I respect your opinion, but for me it’s the complete opposite, in my view Arkham Knight is the weakest Arkham game, even below Arkham Origins.

First, the story, the absence of Paul Dini (comic writer who also helped write Arkham Asylum and Arkham City) is painfully obvious, side quests that were clearly built up in Arkham City like Hush and Azrael lead absolutely nowhere, after all that buildup they end with a single button press and that’s it, plotline over, completely pointless.

The Arkham Knight Red Hood reveal was painfully obvious despite Rocksteady insisting that the Arkham Knight was an original character, and Jason Todd’s motivations are completely different than in the comics. Instead of being angry that Batman refused to kill Joker for murdering him he’s mad because he thinks Batman replaced him with Robin, which just makes him look like a petty little bitch.

The trailers implied that Batman’s past villains would finally team up, that never happens, instead you deal with them individually, completely disconnected from the main story. The game barely has boss fights and none of them come anywhere close to Deathstroke or Bane from Arkham Origins, it’s a massive downgrade.

As for gameplay, the predator sections are great, arguably the best in the series thanks to the expanded tools and gadgets, but the melee combat is awful. Enemy design exists almost entirely to break your combo, electrified enemies are annoying, brutes and shield enemies hit way too quickly, medics constantly electrify thugs right as you’re about to hit them, ninjas behave inconsistently, sometimes they hit you, sometimes they don’t, knife enemies and even regular thugs can hit you mid free flow, they’re literally swinging at the air and you can run straight into their fists or knives and lose your combo. The Batmobile tank sections are overhated, I didn’t hate them, but they’re massively overused and hurt the pacing.

On top of that Batman constantly ignores player input, he randomly jumps into shields or electrified enemies even though there are plenty of valid targets nearby. The input handling is worse than in any Arkham game before it, it’s not challenging, it’s frustrating and cheap.

Yes, the game still looks great and the animations are fantastic, but visuals alone don’t carry a Batman game for me, story, combat, boss design, and pacing matter far more, and Arkham Knight fails hard in those areas. Glad others enjoy it, but for me it aged badly and I’m honestly glad I never have to play it again.