Could be the bias of nostalgia, but I like this game quite a lot.

Biggest criticism I've seen is that it has repetitive gameplay. Your tasks revolve around you killing nine different targets, each one located in a different district of a city, accompanied by missions like eavesdropping, pickpocketing, flag collecting, and more. This repetition didn't faze me at all, because the end result from these missions is you get information that will help you assassinate your main target (# of guards surrounding target, how to get into the area, what the target is wearing, etc.). This level of investigation is something that I miss in the later Assassin's Creed games.

I'm also a huge fan of the story and the setting. The cities of Jerusalem, Acre, and Damascus are really well crafted and still look impressive today, in fact, the whole game still looks really good for 2007. The atmosphere, created by the music and the gloomy visuals, is really well executed too. And the story is done so well here, revealing the overall narrative bit by bit, introducing new concepts until the very end of the game, while also focusing on the protagonist's character progression.

But, there are just a few issues with this game. I ran into a couple crashes, the pop-in is abysmal, you can't really play above 60 fps without the game starting to act up, you need to do some tinkering to get your controller to work, and no subtitles (seriously?). You'll also find yourself screaming "that's not what I wanted to do!" sometimes, because the parkour system isn't always solid.

I've seen a lot of people recommending newcomers to skip this game and go straight to 2. DON'T. I truly believe this is well worth your time.

not as good as IV but it's still good
the concept itself isnt as badly executed as i thought it would be. im not sure if they updated the bikes here or if my version just has something but the bikes control way better than they do in IV and i found myself using the bikes way more than the cars. the missions are nothing special but i was enjoying myself.
the story is an absolute mess however, the pacing is all over the place and every character is way more interesting than johnny himself is, the writing has its funny moments nonetheless but that's to be expected from a gta game.
overall, while the game has a lot of flaws, there is still fun to be had here and the concept itself is interesting, the execution just could've been way better. despite this, i do not see this game being a full fledged game, it just could've been slightly longer to have more impact.

I really love this game. I know it's the worst of the Arkham's and no Kevin Conroy or Mark Hamill but It's so unique and awesome. Combat is sick and in NG+ there are no counter warning markers so it's a lot more crazy and fun. Gadgets are really cool too like the remote claw and the glue grenade, they really spiced up the combat and I loved getting high combos and doing the bat swarm. I felt the stealth portion of this game unlike the other ones felt pretty unpolished especially on PC with keyboard and mouse. Some inputs like the one where you knock out a guy lying on the floor needs ctrl+right click to do and everyone knows combination button presses are terrible. Maybe it worked on a controller but on a keyboard, I've got like 90 other buttons there's no need. Especially considering the spacebar is used for sprinting, jumping, gliding, interacting, and generally acting like the x button on a ps controller. Very lazy pc port. The worst aspect of this is the contextual button prompts. Walk up behind a guy no you cant' just knock him out with the punch button, you have to wait for the game to pull up the prompt so you can right-click and knock him out. If you do it before the game can comprehend you're crouched behind a thug, you just do the counter animation which moves you forward in what I'm seriously considering to be a massive troll on their part to ruin my predator runs. But considering the pc ports of the other Arkham games, we should feel blessed that this one even works at all. Anyways I love the Christmas setting and the assassin's setup. This game really delivers on all their boss fights - this series is known for awesome bosses but I think this one has the best collection.

This game gets alot of flak because it wasn't made by the regular devs but IMO this game has the best boss fights in the series and I was saddened to see it wasnt included in the "remaster" for PS4. Its a really good origin story and you can even start the series right here as its the first game chronologically. Roger Craig Smith does a good job of voice a younger more gruffer batman. The suit is also really dope and a nice change from the regular arkham series suit. The map size is nearly doubled from City and has a fast travel system to accommodate the larger map. Honestly it may be the best game in the series in terms of story and the way boss fights were handled but asylum is my personal favorite. Don't let the hate keep you away from a good game in this series.