LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight - Switch 2 Review
"A blast"
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is the fourth game in the Lego Batman series and the first since 2014’s Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham. I hadn’t realised it had taken this long to bring the series back, but it promises to be bigger and better than ever. Boasting an original story and completely revamped gameplay, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight arrives on Nintendo Switch 2 a few months after arriving on the other home consoles in May. It’s a shame to see Nintendo consoles still getting delayed releases even with the advent of the Switch 2, but oh well, let's swoop in and check out the action!
The Good
I have to confess I hadn’t played any of the previous Lego Batman games but have always meant to. What struck me from the off in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was how the combat felt very much like the Arkham games, which has become the benchmark for most modern adventure games (007 First Light, another delayed Switch 2 release, did exactly the same thing). It really pays off; as you follow Batman through this new take on his origin story, the action comes thick and fast, but it feels accessible, punchy and nuanced all at the same time. Without giving away too many spoilers, the story plays out like a conveyor belt of all the best Batman series characters (pretty much every protagonist and villain makes an appearance at some point), so any fans of the series will be indulged and then some. The voice cast is awesome too, and as a Brit I love to see (or hear) the legend that is Matt Berry make an appearance.
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight plays out as a third-person adventure, but the most enjoyable surprise for me was the structure of it. I was expecting a fairly linear trajectory, and the first hour or two of gameplay does indeed involve some fairly arbitrary and un-skippable gameplay that doubles up as both a tutorial and a story prologue. But once that is out of the way, things open up into an open world, Gotham City, which is teeming with activities and collectibles. Some will compare it unfavourably to the ‘shopping list’ style Assassin’s Creed games of late, but I for one loved it. The freedom of just mooching around was a lot more enjoyable than some of the missions, and Batman’s traversal methods of the Batmobile and/or zipping around on rooftops using his Batline were incredibly liberating.
Lastly, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight supports two-player couch co-op, which is utterly delightful. Whenever I review a co-op, I rope in my wife or eldest son. It was the latter who helped out this time, and as a five-year-old who loves Batman and Lego, it was a sight to behold. Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is literally fun for all the family but not in a boring, dumbed-down way; the single player is hard (and the difficulty level can be tweaked at any time) but the co-op makes it accessible for younger players by virtue of having an older head steer them through it.
TL;DR
- Story is a Batman fan's dream
- Open world Gotham City is awesome
- The co-op makes it an accessible game for all ages
The Bad
Whilst I generally found the performance of Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight to be absolutely fine, things did get off to a slightly inauspicious start when, right from the off - as in literally the first controllable gameplay moment after the opening cutscene - my character spawned below the level and I just fell into an abyss, having no option to reset. Of course at that point I was like ‘uh oh’, but things can only get better as they say, and thankfully they did.
As mentioned above, the combat in Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is fantastic; however, the enemy range felt quite limited. You spend most of the game fighting various Lego-figurine-shaped henchmen, with some exceptions, but it kind of meant that many of the combat moments felt a bit formulaic. Some more imaginative enemy classes, especially more woven into the environment, would have been welcome here.
TL;DR
- A worrying glitch right at the start, which made a bad first impression
- Enemies could have been a lot more varied
Final Score: 8/10
Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight was a blast. Exploring Gotham City felt like a family-friendly Grand Theft Auto, and that’s not a bad thing at all! The story was engaging and the humour spot-on, meaning I was rarely left without a smile on my face. Everything is awesome? Pretty much!
Thank you for checking out our Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Switch review, thank you to WB Games (via PLAION PR) for providing the review code and thank you to our Patreon Backers for their ongoing support:
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