Gotham Knights

Batman is dead. Four heroes are left to defend Gotham from countless enemies. It's an intriguing start, but Gotham Knights doesn't quite deliver.

Unfortunately, neither Batman nor Gotham Knights trusted them enough to give them a chance to prove themselves and create their own legacy. Moreover, the Knights can't get away from the Bat-shaped shadow of their fallen mentor. Is the Gotham part of Gotham Knights fun? They display a pride flag on the wall in their base. But past conventions overwhelm the new tone. It's clear that Gotham Knights wants to introduce a new generation of heroes. These details add up to an endearing glimpse of a modern Gotham. Well, there certainly isn't a lack of things to do in the city. Each day begins with your Knights checking a detective board at the Belfry, a gargantuan skyscraper located in the heart of Gotham. The Talons, a major foe in the comics, can be easily defeated by a two-step technique explained from the get-go. Standing over the ruins of the Batcave, Robin, Nightwing, Red Hood, and Batgirl are left with a mystery to unravel — one that intertwines familiar villains with the Court of Owls, a secret society of billionaires and people of influence that has been operating from the shadows for centuries. Most of the time, however, I found myself button mashing and spamming each character's unique abilities.

That's not to say that this is a sequel to those games – WB Games Montreal decided to splinter off into a separate version of DC comics canon – and in a lot of ...

Unfortunately, combat in Gotham Knights is one of the worst parts about it – and that’s not a great thing to have to say about a game that’s virtually all about combat. Gotham Knights also suffers from performance issues that range from amusing bugs to annoying hindrances, the most grave of which is that the framerate. Gotham Knights does have a New Game+ option, so you could definitely take your hard-won loadout with you to a tougher version of the campaign… At its best, dishing out justice is merely boring as you repeat the same attacks and wait for your special ability meter to charge up and enemy health bars to whittle down (yes, they have health bars over their heads); at its worst, it’s actively frustrating as you’re hit by attacks that seem almost impossible to dodge and don’t feel like you have full control of your character. It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever played but if you were hoping for a return to the smooth, incredibly fine-tuned brawls of the Arkham series, you’re in for a rude awakening when you’re smacked in the face with the simple and underwhelming substitute that sits at the center of this disappointing adventure. As you gain XP and level up, you’ll acquire new weapons and armor, mod components, and crafting schematics to aid your power creep, but unless you’re extremely lucky or willing to grind a whole lot of repeatable crimes in Gotham’s open world, you’re unlikely to have much power over what you’re able to use or craft because drops aren’t frequent or targetable enough to organically build the character you want to play. Really, my only major complaint with swapping characters is that each character has to unlock their abilities and be geared up individually, so the longer I played as one the less feasible it was to actually switch to someone else – I’d have to stop making progress to catch up one character and unlock all their special abilities before proceeding. One key difference is that here you get to play as your choice of the four mostly lovable heroes (Nightwing, Batgirl, Red Hood, and Robin) as you zip around an open-world Gotham, delivering justice to all manner of superstitious cowards and unraveling a troubling mystery in the iconic city’s murky streets. It doesn’t help that the oddly brief campaign is padded out with busywork, like repeated sections where you have to wander around Gotham interrogating a string of different criminal factions headed by everyone from Harley Quinn to Mr. But when you’re stealthily grappling from ledge to ledge, crawling through ventilation shafts, and beating up groups of criminals in a rhythmic combat system, it’s impossible not to compare it to the vastly superior Arkham games. Like Bruce Wayne it was born to a well-respected and rich family, in this case the four third-person action games in the Arkham series. [Gotham Knights](/games/gotham-knights) appeared to have all the makings of the ambitious, action-packed smash hit that it was clearly intended to be.

Reviews for Warner Bros. first Batman game since 2015's Arkham Knight dropped today, and they are not reassuring. While a few critics like Gotham Knights ...

“For all its potential, the game falls flat,” [reported NPR](https://www.npr.org/2022/10/20/1130129906/gotham-knights-review). That’s how beholden the good in Gotham Knights is to Rocksteady’s work—but that good is still present, nevertheless. If my gear is good enough to beat the final boss—and it was—then what incentive do I have to keep playing to improve that gear? [checklist](https://ftw.usatoday.com/2022/10/gotham-knights-review-its-content),” while Gamesradar accused it of [not knowing what it wants to be](https://www.gamesradar.com/gotham-knights-review/). Interior areas ran much better, but considering the bulk of the game has you sifting through the city, it was a pain to have to manage frame drops without falling off a perch and alerting an entire group of enemies. Montreal’s Gotham Knights](https://kotaku.com/gotham-knights-release-date-xbox-ps5-arkham-batgirl-1849445834) follows Batgirl, Robin, Nightwing, and Red Hood as they attempt to maintain order amidt the chaos after a terrorist plot by the Court of Owls kills Bruce Wayne. Sure, you can press another button for ranged attacks, but if an enemy is up-close (which is often the case), you really don’t have a lot to work with, even after acquiring upgrades. It’s a multiplayer system that works so smoothly that you won’t notice any complications beyond the chance to beat up some bad guys with a buddy—and that’s as it should be. There’s a compelling game in Gotham Knights, but it’s hidden away behind a messy UX, needless crafting and customization systems, and combat mechanics that have been stretched paper thin to accommodate four heroes. The Metacritic score [currently sits at 69](https://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-5/gotham-knights/critic-reviews), with Digital Foundry’s John Linneman [tweeting](https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/1583055289791655936) that the game doesn’t look nearly as good [as Rocksteady’s seven-year old Arkham Knight](https://t.co/FDjGc3Tv3N). [first Batman game since 2015’s Arkham Knight](https://kotaku.com/gotham-knights-batman-pc-frame-rate-performance-ps5-1849678532) dropped today, and they are not reassuring. Unlike the Arkham games which focused on exploration, stealth puzzles, and a Metroidvania-like arsenal of gadgets, Gotham Knights is primarily combat focused, with players teaming up to grind out missions that progress the story and unlock better gear.

Gotham Knights takes the Arkham blueprint and reimagines it as a loot-brawler, often feeling similar, but where it's different, it's worse.

This version of Gotham is not its best rendition, but it is massive and benefits from the basic video game truth that most everything is better in co-op. Instead, there's little reason to separate, as the peripheral content is so rote that you'll want to only do what's required of you to unlock the next major story beat, nothing more. The Court of Owls, perhaps the biggest and most beloved new addition to the Batman mythos in a long time, fails to live up to the potential of its comic book source material. It lands as hard as intended, and it's compelling to see them pick up the pieces and grow together. It emphasizes the Momentum meter over the actual learned techniques that Batman must've taught the foursome, and seemingly all in the name of being an RPG that demands sturdy enemies who can't be dispatched with the same ease that Batman has shown before. I'd have less of an issue with this number if the final battles within each of them were more diverse or interesting, but they each inevitably devolve into an arena battle against a damage-spongey villain and maybe an intermittent horde of goons. The problem, however, is it fails to evolve as the game goes on. Becoming Gotham City's watchful protector should be a meaningful journey for the characters and the players controlling them, but it rarely amounts to feeling like anything more than busywork. The issue won't be a shortage of them, but rather a lack of intrigue around any of them. Boss battles are where excitement should be expected, but there are too few of them and they lack the variety and ingenuity of past showdowns, even in developer WB Montreal's past Bat-effort. Meanwhile, iconic characters like The Penguin and Lucius Fox are made to be nothing more than immobile quest-givers doling out missions that are more like basic challenges to earn a new suit blueprint or a mess of crafting resources. It is full of icons ranging from main story beats to one-off time trials and challenges, so at first glance this version of Gotham doesn't seem all that different from other versions of it, or other open-world games for that matter.

Gotham Knights has some big shoes to fill as a follow-up to the brilliant Batman Arkham Knight, an early last-gen title…

If you want to play a Batman game, go back to the seventh and eighth-gen Batman titles in the Arkham series. Turning feels odd, as the camera feels almost glued to the back of the bike - the game doesn't let you really feel the back slide out with a less responsive camera like in Arkham Knight. Every one of those games - especially the excellent Arkham Knight, and including Arkham Origins, which was developed by WB Games Montreal as well - is a solid experience. It's functional and most of the basics of melee fighting are present and accounted for, but it doesn't flow very well. Interiors in general showcase less granular detail in Arkham Knight as well, though these environments are one of the few highlights in the game. My overall impression of Gotham Knights is that it's less than the sum of its parts. Gotham Knights is so devoid of life by comparison that I could drive around for minutes without spotting anything other than the occasional civilian. This tends to stick out quite a bit as the gameworld is always dark and rain-slicked, in typical Batman fashion. Even today, the Rocksteady game impresses with a gritty, rain-soaked rendition of Gotham City swarming with criminals. This is a common issue when dealing with baked GI of course, but the results here are often poor - with characters often looking like they have no integration into the game lighting at all, weirdly glowing. When lots of dynamic lights are onscreen there's a closer match between the lighting systems, as would be expected, but under primarily indirect lighting the results can look odd. Gotham Knights has some big shoes to fill as a follow-up to the brilliant Batman Arkham Knight, an early last-gen title that pushed graphical and gameplay boundaries.

Gotham Knights offers a fun and satisfying gameplay loop, but many features lack the follow-through needed to make a great, cohesive game.

[Gotham Knights' story](https://gamerant.com/gotham-knights-prequel-comic-expand-story/), with the ending feeling like the game was never played at all, and a lot of the story is very slow. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem the rest of the game is held up to the same level and a lot of it doesn't blend like the gameplay. The game only features a handful of boss battles as it is, and this is probably why. Yet, anyone interested in anything more than that is going to face a lot of disappointment with its story beats, gameplay elements, individual features, and many other elements. There's a lot about the game that feels half-baked, from major features like this to small details like Investigations, and these elements bring down what's otherwise a solid title. All the characters end up being a little one-note, unfortunately, and while there is character development, each character tends to retread familiar territory. What happens is that players are able to self-pace their advancement of various side activities, and it's a pleasing way to interact with the world when something as simple as saving one citizen from Players will see major story developments on the map, but to complete activities like premeditated crimes, players have to investigate random crimes, interrogate enemies, and unlock them. At night, players don the cowl as one of the four playable characters and enter a patrol of Gotham City. The city is beautiful, feels alive, and is constantly filled with activity. Batman is dead, Gotham City is in shambles, and players must pick up the pieces as It is a truly fun game, and for many players, it may be easy to overlook many of its shortcomings as a result.

Gotham Knights isn't a sequel to the Batman: Arkham games, but it undeniably toils in their shadow.

That’s how beholden the good in Gotham Knights is to Rocksteady’s work—but that good is still present, nevertheless. The game’s writing and storytelling work more often than not—especially in the quieter moments that play heavily into its themes of found family and legacy. (The other three characters have their own specific movement upgrades to unlock; would it shock you to learn that they’re both cumbersome to acquire, and more complicated to play with than actually fun? You’re going to bring out not just one, but two boss battles with Mister Freeze—whose Arkham City incarnation is still a regular on lists of “Best Boss Battles Of All Time”—and have them be such dull, Video Games 101 slogs?) But all these unforced errors are being applied to a framework that’s so solid that it’s still hard not to have fun with it for a decent proportion of the time. Again, there’s the core of a good idea here—the various suits and sticks allow you to customize your gear and prepare for future challenges, a very Batman thing to do. Instead of shoving loose Bat-Suits or bo staffs into their crime-fighting pajamas, players in Gotham Knights pick up crafting materials and blueprints in abundance, bringing them back to their home base, The Belfry, for later production. Instead, it takes place in a slightly tweaked version of Bat History, albeit one familiar to even passing fans of nearly a century of Bat-Lore: Bruce Wayne is still The Batman, he’s still got a butler, and he’s still got a knack for recruiting teenagers and twentysomethings with a taste for high-impact acrobatics and nocturnal crime-fighting. (Lifted, pretty much wholesale, from Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman comics from the early 2010s.) Choosing one of the four heroes (with the option to switch out periodically), players dive into the Gotham, uh, nights, hoping to honor their slain mentor’s legacy and bring the forces that killed him to justice. It makes sense, then, to chart their growth in a more formalized, and maybe even a more number-crunchy, way. Whereas the Arkham games presented a Batman fully formed (give or take a few tweaks to the tech tree), Gotham Knights is a story about heroes on the rise. To wit, expect to spend hour upon hour beating up crooks, grapple-hooking your way across Gotham—and wondering why you’re not just playing 2011's The only real difference between this Bruce, and the one you might be more familiar with, is that this one is dead—slain in the game’s opening cutscene by one of his classic foes.

Street Art locations: Bowery; Bristol; Cauldron; Financial District; Gotham Heights; Old Gotham; Otisburg; Robinson Park; Tricorner Island; West End.

Bristol in Gotham Knights has one piece of street art for you to find and, unlike most of the street art, it’s not located along a stretch of road. If you’re having trouble finding this street art, head to the statute of a globe being held aloft by tentacles in Robinson Park. The first - Our Friend Joe - is the easiest to find as you’ll clearly see it by crossing the bridge linking the Financial district to the West End. Here, on the left-hand side, you’ll find the street art, entitled Origin of Evil. This is because Otisburg’s street art actually sits on the border between this district and Bowery, so you might not think to look there. It’s located within the tunnel which runs beneath Chambers Street, lying on the border between Robinson Park and Gotham Heights. This is an easy mural to find, because it’s painted on a building east of Gotham City Cathedral. For this piece of street art, you need to head to the bridge which connects the Bowery to Bristol, but don’t go on the bridge. Once there, you’ll want to jump over eastern side and this should land you directly in front of the art, entitled Faces of Gotham. It will appear on your left-hand side on a building, which has high wire fences in front of it. If this list contains a spray can symbol, a piece of street art is hidden within the district and, once found, it will be ticked off! It’s important to note that not all Gotham City districts contain a piece of street art.

Gotham Knights boasts a seriously stacked cast of supporting characters all brought to life by an impressive group of voice actors.

While Freeze sadly doesn’t make incredible puns like that one in Gotham Knights, he’s certainly one of the game’s most intimidating villains as well as one of the biggest threats to post-Batman Gotham. Keane has popped up in everything from House of Cards and Ray Donovan to The Gilded Age and Dopesick. You’d probably expect The Penguin to immediately step up and become the crime lord of Gotham now that Batman’s dead, but his role in the game is a bit more complicated than that. Brian Keane certainly assumes the role of Clayface quite nicely in Gotham Knights. Mylène Dinh-Robic’s voice will probably sound very familiar to gamers thanks to her recent appearance in 2021’s Guardians of the Galaxy game as Meredith Quill. In a game all about people stepping up to fill some big shoes, it’s fitting that Talia Al Ghul has a major role to play in Gotham Knights. While Gotham Knight‘s heroes worried that Alfred wouldn’t know what to do with himself without Bruce Wayne in his life, it turns out that he’s more than willing to assume a similar role for Gotham’s new heroes. Red Hood’s path to becoming one of Gotham Knight‘s playable protagonists has been interesting, to say the least. Nightwing has been honing his craft for quite some time, and his skills are certainly being put to the test now that Batman is going. Video game-wise, he most recently played Arokkeh in Horizon Forbidden West and has previously lent voicework to titles like Ghost of Tsushima. Of course, it’s the voices of those characters as much as their faces that really sell how much they belong to be the stars of an unlikely Gotham adventure. While some fans balked at those creative decisions, it’s certainly nice to see Batgirl patrolling the streets of Gotham again.