Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight Review. The Unexpected Return to Gotham
With endless content to pull from and a great narrative, LEGO Batman has never been better!
After years of fans dreaming of a return to Gotham, Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight finally delivers on that long-awaited wish. Just over 4 years since their last game, TT games have returned to give us an expansive look into the history of the caped crusader.
From the start, you get the feeling that this is a different take on what TT games have done before. Though it’s a Lego game at its core, it respects the history of Batman and gives us iconic moments that we’ve seen in other media formats. Right off the bat, you’re thrown into Batman’s origins rather than being thrown into an already established character. You play as Bruce, who is teaming up with Talia Al-Ghul in their training arc under her father Ra’s Al-Ghul. This truly feels like a training arc since this is the moment when TT Games begins the tutorial of the game.
The writing in the game is true to a Lego game - you can expect the cheesy moments that leave you staring at your screen awkwardly. Though this is the case, it was good to see some iconic Batman moments have some Lego flare thrown into it. One of the most memorable scenes from Matt Reeves’ 2022 Batman film is the car chase with Penguin. It was a treat to see Lego remake this and throw in some fun jokes to make it their own.
The playable cast in Lego games is something that always has players coming back for more. Here, while the cast is quite small, they are handled with much detail. Each character gets their moment and has their origin in the spotlight. We see Selina Kyle’s story into being Catwoman and we even get to see Robin becoming Nightwing. While the characters are fully fleshed out here, I hope to see more characters possibly added post launch as DLC. It would be great to play as characters like Red Hood and even villains Joker or Bane!
Similar to how a strong roster defines Lego games, a rich costume system is essential to any superhero game. As a Batman game, expectations are quite high when it comes to the costumes being added. In Legacy of the Dark Knight, you not only get a large number of costumes, but skins for the bat mobile as well. There is so much customization to choose from, and it is easy to see this as a selling point for fans of the series.
From an audio perspective, the musical score is easily one of the best aspects of the game. While they add their own tracks to certain parts of the game, the cutscenes pull from respective soundtracks from other media to really immerse you in the recreation of the parts. Along with the music, the voice acting is spot-on, and the overall sound design of the game is what you expect from a game in Gotham – whether its raindrops hitting the streets or bones breaking during combat.
One of the biggest concerns of fans leading up to the release of this game was the performance. This review is with the PC version of the game – on a pc with a 4080 card and a Ryzen 7900x. It’s fair to say that that is an above middle grade pc, and the performance was smooth, constantly getting a stable framerate well over 120 fps on epic settings with no frame generation (worth noting that settings like Motion Blur, Bloom and Vignettes were turned off for accessibility reasons.)
Though on the lowest settings possible, the game is very playable on devices like the Steam Deck without frame generation. Earlier last week, this became a major concern for many people once the spec sheets came out, but TT games were able to work their magic and release a Steam Deck verified version of the build on time. For the best settings without frame generation, SteamDeckHQ (@SteamDeckHQ on X) have released this article showcasing exactly how the game looks on the device, and screenshots with how you can get the best possible performance as well!
Out of everything in the game, co-op leaves the most to be desired. While it does have couch co-op, it would be nice to see online co-op be added into the future. It feels redundant asking for this considering its 2026, but for some reason, it is a feature that was seemingly left out of the game for whatever reason.
LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight is the unexpected, but perfect, return to Gotham that we all needed. While it’s a Batman game, it has no shame in reminding you that it is a Lego game at its core – and that is a good thing! It’s a spectacular tribute to Batman’s legacy that manages to be genuinely engaging while not taking itself too seriously. It is a polished experience that brings in rich character lore that honors the history of Batman the best way possible – the LEGO way!