Sunrise Parabellum LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Review

I finished *Batman LotDK* on PC, after playing the main story in 21 hours on the hardest difficulty, in co-op. I collected most of what I came across, did some side content and reached the credits eventually at around 59% completion.. I had no intention of going for 100%. I came into this less for Batman himself, despite being a fan of the movies, comics and Arkham trilogy, and more because I wanted to play a LEGO game in co-op with a childhood friend, like the good old days. My expectations were honestly pretty modest since I just wanted to have a fun time. Unfortunately, this turned into one of the most frustrating gaming experiences I have had in a while. **This review is spoiler free as usual.** *I will first talk about what worked, then the co-op, before looking at the gameplay and open world, and finally the technical issues.* _**A beautiful Gotham with a solid foundation**_ **Visually**, I think the game looks really good. Its stylized art direction works particularly well for Gotham, with good lighting, shadows, volumetrics, textures and reflections. The city has a strong visual identity and somehow reminded me of the feeling I got exploring Night City in Cyberpunk 2077: just walking around can be enjoyable and the environment itself is pleasant to look at. **The voice acting** is also good, while the soundtrack does exactly what you'd expect from a Batman game. There are plenty of **references to the movies and familiar moments from the Batman universe**, which I appreciated. **The combat** is also a strong part of the gameplay. It is smooth and satisfying, with obvious inspiration from the Arkham games and Shadow of Mordor. **Movement** is also great: grappling and gliding let you move around Gotham quickly and make travelling between points of interest painless. Vehicles unfortunately, don't feel nearly as good to control. And then there is **co-op**. Despite the performance hit it causes, I genuinely enjoyed having two players in the world. During missions, you can take different paths, coordinate attacks or approach encounters differently. Outside missions, both players can explore independently and even do different activities at the same time. Small quality of life choices also help, such as being able to open the map, customize your character or pause without completely interrupting the other player. *There is a good foundation here. The problem is that the game rarely builds upon it.* _**Co-op has potential but also plenty of compromises**_ **The fixed split-screen** is understandable for an open world game, but it makes Gotham harder to appreciate and the camera can become awkward (Increasing the FOV helps but only so much). I also don't understand why the game doesn't use a shared screen in situations where both players are driving together or in some of the more linear sections where it would work perfectly well. The split-screen also comes with a **huge performance cost**, especially during rain. What is already an inconsistent game technically becomes considerably worse in co-op. There are smaller omissions too. There are no proper competitive mini-games, no chapter score at the end of a mission to create some friendly competition, and the pool of playable characters feels surprisingly limited for a LEGO game. **The multiplayer therefore lacks some of the playful chaos that made older LEGO games so enjoyable.** Even **getting into co-op on PC can be unnecessarily awkward**. Two controllers are required, and using one keyboard and one controller isn't properly supported. On top of that, the game can decide for itself which controller is the main one, sometimes forcing you to disconnect one before launching the game and reconnecting it afterward. *So while I liked the idea of playing this with someone else, the multiplayer often felt more like a collection of compromises than a genuinely great co-op experience.* _**The problem is what's underneath**_ The **core gameplay loop** is extremely simple = move through a corridor> fight some enemies > advance > fight some more > then watch a cutscene. The combat keeps this entertaining for a while, but there isn't much depth underneath it. **Stealth** is probably the clearest example. The game clearly wants to give you different ways to approach encounters, but the detection system works against it. One enemy spotting you can alert enemies across a huge area, sometimes making carefully designed stealth routes completely pointless. There is also no convenient reload option for retrying an encounter when you want to clear it stealthily. **The combat** itself is fun, but it rarely asks much from you. Some tools, such as the shurikens, can become particularly ridiculous in co-op and melt bosses when spammed. The game feels more interested in being accessible than challenging, which is understandable for a LEGO title, but it leaves the gameplay feeling shallow. This also applies to **the open world**. Gotham is big and beautiful, but it quickly becomes repetitive. There are huge numbers of collectibles and activities, yet very little about them makes me want to actually collect them. The problem isn't simply the quantity. It's the **lack of challenge, variety and meaningful rewards**. Even well past the halfway point, the game was still introducing new types of collectibles, while **the map was becoming increasingly cluttered**. I eventually stopped caring about completion entirely. Even replaying levels didn't feel particularly worthwhile, and towards the end I stopped caring about what I missed anymore and **I was just thinking about finishing the game.** _**Batman, LEGO and a lot of wasted potential**_ **The writing** is simple and clearly aimed at a broad audience, including children. That's not inherently a problem. The characters are goofy, there are some funny moments, and I enjoyed the references to Batman's wider history. What bothered me is the **lack of substance underneath all that fan service**. Villains are introduced, defeated and then largely forgotten. There is little sense of progression or meaningful stakes, and some missions feel like filler rather than steps toward a real goal. Even potentially important events can be resolved and immediately disappear from the story. The same lack of depth affects the LEGO side of the game. Older LEGO titles had a lot of little extras that encouraged experimentation and replay: red bricks, fun unlockables, more reasons to revisit levels and a wider range of characters with meaningful uses. Here, many of those elements feel underdeveloped or simply absent. That's what makes the game particularly frustrating to me. Beneath the Batman references, the LEGO nostalgia and the Arkham inspired combat, **there isn't much of its own identity**. It often feels like a good looking combination of things that I already like, rather than a game with enough depth to stand on its own. _**The technical problems**_ The technical **performance** makes everything above harder to tolerate. The game suffers from the usual UE5 traversal stutters, but there are also frequent short freezes when moving between areas or during transitions. Sometimes the game simply stops for 1 or 2 seconds before continuing. Frame rates can also collapse unexpectedly, dropping from well above 120 FPS to below 40, and even below 30-20 in some co-op situations. Rain and fast traversal make things worse. With a more than capable hardware from mid 2026, I shouldn't be seeing this level of inconsistency, event at 1080p. Add the **bugs** and the split-screen performance hit I mentioned before, and it becomes difficult to ignore how much polish is missing. _**Verdict**_ *Batman Legacy of the Dark Knight* isn't without good qualities. Gotham looks great, the combat and movement feel good, the voice acting is solid, and there are genuinely enjoyable moments in co-op. But for me, those positives couldn't carry the experience.. The gameplay is repetitive, stealth is poorly implemented, the open-world activities feel like busywork, the story lacks weight, and the LEGO side of the game feels strangely underutilized. Co-op has some clever ideas but is held back by technical and design compromises. Then the inconsistent performance and bugs add another layer of frustration. I came in expecting a simple, fun LEGO Batman game to play with an old friend. Instead, by the end, I mostly wanted it to be over. I didn't leave disappointed so much as relieved, and honestly, I regret spending my time and money on it. I suspect part of the game's positive reception comes from what it reminds people of: LEGO games, Batman, the movies and the Arkham trilogy. Those are powerful ingredients but nostalgia alone can't make the underlying game deeper. There is still a foundation worth building on. A sequel with better optimization, stronger co-op design, more meaningful content and a deeper gameplay loop could be genuinely interesting. I just hope the next game focuses less on reminding us why we already love Batman, and more on giving us a reason to love the game itself. ~*Thank you for reading.*