I'm about 3-4 hours into the game and this really bothers me that they seem to have removed the Critical Strikes upgrade in favor of Critical Counters. While it may be a bit more challenging to get a high combo, the Arkham games were always more fun when you take a more offensive stance in combat.

Maybe i just haven't mastered it yet but i wish they still had Critical Strikes in the game.

On a side note: i don't like how Batman assumes fighting pose when you enter combat. I always loved standing stoically as thugs run up to you only to be instantly countered. I guess this goes with the younger, not so confident, Batman though.

You'll get an ability later that'll let you get +2 with each strike.

@gruff182: Well that's good. Kinda sucks that they tier all the upgrades though.

Do you have to complete the both armor tiers before it unlocks the Combo Boost?

the whole skill tree is poorly handled, plus the combat is a mess

On the contrary, I like it. I always found very lazy and weird to have Bats walking around in his normal walk, without even turning his head, which isn't how he'd approach fights in the comic books/movies. He only does it in a couple of instance.

The skill tree is all over the place. I don't like the way it's set up at all but at least you level up quickly. I think this is the easiest Arkham game so far.

Yep, the series lauded for having possibly the best melee combat ever... is a mess.

You just can't please some people.

The combat is a mess? Just because you don't unlock shit in order you'd want now the combat is a mess? It has the best combat engine ever created for a third person action game, dude. Unless you explain your point, you are incredibly wrong. If anything, the game is just rebalanced. And as for the shock gloves, they were in Arkham City's Wii U version, which are useful for those less-skilled players who got mad at being ganked by shields, stun batons and ninjas.

@klei: The combat feels way jankier. I'm constantly whiffing strikes that clearly should have hit, Batman did his "go flying 20 feet" thing towards the guy, isn't getting hit, and just stops. I'm also constantly getting caught on level geometry while fighting (often mid strike animation, exacerbating the inexplicable misses), and the camera seems way less intelligent when fighting bad guys, especially near buildings, trash cans, light poles, inside... basically around anything that it could possibly get caught on.

The fact that the basic combat IS so good and was absolutely great in the first two games just underscores the fact that it doesn't feel quite right here. Its still better than in most games, but it's not an issue of the new systems or rebalancing, rather more of a general lack of polish that permeates the entire game.

Thing I'm finding most irritating about the skills is the level up notification and auto-jump to the skill tree when you have a point to spend. I'm one of those people who likes to save up a good few points then spend them all at once but here it adds so much irritation when trying to get to the map I don't have that choice. Just a small thing but it's bugging me.

@jarowdowsky: totally, don't know why the level up notification doesn't auto-hide after a while. Super irritating.

If I didn't already know that this wasn't developed by the same people, I'd have guessed after playing a little while. This game is buggier and just generally less polished than an Arkham game should be.

Aside from the general jank in combat that Origins introduced, like geometry glitching you out during fights and making batman crouch into FPS mode, failing combat takedowns on available enemies, failing ground takedown (both in combat and in predator encounters), enemies clipping into one another and stacking into messy pileups, super aggressive attacks making you counter all the time and god forbid you get bad framerate in a fight, combat degrades to a nightmare.

Aside from all of the above they also messed up the timings on critical strikes. Where in previous games you could critical strike almost 100% by attacking as soon as a punch landed (as per description) in a seamless fluid combo, now you actually have to actively pause between landing a strike and starting a new one, like full on wait for half a second to a second to catch the time when critical strike will trigger but before your combo drops. As an alternative people now resort to dodging all the time, because the critical strikes trigger 100% if you dodge after each strike thereby extending the time after the punch without dropping combo. So fucked up.

And why would you ever want to use a concussion grenade in a fight. It's the most useless shit ever, in fact during big fights with lots of enemies it's a shitty hindrance rather then help, by making enemies flail a lot randomly an in short bursts, making them way way more likely to break your combo then if they were just all trying to attack you normally. It also seems like they are using shock gloves like a crutch for the created clusterfuck.

I just gotta say I enjoyed combat in Asylum and City much more and it was fun even completing the NG+ and all the challenges and medals.

@jarowdowsky: My lord was this frustrating. A simple long hold of the back/select buttons would have been a simple fix

@jarowdowsky: Didn't Arkham City do that too? After you leveled up the back button always defaulted to the skills screen.

I agree it is annoying and i don't why games keep doing that.

I'm with you, Batman fights with his hands down at his side unless he's up against someone really dangerous. It's more intimidating that way and makes it easier to throw shit from his belt.

the upgrade tree..FUCK THE UPGRADE TREE!

Took a google serach to find out that you can't do the disarm and destroy takedown until you do a particular side mission.

This is completely assinine considering I've maxed out virtually all possible upgrades and i'm at a point in the game where there's gunman and snipers every got damn where but have no idea who the hell Bird is or when i'll be able to access this side mission, that the game never tells you about in the first place, to get this pretty basic, yet crucial takedown maneuver.

the upgrade tree is a joke, If it were a real upgrade tree it might be something like Infamious where you could customize your character to how you play. Instead it's made to gate you, but your already collecting items along the game's story line. It's bad design.

Yeah, the Special Combo Disarm that's an essential move, but they really want you to use the shock gloves instead. That breaks the combat, since you never really drain your combo meter to activate it, the point of special combo moves is you can stop for a moment look around and check out the arena. The shock gloves make you basically sonic the hedgehog ping ponging all over the place to go faster and faster. This doesn't make batman into a crime fighter, he's not just some blur of moves, might as well be in Saints Row 4.

So I've done some more of the later game diverse fights (several times for testing purposes) in tight corners and noticed even more issues with the combat. Particularly most of the issues are with the new enemies they added. I've been knocked down by a charge brute out of an ongoing knife counter several times, been interrupted and knocked out of a double martial artist counter (while counters animation is still going on), martial artist double counter sometimes brings up a target reticule on the second counter press, martial artist double counter drops your combo (and triggers the dropped sound cue) before the counter indicator even finishes and sometimes even if you already countered twice before it was visually over. Targeting is less precise, where in previous Batman games it was point point and you went to strike directly at the enemy you were looking at (with m&k), now the game tries to prioritize targets for you sometimes (like chargers or heavies) which sucks ass, this is more noticeable also because enemies are so frequently bunched up to the point of clipping through one another. After finishing a charged gloves beat down you cannot do the combat takedown move at all and have to first hit someone else once (even if you have special moves available). A brute chargers charge is homing to the point of ridiculousness, i've had situations where I dodge jump over a brute and he will do an instant 180 turn and charge behind him for an instant grab. A lot of enemy attacks straight up can't be countered or dodged if you do the counter or dodge right as you see it and have to preemptively be dodging before your current attack finishes otherwise you will get hit the instant you're exposed (this is again more evident with new enemies).

So add all this to the list i've already posted.

@tennmuerti: in the challenge mode I had more luck controlling the enemies. But I mentioned before, those shock gloves, that's pretty much it. Each hit is like 3 critical strikes and then your ready to do a special combo take down and take those big guys down. the bigger guys, I do the whole bat swarm which stuns them and then rapidly punch him to build up another bat swarm, so it becomes this whole spamming in lots of hits on him till he's down, gets everyone away enough. But in the single player.... don't know, something about like the areas, like it's rough, was at a big 30 man fight, and they kept kicking my ass, always someone off camera, eager to slap me out of a combo.

The thing that I keep complaining about the shock gloves, is that free focus slows down the combat for you to see what's going around you. Now the shock gloves can get you to at least perform special combo moves faster, but your still running around like sonic spin ball.

I don't know, I think also combination of the pyshx of the graphics of the snow and the path finding of the city is different then the challenge modes. I seem to just have better luck with those big guys.

@crithon: Yep you're right on point, I finished all the combat challenges yesterday and they had way less bugs and issues then the combat in the game proper.

Video Games ya'll.

@tennmuerti: I still get the controller disconnect on the snow top arena, where you have second fight with bane. And I also get keyboard and mouse disconnect too. It's really ridiculous to have something like that happen.

The more I see this game, the more I appreciate what rocksteady did with Arkham City's open world. They did something simple, and just refined it and polished and had room to clutter it up with fanservice to nerd out over it.