And so we've finally reached the end of the road with this final, shenanigans-free Telltale release. Sure, there's one more The Walking Dead entry left with its own platform hopping baggage and all that, but Batman: The Enemy Within was the last real game developer took a crack at. I reviewed the original entry as well and honestly almost everything established there still stands, almost further amplified with most points listed there. Which amazes because I really enjoyed this entry more.

What was previously about Batman's relationships with couple of characters is now distilled to a very briefly featured character of John Doe from the last season. If anything, Batman's rogues gallery is much stronger this time around AND story itself is actually rather well-written for what it is almost despite Telltale's usual obsession to one-up with each episode or throw twists at you for no reason. I think that was the first standout that really made this distinct from the previous season which was kinda all over the place and leaning more on “look,we need to introduce these characters so let's trot the all out while torn between multiple uneven arcs”. This time they actually have a plan and work towards it. Only the very last episode goes in this odd direction, but what did you expect with Joker being involved?

That relationship Joker and Batman, as well as Bruce Wayne, have in the game is its cornerstone despite The Enemy Within throwing a curve ball at you early on thinking this is about Riddler and Riddler alone Hell, there's an entire episode where you barely don the Bat costume and spend the entirety of the duration working undercover getting to know the criminal underground. You spend even more shaping the character of Joker as such with your actions and guidance. Sadly, this is one of those cases where if this was an RPG or in the hands of a developer who didn't deal in smoke and mirrors we could've gotten some real resolutions, but I still think the end result was extremely satisfying as it provides an alternate relationship dynamic you don't really see given the origin nature of the story. On Joker front, at least. There are some extremely final decisions much closer to home Bruce gets to make I was not a fan of. That's one way to end your story.

Gameplay-wise, well, I'm tired of sounding like a broken record with this, but it still bears repeating – someone at Telltale really had an ax to grind with gameplay in their games. I think there's barely an hour or so in the entire game, which took me about nine hours to complete, that was dedicated solely to actually moving the protagonist about doing, you know, adventure game stuff. Formula has by now been clearly distilled to dialog where characters beat the player over the head by either encouraging or admonishing their choices, and QTE powered action scenes which do admittedly look really nice and kinetic. What started back with Michonne really went places compared to earlier clumsy beginnings. Also worth noting is my switch to SSD since the last game so I'm not sure whether Telltale really improved their engine or whether my hardware changes had significant something to do with it, but all the performance issues as scenes loaded and unloaded seemed to be gone for me. Props where they're due even if no one is there to hear them anymore.

So, how did it fare? Pretty well, actually. I certainly did not expect to get this level of quality and I think it shows how tighter writing benefits the process and integrity of your story. You don't even need to have played the original because you can create your own “world state” when you start with this one. Part of me hopes some of these choices result in tangibly different consequences, but I'm satisfied with the results I got regardless.

Suicide Squad tie-in character of all things.