This game got shafted by the community. Arkham is one of my favorite game series, and I have 100% completed Asylum once on PS3, once on GFWL and now the GOTY here on Steam. Arkham City is by far my favorite game of all time so knowing that I am very biased coming to Origins in 2024, but here’s some thoughts:

POSITIVES:
+Story+
Although City is my favorite game and we have Roger Craig Smith and Troy Baker instead of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamil who are the definitive voices of Batman and Joker respectively, for me the story blows both Asylum and City out of the water. In both City and Asylum, we have Batman and the Joker as icons that are fully formed and simply interacting with each other. You know how both of them tend to act and Batman is just this white wall of unshakable morality upon which the Joker smashes over and over again, so you get these epic scenes that have amazing stakes on the level of the characters, but their personalities almost never interact.
In Origins, the story is damn near visceral. Both Batman and the Joker get altered deeply by encountering one another and Batman’s convictions get tested to their limits. The story’s themes are elevated to a much higher degree of suffering, brutality and violence when compared to the previous two games. I love both Asylum and City, but this was indeed a step above.
+Bosses+
The bosses here are so much better than Asylum and City, it’s not even funny. In past games, most bosses slightly modify a standard combat encounter, maybe force you to use a gadget. Here, you have a mano-a-mano duel, which feels like snorting a line of the Lord’s powder, a fight against our favorite venom user that works differently both times, a thousand knife fight that feels dangerous as hell and a gadget fight for survival. The DLC Mr. Freeze fight is a bit meh, but you can’t have everything.
+Graphics+
The game holds up even this many years later. Textures and lighting, everything is beautiful, and it is amazing to think that this was a PS3 generation game. Sadly, if you want to run it the best it can look, you run the risk of instability due to some poor integration. Even so, the game looks great because the graphics fit with its art style. All the X360 generation games in the series have trouble with the integration of the Physx drivers and later version of DX, but are still gorgeous.
+Gameplay+
The game is pretty much a carbon copy of City as far as gameplay, with some notable additions and subtractions. The major addition is the martial artist enemy type, which is a bit of a mixed bag. On the one hand it adds some variety, but on the other it pulls you out of the flow of the fight because your character is suddenly playing Patty Cake in the middle of half a dozen thugs. Shock gloves are also a cool addition that allows you to get an additional gear in your flow, but they charge slowly and last too short for you to really be able to mentally sink into one rhythm or the other. There are some additional gadgets that give you more angles in predator encounters, but there has been some jank introduced that makes the gameplay. For example, instead of most edges, railings and surfaces in the open world being valid targets for grapples, now they have been limited to just a few types, and this makes the traversal very clunky when compared to city. All-in-all, it’s still the awesome gameplay of the Arkham series, so a buy just for that, but there are some issues.
+Music+
For the first time the music in an Arkham game has made me notice it. I won’t spoil the moment, but the use of some classical pieces fit so perfectly in a confrontation between the Joker and Batman that I was genuinely impressed. The original soundtrack is still fitting and well executed, but unremarkable, like in the previous two games.
NEUTRALS:
=Presentation=
The atmosphere is great, but there is far less of it. Gotham’s size has grown, but it feels like it is less dense. There is less detail to the environment, and thus, less reason to explore. The art direction is still amazing, though there are a couple of designs that I generally dislike when it comes to Arkham in general.
=Side missions and activities=
It feels like there’s more side content of lesser quality. Like in City, there are a couple of missions that genuinely expand on the ideas of the game and provide a good, albeit short story or idea, but there is a lot more of doing the same thing a given number of times in this game than in City.
NEGATIVES:
-Collectibles-
In the previous two games the Riddler trophies served as a means of making you explore the environment and were genuine short puzzles and riddles. Sadly, in Origins, they are just collectibles. There is neither challenge nor mystery. It’s just a checklist of the most mundane UbiSoft style trudge that you have seen a thousand times. Was a genuine pain to collect them all.

CONCLUSION:
This game is indeed jankier than the first two in the series. It does, however, deliver a great experience that is worthy of the series. I will definitely agree that as a whole it is worse than both Asylum and City, but it is insane to refer to this as a bad game. Very few games in this genre manage to deliver such a good experience, and although this does not feel like Colombian table salt like City, it sure as hell gets the job done.