I...don't know whether to recommend this game or not. I'm mostly enjoying it. Mostly.
I've been playing for around 14 hours or so and by now I've got a decent feel for it, so I'll start with the positives. The character interactions between the titular Knights are fun, and I enjoy the system where you can pick which crimes you deal with night by night, and for the most part combat is fine. I don't recommend playing this straight after or while you're in the middle of playing the Arkham games, as there are similarities in the controls but also differences, and the latter can throw you off.
I appreciate how (apart from one thing which I'll complain about in a second) the characters have different play styles, with Jason's leaning in on his guns, Tim with the staff and Babs with the heavier melee attacks. I'm not remotely done with the story, but I'm liking it so far, and it's a nice touch that you can adjust how they look in-game. The game's going for a different vibe than the Arkham Games, and I respect the effort to at least try and differentiate them.
My main issue with this game is jank - combat's mostly free of jank, sans several cases of the running not working when I want it to, I think it'd have been better if it'd been just given its own button. But in my first few hours I dealt with lag and had to adjust my settings despite having a proper gaming laptop, and later I caught several bits of clipping in cutscenes, ♥♥♥♥'s jacket seems to really like clipping through his shirt.
The main killer for me in this department though is the stealth, as I honestly kinda hate it. None of the characters feel differentiated from in stealth to me, despite Tim supposedly being the best with it, it doesn't feel like there's any unique traits to them like there is in combat - there's no enemies taking more or less time in spotting you depending on who you're playing, and a lot of the areas don't feel very handy or like they work with the stealth mechanics. I will compare it to Arkham here, as the stealth in those games is great - you have plenty of potential options, and there's a building tension with your enemies as you take down more of it. There's a token effort with this in this game, but it feels hollow. The AR system sure as hell ain't Detective Mode, that's for sure. If I got caught or spotted in the Arkham games, it felt like it was my mistake, and even if you did slip up, you could slip back into the shadows and continue your approach. Gotham Knights will have enemies catch you and it's nigh impossible to get them to stop, to the point of sometimes shooting or throwing things at you through objects?? I also tend to find my attempts to use the environment - like firing at an explosive barrel with my ranged attack - from perches never works at actually blowing up the thing in question, just at getting me caught. If it can be noticed by the enemy right next to the damn thing, it should be able to hit the thing itself.
I also find the bonus objectives get in the way more often than not; for example, if there's a bunch of elemental barrels all over the place, and beams in the air where I could probably take down everyone with stealth if I played thoughtfully enough, why am I limited to having to throw myself into combat and doing grab strikes? It completely invalidates the environmental options you do get. Sometimes they make sense, like staying undetected, but the jank often spoils that too.
The case files feel tedious to me, at least the non-main ones. I enjoyed Harley's first one, but the second in the theatre that ends with you having to run around fighting off enemies while disarming bombs at random points felt like it dragged on for twenty years. It wasn't hard, and I wasn't having issues killing the enemies, but I felt bloody bored. Mr Freeze's boss is where you'll really hate there not being a run button; that L stick will betray you when you have to run from the red laser, which was the most irritating thing as otherwise, that fight was just tedious too, just chipping at health, running back to avoid an attack, rinse and repeat. I was LVL 13, the recommended one for this battle, and it still dragged like hell.
I'm mixed thus far on the Knighthood stuff. Jason's one is pretty fun to use, even if I'm getting the hang of it, but Tim's feels...well, janky and kinda unreliable. It's cool in theory but I'm not sure I like how it was executed here.
I'm going to continue playing and I do intend to at least complete the story and as much side stuff as I can. I do know others have a lot more technical issues. I do think it's sort of ridiculous that a game this recent has such problems with jank when the last Arkham game came out in the mid-2010s and runs far smoother. It's mostly a fun time, and the nightly structure means you can take it at your own pace, which has a relaxing quality to it, and you can also cycle through the different characters to keep it fresh, or focus on one, it's up to you and I like that bit about this game.
If you like seeing the Batfamily kids interact, then you'll probably like this, but I will advise getting it on sale (like it is as of me writing this review!), do NOT get it at full price as I think you'd probably feel like you'd been jipped. On sale though, it's a decent bargain and a decent enough game so far.
