LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is finally here — is the crime-fighting experience as revolutionary to the LEGO videogame world as it promised to be? This review from Blocks, the monthly magazine, is a first reaction based on a good few hours of playing the new title.
The first mainline LEGO videogame from TT Games since 2022’s LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight promised to rebuild the classic LEGO videogame formula even more than the game from a galaxy far, far away already had.
But does the revamped combat, difficulty slider, and new mission design add up to a LEGO game that feels fresh yet familiar (and worth playing)? Blocks shares its first impressions of LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, including how the game both meets and misses expectations, all while delivering charming LEGO Batman fun. Our full review, based on a more extensive playthrough, will come in Issue 141, which you can get as part of a great value subscription package.
Light story spoilers for the first 2 – 3 hours of gameplay ahead
There’s a lot to talk about with Legacy of the Dark Knight’s changes to the traditional LEGO game formula, but the things that stick out most after starting the game are how it handles its new combat system and difficulty settings, as well as its level design and how story missions fit in to the open world of Gotham City.
The game’s combat system is built on fighting large groups of enemies, and you have three main melee moves to take them down: attack, parry and dodge. You also have a projectile weapon and a finisher that charges as you land hits. If your videogame experience is limited to TT Games’ previous titles, things will feel incredibly new. If you’ve played even a single mission of an Assassin’s Creed game, you’ll find yourself at home rather quickly. What’s here is done well and it’s a good fit for the type of game Legacy of the Dark Knight is trying to be, but if you’re hoping for a new challenge from the combat system, you might be disappointed.
Part of the combat revamp is the introduction of difficulty settings, of which there are three: Classic, Caped Crusader and Dark Knight. Dark Knight is the difficulty that has been touted as giving players a new level of challenge thanks to it granting limited lives per mission, but the limited lives don’t really come into play when you can quite easily make it through combat without dying once.
It certainly makes the fights with enemies more chaotic, as it adds additional and stronger enemies, but there’s no real increase to the combat difficulty itself. If this is your first experience with this type of combat, it will likely prove more challenging than Classic or Caped Crusader difficulties, but if you’re an Arkham or Assassin’s Creed vet, the difficulty slider might as well not exist.
Level design and how it blends with the open world is also a big part of the game, especially as it was one of the most criticised aspects of The Skywalker Saga. Legacy of the Dark Knight doesn’t return to the chapter-by-chapter style of older LEGO games, but the missions do feel more robust than they did in The Skywalker Saga. LEGO game purists will likely still be disappointed by how much is relegated to the open world — there’s an open world sequence with The Penguin that feels like it would’ve been better suited to a level — but when the prologue is an hour-long, contained level, it’s hard to ignore the improvements made since The Skywalker Saga.
The levels are better here than The Skywalker Saga, but next to the memorable monstrosities in games like LEGO Marvel Super Heroes, they’re pretty simple, at least in the early game. They focus primarily on combat, with puzzles being basic build-a-thing-to-do-a-thing or point-and-shoot in nature. Batman is also quick to narrate what the solution should be instead of giving you time to take in the environment and figure it out on your own.
If you want to know more about how the LEGO brick-infused environment was developed, check out the exclusive interview in our special LEGO Batman issue of the LEGO magazine for fans.
With the levels still being slimmed down compared to older titles, it is worth noting that the in-level collectibles are sparse. There are no minikits, just five objects to find and destroy to earn a Batcave trophy build. There is a red brick, but no citizens in peril or anything else to interact with or collect. So they feel like classic LEGO levels, but longtime fans will notice things missing.
Legacy of the Dark Knight thus feels like it’s attemping to keep the spirit of LEGO games of old while trying to establish itself as a kid-friendly version of the Arkham or Assassin’s Creed games. Whether it does this successfully is going to be up to individual players to decide. Those looking for a traditional LEGO game experience will find some things to love — the beloved humour is here and traces of the old formula are present — but will likely be left wanting. And similarly, those who were hoping for a more grown-up gameplay experience will probably appreciate the new combat and the attempt at harder difficulties, but Legacy of the Dark Knight ultimately just isn’t that kind of game.
Not to say that what’s here isn’t fun — it’s a light, enjoyable LEGO Batman experience — but to make sure you actually enjoy that experience, it’s important to know what you’re getting into. It’s a chaotic mashup of past LEGO games and a more grown-up gaming experience, just as the game itself is a goofy mixture of all things Batman.
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