LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

Following on from the great LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, I had high hopes for LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight, and it didn't disappoint. I had a checklist in my mind of things I wanted to see in the new LEGO Batman game, and it checked nearly all of them.

It's always interesting to see how the LEGO games handle the story of the franchise they're taking on. Legacy of the Dark Knight takes some artistic liberties with the retelling of the Dark Knight trilogy. Although the basic plot is largely followed, there are definitely some extras thrown in to pad out the playing time, some lines are kept from the movies, but said by different characters, etc., along with trademark goofs, gags, and references that we've come to expect from LEGO games, and for the most part, they hit the mark to provide a humorous time while still telling the original story.

The limited number of characters available in the Dark Knight trilogy helps to make every character feel unique in the game. Unlike LEGO Star Wars, where there are hundreds of characters separated into "classes" that all do similar things, each character in LEGO Batman has its own set of abilities and combat styles, which make them feel different to play. Batman focuses on stealth gameplay, which works surprisingly well; Catwoman can summon cats to explore vents, and Jim Gordon can use his foam gun to interfere with machinery.

The game's combat is rather basic, as you would expect from a LEGO game, but it's still quite engaging. Beyond mashing the X button to punch the heads off of enemies, you'll also need to keep an eye out for button prompts to counterattack enemies as well as dodge incoming unblockable attacks. It feels like they've taken a couple of cues from Soulslikes, just watered them down to make the game much more accessible.

You also have the addition of a stealth system, which allows you to perform quick takedowns of enemies. If done properly, it can make missions much easier, since being detected can trigger additional enemy spawns. I was worried this wouldn't work well in a LEGO game, but they've done a good job of it here, and it does feel satisfying when you take out a group of criminals without being spotted, very in-keeping with the Batman style.

These changes help to make the combat something more than just button-mashing, and the flow of the combat feels great, with the game auto-locking onto enemies and your character smoothly moving across the screen to land the next punch to the nearest enemy. This avoids the disappointment when a punch doesn't land, and eliminates the need for most of your own movement during fights, allowing us to focus on the action.

Visually, Legacy of the Dark Knight is quite pleasing. The reflections and rainy streets of Gotham are pulled off surprisingly well for a LEGO title, and the voice acting, while slightly off-kilter compared to the movie's voice actors, captures the general feel of the originals and is decent in its own right.

Being able to explore and drive around Gotham City was a pleasant surprise. I wasn't sure how large the world map would be, given that The Skywalker Saga had many planets with smaller sections, but Gotham City is one sizable map. You'll mostly be gliding or driving around the city to get to your destinations. The driving physics are a little odd, especially certain collision physics that felt very unnatural, but for the most part, it's quite fun to carve a path of destruction on your way to the next mission, or glide along the rooftops to find those sneaky collectibles.

I did try the game briefly in co-op play, which, disappointingly, is still couch co-op only; no online multiplayer here. While it does work well, there are some limitations. The game is permanently split-screen, unlike older shared-screen LEGO titles, which has benefits and drawbacks: it allows for more separation than a shared screen but sacrifices a lot of screen real estate when searching for objects and puzzle solutions.

Vehicles are also oddly limited to only being drivable by the character that owns them, so if you have the Batmobile, for example, only the player playing as Batman can use the vehicle; it seemed like an unnecessary limitation for the game.

I also noticed some issues in this mode. Namely, certain visual elements, such as fog, seemed to display incorrectly on the 2nd player's screen, being too thick or entirely non-existent, and I also encountered an issue where I completely lost control of my character as player 1, requiring a game restart to continue. These issues were not present when playing solo.

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight - Steam Deck Performance

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight has great controller support, as you would expect from a LEGO title, and it also supports 16:10 aspect ratios, so we have no black borders around the Steam Deck's display.

Legacy of the Dark Knight defaults to Low settings on the Steam Deck, and we should keep them there, with FSR set to Balanced. I used the SteamOS frame limiter to limit the game to 30 FPS.

The game largely holds 30 FPS throughout with these settings, even in combat, but do expect the open-world driving portions of the game to dip into the mid-20s. It's still playable, but it may be unpleasant at times.

Power draw varies hugely. In indoor areas on foot, expect around 11-15W of drain on the battery; this can leap as high as 18-22W when traversing the city in a vehicle. Expect around 3 hours of battery life from a Steam Deck OLED and around 2 hours from a Steam Deck LCD.

Accessibility:

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight allows you to remap controls, adjust the size of text and subtitle text, add closed captions, and lock-on assist.

It also offers options to help with difficulty, such as slowing the game to 50%, not losing studs (currency) on death, and skipping some puzzles and combat.

Conclusion:

LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is pretty much what I had hoped for from when I heard the game announced. A humorous retelling of the Dark Knight Trilogy, complete with a sizable recreation of Gotham City filled with collectibles, built-for-fun gameplay, and you can bring a friend along for the ride.

The Steam Deck handles the game quite well for the most part, with an excellent control scheme. Do expect some dips when traversing the city in a vehicle, but by and large, the game remains playable and enjoyable on the handheld.

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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