I'd say City, followed by Origin with Knight being dead last in my personal priority list.
City is an incredible experience with a lot of very apparent love and care put into it. The story is superb, the combat and stealth refinements from Asylum are great, and the attention to detail in the hub world is marvelous. Oh, and yeah... it has more of a hub world than an open world. The hub world links together the different dungeons and is small enough that they were able to cram Easter eggs and clever references all over it. If you're only going to play one of the other three Arkham games, it should arguably be this one.
Origins gets a lot of flak, predominantly because it's more of the same with a little less polish. It was kind of a stop-gap game between City and Knight to keep interest up, and Warner Bros. Montreal made it instead of Rocksteady. It has the same combat system as Arkham City (with a rage mode tacked on and a few new quirks here or there), re-uses the hub world from Arkham City (sans the walls) with a southern island glued, and emphasizes The Joker yet again for a third time. The thing is though, it works. The combat is still fun, the new island emphasizes verticality in ways that are surprisingly refreshing, the dungeons are very well-designed, the art aesthetic is art deco in a maniacal way, and the story is quite good. I personally love it and wholeheartedly recommend it to you.
Knight... I hated Knight. One of the major problems with Arkham Asylum's follow-ups is that each one felt the need to go bigger and bigger and BIGGER, to the point that Arkham Knight is a full fledged open world game... warts and all. It has oodles of copy-and-pasted side quests peppered across the map that repeat the same general things ad-nauseam and exist solely to pad out length. There are now over 500 Riddler challenges, all of which have to be completed for the real ending. The world's increased size means that all those loving touches from previous Rocksteady entries are spread out too thin across it (breadth, but no depth). Oh, and all the island layouts are designed for the Batmobile to easily traverse without getting caught on things, so all the buildings are oddly too far apart and the streets a bit too wide for a city that is meant to feel claustrophobic, old, and menacing. Who knows, though? Maybe Bruce rebuilt chunks of it to accommodate his ride. *shrug*
Speaking of the Batmobile, Knight crams it in to nearly everything it can... to the detriment of pacing and narrative sense. You'll continually be forced back into that stupid vehicle, often to do incredibly stupid things. Sometimes you'll have to grapple up the side of a building in your multi-ton tank because... reasons. Many other times, you'll be made to fight dozens of drone tanks that all look the same and lack any personality whatsoever. Horribly enough, each island is built as a bat-tank battle arena and is used as such in... bat tank stealth sequences. Yes, you have to stealth in a heavy tank covered in bat decals and shoot heavily armored enemy tanks from behind in their glowing, illogically unarmored weak points. Bat tank stealth sequences. Just let that roll off your tongue and wonder how it weaseled its way into the game. Bat tank stealth sequences.
Oh, and the dialogue and story are rubbish. They didn't bring Bruce Timm back, and the lack of his presence shows. Batman's lines give him all the personality of a mannequin, the main villain is arguably defeated two hours in and then things just drag on hours thereafter, the identity of the titular Arkham Knight is telegraphed from half a continent away, it recycles The Joker a fourth bloody time, and the closest thing to witty dialogue that Riddler is given is a text rant about Gamergate (though can you really fault him? He had to make 500 plus riddles and three race car courses that he had to convince himself were riddles too. Man is overworked). I honestly can't recommend Knight to you, but there are plenty of people that love it. Who knows? You might get a lot more mileage out of it than I did. It made me miss the narrative quality, focus, and structure of Arkham Asylum. I'd rather have a 12 hour long high quality experience than 30 plus hours of fluff with some main quests sprinkled sparingly about... but I'm apparently not the kind of gamer that Knight is targeting. *shrug*
Good luck choosing! :-)
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