Five Years Later: 10 Things You Learn Replaying Batman: Arkham Knight

Side missions were something the Arkham series always struggled with, as both Rocksteady and WB Montreal struggled to create missions which didn't just descend into repetitiveness.

Arkham Knight has the same issue, with interesting mechanics, such as the deep-tissue scanner from the Professor Pyg missions, being repeated until they simply feel tedious. What's worse is that classic villains such as Penguin and Two-Face are reduced to missions that have little in the way of character development or story, and instead force the player to repeat mundane tasks such as following Penguin's vans through the streets, only to lead to a simple combat encounter. Furthermore, defeating the various strongholds of the Arkham Knight's militia around Gotham results in a laborious grind in which every battle feels the same.

The most egregious of these is the mission featuring Hush, which took one of Arkham City's best lingering plot threads and reduced it to little more than a five minute quick time event. This is especially disappointing since Rocksteady showed a commitment fleshed out side missions in the events featuring Man-Bat and the Season of Infamy DLC, but decided to throw away one of its fanbase's most anticipated stories for the sake of a cheap surprise.

In the end, completing the side missions comes less from a desire to actually defeat the enemies, but more just to slog through them in order to unlock the game's final ending.