Gotham Knights Review

The Knights:

The initial sequence of Gotham Knights offers us a rather strong and impactful prologue: the Batcave echoes shots of a furious battle between Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul , the ruthless leader of the League of Shadows. The duel to the death between the two archenemies proceeds with no holds barred and is consumed in the name of the most classic of rivalries: Ra’s wants the Dark Knight to join him in leading the sect to purify Gotham City according to the distorted and terrorist creed of Al Ghul, as Bruce Wayne desperately tries to put an end to his opponent’s attempts at conquest.

What happens next is known, as the promotional trailers of the new Warner Bros Games Montreal game have repeatedly told us: the sacrifice of the bat man deprives Gotham of its iconic defender, and while the city mourns the disappearance of the famous philanthropist, the Batfamily must rise from its ashes to take on his mentor’s legacy and continue his crusade against crime. Nightwing, Batgirl, Robin and Red Hood are the Knights who will continue Batman’s mission from now on, but at the same time the four young people will have to deal with their own ghosts and the tragic absence of their master.

Untied from the previous cycle of stories created by Rocksteady during the last decade, Gotham Knights arrives on actual gen consoles and PC and abandons the previous action adventure clothes to embrace an open world RPG frame . The result is a long and layered title, which in many respects will greatly intrigue fans of the DC comic universe. Net, however, of some problems.

The Legacy of the Bat:

As already mentioned, the initial premise of Gotham Knights is very courageous: to immerse the players in the narrative universe of Batman, but without the Dark Knight, entrusting his young students with the weight of a rather ambitious story. The story is in fact taken from a famous comic run centered on the phantom Court of Owls , a secret sect that for centuries has maneuvered the political and financial structure of Gotham in the shadows.

Guided by the latest clues collected by Batman, the Knights of Gotham soon unmask various factions ready to contend for the streets of the city: the Freaks, the depraved followers of Harley Quinn, the Mala, the Inspectors led by Mr. Freeze, and more corrupt cops, street criminals and other surprises that are not to be revealed here, are nothing more than an appetizer to the lethal assassins of the Court of Owls and some disturbing monstrosities that the sect intends to awaken from the maze of the subsoil.

And while Evil continues to mercilessly engulf urban peace, the heroes of the Batfamily plan what to do in the Bell Tower, the group’s new secret base located inside the Gotham Clock Tower. From here, the real central hub of the adventure, the protagonists can take advantage of the daylight hours to talk to each other, upgrade, modify their equipment or use the Bat-computer to view data, files and useful information. It must be said, however, that all these features are also available during quests and during free-roaming, but the same does not apply to changing equipment or for the character to be used before dedicating yourself to night patrols. In short, the Bell Tower takes on a strategic function, since it will only be at this juncture that you will be able to choose the hero to send on a mission and, above all, assign him armor, weapons and powerful accessories to better face the criminal substrate that awaits you in the alleys .

It must be emphasized that Gotham Knights, as far as its contents are concerned, is a fairly dense work . The narrative missions, whether they belong to the main storyline or to the secondary ones, are divided into various Dossiers. The different phases of these Dossiers punctuate the entire narrative and continuously alternate between important narrative turns and collateral interludes.

Gotham Role Playing Game Knights:

The role-playing breath of the game, in fact, permeates and even influences the rhythm of the plot: very often, to continue in the main Campaign, it is necessary to patrol Gotham and gather information from the criminals who dominate the street. Furthermore, all the assignments present an increasing difficulty, and it can easily happen that your current level of power is not sufficient to face that precise segment of history.

In any case, the City of Gotham Knights is an open world of modest size, but it is still quite full of activity. Exploration can be done by moving from one building to another using grappling hooks and gliding, but in addition the Knights can ride the Bat-cycle to hurtle along the road. Unfortunately, the feeling with the vehicle is not the best: the control of the bike does not convey a good sense of speed and the journeys on two wheels have proved to be much less fluid and satisfying than those aboard Arkham Knight’s Batmobile.