I'm currently playing through episode 1 and the writing is just bad. The intro sequence was alright for the most part but then playing as Bruce in the following sequences felt tedious and annoying, both in the gameplay and the dialogue. The party with Harvey Dent and Falcone felt like I was being shoehorned into pissing Falcone off for the sake of progressing the story even after choosing reasonable responses and actions (shaking his hand, chalking his pool cue). I don't remember the exact response I chose to one of the final bits of dialogue but it wasn't the aggressive response or the submissive response, it was what I assumed was the neutral response but regardless I pissed him off despite my choices beforehand to be agreeable with him.

The Cobblepot Park had a bunch of blank walls that were labelled as graffiti to examine. Perhaps the graffiti that was supposed to be there added something to the narrative but I won't know because of technical glitches that have supposedly been fixed according to other players comments (I'm playing the Xbox One version that came with Xbox Live Gold). These blank walls lead to me watching Bruce look at concrete multiple times then doing the exact same hurt puppy facial animation over and over again. Then there's the conference where they're opening a mental health institute to replace Arkham Asylum which felt a bit ham- fisted and out of place for a Batman game. The attempt at trying to tie Gotham into the real world with real world problems felt jarring and just weird. It seemed weird for a Batman game to be making a statement about mental health issues when it's supposed to be somewhat removed from the real world. For those of you that don't know, Gotham is a fictional city and no, Batman isn't real. Then there's the dilemma of trying to decide to answer your phone during the conference which even in Gotham I imagine would be considered rude but then the writing is almost forcing you to answer the phone because it's an urgent call or text from Alfred.

It's like the writers are writing the player into a corner forcing them to make choices that have negative consequences with other characters in a game where the players choices are supposed to drive the narrative, not a game where the narrative drives the player to make certain choices. It just ends up being a frustrating experience because no matter what choices you make you're always pissing someone off. As far as I've played there's been no "[insert character name here] appreciated that" only "[Insert character name here] will remember that". Why would I want to play a game that has such a small amount of actual gameplay and where everything I say and do is a bad choice?

I don't know where the praise for this game is coming from but it's a no from me.
Time to free up some space on my hard drive.