

As you grapple between rooftops, you come across special targets that, when interrogated, will give you information-hilariously delivered as clue points dropped on the ground like Diablo loot-leading to premeditated crimes that will show up with better XP and crafting material rewards the next night you explore the city. Gotham Knights' cleverest idea is taking open world activity bloat and breaking it up into nightly adventures, initiated after you check in at the Belfry. But Gotham Knights killed him, split his body into four parts, and forces you to play as one severed limb at a time. He's a walking Swiss army knife of gadgets and fighting techniques, all of which is at your disposal. Until you dig down into the final parts of the talent trees, craft unique gear, and equip them with stat-enhancing armor mods, the four heroes can't match how perfect Batman was as a videogame protagonist. None of them have truly dramatic strengths or weaknesses. And as a result, each of the characters play like a diluted version of Arkham Batman.

Gotham Knights doesn't fully commit to archetypes like tank, support, and DPS, though. In co-op, they resemble simple MMO bosses that require whoever has their focus to work on dodging while the other gets damage in. As a solo player, they're marathons that drain you of resources, forcing you to balance earning Momentum and spending it on your own high-damage abilities to catch up.

Bosses have big health bars, hard-hitting combos and AoE attacks that are designed to simply punish your dodge timing and positioning compared to normal enemies. The boss fights in Gotham Knights don't stand out like they do in the Arkham games, largely opting for battles of stats and reflexes.

You just cooperatively punch enemies until a notification pops with an XP reward.Įach of the characters play like a diluted version of Arkham Batman. But outside of tough encounters like that, there's little need to build strategies around abilities. I built up my Momentum meter to deploy a decoy that kept the boss distracted while I helped Red Hood up from a downed state or gave him room to heal. I fought Harley Quinn-an aggressive, high-level boss-as Robin with an ally Red Hood who repeatedly got caught in lethal grab attacks. In two-player co-op I could start to see where their distinct traits interlock.
