I picked this up despite the pessimism surrounding the game due to my love of Rocksteady's previous games. Honestly I don't hate it like I expected. Traversal for each squad member is fun and unique, graphically it's quite good and combat can be good at times as well. "Can be" because the mission design is horrible and repetitive, the main issue this game has and one that can't be ignored.
I didn't love the idea of everyone using guns but aside from that the characters do feel distinct. Each ones traversal is very different from the others and things like making huge leaps with Kingshark or throwing you speedforce powered boomerang are very satisfying. Their melees and other unique attacks also serve to further differentiate each other in satisfying ways.
I have some issues with core games as a service elements. Not because I hate that, I've played way too much destiny for that to be the case. Some classic mistakes for this kind of game are found here like a lot of meaningless loot with perks that are not particularly exciting unless its actual endgame stuff. Every mission needs and end screen showing rewards and results and that honestly is just an annoying interruption. There must be a way that stuff could be given via the UI without needing it own screen keeping me from getting back in game. More importantly most missions are designed so they can recycle the same structure over and over so they can easily make more hoping to keep players busy.
To elaborate on that, 99% of missions in this game come down to the same handful of short and generic objectives that you do over and over. Protect these zone, collect the thing enemies drop, blah blah blah. The only unique somewhat memorable things breaking this up are when you do the handful of major boss fights. Enemy variety doesn't even grow adequately over time to make it feel slightly less monotonous. It always boils down to kill the purple guys on rooftops in the end. Missions for your support squad all have unique twists added on top of these missions. That sounds like something that should help right? No. Many are just annoying, the ones that aren't feel like the twists don't matter.
I do like the story, its executed well and has a proper tone for a Suicide Squad game but I'd be lying if I said I did not resent it for being set in the Arkham universe. There are narrative decisions made here that'd be totally fine in a game not carrying Arkham's baggage. But they chose to carry that series legacy on and it feels like this game does not respect what happened in it. Ultimately its all their continuity to do what they want with but its a bummer how some things work out.
I didn't love the idea of everyone using guns but aside from that the characters do feel distinct. Each ones traversal is very different from the others and things like making huge leaps with Kingshark or throwing you speedforce powered boomerang are very satisfying. Their melees and other unique attacks also serve to further differentiate each other in satisfying ways.
I have some issues with core games as a service elements. Not because I hate that, I've played way too much destiny for that to be the case. Some classic mistakes for this kind of game are found here like a lot of meaningless loot with perks that are not particularly exciting unless its actual endgame stuff. Every mission needs and end screen showing rewards and results and that honestly is just an annoying interruption. There must be a way that stuff could be given via the UI without needing it own screen keeping me from getting back in game. More importantly most missions are designed so they can recycle the same structure over and over so they can easily make more hoping to keep players busy.
To elaborate on that, 99% of missions in this game come down to the same handful of short and generic objectives that you do over and over. Protect these zone, collect the thing enemies drop, blah blah blah. The only unique somewhat memorable things breaking this up are when you do the handful of major boss fights. Enemy variety doesn't even grow adequately over time to make it feel slightly less monotonous. It always boils down to kill the purple guys on rooftops in the end. Missions for your support squad all have unique twists added on top of these missions. That sounds like something that should help right? No. Many are just annoying, the ones that aren't feel like the twists don't matter.
I do like the story, its executed well and has a proper tone for a Suicide Squad game but I'd be lying if I said I did not resent it for being set in the Arkham universe. There are narrative decisions made here that'd be totally fine in a game not carrying Arkham's baggage. But they chose to carry that series legacy on and it feels like this game does not respect what happened in it. Ultimately its all their continuity to do what they want with but its a bummer how some things work out.