifth corpse. 

That sums up most of the puzzles in the game well, the first time you do it it’s extremely cool, but subsequent times get . One example is having the Batmobile back down a wall and eject across it. Very cool the first time, but it repeats multiple times throughout the game. Possibly the most unique puzzle in the game, in that it never is seen again, requires you to decipher the code that was punched in through a warped reflection on CCTV. The only issue is that if you take too long Batman just punches the code panel and hot wires it.

The hands down worst part of the game, however, is the Riddler. The Riddler is most likely the last villain you’ll have to take down. But to take him down you need to collect 243 riddler trophies, complete six races, and free Catwoman.

 No other villain requires this much effort to beat them. The real kicker is that you aren’t done after that, since you’ll then have to defeat him in a boss fight. On top of this he’s also the only side villain that requires you to beat the game to catch. I personally once considered trying to one hundred percent the game, but changed my mind after I saw the sheer amount of time it’d take.
The game overall is very good, and ends the series very well. The combat opportunities give the game great replayability. From launching around the screen and attacking opponents, to popping out of vents and knocking out six people at once. The Batmobile combat sequences also allow you to defeat numerous unmanned drones. The puzzles, however, become stale by the time you finish what the game offers. Overall the game is a solid, Batman Begins installment in the Dark Knight trilogy. For the most part very enjoyable, but some parts of the game are very lackluster. This could have been The Dark Knight if you didn’t have to collect 243 riddler trophies in order to get the true ending of the game.

All rights reserved to Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Rocksteady Studios