Considering how long Gotham Knights is, and how large its open world is, there are not many actual bosses. This is especially true if players have no inclination to follow Gotham Knights’ optional villain case files, pursuing Harley Quinn, Mr. Freeze, and Clayface individually. Harley is seen during the main narrative’s Blackgate Penitentiary riot, but players could go through the rest of the game without seeing her again if they choose not to engage with the case file. However, there are also intermittent mini-bosses in Gotham Knights that can be a chore to deal with.
Gotham Knights’ chunky combat encourages a lot of heavy attacks to continuously guard-break enemies, such as GCPD assault units, the Mob’s Godmothers, the Freaks’ Bulldozers, or the Court of Owls’ Gladiator Talons. Mini-bosses are nearly indistinguishable from regular enemies in this regard, and are not typically a unique entity that players haven't fought before. One mini-boss in particular appears a scripted number of times, and while it is fantastic to see interesting Batman villains appear in Gotham Knights, it is a shame that Man-Bat was made into another laundry list mini-boss.
Gotham Knights Reduces Man-Bat to Mini-Boss Chores
Gotham Knights’ Man-Bat is a particularly unfortunate case of the game sidelining an otherwise interesting villain. Dr. Kirk Langstrom is deeply involved in the game’s narrative from the opening of the game, even though he is deceased for its entirety. Once comic book fans hear Langstrom’s name, they may be instantly familiar with his alter ego from the comics, and wondered if he was Man-Bat in Gotham Knights’ obscure past. That still is not clear, but Gotham Knights’ Man-Bat is created differently. It is revealed that Talia al Ghul created the Man-Bat by combining bat DNA, human volunteers, and Lazarus Pits.
Players fight this mini-boss while visiting Arkham Asylum in a fun and surprising sequence. However, that excitement is quickly dulled when players learn they have to immediately battle three more Man-Bats throughout Gotham Knights’ open-world Gotham City, and one more soon after in the ruinous caverns of the Batcave. This effectively turns a cool, unexpected moment into a slog of arduous mini-bosses that pad out the game’s final act.
Mini-Bosses Are Generally Monotonous in Gotham Knights
There are additional mini-bosses in the form of souped bruisers and regular enemies. Basher and Blazer, for example, are particularly troublesome. These mini-bosses can be difficult, especially if one of them is a juicer who can heal or revive other enemies. If fans are playing on Hard difficulty, then they can expect almost every encounter to take at least twice as long because of how much more damage enemies will absorb. This is doubly true for mini-bosses, who will become as spongy as possible, and require players to spam Gotham Knights’ Momentum abilities in order to effectively shave their health.
Mini-bosses may not even seem like mini-bosses due to how frequently they are encountered in Gotham Knights’ opportunistic crimes and premeditated crimes, and as players encounter new enemies they are immediately added to random events in the city. Few enemies are more irritating in an encounter than drone masters, since they spawn multiple drones at once that all take aim at the player or close the distance to fire an area-of-effect attack. Either way, Man-Bat serves as a perfect example of how mini-bosses can instantly become bothersome, and other mini-bosses demonstrate how padded the game’s normal encounters can seem.
Gotham Knights is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
