Best Arkham Game: Which Batman Game Should You Play?

Personally for me it is Arkham Knight. Really ahead of its time, the graphics still look amazing today nearly 9 years later. One of the best combat systems of all time, some of the best voice acting in video games. One of the best portrayals of Batman with a perfect amount of villains, there’s so many but they don’t feel overwhelming. More gadgets, more everything. I love this game.

My personal favourite is Arkham City

I don’t get it where is the shitpost?

Me personally, I value world-building & environmental storytelling first, then core gameplay loop, and finally story & side quests.

1 Arkham City: the perfect balance of everything

• Memorable districts with decaying gothic architecture & environmental storytelling in the hub world
• Handcrafted interior dungeons rich in villainous personality & environmental storytelling; tight predator rooms & engaging gadget puzzles
• High riddle density in hub world & dungeons incentivised players to pay attention to environmental lore; solving riddles unlocked city stories which helped world-building
• Metroidvania level design in Joker’s Steel Mill & Old Gotham Underground (Subway, Wonder City)
• Great combat, stealth & traversal mechanics
• Great boss fights
• Less focused Batman story
• Side missions were a mixed bag

2 Arkham Asylum: world-building & environmental storytelling king

• Haunted atmosphere & environmental storytelling of Arkham Island
• Claustrophobic, haunted interior dungeons with environmental storytelling, tight predator rooms & engaging gadget puzzles
• High riddle density in hub world & dungeons incentivised players to pay attention to environmental lore
• Patient interview tapes helped world-building
• Metroidvania level design in Intensive Treatment & Caves
• Memorable Scarecrow nightmare sequences
• Solid story
• Underdeveloped combat, stealth & traversal mechanics
• Disappointing boss fights
• No side missions

3 Arkham Origins: great character-driven story with flaws in world-building

• Great character-driven story
• Great boss fights, although heavily inspired by Arkham City
• Engaging crime scene reconstructions
• Interior dungeons had tight predator rooms & engaging gadget puzzles, but lighting & textures were flat
• Light-grey skybox exposed flat textures in the open world
• Lack of distinct landmarks in New Gotham; bland architecture
• Absence of riddles meant no incentive for players to pay attention to environmental lore; no city stories to help world-building
• Clunky combat mechanics
• Side missions were a mixed bag, largely copying City’s side mission structure

4 Arkham Knight: a case of narrative & environments serving the Batmobile rather than the other way around

• Best graphics & traversal mechanics hands down
• Great combat & stealth mechanics, although I miss special combo bat swarm for its spectacle & crowd control purposes
• Great Professor Pyg, Two-Face, Penguin & non-Batmobile sections of Riddler’s Revenge side quests
• Arkham Knight plot (military blockbuster) & Joker blood plot (psychological thriller) bundled together resulted in a convoluted split-genre narrative which overshadowed Scarecrow’s presence
• Zero exploration on the societal fallout of Protocol 10
• Low riddle density in open world & dungeons meant less environmental lore to pay attention to
• Interior dungeons lacked villainous personality to fit the sterile high-tech militiary aesthetic; loss of claustrophobic atmosphere because they had to be designed spacious enough to accommodate the Batmobile
• Batman gadget puzzles were largely replaced by Batmobile cannon & power winch
• Loss of tension during predator encounters because many of them took place in spacious outdoor rooftops
• Excessive tank combat sections relative to Batman combat & stealth sections in the main campaign
• Tedious Ubisoft-style militia side quests ending with a horrendous Deathstroke tank boss fight
• Disappointing boss fights

For me, it's Arkham City. Cold take, I know, but there is a good reason for that. This is not only what I think a video game should be, but also want I thinka gaming sequel should be. Expands upon the world from the previous game while adding new features, quality fo life updates, solid replayabilty, And ticks all the things that makes games great for me. Amazing Story, engaging ingredients side quests, addicting combat, and fun. Repayable score based challenges that are fun to revisit after beating the main game.

I recently purchased Return to Arkham Asylum and Arkham City. I never realised how great they were when I played then 8 years ago.

12 year old me didn’t appreciate games when I was that young, the same way I didn’t appreciate movies and the artistic skill.

I would watch the first cutscene, get bored and put on music or YouTube. Didn’t hear that much audio coz it was too dumb to realise how great the gameplay and story telling was.

I’ve started with Asylum and while the graphics and motion maybe wasn’t what I was expecting it was still just brilliant, combat in an RPG done right. All hits looking pretty realistic.

The story is brilliant, I’m watching each cutscene like it’s a movie with all the brilliant characters and scenes. I’m only halfway through yet, about to go into killer crocs lair. A mission I hated doing when I was younger. I don’t really remember the story ahead so I’m pretty happy about that.

Can’t wait to finish this and move onto the next 3, unfortunately I played Arkham Knight quite a bit when I was 16 so I got a good bit of the story there. Not all of it, so I will still enjoy it.

Edit: I didn’t realise the series had been brought up 5 days ago, didn’t even find this sub until today. Apologies. Thread:

Thats hard.

Best introduction? Arkham Asylum

Best sequel? Arkham City

Best last game? Arkham Knight

Best origin? Arkham Origins

Arkh cit game of the yea is mine

IMO, I really liked Batman Arkham Knight. My only real issue was how much they forced the Batmobile missions. I get people wanted the Batmobile after Arkham City, but they definitely overdid it.

Also, the Deathstroke boss fight should’ve been way better instead of just another tank battle. Still a great game overall though.

Arkham city is probably the best story, but i find myself playing knight the most for the aesthetics. Miagani island is exactly what I picture gotham as, except way larger.

Origins has best story, Knight has most fun gameplay, City has best Presentation, And Asylum has best atmosphere.

City, Knight, Asylum, Origins

City is the best. It's the most tightly designed of the three.

Knight is very bloated and undisciplined, and does suffer quite heavily from feature creep, and suffers from technical issues, especially on PC.

Asylum is clearly the product of inexperience, and can be very janky. It is yhe most stable of the four.

Origins is just City, but not as good because nearly every way it differs from City was a change for the worse.

Asylum>>>>Knight>City>Origins

Asylum is just a stroke of masterful batman comic book storytelling. THrilling from beginning to end, with endless twists and turns that leave you wondering how Batman can not just survive what he's endured, but to willingly push forward into a haunted mansion of madness alone is insane. Asylum is arguably one of the best, if not the best batman story I've ever seen.

Knight and City are hard to decide. In some ways City's story is more direct, but I don't find Hugo Strange to be a good villain. He's another wanna be Batman crusher who thinks his intellect is better than it really is, and of course he fails in the end because he doesn't really know how to win. He holds all the cards, but he's straight up a jabroni so he can't win. IDK City just doesn't sit right with me, and every time I have a playthrough of it I think to myself how pathetic the villains seem when it's not the Joker who's masterminding all the chaos for his own amusement, and how the story just doesn't fit well together.

Knight is good, great even, so i just have it slightly ahead of City because it has more going on I guess. The batmobile is sick af honestly, even though it shouldn't be used as much as it is for boss fights, it is badass af so yeah. Not to mention *Spoiler* but Poison Ivy sacrificing herself to neutralize Scarecrow's toxin will never not be a great moment in Batman lore. "Nature always wins..."

It's been a long time since I've played Origins, but I do remember it had some of the best cinematics in the game. I think there was a cinematic of Batman fighting Deathstroke and Deadshot at the same time, and that's basically all I remember but that cinematic goes hard.

My bet is you’ll get a lot of City then Asylum then Knight and so on but honestly I have been a sucker for Origins since release. I’ll die on the throne that Origins is the best Arkham game IMO. It expands a lot on City’s environment while tying into Asylum and setting up for Knight. Its winter environment is perfect, its villains are cool, and the story is fantastic, even more the DLC made it perfect.

yeah arkham city is peak but I live driving round gotham in the batmobile

Knight is by far my favorite in the series, combat/stealth is tight and refined, with a good skill ceiling and room for expression. And the addition of the fear takedowns make Batman feel truly scary and powerful.

I am also a defender of the Batmobile. I think it’s a fantastic design. The feel and weight of the car is just so good and I think the blend between exploring, traversal (gliding + Batmobile), stealth, combat, driving and tank combat easily makes it the most replayable game. It uses it just enough and amounts to only about 20% of gameplay time, which is fair, since it was a major marketing and selling point for Knight back in 2014/2015, being able to drive the Batmobile.

The story was also cool imo, even tho it was a little predictable, I loved the call backs to Killing Joke and Death in the Family. The only major gripes I had was with Deathstroke and The Arkham Knights boss fight.

City easily, I won't deny there is a good bit of nostalgia I remember playing it and thinking that it was the perfect sequel after playing it at release but even years later I still do agree with that take because everything feels like an improvement from Asylum. I love Origins and to a lesser extent Knight but both of these games do have bits that feel slightly downgraded and I just don't believe they are as solid of a package as City is.

Knight > Origins > Asylum > City for me.

Knight had weak boss fights and the story is messy, but it feels like an effort was made in terms of narrative more than Asylum and City and the Joker parts are genuinely amazing. The standard predator and freeflow are the best by far. It's also visually beautiful, gliding feels amazing, and the Batmobile chases are great fun even if the Tank stuff gets old fast.

Origins has the best story and boss fights by far, it would be one for me if not for how much clunkier the fight mechanics were in places and the slow traversal of a relatively empty outdoor environment. If it had been a linear game with the only sidequests being Shiva, Deadshot, Black Mask and Anarky it would probably be my favourite.

Asylum is just a bit dated. There's nothing really wrong with it it's just not as good as the other two. It has really fun atmosphere and I love Joker, Scarecrow and Croc's turns. Bane is lame but it's whatever. The first two games do suffer because of how much screentime Harley has in them, who I find utterly insufferable in the Arkhamverse.

City. I mean it's a good game... it just isn't the best at anything for me and that puts it last. The story isn't as good as Origins, the fighting isn't as good as Knight, it's not as tight or atmospheric as Asylum. So it ends up in last for me even though it's still a very solid game. Add that the side quests are like the worst Origins ones without any of the best ones and that really strikes the last nail in the coffin.

Origins has really good BOSS fights. The CSI-like scaner that recrearte events is really cool. Adding more of a detective spect to it all...SO to me is a nutch more fun that City... but i haven't played the rest of them tho.

I replayed them all recently and was surprised that I think Arkham city might be my least favorite. I know that’s a wild hot take but compared to Arkham knight, the combat and traversal feels very sluggish which is fine with me in asylum and the nature of the claustrophobic environments. Also the story is ROUGH in that game.

So with that in mind knight might be my fav just cause the gameplay is buttery smooth

Yeah, this is what i'd go with. Going back to Asylum/City after Knight felt super weird just because of how smooth combat flows in Knight. Asylum 100% had the best atmosphere, creepy but cool.

Knight had the best stealth and gameplay imo