Takes everything good about the stealth and combat of City and refines it too near perfection.
The world is well realized, with graphics that you wouldn't believe are from UE3. It's only a small chunk of Gotham that's been abandoned but there's tons of distinct landmarks and design choices to make every street feel unique.
Side Missions are the best they've been in Arkham. Less of the "go here and do x" busywork from City and Origins. Highlights being Gunrunner, Two-Faced Bandit, Riddler's Revenge (the missions themselves, not the act of collecting the trophies), all the Militia Checkpoints/Towers/Bombs, and all the Season of Infamy missions. The main campaign also takes you through every notable part of the city and is never a bore thanks to how polished the mechanics of the game are. Just wish there were less walking-and-talking unskippable gameplay segments that grind the pace to a halt: reducing the blast radius of the explosion at Ace Chemicals, repairing the Batmobile, and many others. I get that these happen at important moments but the "gameplay" of these moments contribute so little to testing player skill, I would rather they just make them cutscenes or allow the player to skip them on repeat playthroughs.
ALSO, the most common sentiment I see about the batmobile is about it being overused but in actuality, you spend 19% of the game in the batmobile and exponentially less if only counting tank battles— which is the thing that people like to whine about being too abundant when that is objectively not the case. And even if you do have to duke it out in the tank, they take like 20 seconds to two minutes at most (unless drones come out in huge waves like in some of the endgame Disarmament Missions). The only notable stretch of the game where you're in the batmobile for the majority of it is during the Cloudburst segment, but even that shouldn't take you any longer than it did to complete Simon's Airship. The amount of combat, stealth, and Batman-being-on-foot segments far outnumber the number of times where you're fighting drones.
The world is well realized, with graphics that you wouldn't believe are from UE3. It's only a small chunk of Gotham that's been abandoned but there's tons of distinct landmarks and design choices to make every street feel unique.
Side Missions are the best they've been in Arkham. Less of the "go here and do x" busywork from City and Origins. Highlights being Gunrunner, Two-Faced Bandit, Riddler's Revenge (the missions themselves, not the act of collecting the trophies), all the Militia Checkpoints/Towers/Bombs, and all the Season of Infamy missions. The main campaign also takes you through every notable part of the city and is never a bore thanks to how polished the mechanics of the game are. Just wish there were less walking-and-talking unskippable gameplay segments that grind the pace to a halt: reducing the blast radius of the explosion at Ace Chemicals, repairing the Batmobile, and many others. I get that these happen at important moments but the "gameplay" of these moments contribute so little to testing player skill, I would rather they just make them cutscenes or allow the player to skip them on repeat playthroughs.
ALSO, the most common sentiment I see about the batmobile is about it being overused but in actuality, you spend 19% of the game in the batmobile and exponentially less if only counting tank battles— which is the thing that people like to whine about being too abundant when that is objectively not the case. And even if you do have to duke it out in the tank, they take like 20 seconds to two minutes at most (unless drones come out in huge waves like in some of the endgame Disarmament Missions). The only notable stretch of the game where you're in the batmobile for the majority of it is during the Cloudburst segment, but even that shouldn't take you any longer than it did to complete Simon's Airship. The amount of combat, stealth, and Batman-being-on-foot segments far outnumber the number of times where you're fighting drones.