The Most Frustrating Quests In The Batman: Arkham Series
There are plenty of facts you should know about the franchise, but the "Batman: Arkham" series boasts an incredibly wide variety of side-mission content (as well as successful remakes). Every game in the series features a large number of villains from Batman's rogue gallery, considered by many one of the greatest superhero rogues galleries of all time. So, getting to scour Gotham (or, in the first game, Arkham Asylum) for these many enemies is a treat that any comic book diehard is sure to appreciate.
Now, with all that being said, not every side quest in the "Batman: Arkham" series is a walk in the park. And this isn't because some of those quests can be challenging — the whole reason many of us play video games is for the challenge. Rather, some of these challenges are monotonous and downright frustrating. They take too long, require too much backtracking, and, by the end, just simply aren't rewarding enough for all the legwork it took to complete them.
Catching Riddler in Arkham Knight
To the average video game completionist, in-game collectibles can be incredibly rewarding — but only if they are done the right way. And it can be hard to do them the right way.
In the "Batman: Arkham" series, every single game has a large set of collectible Riddler trophies and challenges that, if found and completed, allow you to defeat the Riddler. In both "Batman: Arkham Asylum" and "Batman: Arkham City," the amount of these collectibles to find feels manageable yet challenging. In "Batman: Arkham Knight," however, the developers went way too far. Many fans certainly feel this way, as this Reddit poll shows.
There are just simply way too many trophies and challenges. By the end, the player is left spending hours backtracking through levels, scouring the map, and competing in monotonous race challenges with the Batmobile (which is, by the way, largely regarded as one of the worst features of the game). If Rocksteady Studios ever returns to make a sequel, hopefully they learn from this lesson by scaling back the Riddler challenges a bit.
Solving the Murders of... Bruce Wayne?
In "Batman: Arkham City," one of the more interesting side-quests is also one of the most frustrating to complete — Identity Theft. It all begins when the player comes across a dead body in a random Gotham alleyway. Apparently, the lead suspect is none other than Bruce Wayne. In order to find out who the imposter is (or if Batman is unknowingly blacking out and killing people), the player is tasked with finding a series of additional, similarly killed victims across Gotham. The only catch is that the game doesn't tell you where these bodies are.
This makes the mission exceedingly difficult to complete to the point that many fans have been left utterly frustrated. In order to find them, you have to search the streets on foot, because the bodies can be easily missed while flying around above the rooftops. This makes the quest incredibly monotonous.
The situation is made even more frustrating by the fact that sometimes the bodies fail to spawn on the map. A reported glitch can sometimes prevent the last body of the side quest from ever appearing. There is a Reddit post dedicated to talking about this bug, and this writer has run into the glitch a time or two during his own playthroughs. There's nothing more frustrating than a mission that makes itself impossible to complete.
Tank battles and an anti-climactic finish
There's little doubt what the most frustrating quest in the "Batman: Arkham" series is — "Campaign for Disarmament" from "Batman: Arkham Knight." There's no feature in the entire "Arkham" series that makes gamers feel less like Batman than the tank combat in "Arkham Knight."
"Campaign for Disarmament" is simply a series of tank battles. Now, on its own, that's fine. However, it certainly doesn't feel like it should be in a Batman game, and yet it's not a terrible set of missions altogether. What makes this mission the most frustrating is the anti-climactic finale.
As players complete more and more of the "Campaign for Disarmament" missions, the game begins to tease a final showdown with one of Batman's most formidable adversaries: Deathstroke. But, instead of an exciting fight where players come face to face with Batman's foe, all fans received was yet another generic tank battle.
Gamers complained that the fight was a big disappointment, simply a "rehash" of other tank battles, with no hand-to-hand combat that players may have wanted from the iconic character. "I will defend this game to my dying breath but yes, the Deathstroke boss fight sucks," another fan added.
There's little more frustrating than being sold short on the promise of a great boss battle, especially from a series known for its iconic villains.