Batman Is Dead, Long Live The Bat-Fam.
YOUR LEGACY BEGINS NOW. STEP INTO THE KNIGHT.
Gotham Knights is an open-world, action RPG set in the most dynamic and interactive Gotham City yet. In either solo-play or with one other hero, patrol Gotham’s five distinct boroughs and drop in on criminal activity wherever you find it.
Story, characters and dialogue
After the longest game intro I've ever seen, we find out that Batman is dead. The fate of Gotham City, the safety of its citizens now lies heavily on the shoulders of our four heroes. To make things worse, we have a nefarious group called the Court of Owls playing marionette with Gotham City and covering up assassinations. The part I enjoyed while playing this with a friend is when you go through cutscenes, the dialogue differs slightly depending on who you're playing as. So when I met Mr. Freeze as Red Hood, my friend mentioned that Mr. Freeze makes a snarky remark when he met him as Robin ( about Robin not being old enough to drink). Although the end result is the same, its an ambitious effort on keeping the game true to the characters' backgrounds and their relationships with other villains.
During the course of the game you get to see how our four Knights not only need to prove themselves to Gotham City as the opposite of vigilantes by solving crimes, saving citizens etc but also need to prove themselves to people that mattered to them the most. Batgirl wants to solve her late dad's unsolved cases, Robin naturally wants to avenge his mentor and father figure Batman, Nightwing never really reconciled with Batman and Red Hood questions his own life choices and morality.
Gameplay Mechanics/Combat
Each one of the Gotham Knights have specific moves and abilities. The game has a pretty simple and straighforward abilities and weapon crafting UI. Once you're at The Belfry, you can craft new melee, ranged weapons, new suits as well as switch characters. The annoying thing is that you'd have to do that process four times if you want to fully unlock all the characters - and I don't feel the game is that engaging to be doing it that many times.
The combat system is OK, definetly not as fluid as Arkham Asylum. You have your standard light and heavy melee attacks, you can grab an enemy and throw them, and if you play co-op ( which I highly recommend) you can have team- up attacks. There were times where I found myself swinging punches at the air because the enemy was 2 steps to the left, and that was frustrating. The slow-mo finishers are pretty awesome albeit weird when you see your co-op partner suspended in the air for a few seconds before finishing their takedown.
The Aerial attacks don't always hit the mark, I'll be aiming for one enemy and end up hitting someone else, and when you're trying to do a Silent Takedown the results can be quite hilarious. The same applies for the grappling hook while trying to jump from one building to the next, and you end up grappling into a completely different direction.
Momentum Abilities are the special combat moves that bring the pain in any fight. Each character will have a total of 8 Momentum Abilities that are unique to them, gained through finishing specific challenges or proceeding through the story. As in anyy RPG game, the more you fight, the more your Momentum Bar fills up, and you are good to go. You also eventually unlock an Ultimate Momentum Ability which opens when you start upgrading the Knighthood Ability Tree. These have a cooldown period so you'd need to be strategic about it. I unlocked Batgirl's Drone ability and it was almost as good as having a third fighter with you on the team.
While playing co-op, we've had a few connection issues and glitches as well. We were unable to stop a bank robbery because, well, the bank robber wouldn't stop robbing no matter what we do. Speaking of co-op, I feel there were a few missed opportunities that could've made it alot more seamless. For example, if we were to take out a group of bad guys in stealth, it would be nice to be able to mark enemies for both of us to see, because in the end we somehow always manage to take out the same person (we could also be really horrible Gotham Knights but still). Same applies to map markers, it would make sense for both to see where we're going for a side / main quest ( it shows when mark streets though).
On the other hand, Gotham Knights is truly open world as co-op. You and your partner in crime-fighting can divide and conquer, even within the same mission. Let's say there's a timed side-quest where you have to deliver an organ donor heart to a mobile clinic, one of you can continue to take out the bad guys while the other glides across the city to finish the mission before the timer runs out. You can play completely independant of each other which is great ( maybe not as fun though) to get through missions quicker.
Verdict
Gotham Knights is good fun with a friend. The fact that you can both go and do your thing makes it an enjoyable open-world sandbox. The combat / grappling mechanics is the biggest drawback, along with minor connectivity issues and glitches but it is still a game worthy of venturing into.
Game Details
Platform: PC (Available on Xbox , Steam and Epic Games.)
Genre: Action Adventure
Mode: Single Player / Co-op
Release Date: October 21, 2022
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