Is Gotham Knights Worth Playing in 2026? A Review From Someone Who Wanted to Like It
The combat is stiff, the open world feels empty, and the framerate never helps. But the story finds its own voice.
REVIEWS
MattGhostie
7/9/20265 min read
Gotham Knights released after Arkham Knight, Rocksteady's final entry in their long running Batman series. I'd wanted to pick it up for a long time, not because I was desperately excited, though the idea of a Bat family game headlined by the Court of Owls was genuinely compelling. The game didn't have positive critical or player reception, but I think it's important to play games you're intrigued by even when the reviews aren't kind. Sometimes you find something that resonates in ways it didn't for others.
So I picked it up with modest expectations. I wanted to get through the main story, maybe dig into some side content if it grabbed me, and use it as a chance to recalibrate. To understand what a lower scoring game looks like from the inside rather than just reading about it.
What I found is a game that had an incredibly tough time dealing with the rabid fandom surrounding the Arkham series. Those games were so good and so well received that anything Batman coming after them was always going to be held to an impossible standard. Unfortunately for Gotham Knights, it comes well short of the mark those games left. And more than anything else, that's what makes it such a frustrating experience.
The Technical Issues Set the Tone Early
The first thing you notice is that the game runs at thirty frames per second even on PS5 Pro. It makes everything feel significantly less smooth than it should, which is a shame because the game doesn't appear to be pushing the hardware particularly hard. It's the kind of limitation that sits in the back of your mind throughout the entire experience and quietly undermines your enjoyment in ways that are hard to articulate but impossible to ignore.
The combat doesn't help matters. Rather than building on the dodge counter system that made the Arkham games feel so fluid and distinctive, Gotham Knights opts for a more standard light and heavy attack setup with special abilities on cooldown. Think modern Assassin's Creed RPGs rather than Batman. On top of that there's a gear system where you farm materials by stopping crimes and defeating enemies at night, upgrading your loadout to take on harder content as you progress.
It's pretty clear this was originally designed as a live service title that pivoted to single player somewhere along the way, and those bones show. You can see the outline of what might have been an interesting four player co-op game with content rolling out over time. What you actually have is a middling single player experience carrying the weight of a framework it was never meant to be.
Serviceable But Never More Than That
I'll apologize in advance for comparing everything to the Arkham series, but that's what most people will do and it's hard to blame them. It's genuinely difficult to divorce any Batman game from those titles because they set such a high bar.
With that in mind, the combat here is fun but simple. Even at full character progression with every ability unlocked, it never quite elevates beyond serviceable. There's a lack of weight to it that you feel in every encounter. Traversal has the same problem. Each character has their own Knighthood ability, Batgirl can glide, Nightwing has his own glider, and everyone has access to the Bat Cycle. These are cool ideas in isolation. In practice they all feel half baked. The Bat Cycle handles stiffly and doesn't convey speed. The gliding lacks the satisfying momentum of Rocksteady's take. Moment to moment the game is fine, but it rarely gets beyond that.
Where It Actually Works
The story is where Gotham Knights finds its own footing, and credit where it's due, it leans into something genuinely different. The tone is much more CW drama meets Saturday morning cartoon, lighter and campier than the dark intensity of the Arkham series. Characters quip, larger monsters roam the city, and the whole thing has an energy that's more fun than foreboding. It isn't entirely consistent throughout, but that differentiation is actually one of the game's smarter decisions. Rather than trying to replicate what Rocksteady did tonally, it carves out its own space.
The central mystery works too. The Bat family trying to uncover what Bruce Wayne was tracking before his death gives the story a compelling thread to pull on, and the game does some genuinely interesting things with the Court of Owls, the League of Assassins, and other classic Batman villains. Gotham itself looks great, and the costume designs strike a nice balance between fun and grounded. The art direction is one of the few areas where the game feels fully realized.
The Open World Undoes It
Unfortunately the open world pulls everything back down. Each night you return to the Belfry, pick your character, and head out into Gotham to tackle story objectives and side missions. On paper that structure sounds fine. In practice the city feels stunted and lifeless compared to what Rocksteady built. The lighting, the mood, the way characters interact and speak all feel like they're operating at a lower frequency. Story beats arrive without urgency. The world doesn't feel like it's alive in the way that Gotham did in the Arkham games, and that gap is hard to overlook when you're spending most of your time moving through it.
The Verdict
I wouldn't call Gotham Knights a bad game. Honestly, worse than that, it's a disappointing one. And that was always going to be a tough sell coming from a studio that isn't Rocksteady, trying to make a Batman game starring characters people had been requesting in the Arkham series for years.
If you specifically want to play as the Bat family and you're okay with a more grounded set of expectations, there's a decent twenty hours here in the main story and side content. Just pick it up on sale. Go in knowing what it is rather than what it could have been, and you'll probably have a good enough time. Just don't expect Arkham.
