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  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation:
    • The series as a whole seems to be arguing Batman could and should keep his allies closer rather than push them away. The whole point of Origins was to teach Batman that he needs allies to achieve his goals. This message is zig-zagged in Arkham Knight since his allies are constantly put in danger seemingly because he kept them at a distance. Other sites, however, argued that the game illustrates Batman really should do it alone since everyone he's close to gets killed, kidnapped, or constantly screws up. Especially when you consider the ending Bruce is forced to either kill himself or fake his own death, reasoning that it's "the only way to protect them." Even though it most likely won't because they are still known associates to the man who physically assaulted and put thousands of criminals in jail for the past decade and assisted on multiple occasions.
    • Another argument the series makes is that sacrifices made for the greater good are to be welcomed, as saving the worst of society, or even just maintaining a status quo, will only backfire. Origins shows Batman saving the Joker's life once, which ultimately led to a massive tally of death and suffering including Barbara's crippling, Scarecrow's maiming, the eventual deaths of the Jokerized patients and Harley and Jason's fall from grace; letting the clown drop back then would've prevented nearly the entire series. Additionally, stopping Protocol 10 led to a class action lawsuit where the surviving inmates won, suing Gotham for damages, whereas letting Strange win would've saved the city money and prevented the events of the final game, meaning Ace Chemicals would still be up and providing jobs. Additionally, if the player chooses not to save Ra's in the Shadow War side-mission, Nyssa declares that the League of Assassins will be reformed and never trouble Gotham again, unlike how choosing to save him will ensure the League will return at some point. Indeed, Bane is revealed to have given up on Gotham and begun liberating his home country, and Mr. Freeze and Nora could only find peace when Nora was freed from her cryotube and Freeze's equipment was destroyed, whereas every villain that chose to attack Gotham not only failed but is worse off than before.
      • At the very least, the series posits that Batman's "no kill" rule, while generally a good policy that he is right to have, should not be an absolute and a couple of judgement calls would have prevented unthinkable amounts of misery. The idea that "crossing the blood-red line" is something that he could never come back from and turn him into a remorseless killer unable to stop is directly challenged at the end when he snaps the Joker hallucination's neck, which Batman unambiguously considers a legitimate Kill - yet he was still the same man after it happened, not a monster, meaning his fears had always been unfounded.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Batman in this game is both a Tragic Hero with Heroic Willpower and a cold Manipulative Bastard who really does bring death and misery to all who follow him, whose trust issues tend to make him a liability to his allies. The game also casts serious doubts on how actually effective he is, with Batman coming across as a Failure Hero and a Destructive Savior. His relationship with his allies also falls under this label, namely, the fact that in the Arkhamverse, Batman took on Tim Drake as the third Robin less than six months after the Joker kidnapped Jason Todd, and before Jason's death was confirmed. Did Batman take on Tim to help him find Jason? Was he so obsessed with keeping the Dynamic Duo intact that he let Tim take on the role, despite Jason's claim to it? If Jason did return, what was his plan for both Tim and Jason? The game doesn't delve into any of Bruce's reasoning for when and why he let Tim be Robin, even when Jason later asks Bruce accusingly if he'd "replaced" him in a month or less, although considering several of these accusations are fueled by a Joker-manipulated Jason, there may be an element of Unreliable Narrator at play.
    • The fact that the Joker hallucination is at least partly fueled by Batman's subconscious means that some of his observations might provide rather worrying insights into Batman. For example, at one point he accuses Batman of deliberately letting the Titan cure get destroyed and then lying that he would have saved Joker just to deny Joker the victory of making him kill, and he also observes that turning the Batmobile into a battle tank is very unlike him (which was a criticism some reviewers and players also made), almost as if " an evil clown was whispering in [his] ear as [he] drew up the designs." This also could be seen as a manifestation of Batman's never-voiced anxiety and self-doubt, however.
    • Furthermore, the Knightfall Protocol becomes a gold mine of speculation due to Bruce's own vague response on its purpose being to protect Gotham. Is he so dedicated to being Batman that he can't possibly deal with his secret being exposed? Or is he uncomfortably aware of the dangerous potential he has? What about his own mental state considering the Joker hallucinations make him snap and kill one of them? The list goes on thanks to the ending's ambiguity.
    • Is Batman still the same Batman by the end of the game? It's been theorized that after Joker's hostile takeover of his mind, the man Bruce Wayne was effectively destroyed, and the Batman persona was the only survivor of the conflict. Is Bruce's cold takedown of Scarecrow indicative of his full transformation into the Bat persona? Or has he just had enough of the conflict? Drawing from this theory is the Batman seen at the very end of the game the original, now using fear toxin to become "the darker myth that Gotham needs" and just the pure Batman persona, almost completely unfettered by Bruce? Or is it Azrael, using fear toxin much like his comic counterpart did during his stint as Batman in the Knightfall comic?
    • Likewise, the GCPD has become so supportive of Batman that they seem to accept him as a de facto leader, second in authority only to Gordon, giving him far too much latitude. Gordon knows Batman is keeping four people prisoner against their will without any trial (to quarantine them, admittedly); he's allowed to wander anywhere in the GCPD, including the evidence locker, the interview room, and the holding cells, without any guide or oversight; he can assault prisoners without reprimand and forces a corrupt cop into a cell in front of two other officers without any preamble, who proceed to apologize to Batman for pointing their guns at him when they realize the full details. That said, the game is set in a classic martial law scenario where there has been a complete disintegration of civil authority: due process simply isn't an option when everyone who could actually serve on a jury has fled the city in terror, and some serious restraint is being shown in incarcerating thugs in a vulnerable central location rather than executing them on the spot (let alone criminals willingly ignoring a city-wide evacuation order to run riot and that attempt to kill anyone stopping them).
    • Then there's the Arkham Knight, either Jason Todd is a Jerkass Woobie who is capable of being redeemed or a war criminal who, regardless of his Freudian Excuse, is a collaborator of a supervillain and provided him the manpower to build a biochemical agent, all the while knowing that he intended to unleash it on a large civilian population — the Eastern seaboard of the United States. Todd's soldiers killed three of the five hostages at ACE Chemicals and who knows how many more in their rampage across Gotham. The fact that Arkham Knight later drives the Tank that unleashes the Cloudburst only makes his culpability all the more damning with some seeing his late redemption as both unearned and unmerited compared to the scale of his actions.
    • Are the Mooks Ax-Crazy people without any chance of reformation or are they just "normal" people for whom it's the only option? The Enemy Chatter shows both as possible.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Jack Ryder seems less concerned over nearly being sacrificed to a religious cult and more enthused on how the experience might be the key to getting his own show. Considering the kind of character Ryder is, it's likely intentional.
    • In the DLC stories set after the main game, none of Batman's allies seem particularly broken up by the fact that as far as they know, Bruce and Alfred are dead. Even if they know he's still alive, they'll never see him again, so he's as good as dead. Possibly explainable for Nightwing, Robin, Oracle & Lucius since it's unclear how much time has passed since the end of the main game, and though her DLC is stated by Word of God to be taking place the very next night, Batman told Catwoman that he was going into exile in the wrap up of the Riddler side-mission.
  • Annoying Video Game Helper:
    • Coupled with camera screw. During the fights, the camera will swing around so that you can Notice This when someone is about to shoot you or charge you. However, if you're in the middle of doing something, then you can expect to do something wildly, possibly fatally, different.
    • While Dual-play is otherwise well done, the character controlled by the A.I. cannot actually knock out anyone, which means they will keep beating the final enemy to the ground, possibly ruining your combo if you don't notice the grounded enemy or try to perform a special move to the enemy after your buddy knocked them down off-screen.
  • Anti-Climax Boss:
    • At the end, Scarecrow's apprehended in a cutscene, and the final confrontation with the Joker is effectively a playable cutscene with some extremely simple and easy tank and combat sections thrown in. Narratively, it's well done, but after the intense and challenging Predator section with Jason Todd and the tank battle at the GCPD, it's a breeze.
    • Hush isn't one in-game, but he qualifies as a meta example. After all the build-up from Arkham City, Batman takes him down with one move, with some help from Lucius.
    • To some players, the last two fights with the Arkham Knight count as this, especially since he was hyped up as "Batman's ultimate challenge" before the game's release. In his second fight, he's in a gigantic and menacing excavator who only tries to run you over and all the player has to do is get his attention and make him damage himself three times by having him chase you through the narrow tunnels. However, he's not quite finished yet, and after revealing his true identity, Jason Todd, you'd expect to have an epic Final-Exam Boss between Batman and his former student, right? Not the case here. For all his hype, the Knight is finally taken down in a glorified Predator encounter, which consists of defeating more of his militia and simply staying out of sight of his drones and him while you sneak under his vantage point a few times to whack him. Granted, while avoiding the drones along with the Knight's vision can be fairly tricky, many people felt that this was a disappointing way for the Arkham Knight to go out, especially after how they were expecting him to really be the Bat's ultimate showdown.
    • Tragically, the unlucky bastard to get hit with this the hardest is none other than Deathstroke. After his debut in Origins, which gave him a highly energetic Duel Boss and Climax Boss scenario (which many regards as one of, if not THE greatest, boss fight in the series), poor Slade is delegated to yet another Batmobile tank battle. It plays out largely the same as the Cloudburst fight where the player must disable the Cobra tanks before taking on the main tank, except Deathstroke's tank has a 360 field of vision, which makes it somewhat more difficult, but it's not terribly difficult for someone of his caliber. And after all this, how does he get defeated? From a single move in a cutscene. As Slade leaps out of his tank, Batman dives into him and pins him to the ground. He doesn't even bother trying to escape Batman's hold, despite being one of the few people who could take Batman in a direct physical fight. This left an incredibly sour taste in many players' mouths after seeing such an awesome villain get abruptly hit with a case of Badass Decay so hard.
    • Nightwing in the Harley Quinn DLC is literally fought the same way as a typical Stun Baton mook, instead of anything resembling an actual unique boss fight. The only difference he has on the standard mook is he has a health bar.
  • Awesome Music: See here.
  • Awesome Video Game Levels:
    • The ACE Chemicals Infiltration level. You have a huge area of movement with seamless interiors and exteriors, seamlessly switching between the classic predator/combat gameplay with the new Batmobile used for combat and environmental puzzles as well as the first glimpse of the varied enemy archetypes in the game. It also has memorable first encounters with Scarecrow and Arkham Knight as well.
    • The Cloudburst. Scarecrow unleashes his fear gas and covers the ground level of Miagani Island with Fear Gas, which means that Batman can only glide across roofs. Riding the Batmobile within the Fear Cloud provides for astounding glimpses of Scenery Gorn and apocalyptic destruction and likewise, Batman teaming up with Poison Ivy to repel the gas cloud while fighting an army of tanks before engaging in tank combat against the Arkham Knight himself.
    • Panessa Studios. The sequence where you hunt the Joker clones as you team up with Robin who you can call for assistance in both Predator and Combat. You also have a wide variety of mission sequences where Batman and Robin have a Boss Fight in a Wild West backdrop, the Johnny Charisma fight where Batman hallucinates Joker singing "Look Who's Laughing Now", the disturbing Jason Todd flashbacks which make it the dramatic center of the game.
    • Deacon Blackfire's sidequest is really nothing more than a fight followed by an extremely simple "puzzle"; the whole thing has a time limit of three minutes. However, you can only access it late in the game, as enemies have more and more difficult tricks added to them. Blackfire's followers lack any such gimmicks except for two knife-wielders, which are easily taken care of with the "destroy weapon" special combo move. Coupled with the wide-open space and the sheer amount of guys to beat up (about twenty-five), it's extremely cathartic to just unleash all of Batman's skills however you want, without worrying about needing to set a mook up to be punched.
    • If we're talking DLC, Freeze's is certainly the best of the bunch if only for the storytelling. You also finally get to see Nora in the flesh after only seeing her obscured in ice all this time and while the campaign culminates in another tank battle, the sheer tense and desperation more then make up for it.
  • Badass Decay:
  • Base-Breaking Character: The Arkham Knight. While many see him as a badass Evil Counterpart to Batman, many others dislike him thanks to his whining and the fact he's one of the classic base breakers, Jason Todd. Many also thought that the reveal of his identity was too obvious compared to how he was treated as such a great mystery.
  • Broken Base:
    • The Batmobile in general. Some fans had been hoping for its inclusion since City while others rejected the idea since it could detract from the main gameplay. After Knight's release, the reception was further split on the Batmobile's redesign, especially because it bristled with actual guns and the less-lethal weapons one might expect. There was also debate on whether or not the tank combat had any business being in a Batman game. There's also the fact that, for all its power, gliding is still a faster way of moving around the city, so many players tend to ignore the Batmobile most of the time, only using it as a boost platform to launch themselves into the air or when the plot actually requires it.
    • Before release, there was a split between fans who hoped or wanted Joker to return, and others who wanted him to stay dead so other villains could shine, as previous installments had been commonly criticized for placing too much focus on him.
    • Some of the new character designs. While most people seem to like Batman's new Batsuit, especially for a cape that really looks like cloth, its more technological look feels off-putting for fans used to the classical look. Likewise, Poison Ivy's and Catwoman have new designs, while more realistic in proportion, have drawn confusion for the fact that Catwoman suddenly looks younger and Ivy's new design has duller colors and much of her plant details have been removed. There turns out to be a good reason for the latter, Gotham's plant life has been withering and Poison Ivy's connection to the roots was no longer what it once was.
    • The identity of the Arkham Knight. Even fans who have been anticipating Jason Todd's inclusion in the game's universe were divided between happiness over the fact that Jason's first appearance directly escalates him as the title character, to have preferred him to be the Red Hood (though we do eventually see in the game that the Arkham Knight armor is merely a cover of Jason's Red Hood garb). Others simply disliked the idea that the Arkham Knight isn't an exclusive new character after all or wished him to be any pre-existing character other than Jason. The way he's portrayed doesn't help either, with his whiny militant surfer-bro personality who comes off as an annoying fratboy who's constantly boasting his superiority over the Bat, even after Batman shuts down every one of his plans and countermeasures.
    • Barbara Gordon's treatment was also a call for criticism from some circles — she's kidnapped, used as bait, has her attack from Joker shown in flashback, and seemingly forced to kill herself to mess with Batman, which would be a blatant case of Stuffed in the Fridge were she not later revealed as alive. Though the Arkham Knight personally made sure no one touched her, which relieved the issue with her treatment to some, while others felt that the fact that we still see all the above happen, yet to have it turn out to be another hallucination, to be a bad attempt of having it both ways: using violence against women for shock value and to drive a male character's story, but never seriously physically harming her in-story.
    • John Noble as the Scarecrow. While a good amount of folks seem to be won over by his portrayal of a Creepy Awesome, others dismissed his performance as a generic, one-note villain voice that doesn't capture any of the Scarecrow's or Jonathan Crane's unique qualities.
    • The Joker being present as a ghost/hallucination and the final conflict being between him and Batman is either a good way to end the Arkham franchise or an Hijacking that (again) ruins the chance other villains had to shine.
    • The open ending. Lazy writing? A way to satisfy fans by letting them make the ending whatever they want it to be? Or did they lie about this being the final game and are planning to follow it up with a spin-off series or allegedly unplanned sequel?
    • The Season Pass and its price. Some complained about the lack of any long story DLC, and others on how most of the content seems to be cut from the main game to raise the price ($60 game, $40 DLC). Those who didn't mind the SP note that Arkham City's Story DLC wasn't that great/long either and that cut content or not, the full Arkham Knight experience has more content than AC for the same price (Arkham City's DLC also costs $40).
    • Challenge maps. Is the A.R. theme good or not? Is the fact that alternate characters have different enemy pools a good way to add variety to enemies or is it simply developer laziness/inability to get the actors/mo cappers back, to make new animations of characters fighting new enemies? Are the locations good? Are there enough variety and maps? Most who liked the maps often reminded those who complained about the lack of variety that again, the previous games that are used as examples of evidence in fact had fewer maps, many of which were simply reused multiple times with different character load-outs.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • As mentioned on the awesome page, the final fight with Joker counts as this, as will not end until you chuck him in the cell with an Environmental Takedown. Nothing else will keep him down. But seeing as the Joker is an absolutely terrible fighter and has been pissing Batman off the entire game, you can spend however long you wish utterly beating the crap out of him. The Joker pathetically begging Batman not to kick him out of his mind and therefore erase his presence forever is just the icing on the cake.
    • Similarly, the A Matter of Family DLC allows players to beat down the Joker and Harley. Doubly satisfying since Harley lacks a proper boss fight in the main game.
    • The boss fight with the Riddler counts as well. After four games of having to endure Riddler's constant stream of insults, the satisfaction of finally beating the smug prick's face in once and for all is so awesome, to say the least.
      • Prior to his boss fight, Riddler's commentary during the "Condamned" race track is also extremely satisfying, especially since the track is widely considered That One Sidequest as seen below. Over the course of the three laps, he goes from smug to shocked, then shocked to panicked, and as you approach the end of the final lap, he screams in anger at your continued survival. By the end, he is audibly seething as he is forced to acknowledge that you beat the race.
    • After how evil he had been throughout the whole game, seeing Scarecrow be injected with his own fear toxin and completely lose his sanity in front of all of Gotham, exactly what he tried to do to Batman, is extremely satisfying. Gordon then knocking him out with one punch seals the deal.
    • For many the game is this, since it gave Batman a real ending to his career. Unlike most trilogies and gaming franchises, and comic book stories, that either become Franchise Zombie or bring a clean slate, this version brought definite changes to Batman's career, taking his story to a tragic yet heroic finish, having him definitely defeat the Joker and reclaim his sanity, putting most of his enemies behind bars, with everyone knowing who Gotham's hero really was, making the Arkham Series alongside The Dark Knight Trilogy and the DC Animated Universe to be one of the few superhero adaptations to give an ending to the hero.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal: The Arkham Knight is Jason Todd aka the Red Hood. Even before release a lot of fans guessed the Knight's identity, to the point some insisted it wouldn't be them because it was so obvious. The foreshadowing is not very subtle from the moment Batman first meets the Arkham Knight face-to-face, and we learn he knows Batman and claims to know how he thinks, he has a vicious hatred for Batman and wants to see him dead, and there's also his costume and choice of weapons. Anyone remotely familiar with Jason Todd in the comics would peg the Knight's identity right away. But if you weren't, don't worry, the game features flashbacks about them that fill in Jason Todd's role in Batman's history; the character had never been mentioned in any of the prior games (save for an off-hand comment by Joker in Robin challenge maps in City), so why include those scenes if it wasn't going to tie into the story importantly? This is lampshaded by Smosh Games in their Arkham Knight honest game trailer where they describe the Knight as " A young-sounding man in a red suit who clearly has a long past with Bruce Wayne. And if you can't guess who it is before the game tells you, welcome to your first Batman story!"
  • Common Knowledge: Thanks to Rocksteady and WB yet again not listing which actors voiced which roles, it was assumed that in addition to returning as Deathstroke, Mark Rolston reprised his Young Justice (2010) and Injustice: Gods Among Us role as Lex Luthor. It was August of 2017 when people learned he didn't, as Keith Silverstein revealed on his Twitter page that he was the voice of Luthor's cameo.
  • Complete Monster: See here.
  • Contested Sequel: Opinions are varied as to whether or not this game lives up to its predecessors Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City (and to some extent, Batman: Arkham Origins). Many love the enhanced visuals, the expanded combat, and the bigger world, and find the ending to be compelling and a fitting finale to the series, with perhaps the richest and most complete gameplay experience overall. Others, however, criticize the handling (and frequency) of the Batmobile, were disappointed with the level design, miss the on-foot boss battles that the series was well known for, and were displeased at the bloat of Collection Sidequests. Feelings on the story itself are generally mixed, with the Joker segments and the use of Scarecrow being praised, while the identity of the Arkham Knight and the use of the Batfamily were points of criticism. Critics were also disappointed by the fact that at launch, one could not play as other characters in challengesnote , the Sequel Difficulty Spike in the predator challenges and for those who played on PC, the Porting Disaster.
  • Creepy Awesome: Scarecrow is at his most terrifying and awesome in this game, thanks to his wonderful visual design, voice-acting, and writing which makes him one step ahead of everyone and a dangerous and cunning opponent.
  • Critical Dissonance: The game has received highly positive reviews from many critics (with Wikipedia not listing any review that's less than a 7/10), but among fans, it was more divisive. Most of the criticism was directed towards the Batmobile segments, the predictable story, the overpriced DLC, and the PC port's performance problems.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: The Joker is back as a drug-induced hallucination, and his sense of humor is as horribly hilarious as ever. His crowning achievement in Black Comedy has to be the song he sings when you confront Johnny Charisma.
    I'm stuck in your head, and I'm laughing - ha!
    I fill you with dread, and I can't stop laughing!
    Your parents are dead, and I can't stop laughing!
    What else can I do?!
    Now I'm part of you.
    • Making fun of Bruce's dead parents seems to be a favored joke. In Bruce's office, Joker will pretend to leave two voicemails from Thomas and Martha after Batwoman's message. Additionally, during the final battle with him, Joker will occasionally say that Bruce's dead parents could probably hit him harder.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • The Medics are Combat Medic at its finest. Medics can revive knocked-out enemies during both Predator and Combat segments, can give enemies electrical charges to make them temporarily invulnerable, have more health than regular Mooks and if there are multiple Medics, they can revive each other. If you decide to forego the Shoot the Medic First option, this can and will make every fight they are in twice as difficult. Somewhat helped by the fact they only have limited heals but one Medic reviving another will refill the number of times they can heal. However, Batman being Batman, later gets an upgrade that allows him to disable their equipment and shock them unconscious. Something which can be quite cathartic after having to deal with them for a while.
    • Brutes are so bad, they border on Boss in Mook's Clothing. They punch faster than normal enemies, possess weapons such as blades, shields, and shock gloves, and unlike Hammer and Sickle or the Enforcers in Origins cannot be damaged by normal strikes and can only be taken out with beat downs, a Special Combo Takedown (or two if they are wearing body armor) blunt weapon strikes or a Special Combo Batclaw. And they occur way more often than in previous titles. Plus, mini-gun Brutes also appear in several predator maps, and they can only be taken down after long beatdowns (which will alert others unless you save them for the last) or by Environmental Takedowns. Good luck if the challenge requires you to take them out first!
    • The charging mook, especially on New Game Plus, since the absence of counter prompts makes their approach even harder to counter and dodge away in time.
    • In Drone battles, Dragons and Mambas. The former, an air unit, while weak is difficult to hit, attacks with bombs with not too large a radius. But combined with any other enemy, this means that dodging their attacks can lead to taking damage from the other drones. The latter, a land unit, sends homing missiles stoppable only by walls or Vulcan guns, can survive two shots from the 60mm cannon, and often comes in packs. This means that if there is more than one at a time, you'll be going between the two, stopping their missiles while other drones keep attacking.
    • To some, Ninjas. They randomly dodge your attacks (they always dodge gadgets) and sometimes attack by jumping, meaning that you may not notice the counter icon. As they also sometimes run to the player but don't attack, experienced players who know when to counter before the icon appears might be fooled by their animations.
    • Shield enemies in general, although largely because the context prompt for disabling their shield is finicky and Batman will often dodge instead of attacking one.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: The Arkham Knight. Sure, he might be a Jerkass Woobie with Freudian Excuse, but he still took part in a terrorist plot to cover the Eastern seaboard in fear-toxin just to get revenge on Batman, and his soldiers murdered three hostages at ACE Chemicals plus several scientists aboard Stagg's airship.
  • Ending Fatigue: The climax of the game begins once the Cloudburst goes active. The player is locked inside the Batmobile on Founders Island, goes underground, and explores a long tunnel segment to find a plant to help Ivy clear off the toxin (all while still in the Batmobile) and then fights and destroys the Cloudburst and the battle ends with Poison Ivy performing a Heroic Sacrifice. But the game doesn't end here: Batman finds out Gordon has been abducted by Scarecrow, infiltrates the Militia's stronghold, faces the Arkham Knight's excavator, which results in the Batmobile being destroyed, and finally fights the Arkham Knight himself and discovers his identity. With all this done, Gordon and Batman board an elevator to finally go and confront Scarecrow, which should lead into the ending, right? Wrong, the game goes for a while longer, consisting of a predator mission, an epic tank battle as Scarecrow attempts to level the GCPD, and one last fight against militia mooks, before rather anti-climatically ending with Batman deciding to surrender himself to Scarecrow. After the story intensity of the Cloudburst and fighting the Arkham Knight and finding out his identity, the following segments seem like the game is spinning its wheels trying to inch to the ending.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Professor Pyg has resonated as one of the most memorable new additions in the game thanks to the disturbing nature of his sidequest and his unexpected inclusion surprising (and horrifying) many players, causing many to gain an interest in him. His newfound popularity here likely helped lead to his memorable guest stint on Gotham.
    • Thanks to his freaky design, tragic sidequest, and his pants-shittingly terrifying first encounter, Man-Bat also proved to be one of the game's most popular new villains.
  • Epileptic Trees: Many believe that Jason killed a body double of Black Mask. His mask is not the same one as in City, Origins established that Roman is paranoid, and a mook confirmed that Roman knew of Red Hood. Most notably, when confronted, Roman acts very Out of Character, begging for his life. (Compare to Origins, where he curses and threatens multiple armed henchmen while tied up.)
  • Esoteric Happy Ending: The complete, true ending. Sure, Bruce stopped Scarecrow and stopped himself from turning into a new Joker, but his identity was revealed to the whole world and when the game tells us that Gotham is now safe because all the villains have been caught and sent to prison, we’re supposed to be happy that we helped Batman finally make Gotham a safer place. However, considering how often the villains break out of jail, it’s only a question of "when", not "if" the villains will break out to cause havoc again; so at best, it's just a temporary setback for them. If you compare what happened to Bruce and what happened to the villains, Bruce has lost so much more in this adventure than the villains have. He lost his home, everyone knows his identity, and there are still thousands of his enemies who will definitely break out of prison to hurt people again (and likely people he cares about too, considering that they now know who he is), and he lost everything. What makes it worse is that Scarecrow wanted, among several other things, for Batman’s life to be ruined and to reveal his identity to the whole world. It may not have happened the way Scarecrow wanted, but it happened anyway. Batman’s identity is now common knowledge, he lost basically everything, and his life is ruined. Taken further, while Jason lost his army, he can just walk away from it all after one heroic act without even the minimum of him being arrested like the others, despite his involvement in Scarecrow's plot making him into a war criminal, meaning there is still at least one villain on the loose, even excluding others who were merely waiting for the end of the night like Victor Zsasz or Calendar Man are still very much at large. While the full game and DLC add-ons imply that several villains have been utterly bankrupted, and some are even dead — namely Scarecrow, Poison Ivy, the Joker, Black Mask, Mr. Freeze and likely Riddler — does this really count as a happy ending?
  • Evil Is Cool: Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight. The former is because of his voice, his new look, and the latter for being an Evil Counterpart to Batman.
  • Fan Nickname: This version of Tim Drake gets called “Tim Shady” on certain parts of the internet due to his resemblance to Eminem.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • The disruptor rifle. With the right upgrades, you can use it to sabotage virtually any piece of enemy equipment, from medic backpacks and detective mode trackers to weapon crates and deployable (but not static) sentry guns. This typically results in the equipment taking out the user when they try to use it. You can take out up to four enemies without so much as touching them and render Medics useless in both fights and predator sections, and the enemies have no countermeasures whatsoever. However, these upgrades don't show up until after you first deal with them (showing Batman being Crazy-Prepared) and can be more of a cathartic factor to some players after having a pain dealing with them. Plus, using the disruptor will highlight enemy equipment, providing an alternative to Detective mode for encounters with the DM trackers.
    • A low-key instance is the voice synthesizer. The first times you use it, it seems unremarkable; you can use it to order certain goons around and typically lure them into a hazard or an isolated spot for a takedown, but their boss will quickly realize what you're doing and tell their men, and from that point on the synthesizer no longer works. What pushes it to this trope is when you figure out the Loophole Abuse possible with it. If you use the synthesizer to directly lure an enemy into a trap, odds are they'll catch on, but if you lure them over to an area and then take them down on their way back to their previous position, you can get away with using the synthesizer more often, since you technically didn't use it as part of the takedown. Additionally, if you don't perform any takedowns with it at all, you can use it as often as you want and effectively control enemy patrol routes — you can order enemies around wherever and whenever you like, making it much safer and easier to slip around unnoticed and set up a trap like a freeze mine or explosive gel for when they come back. The synthesizer also has a very low cooldown, letting you use it repeatedly in a short amount of time, and with proper timing to get them all together before they leave, you can have groups of enemies huddle up for a big fear takedown combo, so even if It Only Works Once, it'll be worth it.
    • Quick-throw Batarangs. In the previous games, Batman threw one Batarang, which usually was used to simply make some room to fight others. In this game, Batman by default throws three batarangs, which combined with the "Multi ground takedown" can take out a large number of enemies very quickly. Unless there are enemies that are immune to batarangs, it's possible to clear rooms by just hitting an enemy, quick-throwing, hitting another enemy, quick-throwing, and topping it off with a special move.
    • Red Hood is this in Predator Maps, courtesy of two advantages: Dual Handguns and extremely fast Silent Takedowns. Dual Handguns are fast, have unlimited ammo, and capable of killing mooks in one shot. Several maps can be completed just by taking a position on a far, far away vantage point and sniping the mooks one by one. Then there's his Silent Takedowns, just as fast as Knockout Takedowns without alerting others, allowing Red Hood to stealthily take down enemies fast and silently. Even with Red Hoods' drawbacksnote  and the maps' challenges, hardly slow him down in the hands of a skilled player. This is also the reason why Red Hood is nerfed in "Endless Knight" Predator Mapnote . Oh, and did we mention that those pesky Brutes are missing if you're playing as Red Hood?
  • Goddamned Bats: The Mamba and Python drones. They launch missiles that take a bit to acquire their target and then fly straight toward the Batmobile. You only have a few seconds to find out where they're coming from and shoot them down before they hit you. They're especially annoying in AR challenges, where keeping up your combo to score high is essential. The reason they fall in this category instead of Demonic Spiders is that Mambas can be destroyed in one shot (with a fully upgraded 60mm cannon), Pythons are very rare, and a well-timed EMP takes the missiles out of the air.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The game is supposed to be set up to prevent XP grinding, but there's an oversight: beating up the thugs at some sub-missions such as watchtowers will award XP, then the player can leave without destroying the objective, return a while later, and get XP from that group of mooks again.
    • If you purchase an armor upgrade for either your suit or the Batmobile, it will fully restock the health bar. Extremely useful for later missions where you are taking on entire armies. (This is true for Asylum as well.)
    • Sometimes a mission will start without the obstacle, such as a Batmobile race without the pillars the player needs to raise or lower, or one Riddler trophy where the turret that would normally shoot the robot you're supposed to control is absent.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • At the end of the game, we see Batman's worst fear is him becoming the next Joker and using his tech and skills to go on a murderous rampage across Gotham. Dark Nights: Metal gave us the Batman Who Laughs, a Joker-ized version of the Dark Knight from a parallel universe, and he's far more dangerous than the Joker ever was.
    • When Robin realizes that Batman is the last Joker infected, he tells Batman that he needs to be locked up for his own and everyone else's safety, saying that if he were to go rogue, he'd be too dangerous for Robin to stop. Come Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, Batman has been brainwashed by Brainiac into becoming a monstrous killing machine, and all the Squad can find of Robin is his mask in a small puddle of blood.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
    • After rescuing some firefighters after Batman's identity is revealed, one of the men mentions that next time they'll tell him Superman is a janitor or a journalist. Superman: Truth, which came out just before the game came out, did exactly that.
    • Kate Kane leaves Bruce a message on his voicemail reminding him of her engagement (to a woman). Gay marriage was legalized nationwide in the United States a week after the game launched. Perhaps even more hilarious in hindsight when Kevin Conroy himself came out as gay in 2016.
    • While hacking Stagg's computer, Joker makes a quip about hacking his online dating profile next. Several months after the game's release, dating website Ashley Madison had a massive data leak of all of its profile users.
    • Several moments in this game are made funnier after the release of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice:
      • One of the bits of Enemy Chatter has a militiaman saying super rich guys like Bruce Wayne probably show their "bottle piss collection to a party of supermodels". Flash forward to the release of Dawn of Justice, and there is a scene where Lex Luthor put a bottle of his piss out in a Senate hearing, showing yes, he might be partly right.
      • The Joker branding Jason Todd becomes this since in Dawn of Justice, Batman punishes human traffickers and rapists by branding them. Bonus points if the player does the scene while wearing the Dawn of Justice skin.
      • The Knightfall Protocol requires voice activation from Bruce, using a single word. Said word? "Martha".
    • During the ending Batman appearing throughout Joker's POV hallucination as statues have caused many to compare him to the Weeping Angels. Batman's next major video game appearance sees him fighting the actual Weeping Angels at one point.
    • Edging the line between this and Harsher in Hindsight: Poison Ivy's body disintegrating looks almost exactly like the infamous effect of someone being killed by the "Snap" in Avengers: Infinity War. You are now incapable of watching that scene without picturing Ivy saying "Batman, I don't feel so good..."
    • Ashley Greene voices Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in this game. Seven years later, fellow Twilight-alum Robert Pattinson would play the Batman himself.
  • I Knew It!:
    • Several people correctly speculated that the plot of Arkham Knight would involve a power-vacuum after the death of the Joker, based solely on the ending to Arkham City and that Scarecrow would be the Big Bad based on his hidden room in Falcone Shipping.
    • Regarding the Joker, two sets of theories came up regarding his fate. One set of fans believed that the character was completely dead and would be exempt from Joker Immunity or being resurrected somehow, and the other set of fans believed the same, but were under the impression that the character would be seen in hallucinations and flashbacks. Both groups were correct.
    • A lot of people correctly predicted that the Arkham Knight's true identity was the Arkham-verse's version of Jason Todd.
    • It was also widely speculated that the climax would happen at Arkham Asylum.
    • Many people figured out that it was John Noble who voiced Scarecrow before the official reveal.
  • Inferred Holocaust:
    • When Mr. Freeze's cryo generator explodes, there's enough ice to partially freeze at least two of the three islands. That had to instantly kill some people as well.
    • Unless they evacuated while Batman was unconscious, any defeated militia inside Ace Chemicals might have died. On one hand, there are no bodies when Batman races out of the facility. On the other hand, Batman could not have been unconscious for any longer than a few minutes or the toxin would have had much more severe effects, but could everybody really have woken up, run a long tunnel outside, and cross a destroyed bridge/enter a helicopter in time?
  • It's Hard, So It Sucks!: Even the Easy difficulty was hard for a lot of first-time players, and that includes players who were experts at the previous games. Normal mooks are now capable of doing charge attacks that cannot be countered, the only way to stop them is to either throw a Batarang at them or jump over them. The Special Combo Bat Swarm has been replaced with the environmental attacks, so if you need to stun a group of enemies at once, you're screwed unless you use the Special Combo REC. Some players feel that combat is much more difficult this time around due to Batman's movements being harder to control (i.e. aiming for one enemy only to end up punching a brute/shield/taser thug and losing your combo).
    • Even skilled players with a taste for it can find New Game Plus's Knightmare mode to be a bit much due to the mechanics creaking under the weight of later encounters. The combat in the entire series was deliberately designed with colored counter icons in mind, and taking them away in this most complex entry can deprive the player of vital information that they otherwise can't reasonably be expected to parse. Do I need to standard counter or blade counter that sword enemy? Exactly how many and which of the six enemies within a three-foot radius are about to attack? Figuring out if brutes are going for a punch or if a faraway (or even offscreen) enemy is doing a charge goes from difficult to borderline impossible. When almost every enemy has an uncounterable attack and/or cannot be simply punched, every action counts and landing the right move on the right enemy is the key to victory. However, the game can frequently get confused as to which enemy you wanted to target, resulting in standard mooks getting an Instant Takedown instead of a medic or brute, the Batclaw discharging an electrified enemy instead of disarming one with a gun, or a blunt object being the target of a Disarm & Destroy combo rather than the far more dangerous riot shield. Enemies in other combat-oriented games have things like more obvious animation windups and audio cues that Arkham games never felt the need for due to the presence of the counter icons, and Knightmare difficulty showcases exactly why they were so essential when you are encouraged to maintain a perfect combat flow.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The "Catwoman's Revenge" DLC has raised some eyebrows for a sequence in which Selina has to steal three terminal keycards from armed goons, directly recycled from the Arkham City quest. Funny enough, though, Catwoman even comments, "Why is it always three of something?"
  • It's Short, So It Sucks!:
    • The DLC Missions. Each can be easily beaten in less than an hournote . This is zig-zagged, however, with the "Season of Infamy" DLC, which are full-on side missions, but each individual side mission can still be beaten in 15 to 30 minutes. Catwoman, Robin, and Nightwing were cited to at least give more on the story after the events of the game to make it worth their time. But Harley and Red Hood barely get anything lore-wise and largely just come off as mini-games then additional content.
    • Some of the story side-missions, especially Two-Face and Penguin, Batman's most iconic villains are far shorter than some feel they should be. By comparison, the missing firefighter mission is longer than both combined, and they feel far less substantive than even the Season of Infamy side missions.
  • It Was His Sled:
    • The Joker's presence as a hallucination has become common knowledge for several, which might be helped by the fact it occurs early on in the story and makes it difficult to discuss the game without mentioning it. Mark Hamill publicly acknowledging his presence in the game after release doesn't help either.
    • Jason Todd being the Arkham Knight is probably even more well known due to the obviousness of it as Captain Obvious Reveal notes.
  • Jerkass Woobie:
    • Quincy Sharp, utterly broken by Hugo Strange's psychological conditioning, hangs himself in his cell to be with his "master".
    • Killer Croc, albeit heavy emphasis on the Jerkass part. Yes, he's a cannibalistic Serial Killer, but his condition has grown significantly worse thanks to being tortured and experimented on by the corrupt Warden Ranken. He now resembles something akin to a Kaiju, with frills, spikes, and a long tail. It doesn't justify his actions but it's easy to see why he wants revenge and to be cured.
    • The Arkham Knight, once he's revealed to be Jason Todd. Underneath the mask of the homicidal Professional Killer is a broken, tortured soul in desperate need of help and struggling to deal with the trauma from his torture at Joker's hand. Both Batman and Barbara believe he is not beyond redemption and desperately tries to help him. They turn out to be right.
    • All of the Joker Infected qualify, but Christina Bell takes the cake. The blood transfusion that infected her with the Joker's disease was for a miscarriage. Her baby dies, she turns into Joker, spends her final days locked away and in constant physical and mental pain and then she's killed by Henry Adams.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: A Matter of Family has a lot of reasons to play it: some want to play as Batgirl, others want to see Joker back in his prime, and others still are here simply to see Robin and Batgirl interact. However, the biggest crowd of people eagerly awaited the DLC upon the announcement that Harley would be wearing her iconic red and black jester outfit, which Rocksteady clearly knew about given the Male Gaze towards the end of the DLC.
  • Low-Tier Letdown: Poor Catwoman; while she's fine in combat maps, her already somewhat awkward predator gameplay from City is made even more slow and difficult due to the maps not supporting her ceiling climbing abilities. While her run remains silent and she's been given a slight Balance Buff (Her caltrops regenerate now and she has just as much health as everyone else) she also cannot perform double takedowns at allnote , with the end result being a character whose stealth gameplay is almost entirely limited to singular silent takedowns, meaning her challenge maps consist of a lot of waiting, to the point where it's not uncommon for 3-star runs taking well over 10 minutes. Even Harley and Red Hood - who also have somewhat limited movesets - at least have something to compensate for itnote , but Catwoman's lack of almost any useful moves just makes her predator gameplay a chore.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Henry Adams, despite appearing to be immune to the Joker infection, is in fact the most devious of the infected. After beginning to transform into Joker, Henry pretends to be immune, convinces Batman that a cure for the infection is possible while simultaneously reaching out to Harley Quinn to plan an invasion of the movie studios with her. Having Harley actually hit him to sell the illusion and hacking the Batcomputer to let her in, Henry continues the charade while Batman defeats the other infected, luring them back into his room in the process. After they're all defeated, it's revealed that Henry has killed all of the infected, believing that only the strongest Joker should be allowed to live due to evolution. When he learns that Batman himself is infected, Henry proves that he genuinely believes in this ideal by shooting himself in the head with no hesitation, vowing that Batman is going to be "spectacular".
  • Memetic Badass: Played along with Memetic Psychopath. Despite the fire chief Raymond Underhill's crimes (aiding Firefly in burning down abandoned apartments) having a noble reason to do so (having his men keep their jobs), Batman still locked him up alongside the other supervillains. This caused the fandom to joke that he is the most dangerous/evil of them all.
  • Memetic Loser:
    • Deathstroke became one, thanks to his infamous "boss fight." It's a common point of ridicule that several characters not known for their fighting prowess (notably the Riddler of all people!) got better boss fights than him.
    • Black Mask became the butt of many jokes in this game as, after being Hijacked by Joker in the last game, he's unceremoniously killed by Red Hood in the DLC in this one. He's often considered the Butt-Monkey of the Arkhamverse.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Expect almost every French player to say something along the lines of "Damn, Jamy became hardcore" due to Jamy from the (now canceled) educational TV show ''C'est pas sorcier!'' closely resembling the Riddler.
    • The over-the-top behavior of Dax Ginn in the Arkham Insider videos, and his breathless, excited praise of every element in the game, gave rise to many, many variations on "Dax is hyped". Even more so with Gaz Deaves, whose ecstatic red-faced commentary seemed to blur the line between "game dev" and "drunk soccer hooligan"; commenters jokingly theorized that if they were ever in the same video together, the Earth would be crushed in a singularity of hype.
    • A video clip of a cutscene where Batman and Catwoman have swapped character models has reached people who have not played the game. Batman with Catwoman's over-the-top Supermodel Strut has been compared to characters from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure and has been used to show what people mean when they talk about the Male Gaze.
    • Where was he during Arkham Knight? Explanation

  • Misblamed: A lot of the negative reception Arkham Knight received was due to its PC Port, which Rocksteady had no involvement in.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Scarecrow already proves he isn't playing around when he threatens to douse the city in fear toxin, but the moment he forces Gordon to lure Batman to him, then throws Barbara off the construction building when Gordon seemingly kills Batman is the moment he truly crosses the line. But if you think neither of those really counts (since both were ultimately successful), then it's officially game over when Crane captures Batman and Robin, making Gordon unmask the former on live TV or else he'll kill the latter, thus forcing Bruce and Alfred to destroy Wayne Manor and apparently go into hiding.
    • Harley Quinn was never the nicest girl in town, but her actions in A Matter of Family were horrific, even if she only was an accomplice. Just to recap: she helped The Joker con the desperate rich father of a little girl with terminal cancer into building an amusement park for her just so the Joker and Harley could use it as their secret hideout once the father and daughter died; helped turn said little girl into a test subject for the TITAN formula with the promise that it would cure her (which also doubles as a Moral Event Horizon in retrospective for Dr. Young from the first game), but was what caused her painful death; drove the grieving father into suicide by rubbing salt into the would AND gave him a drug that would supposedly kill him quickly and painlessly but was actually Joker serum that gave him a painful death between laughing fits. Jesus Christ.
    • The Joker could have crossed the horizon as early as Origins, but if nothing else he did in the series does it, he finally definitively crosses it with his actions before the events of the game. In a Gotham City Story, he bombs a kindergarten which inevitably kills untold dozens if not hundreds of children, toddlers, and infants, before gleefully singing "Humpty Dumpty" as he watches the mourning parents - all of this, of course, For the Evulz and to draw Batman out for the sake of his hunger for attention. Jason Todd in particular was so infuriated after witnessing the aftermath that he decided to gun after the Joker...which led to him psychologically and physically torturing Jason for over an entire year - manipulating him into thinking that Batman abandoned him for another protege, before seemingly shooting him dead. He had then filmed all of it and then sent it to Batman, for a simple reason: to hurt him in the absolute deepest, most personal level possible, all because Jason showed up instead of him: and to thereby demonstrate what happens when Batman involves his friends and allies into his and Joker's "crazy little game". All of this started in a single night.
  • Obvious Beta:
    • The PC version had to be removed from stores more than once due to the amount of bugs and crashes that many players experienced.
    • It should be noted that the other versions, while miles ahead of the PC port, aren't exactly bug free. As Some Call Me Johnny observes in his review of the PS4 version, the game can suffer from numerous glitches even on console, including the game failing to load environments, Batman getting stuck in place, and even full on crashing.
    • While the challenge map updates were greatly appreciated, the team clearly had limited time and/or resources when making them. For example, Harley's and Red Hood's stories feature the Blüdhaven police and Black Mask's thugs as enemies, and they have unique dialogue when talking about the two (anti-)villains. In challenge maps, they are never referred by name, the unique enemies and lines are absentnote  as are some of their gimmicks such as Ivy's man-eating plants and bulletproof enemies. As almost all of the challenge maps were designed with Batman's abilities in mind, some characters suffer a bit (most notably, Catwoman can't climb 99% of ceilings).
  • Older Than They Think: Upon its reveal, many were weirded out by the various weapons in the Batmobile (and some still are). However, many Batmen have had guns on their cars, for example, both Burton's and Nolan's had machine guns on them. Non-lethal weapons can be traced back to Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and "rubber bullets, I swear."
  • One-Scene Wonder: The encounter with Professor Pyg is mercifully brief but immensely memorable. Likewise Nyssa Raatko who appears in the Shadow War DLC and Nora Fries from In From the Cold make quite an impression even though they appear in missions for the DLC.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: All of Batman's major villains are nothing compared to the power of Scarecrow and Arkham Knight. But then they're overshadowed by Joker, who ultimately serves as the game's Final Boss.
  • Player Punch: For those who grew up with Mark Hamil's Joker, having to cremate the Joker's corpse in the game's opening sequence will be a massive Tear Jerker. The New Game Plus makes it even worse by having Joker rather than Gordon, open the game with this line.
    Joker: This is how it happened. This is how the Joker died.
  • Porting Disaster: On release, the PC version was capped at 30 FPS by default, and it had various performance issues even on very high-spec PCs (particularly on AMD rigs). One video by Rock Paper Shotgun had the game running on a fairly good rig at 60fps, with frame drops and stuttering into the single digits. It was so bad that Warner Bros. decided to essentially recall the PC version of the game by removing it from Steam and banning the sale of physical copies while they attempted to fix it. It eventually came to light that Iron Galaxy, a company known for making decent games and ports, had been outsourced and hired to make the port, but only eight people worked on it. As a result, the PC version had much worse performance, much worse graphics, low-res textures, advanced graphic effects missing, and the list goes on. Warner Bros. supposedly knew about the problems "for months" but didn't bother to fix them. On release day, the game got a painful 31% positive review score on the Steam page, and lowered to 13% the day after, however since the subsequent patches, the reviews on Steam became more and more positive with users noting that most of the problems have fixed and the recent reviews of the game are 89% positive. It still isn't a full Polished Port, as the game is known for having hitching, stuttering, and large frame drops while playing, but it's at least a step up from the terrible original release.
  • Questionable Casting:
    • Loren Lester was in the game, and he didn't voice Nightwing?note  Most people were pleased with Scott Porter's performance, though.
    • Some people feel this way about John Noble as Scarecrow. While most consider his performance as a villain to be good, some people feel that he does not capture the uniqueness of the character and comes across as Hugo Strange 2.0.
    • Troy Baker as the Arkham Knight especially since he's voiced at least three other characters in the Arkham games and that's not even taking into consideration that many people are sick to death of him because he plays a main role in every video game these days. Fans of Batman: Under the Red Hood are especially upset because they were hoping for Jensen Ackles to provide the voice.
    • Ashley Greene does an admirable job voicing Barbara Gordon. But some fans were left confused as her version of the character sounded noticeably younger than the one in Asylum and City voiced by Kimberly Brooks.
  • Romantic Plot Tumor: Tim Drake being Barbara's Love Interest isn't exactly well-liked by fans of any of the characters involved, in particular the way that it takes over both of their characters (especially in their respective DLCs, where most of their independent character struggles are sidelined in favor of their relationship).
  • Rooting for the Empire: Arkham Scarecrow's audacity, cunning, coolness, and genius are so compelling that you can't help but stand up and applaud when he unmasks Batman to the world.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The Batmobile is this for a portion of the fanbase. The default driving controls are awkward and must be changed in the menu, the racing/tank-style gameplay tends to break up the flow of the gameplay, and a lot of people hate that it's outright required for many missions and portions of the map, and thus feels forced on the player. The shilling the marketers gave it in the leadup didn't help. More than anything else, though, it's faulted for introducing a lot of difficulty-via-bad-design into an otherwise beginner-friendly series, lacking the fun counter-attack mechanics of the brawling and having really, really long fights that take place far too often. For a more detailed listing of its issues, check here. Some claim that it becomes more tolerable on repeat playthroughs, however.
    • The default controls for the Batmobile are particularly awful. By default, you have to hold the L trigger to enter tank mode and reverse/brake/drift are all on a single button. You can change this in the settings to a far superior scheme, making tank mode a toggle with the R button, moving the brake/reverse to the L trigger, keeping the gas with the R trigger, and keeping drift the same button that was combined with the other functions previously, making the Batmobile much more comfortable to play, but most players will not discover this, because the option to change the controls is HIDDEN until after you complete the first drone battle and rescue Poison Ivy. Most players will set their control options when they start the game, and wouldn't think to go back into the menu again after 30+ minutes of gameplay to find a previously hidden option.
    • The Riddler trophies that require your Batmobile's sonar to find. You start at a specified location and have to follow a trail of question marks until you reach its location. What makes it an issue is that some question marks are pretty annoying to uncover, requiring you to be in a specific direction to uncover them, and some trails reach multiple levels (climbing up buildings, going through spaces on the third floor, etc.). If you stray off the path for too long, the trail disappears and you have to start all over.
    • One Anti Frustration Feature not returning from Origins is Riddler informants being immune to takedowns, so you have to watch where you're attacking when they're present once more. In fact, they are easier to knock out than usual. Some players preferred this, however, as the implementation of this feature in Origins was somewhat strange and slapdash, forcing the player to defeat them before interrogation and turning informants into bizarre exceptions to basic rules of Arkham combat, potentially even causing the player to drop their Freeflow. That a happy medium was never achieved was disappointing to many.
    • Automatic camera changes while driving. This happens in two different kinds of missions. In battles against Cobra Tanks/Cloudburst, if you're spotted by the enemy you have to start driving away, which instantly pushes the camera away. Since this doesn't happen anywhere else in the game, it throws you off and makes escaping harder. Also, while trying to stop militia APCs, you have to race behind them and shoot them as soon as you get a chance. But they will request help from other vehicles, that will race between them and you, so you have to either pass or disable it to reach the APC. The problem is that as soon as you make any of the helping vehicles crash the camera will slow down and focus on them so you can watch the crash instead of the APC you're following. Prepare to instantly crash yourself or be thrown off the path, being forced to relocate the APC which has now gained a lot of distance.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: The Batman/Poison Ivy ship enters the battle against Batman's relationships with Catwoman, Talia, and Joker thanks to their increased interaction and more memorable moments together. Sadly, all ships sink by the end.
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The side missions, 8 characters in challenge maps, 6 Batmobiles in race maps... There's a lot to do. The races especially can be surprisingly addictive, since Arkham Knight is probably the best Batman driving game available.
  • Special Effect Failure:
    • Numerous alternate skins for the Batsuit were clearly implemented without taking into account the full range of Batman's animations in the game. Some of them have capes that don't reach Batman's arms while gliding, causing his arms to be visible and it looks like he's T-posing in midair instead of actually holding the ends of his cape out. The tops of the capes are attached to Batman's shoulders, which causes parts of his suit and body to clip into each other. Also, many of the alternate skins don't have the cowl removable separately like the vanilla skin does, so in scenes where Bruce is supposed to take his cowl off, the sound effects will play and he'll do the animation to lift the cowl off his head while holding nothing, and depending on the scene the cowl will variably stay on his head, suddenly vanish with only parts of the neck left, or only parts of the cowl will vanish leaving parts of Bruce's unmasked model clipping through the rest. Some particular examples include:
      • The Batsuit v7.43 has no unmasked model whatsoever. Whenever Batman takes his mask off, he keeps the cowl on, the mask he holds is invisible, and a few tufts of hair clips through the cowl. What makes this particularly egregious is that it's the game's default suit.
      • The shoulder plates of the Dark Knight Trilogy suit have a tendency to pop up at erratic angles when Batman moves his arms.
      • The Reeves-verse suit released in late 2023 is overall very low in quality on all platforms due to its heavily pixelated textures and poor light rendering in comparison to other suits that have no issues with lighting. The fact that it's one of several suits that has no shadows is equal parts hilariousnote  and frustrating.
    • The Two-Face display in the evidence room describes his weapons as twin semi-automatic handguns, despite them clearly being a pair of revolvers.
    • An audio example; while they got Troy Baker back to record new lines for the predator map character selection updatenote , many of the new lines stand out by their vastly different delivery from the others (A lot are said noticeably faster, for example). This is even more noticeable in certain foreign dubs (such as the Italian one), where the delivery is consistent but the new lines don't have the Arkham Knight's voice filter applied, meaning it can be mistaken for that of a generic soldier.
    • The Batmobile looks like a tank and has the physics of a cardboard box. Except to see it bounce around the environs of Gotham twirling through the air regularly, especially when you drive it off a highway or a building. When using the hotkey to summon the Batmobile to your location, depending on the environment in its way, it's possible to see it get flipped on its side or even upside down and it'll still move towards you on autopilot. If it drives into an indestructible environment object, it's liable to flip onto its side or spin around near-instantly as its momentum goes out of whack.
  • Squick:
    • The opening cutscene of the game is the Joker being cremated. The player is forced to use the controls to control how large the flames are, giving them a lovely view of his skin slowly bubbling and blistering.
    • Firefly does not wear a full bodysuit in this game, he retains his goggles, pants, and jetpack, but wears a white tank top that leaves bits of his burned skin exposed. It's very hard to look at.
    • Professor Pyg makes some disgusting retching and gagging sounds when he gets upset.
  • That One Achievement: "Requiem for a Killer", which requires you to obtain a million points and beat a boss in the Iceberg Lounge challenge map as Batman; even the 3-star rating for the map is a measly 50,000, and going over 200,000 is an accomplishment in on itself. The challenge is an endless one, but not only does every enemy type appear in it, but the spawn limit is high enough that keeping track of enemies becomes an absolute nightmare - not to mention the ever-present possibility of being attacked off-screen, the targeting screwing up, or an enemy gaining a blocking tool just before your attack connects. Simply keeping up a high combo is presumably the easiest way to do it, but this becomes increasingly difficult later on in the fight when enemies start gaining special powers, limited invulnerability, and other combo-killers. Losing your initial combo is enough to warrant a restart, due to how insanely hard it becomes to build up a new one when most enemies are immune to basic attacks. Fortunately, it's not a requirement for platinum on PS4, although the relative ease of every other trophy means this one becomes a Last Lousy Point.
  • That One Boss:
    • The Arkham Knight's giant excavator. It's incredibly fast and any hit from it is an instant game over. It also can't be damaged through normal means and is fought in one of the most frustrating areas of the game to navigate in the Batmobile.
    • Even worse is the fight against The Cloudburst tank. The player is trapped on Bleake Island with it and 6 Cobra drones. The Cobra drones themselves are very tricky without the hack upgrade for them since they like to clump together and turn around at random, then comes an even trickier part of destroying weak points on the Cloudburst. Once alerted (which unavoidably happens whenever a weak point is destroyed) the Cloudburst instantly becomes insanely fast, and ridiculously aggressive, and starts letting fly with an incredibly powerful laser cannon; if the player is not good at drifting the Batmobile, expect much-torn hair and restarting. The final stage is at least easier, with the minor problem of not bothering to tell the player that the Cloudburst tank is only vulnerable in one extremely specific place that isn't exactly where you would guess it to be.
  • That One Sidequest:
    • The "Condamned" Riddler race is a major pain in the ass. Driving up walls and avoiding blockades at the same time is not an easy process. Switching to first-person makes it a bit easier, however.
    • The 'Azrael's Atonement' combat challenge. You have to get 30,000 points, which is somewhat ridiculously high. And you have to deal with ninjas and medics. Oh, and if you get hit once the challenge immediately ends. The ninjas in particular are annoying to deal with since they are equally likely to use a standard attack for countering as they are to use one requiring a Blade Dodge/Takedown, which has a somewhat different button input. With a normal combat flow going, it may be difficult to switch, leading to being hit... and having to start over from the top.
    • "Big Game Hunter" can be this even if you don't have a problem with the Batmobile. You must destroy 6 Cobras without ever being spotted, and you also have to deal with the Cloudburst tank roaming around looking for you. Also, sometimes a Cobra will spawn looking in your direction as soon as the challenge starts.
    • Getting 3 stars on "Slumdog Billionare" requires a high score (meaning you can't get hit for a long time), and takes place in an incredibly small area (for a vehicle challenge anyway) with Mambas and Diamondbacks pouring in from all sides, with the odd Dragon and Rattler for good measure.
    • The "Cauldron Speedway TT" DLC race. It requires you to pull off big drifts to slow down the clock, not hit anything, and take a shortcut to the end (which is very difficult to get to when using the default car or Tumbler), or else you will not make it on time. Even skilled players have stated that it has taken them dozens of tries to beat it and some have even rage quit over it.
    • "Batmobile Proving Ground - 3 Lap Race" is even worse than Cauldron Speedway. You only have a minute to complete it, meaning you must drift through the track whilst simultaneously dodging barricades and listening to Lucius chide you for every mistake you make.
    • The Catwoman DLC final fight caters to all of her weaknesses and none of her strengths. You're fighting hordes of robots while also dealing with an electrified floor and two roaming lasers. Catwoman herself does not have an offensive moveset (so no group takedowns), her counters take forever (which can leave you trapped on the electrified floor slowly dying), she has the base amount of health, and the way combat works, in general, means the game can just launch you straight into the things that are killing you regardless of your intent. You don't just need skill here, you need a lot of luck.
    • A lot of the Campaign for Disarmament missions. You need to remain close to the mine while enemy tanks keep on appearing (upwards of 42!). They're numerous and utterly cramped with the game barely giving you much breathing room. At first playthroughs, these can be an utter pain and absolutely monotonous if you don't pace yourself.
    • Any of the Predator Challenge levels that don't have Harley as the default character become a nightmare if you try to complete it as her. Because the challenge maps do not cater to her play style at all, especially the fact that she cannot perform silent takedowns, even challenges that are originally fairly easy become frustratingly difficult as Militia or thugs swarm your location any time you take somebody out, all while Harley doesn't have a grapple to make a quick escape.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
    • The new AR challenges drew so much fan outcry that a series of DLC and patches reverted them back to the way they were in previous games.
    • For whatever reason, the Arkham Origins skin added as DLC is based on the all-black "Dark Knight" variant of the Origins bat-suit rather than the default gray and black version. Needless to say, several mods were made to rectify this.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • Hush returns from Arkham City. He's not in costume, only trying to steal Bruce Wayne's fortune while wearing Bruce's face and taking Lucius Fox hostage before being beaten up by Bruce in a sidequest that totals out at five minutes max. For a character traditionally depicted as The Strategist amongst the rogues, and an adequate combatant even against the Bat family, it feels like a cheap conclusion. You don't even get to hear his Motive Rant, since it's drowned out by Bruce strategizing about how to take him down.
    • Nightwing. The Lancer to Batman is confined to the Penguin side quest, is captured in it, plays as a boss in Harley Quinn's DLC, and gets defeated. His traditional romance subplot with Babs is taken by Tim Drake; his traditional Arch-Enemy, Deathstroke, who returns in this game, is taken by Batman, and there's no suggestion that he's taken over once Batman disappears as he goes back to protect Bludhaven. On the plus side, he is the ally that's Dual Played with the most, and the one Batman is the least snide to. Somewhat allayed due to his appearances in the game's DLC, especially the Killer Croc episode in "The Season of Infamy" which recaptured their classic banter from the comics.
    • After his supporting role in Arkham Origins and the comic tie-ins, it's somewhat odd that Harvey Bullock is nowhere to be seen in-game outside of a whiteboard Easter Egg despite his status as Gordon's Number Two and the focus the GCPD gets during the game.
    • Even detractors of Arkham Origins will admit that Deathstroke's boss fight was one of the high points of the game, and some comic fans acknowledge that Deathstroke is perhaps the most lethal person Batman can take in a straight-up fight. Even Batman himself told Jason that Deathstroke was the toughest person he'd ever fought. Here? He's relegated to another tank mission and gets taken out of the equation in a cutscene.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Before the game's release, part of its advertised premise was that with the Joker gone, Batman's rogues gallery would be joining forces to take him down once and for all. In reality, the extent of this 'team-up' is that most of the major villains chipped in to fund Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight before the game started. Come the game itself, they're all back to acting more or less independently with only hints of a larger collaboration, such as Penguin supplying the militia with guns. In fact, the usual villains are overshadowed by Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, with the rest of them except Harley Quinn only being encountered in side missions.
  • Underused Game Mechanic:
    • While several endless combat challenges only end when Batman is defeated, there's only one endless predator challenge. This is disappointing in that the one challenge that uses this concept (Endless Knight) was widely praised for the variety of ways to take down enemies and escalating challenges.
    • Harley's plants and Red Hood's bulletproof enemies are only used in their (extremely short) DLC campaigns and nowhere else; not even the predator and combat challenges designed with said characters in mind use these unique mechanics.
    • One could argue this about the challenge maps in general; while they aren't bad per se with some providing genuine challenges, interesting layouts, and decent variety, they still feel like an Obvious Beta compared to the previous entries. Even after character selection was added through patches, some characters cannot fight certain enemy types at all, and as mentioned above, Harley and Jason are made to fit the mold and their unique level gimmicks are absent. In Predator, instead of the personalized lines of City and Origins, everyone gets the same generic announcements Batman gets (just with all mentions of Batman left out), and only Batman, Robin, Nightwing, and Catwoman are called by their names by mooks. Speaking of the announcer, just like in City only one character (Arkham Knight) is used for all mapsnote , despite both Scarecrow and Deathstroke also doing so in the main campaign. Overall, while the maps do their job, they could have been handled better.
    • The game adds the option to use gadgets while gliding. The only place where this mechanic is required is as a condition to unlock one of the AR missions. This is particularly wasted given there are two flying bosses in Firefly and Man-Bat that could have been a way to introduce the new mechanic and better incorporate it into the game (instead one is fought by chasing with the Batmobile and then attacking with its ejection, and the other is barely a confrontation, only requiring Batman to dive onto him once he's directly above). The gadgets are also difficult to aim and some will ruin your combo.
  • Unexpected Character:
    • Deacon Blackfire, the villain from Batman: The Cult, is a villain in one of the side missions.
    • Another side mission villain that comes out of the left field is Professor Pyg.
    • Simon Stagg, who's usually associated with Metamorpho, is a hero from a far less gritty sector of the DCU.
    • C'mon, hands raised for anyone who had no clue Joker was in Arkham Knight at all, voiced by Mark Hamill no less.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: To some extent, the Riddler. Yes, he's an Adaptational Jerkass Hate Sink. But it's very clear that Batman is partially responsible for his Sanity Slippage. The Freudian Slip about his father reminds just how much of a broken man-child he is.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • The Arkham Knight/Jason Todd. His past trauma at Joker's hand and feeling abandoned by Batman is horrible, but it doesn't come close to justifying being involved in Scarecrow's plans (including personally releasing fear toxin in a crowded diner, which is easily a war crime) or leading the Militia to invade and take control of Gotham. He also suffers no consequences for his crimes, able to just walk away from them all and the innocents he killed or led to their deaths.
    • The DLC "Beneath the Surface" tries to present Killer Croc as a Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds and a Tragic Villain. The problem is, he's still an Ax-Crazy cannibalistic serial killer who never shows any remorse for his crimes and is a complete Jerkass, so there are few if any reasons to care about his tribulations.
  • The Un Twist: It's obvious enough that Jason Todd is the Arkham Knight that you'd be forgiven for thinking "that's too obvious" and they were going to do something different.
    • The Joker being brought back through Fear Gas hallucinations was a common expectation before the game's release and ultimately proved true.
  • Vindicated by History:
    • The originally very poorly done PC port has become much more warmly received after an extensive overhaul and several patches. A later report on the game on high-end PC notes that it's the best version yet.
    • On a wider note, the general critical view on Arkham Knight is much less contested years later, especially after the expanded episodes and DLC were made available at a lower price or in the complete edition. It's considered a great third game, a satisfying conclusion, and some even consider it the best.
    • The game gets vindicated even further after the disappointing launch of Gotham Knights (2022). Even during the previews, some have already made comparisons between those two games, only to find out that Arkham Knight looks and plays much better despite the 7-year gap. Many return to this game just to appreciate the groundbreaking visuals, art direction, and gameplay compared to Gotham Knights and for being a more proper (albeit unintentional) swan song for Kevin Conroy's Batman compared to his highly polarizing end seen in Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The Arkham series have always been good looking games, but Knight pushes things into overdrive. The extremely good rain effects, strong particle, and smoke effects, exceptional lighting, solid animation, and incredibly detailed character models make Arkham Knight one of the best-looking games of the generation. The PC port is no slouch either, featuring several graphical enhancements.
  • WTH, Costuming Department?:
    • The Batman Beyond pre-order DLC skin. It looks more like a re-skinned Arkham Knight than the actual costume (which is particularly annoying, as City had a much more accurate version of the costume). They probably wanted a more armored look so it wouldn't look out of place next to the default suit, but it still looks ridiculous.
    • The Batman: Gotham Knight skin has also prompted some mockery, with the stylized anime design not translating well to the game's realistic look (including body armor that looks suspiciously like hockey pads).
    • Nightwing's new costume. Whilst one may argue which of the actual suits from Knight & City is the better, his mask in Knight is ridiculous - at first glance, it appears to be a cowl & part of the suit. However, upon examination of the character model, you will notice that it's not part of the suit, and he has his previous domino mask on top of the new mask, which really only serves to protect his cheeks. He must get bitch-slapped a lot if he needs cheek protection.
    • Many gamers aren't too thrilled with Robin's hood being down in this game, since his buzz cut makes him resemble Eminem.
    • Batgirl's costume comes with noticeably high heels.
  • The Woobie:
    • Barbara Gordon. She feels conflicted about having to lie to Jim to help Batman, gets kidnapped by Scarecrow and the Arkham Knight, finds out the Arkham Knight is Jason, and nearly gets killed by Scarecrow.
    • Man Bat (Kirk Langstrom). He was just a scientist who wanted to create a cure for hearing loss only to turn into a bat creature and accidentally kill his wife. When cured of his condition, he realizes what he did and breaks down sobbing.
    • Mr. Freeze still hasn't managed to cure Nora, and the stress is causing him to explode into fits of anger. Furthermore, despite being trapped in cryostasis, Nora has begun to retain small amounts of consciousness over the months and years and worries that, though Victor still loves her, he only wants to save what he sees in his fading memories, not the woman she really was. Freeze's side-mission in Knight ends with Nora awake and his equipment destroyed: the two leave Gotham to spend their remaining few days together.
    • By the end of the game, Batman himself. He has lost both his Batman and Bruce Wayne identities, finds out that a former Robin has become a supervillain because he didn't rescue him in time, nearly gets another Robin killed, breaks up even the Slap-Slap-Kiss dynamic with Catwoman and finally he and Alfred go underground cut off from all their former friends and allies, with Batman not even being able to attend Tim and Barbara's wedding.

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