System: Windows PC
Rating: 57/100
Playtime: ~1 Hour

As part of the Arkham City GOTY edition, there's enough here to at least get another mission's worth of time out of it. If it was 2012 and I paid for this, I'd be way more negative. At an hour runtime, it's interesting that they gave a full Robin build, when you barely play as him. Robin was a fun build to use, but I wish it would've been more to it, and less Batman who you just played the whole game as. I also see people talking about how hard this DLC was, but I had the opposite experience. I was taking bullets like it was nothing. The Hugo Strange fight was so difficult to me, and the Harley fight that was similar was a piece of cake.

Arkham City's only story DLC, Harley Quinn's Revenge functions as an epilogue to its parent game's story. Unfortunately despite the intriguing narrative questions posed by that game's ending Harley Quinn's Revenge does little to grab the player's interest. You alternate between playing as Batman and Tim Drake's Robin in a neat twist to the regular Arkham format, and Robin even has a few unique skills to call on such as a shield, and both get their own combat and predator sequences so the core experience is preserved at least. However, the locations you fight through are insipid and the actual encounters are dull.

Oh wow, this is how you make a sequel. I really liked Ori and the Blind Forest, but there were a few things about it that I thought could be improved on and this game managed to fix all of them while improving on what the first game did so well. In my mind a good sequel should do three things:

1. Take what the first game did right and expand on it. Don't try to fix something if it isn't broken - they kept true to their vision of the first and didn't reinvent the wheel with their Metrodivania layout or platforming.
2. Take what the first game does wrong and figure out a way to make it work - they made the combat more fun and got rid of the out-of-place Soulsike aspects.
3. Expand upon the story, the characters, and the world in a way that feels genuine and worthwhile. It should contribute to its predecessor, not contradict it - many lesser sequels, I feel, are overtaken in arrogance and try too hard to make something different than the first. Why? We love the first for a reason, don't try to undermine it. Will of the Wisps evolved the world that the first one laid out in a meaningful way.

Much like the first game, Will of the Wisps is an exemplary showcase of visual storytelling. Their is little dialogue; most of the story is conveyed through purposeful actions, music, and visuals. The way they manage to capture such emotion with such little dialogue should be applauded. It helps when your game looks this good. I mean holy damn, this game is stunning. The colors, the environments, the music, it's all so breathtaking to look at. I got emotional several times throughout the story and that's in large part because of how gorgeous it all looked and felt.

The only thing I didn't like was a cheap copout at the end of the story (I don't want to spoil anything) and, even though it was a significant improvement on the first game, the combat was still the weakest part of the game. But I can forgive the combat because the platforming was flames, and that was the bread and butter of the gameplay.

I really loved this game. I also appreciate it being relatively short; I can't do longform Metroidvania. This may be my new gold standard for the Metroidvania genre.

The game isn't bad however it is easily one of the weaker 2D games in the franchise. I'm not a massive fan of the aesthetic, Zelda music has some of the best soundtracks throughout the entire franchise, however this soundtrack sits in the middle, with some great track, and then those that stab your ears. The sword play is frustrating to say the least, maybe coming off of the Oracle games but the sword hitbox felt smaller than the sword, and there was an obvious deadzone, something I did not feel in the original game.

Although I have played the game multiple times, this is the first time I have finished it to completion. Don't expect what some call the greatest game of all time, It's not even the best in it's own sub-series, let alone the franchise.

(9-year-old's review, typed by his dad)

Nope. Too many spiders. It's like if Shelob, Aragog, and the spiders from the Hobbit had a party and had a bunch of sweet baby spidelets, and then they became teenagers and started jumping.

...wait. Spice? Dune?