I wanted to like this game, I have over 1300 hours in Batman Arkham Asylum, City and Knight and have been following Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League since it was announced at DC FanDome back in 2020.

It pains me to say it, but I have a hard time believing this game is made by the same Rocksteady that gave us such incredible and timeless games like Batman Arkham Asylum, City and Knight. I liked the closed alpha this game had back in late November/early December 2023 and wanted this game to succeed, but I cannot in good conscience recommend this game, especially given the asking price.

Spoilers may be ahead.

While the story is serviceable, I have issues with this game taking place in the same universe as the Arkham trilogy (or quadrilogy if you count Arkham Origins), it doesn't sit well with me and I think the only logical explanation as to why Rocksteady and WB tried to piggyback off the Arkhamverse would be to improve sales and reception, which based on early reviews and impressions, has backfired spectacularly.

There is also a strong argument to be made that the events of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League diminish and de-value the story of the original Arkham games.

It is for this reason, I will consider the Arkhamverse as ending with Batman: Arkham Knight. I do not care what Rocksteady or WB say, but Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is not worthy of being in the Arkham universe.

The gameplay I'm rather conflicted on, characters control well and the gunplay is better than I expected, and there are some missions that are genuinely fun, but the gameplay, especially towards the end is let down by a boring, repetitive and grindy mission structure that has no respect for the player or their enjoyment. I can only conclude at one point this game was meant to have loot boxes and purchasable weapons and items, that instead got morphed into mission rewards for completing boring and repetitive side-missions, which have minimal, if any relation to the story.

Towards the end of the game, I dropped the difficulty from medium to easy, this was after beating all the Justice League members (which as a side note weren't that hard) and this is a core issue I have with the game.

You would think the hardest parts of the game would be the Justice League boss fights, requiring you to use the abilities of all four main characters, but they aren't, the Justice League boss fights are rather easy by comparison to some of the side missions and activities, which just throw endless goons at you, some of which have invincibility or can only be taken down by certain modifiers, like grenades or shield harvesting, which don't always work well either and the game doesn't do a great job of explaining what all these combat mechanics do.

The game expects and wants you to grind out side missions and activities before proceeding, rather like a lot of Ubisoft titles, but this isn't fun, and runs contradictory to what Rocksteady themselves said about this game not being grindy and respecting the player's time.

Overall I'm very disappointed, we've waited 8 years and this is what we get... It's no wonder WB didn't send out review codes and why the studio founders of Rocksteady left the studio back in late 2022, they saw the writing on the wall and bailed.