Review — Batman: The Enemy Within — The Enigma

Batman: The Enemy Within

We sit down and review Batman: The Enemy Within — The Enigma. This is the first episode of Telltale’s second take on the Batman franchise. Here’s our review on how they did

He we go with another trip into Gotham as the first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within has just dropped and is continuing the story mostly where we left off. That story being however you left Gotham after the events of the first time Telltale Games brought us this fun. All with the extra level of madness Batman usually brings out in the world and he is doing it in spades here yet again. Although, this is more or less dancing around the release and the fact that we’ve already dug into the first episode to see how it has all progressed so far. Here is our review of how this new season has kicked off.

Story

It’s only been a short time since the events of the last Batman title. Gotham is still dealing with all of those horrors that were brought out and the “new world order” that is being instilled with the law enforcement. They are letting a masked vigilante run the streets and all. Nonetheless, a villain of Gotham’s past has come back and it bring his own brand of “evil” to Gotham and we need to help Bruce Wayne or Batman handle it all. But is The Riddler the real issue here or just the start of something bigger…?

Hated

If I had to choose something to hate on for Batman: The Enemy Within and this first episode, I’d have to say it felt like some of The Riddler was under-used. He is one of my favorite characters and I get that the riddles and puzzles need to be something a player can beat rather quickly to keep the story flowing, but everything he asked or did was something you didn’t need to be a Master Detective to figure out. This is truly a nitpick and finding something to gripe about though. It isn’t even the biggest part of the whole experience but I think I was just hoping for a bit more before I even started playing.

Loved

Even though I griped on the under-use of The Riddler in this episode of Batman: The Enemy Within, he was the main villain here, I have to give major kudos to Telltale Games for making him the right mixture of goofy to mad-genius which makes him one of my top in the whole franchise. Outside of the softball riddles and puzzles, he was extremely well written and made my love the character even more. He brought the right level of darkness to the story and also made you feel like he could be a bigger foe than he was. Mixed in with some great V/O work from everyone and I can see him making another huge comeback over time.

Moving on from characters and story though, there were also some other great changes added into Batman: The Enemy Within when it came to combat and option selection. A similar system that we saw before is still here where we needed to go through a string of successful moves to lead up to a finishing one, but there was also options in there for more than one action. I’m not sure if these have any lasting effect on the characters in Batman: The Enemy Within, but it did give a nice feeling of having more freedom of choice when all is said and done. I guess it made things a bit more satisfying in the end which, led to even more enjoyment.

The last item I have here is the relationship system we have between Bruce and other people Batman interacts with. I’m still not completely sure if I like this system, but it was a nice new feature that I may have just mishandled which led to my uncertainty. It’s not strange to know that Telltale Games is tracking relationships between characters in the game, but now we get to see the results a little clearer than we have in the past. Some choices seemed to give opposite results in my eyes, but this is only the first episode of Batman: The Enemy Within so things may change. I’m going to have to replay it all again to see if it is always the case due to story or if each of the NPCs actually have set likes and dislikes that I didn’t navigate correctly.

Overall

At the end of the day, I really enjoyed this episode of Batman: The Enemy Within. Sure, The Riddler wasn’t used to the highest of degrees the character could be used, but it was easy to look past that and realize my fandom was taking over at those scenes. The rest of the story and characters made up for that as well as some of the fun twists along the way. There does seem to be some new mechanics in there that may frustrate those who want to have a “perfect” run, but that isn’t what these games are supposed to be about at the end of the day. Just know that is in there, then head out, and start to enjoy Batman: The Enemy Within as it is right now.

I give Batman: The Enemy Within — The Enigma 1 Question That Can’t Be Answered ‘Yes’ To on the Questions That Can’t Be Answered ‘Yes’ To scale.

Batman: The Enemy Within — The Enigma was developed by Telltale Games. Batman: The Enemy Within — The Enigma was published by Telltale Games for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC on August 8^th 2017. A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.