Arkham Knight is a game that i have very mixed feelings for , i waited so long to play this game after 100%ing all the previous games , so that the finale hits harder , and i''ll admit that the first playthrough of this game did deliver a really solid experience and the gameplay was the best in the series so far aside from some balance issues.

The problem with Knight is that when its good.... its really good , like incredible....genuinly , but its lows are the lowest in the entire franchise. The Lack of proper boss fights is heartbreaking , whats meant to be a finale , somehow ends up feeling less liberating than a prequel made by another studio , Arkham Origins understood why a one to one , close quarter fight is the best for Batman and getting to punch your enemies in the face , even if its just pressing X over and over again , can be gratifying in its own sense , people don't praise those boss fights because they are mechanically deep or profound or something , its held up high because they feel personal and more direct , the fantasy is served on a platter. What's Knight's idea of a compelling boss fight? Either an all Tank Battle for the 50th time or throwing in 50 enemies at you while you try to chip away at the bosses's health (which isn't inherently bad , Origins does this pretty well ) and that too you only get the honor of doing for a couple of bosses. Not to mention the stark imbalance in combat difficulty from the previous games , before anyone thinks to themselves its a skill issue , i'd like to clear that i've 3 Stars , No hit + Perfect Freeflow bonus on all combat challenge maps (besides infinite ones obviously) so no.....im not crying because i keep losing or something. The Problem is simply that Arkham Knight has too many enemy types with too little counter or dodge variety , a busy screen that makes it hard to read the enviroment more clearly and enemies genuinly clipping into you from time to time due to the sheer numbers of them the game throws at you. It's not even that bad until you start playing New Game + , where for some dumb reason Rocksteady decided it'd be fun to remove all counter icons , thats like.....you literally taught as your already bloated combat language and now you literally thew out the window.

I Wouldn't even mind the option if it was optional , but no....you wanna play new game + and relax with all the upgrades already unlocked and riddlers trophies found? pleaseee...
and the fact that you can't reset it makes it even worse. AND I KNOW that all the previous games had a similar thing but how is it that another studio that made a prequel your franchise is the only one to give players a replayable NewGame+ (I Am The Night) even if its hardcore

Its not that its easy to lose in New Game + , it is but thats not a problem , the problem is that the lack of counter icons makes the combat redundunt , you can only play it in a certain way now which is to evade over anything risky and hit everyone from the back , God forbid some of us like to play with variation and style , i find already found it really hard to keep track of enemy actions due to the busy screen , and now im expected to learn their animation patterns , i've done so for Origins and City because you had to deal with way less enemies and the visuals made it easier to know what attack an enemy might perform.

Knight is just filled with so many of this small inconvinient things that makes the overal experience less satisfying , such as the fact that you really only have Paint Jobs to select for the default Batmobile model if you wanna play the main story with something else , god....how hard was it to just add a gun on top of every Batmobile DLC , why put it in the game if all you can do with them is race or freeroam.....AFTER you get rid of the miltia tanks........ like if you're gonna spend so much time implenting it and then why not go a step ahead , future proof it and make it more replayable this way?

Why can't we change suits at the Wayne Tower? Origins let you do so in the Batcave (only game to really have one , i don't care for Asylum's batcave) , there's literally an animation for suit up too , just make a default one for all the suits if customs are too time consuming.

Why are there so many riddler trophies? it gets so old by the time you get to Knight , it was really not neccessary to have so many , it makes the city look ugly and its just padding on top of an otherwise well made side quest , this time you don't even get to collect maps to ease the grind , no.....just interrogate a nobody on the street in green for the 100th time with the same 2 animations and 10 lines of dialogue variation.

so why do i still recommend this game after all that complaining?....well you already know , its the best batman simulator we have so far and genuinly a techincal marvel of a game with great replayablity. Time has been kind to this game and people nowadays actually don't tolerate any negativity towards it , maybe because its the last game they ever got , or because they've warmed upto it , perhaps they simply played it first.

I wish it grows on me overtime , i believe it will , some day when i replay it again with some gameplay mods and hopefully even more suit mods.

8/10 , Great game , dissapointing finale.

In my opinion one of the best superhero games. batmobile is really cool and world is highly detailed and immersive.

This is my favorite game of all time basically. Easily the gold standard for superhero and action games. I have over 800 additional hours on this game on console.

PROS
-Combat, stealth and traversal never really get old, as you can always get better
-Types of mechanics you engage with change frequently, making the gameplay loops feel consistently refreshing
-Batmobile and associated challenge maps are amazing
-Runs very well now, incredible visuals
-Good story with well written and performed dialogue and written lore
-Riddler is tiring if you feel obligated to catch him, but he adds an incredible amount of things to do, and the puzzles are very well designed
-Batman's capabilities and character development from previous games are flawlessly expanded
-Easily the best Arkham game to me (it's not even close)

CONS:
-No real boss fights
-DLC mini stories are not amazing
-Side quest structure can be a tad repetitive despite being enjoyable