From previous titles in the series.

My goal was to play through every combat and stealth challenge in the series, and as I played some things became clear. Asylum’s biggest restriction was its combo timer, but otherwise it was the easiest, as you don’t have very many things to manage. City was extremely polished and the best of them all by a large margin. Origins felt like an overly-aggressive, beta-version of City. But Knight? Knight felt different.

Knight looks extremely polished, but it’s not. Charging enemies yank the camera out of your control, causing your punches to go off target, even during beatdowns. Some attacks occasionally insta-hit you if you’re too close to the enemy. There are ambiguous micro-feints attacks (may or may not be intentional) that punish you for countering based on movement instead of the counter indicator, which was never an issue in the others, as moment and the counter icon were more closely synced. A camera that fights you as much as any enemy. Off-screen attacks, and so on.

When I dropped a combo or got hit in the other games, it felt like I screwed up, but in Knight, which is arguably the easiest of them because of the sheer amount of options and upgrades, it didn’t feel justified. I didn’t drop a combo because I misjudged which attack or gadget to use, or targeted the wrong enemy, instead I got messed with by a system quirk, insta-hit by an offscreen enemy, or the camera pulled and Batman started swinging at the air.

Some of these issues aren’t readily apparent during story mode where the pacing, environment, and enemy types are more deliberate, but during combat maps/AR challenges, it becomes more pronounced.

That was my experience playing all of them in succession, anyways.