Arkham City may seem familiar to asylum in some gameplay ways but the story and the open world opened this game and felt like a new phoenix, although I consider this game to be way easier than asylum if you play on normal or either easy and it was shorter with minus 2 hours compared to asylum for some reasons.

Gameplay
Like I said, this game has a decent open world but for 2011 it must have been amazing to have that. An open world full of side quests and still full-filled with riddlers trophies, but the best part of the game it must that now you can play with other other characters, like in the story with catwoman. The side content after you finish this game is kind of huge compared to asylum but for me I do love the atmosphere of asylum better than this game imo, but here you can fly up in the sky with your cape and yes the freeroam is way better here than asylum.

Story
Bruce Wayne, also batman was captured by Hugo Strange but the game actually starts with catwoman who is threatened by two face of public execution, batman is being held like a prisoner in arkham city. Our here manages to get out of the prison and track two face and rescue catwoman, but while he had a chat with her a sniper rifle was pointed at her and batman saw joker in a tower. Batman was threatened for exposure to the public but his main goal in the game is to defeat TYGER's soldiers that are being ruled by Hugo. Later on batman tracks down joker and goes into a chimney that leads him to harley, though easily beaten up our iconic antagonist shows up and makes batman go to sleep, after that catwoman adventures herself to ivy's location but she was trapped in the meantime. After batman escaped he was informed that injection was a virus remained from the last time joker became the titan at the end of asylum, and so batman knew he was on a clock and needed to find a cure quick, he was thinking that freezer is the only man who can help him make a dose for him but he finds out that he was trapped by cobblepot in the museum and he heads there but after he entered the museum he met penguin and he prepared a gladiator arena special for batman, but after our hero escaped death he heads straight but he was trapped by freezing water and he could not reach penguin but only by having a tactic, meanwhile he rescued an officer that requested batman to save his men as well. After that he finally reaches penguin but he got a trick, he stole freezer's gun and can't proceed without being hit by freezing ice. So batman head to the right side and found freezer, he didn't seem so happy at first but batman got his distruptor and was ready to fight penguin, but he was tricked again and batman was forced to go down and fight a TYGER infected soldier? idk what was that tbh, and manages to use electrify him till death, and penguin was dragged down there where he took some good fists coming from batman. After that he met with freezer, telling him that a cure cannot be made, and he needs a special type of blood to achieve the cure, batman had an idea to check up ra's ghul corpse to gather that blood, but an assassin heard what he said and ran out to tell the others, that female was from ra's ghul tribe and batman quickly promised that he will be back with the source of the cure. Tracking the blood trail he finds out an underground wonder city right below the subway station, when he opened the door batman met with talia, a girl he met in metropolis sometime ago and batman was already on a clock and sick. He was desperate to do anything to reach ra's ghul blood which was the father of talia, he needed to complete the demon trials and so he accepted and he met ra's soul in another dimension after he drank the chalice. After he completed the trial he finally met him but he was very angry because of the lazarous pit and he begged batman to kill him and he refused so he took him in a fight and after sometime ra's ghul decided to kill her own daughter but he came back to his senses and batman extracted his blood. After that he went to the police station where freezer was, something felt off about him for some reason and he became very angry and fought batman until he came back to normal, but it was too late... Joker took the cure and batman had to find him but there was 2 problems that had to be resolved, hugo's protocol 10 that literally kills everyone in arkham and his time limit about the virus that was injected in him by joker, so batman came back to fight joker but he was not alone, joker called for soldiers in the room even a mutant one and after all that fight the wall collapsed where batman stand, everything was almost over but talia came there out of nowhere and made a trade offer to joker about immorality so he accepted, back to catwoman after sometime with ivy, she promised that she will bring her flowers back to her if she let her free, ivy accepted and she had into the sewers where she silently took 3 keycards from the soldiers and got ivy's plant but she was discovered and had to fight the soldiers. After he finished her fight she had to make a choice, leave gotham and batman or save batman and then leave gotham, in my playthrough I decided to help batman so yeah. After she found batman he decided to leave catwoman alone because he had chase hugo strange, immediate he rushed to the clocktower where hugo was after fighting his thugs and successfully defused protocol 10, but then out of nowhere ra's ghul shows up and tells batman that he was the man behind protocol 10, he stabs hugo and threatens him but quickly he activated protocol 11 that destroys the high building. After batman survived the explosion he saw ra's body hanging, but right after that joker gets on a TV and threatens talia's life so he can make batman come to him and get the cure. In the last moments of the game you finally show up in the cinema where joker is and he transforms into clayface and kills talia. in the action to beat batman but he failed and the floor collapsed and batman took the sword and froze clayface and he directly went in him and sliced him up, then the game ends with joker dying and batman taking the cure and leaving with his corpse outside where everyone sees joker dead with the police as well. Right after the credits you play as the fourth mission and the final one of catwoman, where she leaves the city for good because batman took care of protocol 10 and unfortunately talia was killed but he took the cure , she head back to her apartament but she was shot in a explosion and got the information that twoface took her stuff, so she made into the museum and finished him off but without all of her stuff because twoface gave away some of it.

In the continuation to the pretty ok Arkham Asylum we, as Bruce Wayne, are thrown into the stylish island as a small example of what is gotham city.
Exploration of open world is really well crafted. Both glading and grapping feels really natural and is very easy to move around. Especially with really good placement of the buildings that allows for very quick traversal.
Combat system once again remains as one of the best parts of the game, expanded with few new possibilities.
Boss fights are also better, but I still wouldn't call them "incredible" or even "memorable". Final Boss once again felt underwhelming without anything exceptional that could be considered as the culmination point of action.
Loved the introduction with Catwoman but at some point her plot felt unnecessery and was ruining the overall pacing of what was going on in the Batman storyline.
Pretty good but still isn't what I heard about the Arkham series.
DLC with Harley Quinn terrible, boring shit.