It's revealed that most of the Justice League fell under Brainiac's mind control because Green Lantern and especially Superman insisted they go to Brainiac and negotiate in good faith after he invited him, no matter how much the other three pointed out that Brainiac looks Obviously Evil, the latter even invoking his own origins as coming from space like Brainiac just did to convince the members opposed to the idea. With how hard he pitched it, even getting a tad emotional saying it, was Superman truly being a Too Dumb to LiveMartial Pacifist? Or did he think the League wouldn't stand a chance against Brainiac if they tried to fight him? Given the emotional moment occurred when he brought up how he arrived, was he projecting his own hang-ups about being an outsider to Earth onto the situation and letting it cloud his judgement? There is subtext that in this universe, metahumans are not well-regarded among the general population, given that the Justice League has to heavily market itself seemingly and it's strongly implied Lex Luthor is planning on running for president on an anti-meta platform. Given that, could he have thought that peacefully resolving the Brainiac situation without any violence would improve the standing of him and other metas to the public? Could he have even thought Brainiac could somehow bring back Krypton, given that Superman himself offers to find another way to restore Colu? Did he truly believe that they couldn't fight Brainiac without the risk of collateral damage to civilians, given how densely populated Metropolis was?
Is Amanda Waller genuinely evil or is she just in an impossible situation against an alien invasion where every Godzilla Threshold has been crossed? Most notably, when she launches a nuclear bomb against Brainiac, her final words to the squad sound genuinely pained, and she has notable A Father to His Men tendencies when her convoy is attacked.
The giant demon Batman fight is a visual spectacle, but in terms of actual gameplay, it consists of the player just jumping over a bunch of projectiles and shooting anything purple as much as you possibly can. It gets a little harder as projectiles come faster and in higher numbers, but it's still not very difficult when the characters can double jump and keep shooting at the same time. Notably, the first Batman fight is highly praised for effectively putting the players in the shoes of the Mooks they spent the past four games fighting, making it even more disappointing that the final fight just consists of jumping and shooting.
The Final Boss fight with Brainiac in the main story is a rehash of the Flash boss fight (as in Brainiac literally transforms into a purple copy of the Flash) only with more Mooks running around, and has just one phase. Things only got worse in later updates when it was revealed the other twelve Brainaics would also simply copy the Justice League encounters, with many fans rightfully noting how lazy this was.
King Shark takes John Stewart's Green Lantern ring after his death and is able to successfully use it to create a giant construct that breaks Brainiac's shield. Ignoring the fact that that's not how Green Lantern rings work in the comics (barring a few instances that were deliberately allowed by their chosen wearers), if we assume that they run on different rules here then it now makes the Green Lantern Corps look like morons for creating a weapon of such power that can so easily change hands with practically zero safety measures put in place to stop it from happening. Also the ring does not return to Oa but just falls into the water.
During the battle between Superman and Wonder Woman, it's revealed that Superman is immune to Kryptonite after he survives Wonder Woman stabbing him in the chest with a large shard of it. Luthor-2 theorizes afterwards that Brainiac must have altered his DNA somehow, and subsequently creates an entirely new type of Gold Kryptonite barely one mission later which Superman is vulnerable to.
During the battle with Batman, he uses Scarecrow’s fear toxin in an attempt to capture and defeat the squad. To counter this, Harley Quinn somehow suddenly possesses an understanding of Neural chemistry and fear toxin on pair with both characters in order to mix together a counter toxin. While Harley Quinn does come from an educated background, her area of expertise has always been psychology and beyond her experience with Joker toxin; she has never demonstrated any extensive knowledge of neural chemistry until now and such expertise is never utilized after this fight. The story attempts to handwave this by saying she got the information from Scarecrow, but that doesn’t explain how she was able to create her own variant of the Fear Toxin by using the same chemicals already in use by Batman.
Audience-Alienating Premise: The game is a perfect storm of things audiences didn't want and/or had gotten thoroughly sick of by the time of its release, and the dislike towards the game's core concepts resulted in it quickly becoming a critical and commercial failure many people saw coming from miles away:
Gameplay-wise, it's a looter-shooter live service game, which made sense in 2019-2020 when development began and games like Destiny 2 were huge. By the time it released in 2024, a mixture of over-saturation, the frequency with which such games released in a content-poor state hoping to patch in new content later only to die before said content ever materialized, and general fatigue with a grindy, highly-monetized design philosophy had turned mass audiences against the genre, with huge flops like Anthem, Marvel's Avengersnote Itself a superhero game, and one with a team of A-listers attached to among the most profitable franchises in human history at that, and Redfallnote Not technically live-service, but it has many similar elements which led many to suspect it started development as a live-service title. looming large in the public imagination. The game's $70 initial price as part of the console generation's new wave price hike on top of its numerous in-game purchases only further drove audiences away.
Tonally, it draws a lot of inspiration from the edgy, irreverent demeanour of superhero deconstruction stories like The Boys and Gen V, with a plot revolving around killing famous superheroes gone bad and a bunch of nasty Anti-Hero protagonists constantly indulging in profane and wacky antics. However, while those works use Corrupted Character Copies of classic superheroes, meaning audiences have no attachment to them, this game instead uses the actual Justice League, a group of beloved comic icons subject to brainwashing. Audiences are going to be considerably less interested in doing as the title suggests and putting them down, especially as a bunch of irreverent press-ganged supervillains who'll gloat about it.
Finally, as the first installment in the Batman: Arkham Series in nearly nine years, it's the opposite of what fans of those games want: an always-online multiplayer live-service versus an exploration-heavy single player experience, utilizing third-person shooter mechanics rather than the famous, genre-defining "freeflow" combat system, an irreverent Black Comedy tone rather than a traditional superhero story with moments of deep character study, and that's just looking at its gameplay and story as a standalone. As a sequel to those games, set in that universe, and featuring the less than graceful death of that version of Batman, right after his beloved voice actor's real world death no less (admittedly, the game developers had no way of knowing this would happen, but it didn't help the game's reception at all), well, it hardly feels like a good conclusion to the story or a good send-off to the character.
Keeping with the tradition of Suicide Squad trailers being set to iconic tunes, the game's first trailer plays OutKast's "Bombs Over Baghdad" while the Squad does its thing.
The "No More Heroes" gives us "Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz in a way so epic that shows us that there are no more good guys playing nice, but a group of beasts that Waller let out of their cages.
Bile Fascination: The immense backlash to Batman's death has caused an increased amount of interest from people who actually enjoy just how far the game is taking Refuge in Audacity and are now more interested than they were before. Though this ultimately didn't help initial sales, and, at least on Steam, the game ended up having under 1000 players less than a month after launch and would continue dropping to under 400.
Many seem to think Rocksteady had to make this game instead of a single-player Superman game and Metropolis being the setting is a remnant of early work on that. While there's no denying that they made their name by making Single-Player games as opposed to the co-op live-service shooter that this is, there is no credible report that they ever worked on a Superman game, the one tweet that suggested it later recanted it as a mix-up of studios. Metropolis being the setting is likely out of coincidence in that Rocksteady used up Gotham City in their previous games, and wanting a new location, Metropolis is the next most well-known DC setting.
Following the release, there was a lot of public discussion on how Captain Boomerang pisses on the Flash's corpse after he dies. In actual fact, Boomerang does intend to do so, but Deadshot stops him before he can go through with it, with the resulting length of the scene coming from jokes about his Gag Penis.
Many, many people operated under the assumption that the game is Kevin Conroy's final performance as Batman despite no official confirmation as such from Rocksteady or Warner Bros.. Most of the criticism for Batman's execution stems from this belief, with countless fans arguing it was disrespectful to end Conroy's most iconic role in such a way. However, just under a month after the game's release, Conroy was confirmed to be posthumously reprising his role as Batman one last time in Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths — Part 3.
Even though the game's subtitle is Kill the Justice League, prior to release, not many were convinced the Justice League would actually be murdered, since they are DC's big hero team and killing them off would potentially write Rocksteady and future developers into a corner since them being dead means no new games starring them, not to mention how powerful they are compared to the Squad. The most common theory was that the Suicide Squad would end up saving the Justice League from Brainiac's control (deliberately or not) and/or that the League the Squad is facing is not actually them, but clones made by Brainiac, fulfilling the "kill" part without actually killing them. After the game released, players discovered that unfortunately, they really did do it and the Justice League is killed.
Another theory from how The Multiverse is involved is that this could be an Elseworlds version of the Arkham series, allowing it to still take place after the previous games without being their definitive future.
Luthor's theory that Superman was genetically modified by Brainiac to be more resistant to kryptonite opens the door for him and the other League members being granted Resurrective Immortality, allowing them to return in future updates.
There is also a calendar sheet-styled Easter Egg that implies Batman's return, giving at least some hope for his fans.
It's eventually revealed in audio logs that the reason Brainiac was able to brainwash all of the Justice League members is because Superman and Green Lantern wanted to peacefully negotiate with Brainiac aboard his ship (specifically, Brainiac asked them to do so and they agreed). Fans strongly disliked this explanation due to making Superman look like a complete moron walking right into an obvious trap (so obvious Batman, Wonder Woman, and Flash immediately recognize it as such, but Superman talks them down), with Brainiac's ship resembling a giant glowing skull, complete with spikes, a cobra hood, and tentacles.
Fandom Rivalry: Has developed a bit of this with Gotham Knights (2022). While a lot of players are excited for both, many people who were turned off by Suicide Squad being anotherBeware the Superman story find Gotham Knights more interesting, since it will be the first time in a major AAA release that almost the entire extended Batfamily is both present, playable, AND the main focus; meanwhile, other people who were a little disappointed or turned-off that Knights wasn't an Arkham spin-off (including those that wished to play as that version of the family) are more interested in Squad, wanting a continuation of that series and trusting Rocksteady's track record. This has only increased after the game was released, with many arguing Gotham Knightshad a far better send off for Batman than this game did.
Fanfic Fuel: What were the Justice League up to in the five years between Arkham Knight and this game? What supervillains did they fight? What did the Bat-Family do in this time?
Fans of the Arkham games prefer to ignore this game being part of the Arkhamverse and treat it as its own standalone story, due to several Continuity Snarls such as Deadshot's Race Lift and Captain Boomerang and King Shark being alive and well, as well as the tone, story, visuals, gameplay style, and scope of the plot not at all meshing with the previous games in the franchise. Not to mention that Batman's appearance is seen as invalidating his sacrifice at the end of Batman: Arkham Knight.
This hits new heights when Batman's death scene started getting shared online and even people who gritted their teeth through the above reasons immediately declared the game non-canon. Similarly, many disliked that the Justice League were finally introduced to the acclaimed Batman Arkham game series, only to be immediately reduced to evil, mind-controlled villains and all killed off anti-climatically by the Suicide Squad, feeling such a plot would've easier to stomach as a stand-alone game.
Given the direct involvement of the multiverse in the game's plot, some fans have decided to treat the game as being set in an Alternate Continuity based on the Arkham games instead of being in the (exact) same universe as them.
Informed Wrongness: Boomerang putting a bomb in Poison Ivy's neck, which the rest of his team immediately slapping him around for until King Shark straight up knocks him out. This is supposed to be an Even Evil Has Standards for the other members of the Suicide Squad. But this falls flat considering several factors. Poison Ivy was about to feed them to her plant until she found out she has a bomb in her neck, making them seem like Ungrateful Bastards to Captain Boomerang who rightfully did not trust her and saved their lives by doing what he did. Harley Quinn's objections about not harming children ring hollow considering she has killed and hurt lots of children while working for the Joker and it seems she only cares about Poison Ivy due to their prior relationship. And they also did not object at all to him implanting a bomb in Toyman's neck despite him being an innocent teenager just because they thought he was annoying, making them all look like selfish hypocrites.
A number of fans complained this is yet another major Suicide Squad adaptation following Suicide Squad (2016) where the group have to save the world from an incredibly powerful antagonist far beyond the abilities of its members (most of which are just regular non-superpowered people) to realistically stop and are somehow supposed to be a match for the Justice League, rather than the lower-stakes, covert missions they go on in the comics.
The announcement of a parallel-universe Joker being the first post-DLC character has gotten negative reactions, with most fans finding the idea to be needless and many joking that Rocksteady simply cannot make a game that doesn't have the Joker in it.
Within the context of the game itself, critics and audiences have both complained about how every single mission, story and side, follows one of five templates, and how three of the five boss battles (The Flash, Superman, and Brainiac) use very similar mechanics with only cursory changes.
Just Here for Godzilla: The Game Awards 2022 trailer revealing that the game would feature Batman voiced by Kevin Conroy captured the interest of a lot of people who had been previously Tainted by the Preview. This is due to the combination of it being one of Conroy's final performances as Batman following his death in November 2022, as well as curiosity to see what happened to Batman in the Arkhamverse following the ending of Batman: Arkham Knight, in which his secret identity is revealed to the world, forcing him to fake his death by blowing up Wayne Manor.
Magnificent Bastard: Earth-2 Lex Luthor is a less arrogant counterpart of Earth-1 Lex Luthor who used his wits and resourcefulness to be the only human to survive Earth-2’s invasion by Brainiac. Surviving for 3 years, Luthor learns of Earth-1 and supplies knowledge to to his Earth-1 counterpart to prepare him for Brainiac's invasion of his Earth. After the arrival of the Suicide Squad in Earth-2, Luthor has the Squad assist him in getting to Earth-1 and after hacking into Argus, exposes Amanda Walker's plan to brainwash the Squad, convincing them to serve him instead. Luthor leads the Squad’s efforts to kill the Justice League, making use of Yellow Batteries for them to kill Green Lantern, studying Batman to figure out Brainiac's changes to Superman’s DNA, and creating Gold Kryptonite to organize the defeat of his greatest enemy Superman in front of his own monument. Luthor even manages to force Walker to work with him by creating a failsafe that will take all his work with him if Walker tries to control him. Luthor finally creates a device that allows them interface into Brainiac after his defeat, allowing the Squad to hunt the other 12 variants of Brainiac across the multiverse, cementing himself as a resourceful yet untrustworthy ally to the Squad.
Memetic Loser: Brainiac developed this reputation due to his Orcus on His Throne tendencies which got his Justice League defeated due to him not intervening sooner to help them. While his capture and brainwashing of the League sounds impressive, the fact it mostly happened due to Superman grabbing the Idiot Ball means Brainiac didn't truly defeat them. (However, that pales in comparison to Brainiac actually being defeated by The Squad, who by design are supposed to be a team of disposable B to C list villains mostly armed with guns, which makes him look even more pathetic. Finally, the reveal that there are 12 other variants of Brainiac that the game expects the Suicide Squad to defeat, means Brainiac is going to lose to the same team for a grand total of 13 times!) Not a terribly impressive track record for a galactic conquerer.
The Elseworld's Joker was hit by this almost from the moment his design was first revealed, to largely negative reception. His disastrous implementation into the game didn't help fan perception. r/BatmanArkham quickly dubbed him the Twinkler, which would be the first of several unflattering Fan Nicknames to follow.
Batman with a gun.ExplanationIn the "No More Heroes" trailer, Batman under Brainiac's control is seen brandishing a gun. The sheer shock of seeing one of the most anti-gun characters holding one led to an exploitable meme.
The Aslume is canon!ExplanationPrior to this game's release, the r/BatmanArkhamsubreddit devolved into weirdness out of sheer boredom of not having any new games in the Arkhamverse for eight years, adopting the name "the Aslume". A shot in the "No More Heroes" trailer shows the Arkham Asylum gates, with the "Y" having rotted off its place, leaving "Aslum". Users then proclaimed how Rocksteady has now canonized the Aslume.
The Aslume is over/[Batman] wasn't stupid.Explanationr/BatmanArkham's insanity is credited to this postasking why Batman didn't just call the Justice League for help during Arkham Knight. Before the game was released, an alpha tester stated on Twitter this game would reveal the Justice League didn't exist yet. Cue the "inmates" expressing shock that their catalyst for insanity was wrong and wondering if they should go sane again. Though people have countered that Easter Eggs in Knight confirmed that while the JL didn't exist yet, its individual members were active, leaving the question of why they didn't help when they saw the news intact.
"It's called "Kill the Justice League!"note This meme was made in response to the backlash the game got over leaks of Batman's death as well as the full release that featured the deaths of the Justice League, maliciously calling out the people who were shocked at the game despite the title indicating what the aim is.
"It's also called "Suicide Squad"!note A common response to the above argument, in that despite its name and its source material none of the squad die during the game's story, despite the inclusion of at least one Red Shirt to prove the bombs are to be taken seriously being a team staple.
"Me when Screwball kills Spider-Man in Kill the Avengers"Explanation (spoilers)In response to the fact that Harley Quinn ultimately kills Batman by shooting him in the head, jokes abounded comparing the idea to Screwball from the Spider-Man (Insomniac) series ultimately being the villain to put down that game's version of Peter Parker.
Can we all agree that the Arkham saga ended here?ExplanationA series of shitposts stemming from this serious post on the infamously insaner/BatmanArkham subreddit parodying the Fanon Discontinuity applied to the game. Usually, it's screenshots of arbitrary moments both Batman-related and not, or pictures of theories of how the universe will end. A related trend is "Can we all agree that the Arkham saga began here?" where they show pictures of the Big Bang or sperm.
Can we all agree that this should have been the Arkhamverse Suicide Squad?/Why weren't they the Arkhamverse suicide squad? ExplanationMemes depicting various groups that fans think should have been the game's Suicide Squad, such as the LEGO variants of the characters or the Team Fortress 2 Mercenaries.
Boomerang's epic double-take Oh, Crap! face when seeing the gigantic Green Lantern shark construct coming straight for the Suicide Squad has started to become a popular "When you see X" template on TikTok.
What Arkham Batman ACTUALLY would've done here. Explanation (spoilers!) Some fans' outrage towards Batman's infamous death scene, mainly over Harley shooting him in the head, and how he should've been able to beat all of the Squad single-handedly resulted in severalvideos showing him taking down Harley and the Squad right before Harley shoots him.
Kill The Arkhamverse / Suicide Squad: Kill the FranchiseExplanationMalicious Misnaming for the game's story, for ruining the lore of the Arkham Series in the eyes of many fans, or for derailing an otherwise-beloved series of games with what everyone thinks is going to be a disappointing final installment.
That ain't the Joker, that's ___. ExplanationA Pretender Diss where the Elseworlds Joker is distinguished from the Arkhamverse Joker with an unflattering nickname. Variants include the Giggler, the Chuckler, the Jonkler and the Kidder.
Critics have criticized Rocksteady for making what was thought to be Kevin Conroy's last role as Batman a game where he turns evil and absolutely dies without question, getting shot point blank in the head while tied up. Conroy's illness and passing happened fast enough that Rocksteady could not have known this would end up being his last time as Batman when the game was written and recorded, and his death happened too late for much to be changed (in addition to him not being able to voice more lines anyway). Also, Conroy himself ultimately agreed to voice Batman in this work knowing what the storyline is, and this tweet by one of the writers claims Conroy was able to give feedback to Rocksteady and never disapproved of it.
Most people seem to think that the the badly received story-line moments, such as the universally panned death scenes of the brainwashed Justice League, and Deadshot getting a Race Lift, happened because Rocksteady had narrative consultancy agency Sweet Baby Inc write the story instead of them. Actually, Sweet Baby Inc joined development of the game after the story was written to make in-game ads, audio logs, and NPC barks,, so things like Boomerang trying to piss on Flash's corpse and Harley unceremoniously shooting Batman were conceived by Rocksteady itself and did not happen because of outsourcing. The only things Sweet Baby might be able to be blamed for is the controversial backstory moment where Superman convinced the rest of the League to try to negotiate with Brainiac since that is told in audio logs, and an extremely out-of-character archive log in which Lex Luthor (a narcissistic capitalist human supremacist) gushes over Wonder Woman and describes the Amazons as the perfect society, but whatever happens in the cut-scenes in the game isn't by them.
Obvious Beta: Upon release, the game was found to be incredibly buggy and unpolished. Cutscenes sometimes have characters missing, enemies can phase into walls and render missions impossible to complete, some NPCs cannot be talked to at random preventing mission continuation, and sometimes talents cannot be accessed, among other bugs. Many players even found their game had already been completed out of the gate.
Despite the game delving heavily into The Multiverse, this isn't the first time that the Arkhamverse has actually dealt with the subject. Batman (Chip Zdarsky) would feature the Arkham Batman in a surprise appearance, interacting with his mainstream DC Universe counterpart, and it was the result of the Red Mask that the Arkhamverse Joker was resurrected. However, given the second of those spoilers has zero impact at all and is not mentioned, it could easily be viewed as non-canon.
There has been some criticism of Lex Luthor's respect for the Amazons in the codex files being uncharacteristic of him. However, there is precedent for this in the comics — Superman: Birthright and Superman: Secret Origin depict Luthor as feeling that he has a kinship with advanced societies because he believes his intellect puts him above other humans. While the Amazons are aliens, they are often portrayed as being more advanced than most human societies in some ways, so Luthor showing some admiration for them isn't unusual for him.
So Okay, It's Average: A frequent review from critics is that the gun gameplay, most of the story, and character interactions are fairly enjoyable, but the game is crippled significantly by the choice to make it a live-service looter shooter, resulting in repetitive missions, an unrewarding grind, no endgame payoff, lack of variation between the playable characters, and ultimately doesn't stand out from the crowd.
The scene where Captain Boomerang, in a disgusting showcase of him being The Bogan, decides to urinate on Flash's corpse and is stopped by Deadshot in a brief moment of Even Evil Has Standards (and the scene then makes a joke about Boomerang having a Gag Penis). It became one of the centerpieces of the audience's hatred of the game through the sheer awfulness of it all.
In-universe when the Squad are trying to find a way into the Hall of Justice, Boomerang holds up Flash's severed thumb that he kept as a trophy — then reels back in disgust because he accidentally touched the bone.
Harley flirting with a preteen clone of Poison Ivy is incredibly uncomfortable for a lot of fans.
Tainted by the Preview: It may not be an exaggeration to say that almost every piece of major promotional material wound up doing more harm than good when it came to the perception of the game.
Several people, while interested in the new game, were exasperated at the apparent premise, whichisyetanotherevilSupermanstory and wish DC would just do a game with a normal, heroic Superman.
Many also expressed frustration with the reveal that it would be yet another video game that will adopt the increasingly unpopular live-service model, complete with battle passes, in-game purchases, and an always-online requirement even when playing solo. This was amplified by the announcement of Suicide Squad's live-service nature coming shortly after numerous live-service games announced that they were shutting down after proving unable to sustain a large player base, suggesting that Suicide Squad is late to a gold rush that already proved to be unprofitable for most involved. This was brought to a head when it was revealed that the game would be delayed a second time from its attempted May 2023 release window (by almost nine months no less) due to the negative fan feedback it received from the February 2023 State of Play presentation. And then it was intensified even further when after months of radio silence, Rocksteady revealed that they were still planning to go ahead with the live service model despite the months-long delay ostensibly being an attempt to address fan complaints about said model.
The announcement that the game won't have an offline mode at launch cost the game a lot of goodwill among fans who were on the fence about buying it.
The early reactions from play-testers of the game's closed alpha in January of 2024, both professional and general, were mixed to negative over what was allowed to be played. Many suspected that Rocksteady lifting part of the play-testing non-disclosure agreement so soon after it finished was damage control in response to largely unfavorable opinions from game journalists over the alpha gameplay (including an outright negative impression from IGN, a game site notorious for very generous ratingsnote Their final review upon the game's release was not any kinder, giving the game only 5/10), so that a greater number of play-testers could come out to defend the game.
The news that no outlets would be given review copies for the game also raised hackles, as the lack of review codes for a game typically indicates a lack of confidence on a publisher's part or an attempt to prevent negative headlines from breaking until after a release date to maximize sales. This theory gained a lot of weight come wide-release launch day, where it received middling critical reviews and an abysmal concurrent player peak on Steam of about twelve-thousand.note For comparison, Batman: Arkham Knight had a launch day peak of twenty-seven thousand players on Steam, despite its PC release being widely considered a Porting Disaster; the Batman: Arkham Origins PC port had a launch day peak of twenty-five thousand, Gotham Knights (2022) had a launch day peak of twenty-four thousand, Marvel's Avengers (another live-service superhero game, and which ended up a commercial failure) had a launch day peak of thirty-one thousand, Persona 3 Reload (which released on the same day and was also immediately available on Xbox Game Studios's Game Pass subscription) had a launch day peak of forty-three thousand, and Granblue Fantasy: Relink (which launched the day before Suicide Squad) had a launch day peak of seventy-three thousand.
The teasers for the first post-launch DLC character, an alternate universe version of the Joker, received mixed to negative reactions due to dislike over his revamped design, resorting to bringing back the Joker again after twice being criticized for hijacking the Arkham games already, using an umbrella as his traversal method (umbrellas are associated more with the Penguin) and the explanation from the developers that he's "masking insecurities", "not sure who is yet", and "inexperienced", motives many people thought was wildly out of character from theJoker. The Joker being revealed well before the game even came out was also suspected by some to be another attempt to rebuild hype after the negative press coverage of the game's closed alpha.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Harley's characterization during the game is basically unrecognizable from the original set of Arkham games. Previous games in the franchise showed her as fanatically loyal to the Joker, even after his death, without any remorse for her actions, as well as taking an active role in Joker's schemes and cruelties. Though it was made clear he had manipulated and abused her, she was generally shown to be more of a trusted right hand rather than simply another one of his victims. However, during the game, she is portrayed more closely to her modern depiction as a funny anti-hero with no mention of her many previous crimes, such as convincing a grieving father to commit suicide with Joker venom after helping ensure his cancer-stricken daughter suffered a very painful death in the A Matter of Family DLC, and her time with the Joker is dismissed as "a phase." The fact that all her character development happened off-screen doesn't help, nor does ongoing backlash to the character's oversaturation in DC media making attempts to sweep her prior characterization under the rug in favor of something more palatable and marketable making it all look a bit more suspect.
The game's story gets a lot of criticism for being yet another "Evil Superman" conflict, owing to the sheer glut of recent media with this premise (such as Brightburn, Invincible, Eternals, The Boys, and DC's own Injustice), making the concept feel tired out by time of release.
The game's general premise has been criticized for once again turning the Suicide Squad into bombastic anti-heroes fighting super-powered foes, feeling it's trying too hard to ape the success of series like The Boys (2019) and Guardians of the Galaxy, not the first time this accusation has be levied against the Squad. It's made worse by King Shark in this just having MCU Drax's personality, and Harley Quinn being reworked from her Arkham incarnation into something more in-line with the irreverent Anti-Hero from more modern works.
The inclusion of the multiverse into the Arkhamverse was mostly met with exasperation and derision, not only because the series had otherwise largely sidestepped or avoided such high sci-fi concepts, but again due to the quantity of recent superhero media that focus on the multiverse, like Spider-Man: Spider-Verse, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Flash (2023), and Injustice 2 (which also had Brainiac as a primary antagonist and Multiversal Conqueror).
The gameplay has also been slammed for being yet another grindy looter-shooter ripe for monetization trying to ride Borderlands or Destiny's coattails, following a decade of major live-service flops, and years after that bubble was widely seen to have popped even within the superhero genre.
The Justice League themselves get hit hard with this, especially with this game being their first proper introduction in the Arkhamverse. They are only seen occasionally, and mostly only in their corrupted, brainwashed forms. There's never any proper showing of them back in their heroic state besides several recordings of them prior to Brainiac's invasion, and they don't get much more development than that since they're largely killed off rather quickly and with little fanfare. Only Wonder Woman, who is the sole League member who escaped the brainwashing, has any measure of proper screentime and characterization as her usual self. Many have also bemoaned how the game does very little creative with their brainwashed forms as well, mostly having them all act like an obnoxious Smug Super instead of really exploring how evil versions of these characters would behave in comparison to their normal selves. Superman may be the most egregious example, as not only does he lack any personal connection to anyone in Task Force X (like Harley and Boomerang naturally do with Batman and Flash, and Deadshot with Green Lantern), but he doesn't even get a proper dying scene; he just flops to the floor dead and the Squad gloats about having killed the entire Justice League.
Batman himself deserves to be singled out here. His actual fight boils down to a rehash of the Scarecrow sequences from Batman: Arkham Asylum. This is especially grating, as it follows on the heels of the Museum sequence, which was much-lauded by fans for being a Predator sequence where you're controlling the mooks. It doesn't help that this distinctly lackluster showing is immediately followed up by Batman's death scene, probably the most infamous, fan-reviled part of the entire game.
The support team for Task Force X also gets hit with this. The game goes out of the way to have you recruit famous villains such as the Penguin, Poison Ivy, and Toy Man while mixing in lesser known villains such as Hack and Gizmo. However, apart from their introductory quests, they are all relegated to being side quest givers for the rest of the game. This is particularly egregious for Poison Ivy, who was resurrected as a child after her death in Arkham Knight yet the fact she's back from the dead and aged down, and how it affects her relationship with Harley, is never really explored.
Many fans were, if nothing else, interested to see what interactions the Elseworlds Joker would have with other members of the Suicide Squad, and especially with Batman. Upon release, the answer proved to be "almost none." JP Karliak's vocal performance was just about the only part of the character that was generally well-received, and even then, many fans felt he deserved better material than what he got. Elseworlds Joker has almost no unique story content or dialogue, has no interactions with the other members of the Squad outside of his single unique cutscene, and doesn't get any special dialogue from members of the Justice League if they kill him, not even from Batman himself.
The narrative almost completely brushes past Batman's activities after Knight, even though what came in between — Bruce meeting Superman, being convinced to accept new allies, emerging from hiding to join the Justice League, rebuilding his image as a public-facing hero — would've been a monumental, life-changing decision on par with the Knightfall Protocol, with enough story possibilities to fill its own game. A not uncommon sentiment among Arkham fans was that they'd rather have played that game than the one they got.
Brainiac's brainwashing of the Justice League is absolute; barring Wonder Woman using the Lasso of Truth to get the Flash to answer how to undo the brainwashing (they can't), there are no moments of resistance, and the Leaguers don't even get Dying as Yourself moments. As this is the first appearance of most of these characters besides brief mentions in the other games, we never get to see how they act without brainwashing, bringing another trope into play. The story immediately putting the kibosh on any attempt to save the Justice League further robs the player of a potential conflict between Waller/Task Force X and Wonder Woman, who is actively trying to save her friends and teammates, which was ripe for its own level and boss fight.
The game makes several references to the fact that this isn't the first team Waller sends against Brainiac's forces, with the clear implication the other ones haven't survived. Letting the player do a few missions with those other characters, even if it was just the tutorials, and then killing them to replace them with the current team would have gone a long way into making this feel like an actual Suicide Squad game.
Many gamers and fans of the franchise have lamented the changes to Harley's character and the story potential lost with it since the release.
Previously in the franchise, Harley was shown to be one of, if not the most, cruel and unsympathetic versions of the character depicted, having taken part in torturing Jason Todd, killing children, and convincing a man to commit suicide, among other crimes. As well as this, unlike many other versions of the character, Arkham-verse Harley never had a chance to finally choose to break up with the Joker, he died with her still very much in love with him. The depiction of a darker Harley Quinn, finally being given the chance to confront the man she blamed for the Joker's death, while also being called out for her various crimes, having her reexamining her relationship with Joker and choosing to finally move on or stick to the darker path and keep mourning him, proved an interesting idea for many. In the game itself, however, her relationship with Joker is dismissed as a "phase" and is forced into a more familiar depiction as a bubbly anti-hero.
Related to this, in the scene where Harley kills Batman, before delivering the killing blow Harley gives a rather generic and borderline hypocritical criticisms of Batman, that he physically and mentally damages his enemies (despite Harley herself having done much more and much worse things in the previous games), which seem more like problems that a real-world audience might have with Batman, rather than Harley herself. On top of that, her criticism breaks fully out of character by having her remind Batman of when he said she was never very bright or smart, but he only ever said so in internal dialogue or when she was otherwise completely out of earshot, so it sounds more like the writers or audience complaining than anything else, especially when said complaining, that a then-legitimate interpretation of the character ended up being an Unintentional Period Piece since said character has gotten popularity-induced power boosts in the interim, is unbelievably petty. Having her list more personal grievances, such as him repeatedly beating her with ease in their previous encounters, being partially responsible for Poison Ivy's death, or believing him to have murdered the man she loved and ruining her own attempts at revenge, may have helped the scene be better accepted.
The premise of Season 1 — an Elseworlds Joker added to the roster as a playable option — interested people still divided on the game, especially given the pre-release showcases that implied he would encounter the Squad early on, have unique interactions with his new teammates, and take an active role in its plot. As it later turned out, the sizzle reel cinematic footage of the Joker used in the trailers was the only cutscene with him in it; the character was locked behind multiple levels of grinding gameplay and another recycled Brainiac boss fight, and after an anti-climatic first meeting with ARGUS and Task Force X (with Harley in particular having zero emotional engagement), there wasn't anything left that players could do with him except dick around in the overworld and solve some new Riddler challenges tailored to his traversal mechanics. Not only was this a complete letdown, but the game offered a premium-currency bypass just to unlock him without grinding, which infuriated the userbase even more.
The Justice League were a shoo-in given the title, and Penguin was fair game, as he's already been a staple of the Arkham series, but the appearance of somewhat obscure Teen Titans villain Gizmo wasn't something many could've guessed. Even less expected was the addition of Hack, a one-shot character who only appeared in the 5th volume for the Suicide Squad.
Even though he's been a fixture of the Arkham series, confirmation from a gameplay preview showing that the Riddler would be coming back caught people off guard, given that this game isn't Batman-centric and his end in Arkham Knight was far more definitive than the other Gotham rogues. Many viewers even joked that hearing his voice again without warning gave them PTSD.
The Joker is confirmed to be the first post-launch playable character. While Joker is confirmed to be an Elseworlds version of him, the fact that he's even included to begin with despite being Killed Off for Real in Arkham Knight was a definite shock.
The Justice League members, bar Wonder Woman, are consistently portrayed as insufferable, scary, and violent Smug Supers, and the Suicide Squad wastes little breath in expressing their distaste for them. This was likely an attempt to get players fully on board with the titular task of killing the Justice League, but it doesn't seem to have worked. The League are unambiguously being brainwashed, their true selves buried underneath Brainiac's influence praying for someone to kill them so that the horror can end. Furthermore, the Squad's dislike of the heroes seems to start and end with the League having foiled their petty self-serving schemes in the past. Many players found the League to be objects of immense sympathy and very much did not share in the Squad's casual satisfaction once they've been killed.
Even Amanda Waller gets into this. Her use of a nuclear bomb as soon as the skull ship's shield is down (with the squad and a lot of civilians in the blast zone) is supposed to be a Moral Event Horizon. However, given the threat level against the entire world, it seems to be the obvious tactical choice. If it had worked and destroyed the core of the invasion fleet, it might have even ended the war right there.
less than a month after launch and would continue dropping to under 400.