Despite not being a fan of story experiences and walking simulators, I tend to really enjoy Telltale Games’ products. I’ve never read the Batman comics but have watched some cartoons and all the films so I am somewhat familiar with the story of Batman.
I think the game defines its own Batman - I believe they have come up with their own history of Bruce Wayne’s parents, and this discovery tarnishes Bruce Wayne’s legacy. Then public opinion on Batman is mixed. Meanwhile, Penguin is planning a revolution while experimenting with mind-influencing chemicals alongside a mysterious leader, Lady Arkham.
Like the other Telltale Games, it has plenty of twists and turns and gives you a good illusion of choice (even if your choices don’t really matter until the final scenes).
You really feel like you are managing your relationships with Catwoman, Harvey Dent, Alfred and Gordon. Then you are often given a choice which sounds like it can impact people’s perception of either Bruce or Batman, so you have to consider which reputation you want to enhance. These choices are often whether you go to talk to someone as either persona. Bruce is the more charismatic option, whereas Batman is more intimidating.
There’s some parts of the story that were a bit darker than I expected, so there’s themes of child abuse, and murder.
When battling goons, these are often long fight sequences. I thought it was hard to know if you pressed the correct button: arrow inputs go yellow, but keyboard inputs don’t seem to give you visual feedback. Although it mainly involves pressing WASD and QE, then it throws in the combination of Shift + E/Q for finishing moves. There’s no hammering buttons - it is just single key presses. Some scenes ask you to plan out your attacks so you can choose whether to slam enemies into a table, or into another enemy etc. I think it’s just a choice of how brutal you want your Batman to be.
There’s a few detective sections which sounds good in principle but these are usually too simplistic because there’s not enough objects. So you might look at a dead body and look at a hole in the wall and obviously you are going to link both and it's usually the correct thing. Once you have matched all the clues, then Batman deduces what happened in the crime scene. It’s a nice idea but needs to be enhanced further.
It’s using the updated Telltale engine so has a sharper visual style and works well to represent the source material. I didn’t encounter any bugs, but I had to adjust the volume levels since the music was high in the mix. If you are looking to play a good Telltale game, or are a fan of Batman, then this game is a good choice.