Review: Batman: The Telltale Series Episode 5 – City Of Light

Batman: The Telltale Series looked to be picking up some major steam after the fourth episode, with all signs pointing toward an epic finale. Unfortunately Episode 5: City of Light delivers a mediocre finish riddled with performance issues. City of Light manages to tie up all the loose ends of the series, some better than others, in an episode that clocks in at just under two hours.

Episode 4: Guardian of Gotham left off with Batman taking care of either the Harvey Dent or Penguin story arc, depending on the choices you made during the episode. That left two villians remaining to take down in City of Light: Cobblepot or Dent, and Vicki Vale, the leader of the Children of Arkham. The showdowns with Harvey and Oswald end rather quickly, with the Penguin story arc being the more disappointing. After all the build up throughout the series, and the childhood memories Bruce and Oswald share together, you’d expect a more emotionally charged face off.

With Batman making short work of the secondary villians, that left plenty of time to focus on the final encounter with Lady Arkham. City of Light dives into the origin story of Vicki Vale and how she came to be, while incorporating the detective-style gameplay mechanics that have been utilized throughout most of the series. All the investigating leads you back to familiar territory, Arkham Asylum, to end the Children of Arkham once and for all.

The final fight scene with Lady Arkham is definitely one of the high points of the series. The fight sequences are extremely well choreographed, and rival the final battle in Tales From The Borderlands for Telltales best fight scene yet.

While the Two-Face and Lady Arkham story arcs are wrapped up nicely in the series finale, the same can’t be said for the Selina Kyle/Bruce Wayne romance. After vowing to get as far away from Gotham and Harvey Dent as she can, Selina randomly steps back into the picture for a brief moment, only to have an awkward and forced goodbye. Considering how much of a role she played in most of the episodes, Selina Kyle’s exit was a major letdown.

Technical issues have been the thorn in the side throughout the majority of episodes of Batman: The Telltale Series, but none worse than City of Light. On several occasions the cut scenes became extremely choppy, especially the opening scene. Some scenes became so bogged down that the game crashed on multiple occasions, and one enemy appeared as a floating set of eyes and a mouth.

After what has been a pretty solid four episodes, Batman: The Telltale Series ultimately falls short in the final episode, and fails to deliver the conclusion that the series deserved. Despite a lot of character development and build up, some story arcs don’t get the attention or ending they warranted, and the overwhelming performance issues capped off what has been a sour end to an otherwise excellent series.

Playstation 4 Season Pass of Batman: The Telltale Series was provided by Telltale Games